85 Quotes by Marilyn French

The philosophical problem of Either/Or, as Kierkegaard referred to it, is therefore largely a factitious problem, in which philosophers attempt to synthesize or reconcile oppositions that are created primarily by their own categorizations. We are told that a thing is either A or not-A, and logically these categories are exclusive. But such division is not intrinsic in reality, in which elements flow into each other and possess similar properties.

And there are so much easier ways to destroy a woman. You don't have to rape her or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her. You don't even have to do that. You can just let her work in your office for thirty-five dollars a week.

I have opened all the doors in my head. I have opened all the pores in my body. But only the tide rolls in.

Pride. You have it where you can have it.

All men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes.

When a man loses superiority, he loses potency. That's what all this talk about castrating women is about. Castrating women are those who refuse to pretend men are better than they are and better than women are. The simple truth — that men are only equal — can undermine a culture more devastatingly than any bomb. Subversion is telling the truth.

It does seem true that a young woman may sometimes behave in a way that can be called titillating, and that men take such behavior as being directed entirely at them. [...]I've often seen blushing young men with shining eyes behave in the same way, but no one says of them that they want to be raped. If, after taking a few steps forward, they then decide to retreat, no one accuses them of being cunt teasers. In fact, the disappointed woman probably thinks it's all her fault.

My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter.

...Blum remarks that Kant and Hegel specify that rationality, self-control, strength of will, consistency, adherence to duty and obligation, and acting on ‘universal’ principles comprise moral behavior; they specifically exclude from the makeup of moral man qualities like sympathy, compassion, kindness, nurturance, and concern for the community, which are associated with women.