no. 453

"When you say average, do you mean that basically if you tightly gathered all the girls in the world, it would turn into that girl!!? That would be a girl crystal!! Th-that would be a jewel!"

Shinohara En, the cross-dressing, girl-loving protagonist of Komura Ayumi's manga Usotsuki Lily, vol. 0, ch. 4, pg. 30


As someone who has long been a champion of seeing beauty in the "ordinary", I find this to be a lovely statement.

no. 378

"Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures - the fuller breasts and rounded hips - have become distateful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men."

Sandra Lee Bartky, Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power


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no. 375

What men mean when they talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.

And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a woman, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than “pleasant agreement.”

When men say “most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool” the subtext is not, “I love you, be the mother to my children.” The subtext is “do not step out of line, here.” If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general.

Lady, You Really Aren’t “Crazy”


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no. 371

"I interviewed a young anthropologist working with women in Mali, a country in Africa where women go around with bare breasts. They’re always feeding their babies. And when she told them that in our culture men are fascinated with breasts there was an instant of shock. The women burst out laughing. They laughed so hard, they fell on the floor.

They said, “You mean, men act like babies?”"

Carolyn Latteier, Breasts, the women’s perspective on an American obsession

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no.348

“Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else’s… I refuse to burn my energy adding extra magic and sparkle to other people’s lives to get them to love me. I’m busy casting spells for myself.”

Laurie Penny in her excellent article I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

no. 345

"Opinions are like orgasms, most girls aren’t taught that it is okay to have their own and are only expected to further men’s."

awfulbanter

no. 340

"Fuck that. Fuck that right now. I’m going to tell the generation of so called men something right this second. It’s an amazing mystery of the universe. It’s how to never get friendzoned.

This is how you do it.

You come to the terms that the friendzone doesn’t exist and that the most important thing in the universe is not your dick."

Wesley, as reporting how her dad got real defensive when some guy told him that she friendzoned them.

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no. 338

“Women’s liberationists, white and black, will always be at odds with one another as long as our idea of liberation is based on having the power white men have. For that power denies unity, denies common connection, and is inherently divisive.”

bell hooks; Ain’t I A Woman: black women and feminism

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no. 337

“Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not … ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“… when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”

Erykah Badu: June/July Cover Story [Pg 1] | VIBE

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no. 336

“If sexism is a gun, men hold it. And sometimes it recoils and hits them and that HURTS…but not as much as getting hit with the bullet.”

Laura

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no. 333

"Women are presented too often not as consumers of the product, but part of the product – a sexy body sexily getting ready to surf, or a sexy body sexily wearing American Apparel. We’re used to seeing women look sexy and undressed in ads, while men in ads tend to just wear the clothes properly while also looking handsome in the face area."

Caitlin Welsh, Quoted in "Men Need Clothes; Women Need to Look Sexy" by Dr. Lisa Wade


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no. 299

"If girls are asking to be raped because their clothes don't completely cover all of their bodies, then boys are asking to be kicked in the balls just because they don't wear cups everywhere."

iseeavoice

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no. 288

“I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don’t listen to the women’s liberation rhetoric because they know that it’s nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles. They say things like they don’t want men opening doors for them anymore, and they don’t want men lighting their cigarettes for them anymore. Big deal. Black women have been opening doors for themselves and lighting their own cigarettes for a couple centuries in this country. Black women don’t quibble about things that are not important.”

Wilma Rudolph

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no. 286

"If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been 'fuck off' because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, 'No, fuck off, leave me alone, thank you very much'."

Dame Helen Mirren

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no. 283

"Yes, the Bechdel Test. It’s named for Alison Bechdel, who is a comic book creator. The test is, are there two named women in the film? Do they talk to each other? And is it about something other than a man? I actually think the Bechdel Test is a little advanced for us sometimes. I have one called the Sexy Lamp Test, which is, if you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a sexy lamp and your story still works, you’re a hack."

Comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel, Avengers Assemble)

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no. 282

My mother had three pregnancies, and two children. She had a miscarriage, between my brother and I, in that four year span between our births, there was another pregnancy, another child desperately wanted, who didn’t live to term.
My mother had her pre-natal care, and her post-miscarriage care, at Planned Parenthood.
Because it was the best place for her. Because at the time, she had a two year old child and a bike and they were living just around that nice little sweet spot between ‘desperately poor’ and ‘almost have enough to consider a savings account.’ And when you are poor, and female, and need health services, Planned Parenthood is there.
And my mother walked past the protesters, walked past the people who screamed at her about not killing her baby, about how she was a whore, and she was going to hell. My mother, in mourning for a child that she had lost, blaming herself, hating herself for failing at this most feminine of things, walked through that, to care for herself, to get the medical care she needed. So that someday, two years later, she could have me.
I cannot speak to the courage that must have taken. But that path is walked by thousands of women. Every single day.
She donated to Planned Parenthood until her death. And she said to me, that the people who screamed at her saw her only as a vessel for a baby. They didn’t care about her, they didn’t care about her baby, either. They were pro-birth, not pro-life, because none of them would be there after her baby was born, to offer help and support and care.
The protesters didn’t care about her. And the medical professionals inside did. It is the right of every woman to have access to safe, affordable, quality health care, no matter where she comes from, what her income is, or what choices she makes with her life. And that is what these kind of bills are attempting to take away.

scifigrl47

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no. 279

"You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman’s looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she’s ugly, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot."

Hillary Clinton

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no. 276

"17% of cardiac surgeons are women, 17% of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice?

…We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17% women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men."

Source: NPR: Hollywood Needs More Women

no. 264

"It takes 237 muscles to fake an orgasm but 15 to say 'it’s called a clitoris and it’s right here'."

Nolan at pinenolanapplehttp

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no. 263

"When Stuyvesant says that women’s dress and bodies are distraction in a learning environment, for example, what they’re really saying is that they’re distracting to male students. The default student we are concerned about - the student whose learning we want to ensure is protected - is male. Never mind how “distracting” it is to be pulled from class, humiliated, and made to change outfits - publicly degrading young women is small price to pay to make sure that a boy doesn’t have to suffer through the momentary distraction of glancing at a girl’s legs. When this dentist in Iowa can fire his assistant for turning him on - even though she’s done absolutely nothing wrong - the message again is that it’s men’s ability to work that’s important.

And when rape victims are blamed for the crime committed against them, the message is the same: This is something that happened to the perpetrator, who was driven to assault by a skirt, or a date, or the oh-so-sexy invitation of being passed out drunk. Women have infringed on their right to exist without being turned on. (Ta-Nehisi Coates describes this centering of male sexual vulnerability quite well.) Our very presence is a disruption of the male status quo."

Jessica Valenti, “Asking For It”

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