362 Quotes About Patriarchy

But there are many things a woman never sees until she’s joined unto a man.

She, too, was part of this game in which women could only hope to survive by keeping each other down.

The spread of religious fundamentalism throughout the world right now is men retrenching to undo the civil and social advances of women; to reestablish male power as a fundamental reality by reestablishing gender as an absolute. This requires rigorous tightening of restraints on male sexual behavior as well as intensifying civil and sexual controls on women.

I suppose it isn’t fair to fault my father, though he’s the one who used it, moved it, claimed it as his own because of course, he did. That’s just the way of things, I beg and fight and scrape for scraps while he just has to glance upon a thing to make it his.

The feeling that I've done something wrong, that I really don't know what it is, that there's something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone's love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to be someone else--someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.

Originally and naturally, sexual pleasure was the good, the beautiful, the happy, that which united man with nature in general. When sexual feelings and religious feelings became separated from one another, that which is sexual was forced to become the bad, the internal, the diabolical.

That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy.

Me parecía que era necesario salvar con las palabras todo lo que la historia, la Historia grande, es decir, la de los hombres, había hecho impreciso, había condenado o idealizado [con respecto a las mujeres].

To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others.