116 Quotes by Soraya Chemaly

It is not only that we have the right to claim anger. It is that our anger is a moral obligation.

A society that does not respect women's anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.

We minimize our anger, calling it frustration, impatience, exasperation, or irritation, words that don't convey the intrinsic social and public demand that 'anger' does. We learn to contain our selves: our voices, hair, clothes, and, most importantly, speech. Anger is usually about saying "no" in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but "no.

When a woman shows anger in institutional, political, and professional settings, she automatically violates gender norms.

It's the sting of knowing that exactly as the world starts expanding for most boys, it begins to shrink for [girls].

Finding communities that validate and share your anger creates powerful opportunities for collective social action.

Improving maternal outcomes means valuing women not only as reproductive engines but also as human beings - something that is still, quite apparently, a problem.

What my sister needed was not people urging her, as so many did, to get pregnant again as soon as possible, but acknowledgment of her loss and the violence that she experienced in that loss. She needed to know that this was not a failure or that she was a bad mother. She needed to be allowed to be not only sad but also, in her grief, to be angry. But as Gunther explained, "Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers.

The challenge we face is in being unapologetic about our desires and decisions and in not judging other women's choices. It is in rechanneling the anger, guilt, and shame that we often encounter into creating a culture that no longer conflates the word woman with mother and the word mother with sacrifice.