Women S Movement Quotes

“There could be a powerful international women's rights movement if only philanthropists would donate as much to real women as to paintings and sculptures of women.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof

“This book appears at a time when public discussion of the common atrocities of sexual and domestic life has been made possible by the women’s movement, and when public discussion of the common atrocities of political life has been made possible by the movement for human rights. I expect the book to be controversial—first, because it is written from a feminist perspective; second, because it challenges established diagnostic concepts; but third and perhaps most importantly, because it speaks about horrible things, things that no one really wants to hear about.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Sitting with Ricki [Abrams], talking with Ricki, I made a vow to her: that I would use everything I knew, including from prostitution, to make the women`s movement stronger and better; that I`d give my life to the movement and for the movement. I promised to honour-bound to the well-being of women, to do anything necessary for that well-being. I promised to live and to die if need be for women. I made that vow some thirty years ago, and I have not betrayed it yet.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

“Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.
We could breathe and talk to one another.
We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”
—Jules Finn”
― J. Dylan Yates, The Belief in Angels

“Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of 'satanic ritual abuse' legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women's movement and the child protection movement. In efforts to characterise social workers and therapists as hysterical zealots, 'satanic ritual abuse' was, quite literally, 'made fun of': it became the subject of scorn and ridicule as interest groups sought to discredit testimony of sexual abuse as a whole. The groundswell of support that such efforts gained amongst journalists, academics and the public suggests that the pleasures of disbelief found resonance far beyond the confines of social movements for people accused of sexual abuse. These pleasures were legitimised by a pseudo-scientific vocabulary of 'false memories' and 'moral panic' but as Daly (1999:219-20) points out 'the ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as the "merely ideological"'.
The media spotlight has moved on and social movements for people accused of sexual abuse have lost considerable momentum. However, their rhetoric continues to reverberate throughout the echo chamber of online and 'old' media. Intimations of collusion between feminists and Christians in the concoction of 'satanic ritual abuse' continue to mobilise 'progressive' as well as 'conservative' sympathies for men accused of serious sexual offences and against the needs of victimised women and children.
This chapter argues that, underlying the invocation of often contradictory rationalising tropes (ranging from calls for more scientific 'objectivity' in sexual abuse investigations to emotional descriptions of 'happy families' rent asunder by false allegations) is a collective and largely unarticulated pleasure; the catharthic release of sentiments and views about children and women that had otherwise become shameful in the aftermath of second wave feminism. It seems that, behind the veneer of public concern about child sexual abuse, traditional views about the incredibility of women's and children's testimony persist. 'Satanic ritual abuse has served as a lens through which these views have been rearticulated and reasserted at the very time that evidence of widespread and serious child sexual abuse has been consolidating. p60”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“The suffragettes were easy to condemn, but hard to ignore. Their actions also boosted donations to peaceful, law-abiding suffragist societies. Many of those who claimed to be repelled by the militants were what we would now call "concern trolls" pretending to care about the success of a movement they never supported anyway.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“Changing the world is always difficult.”
― Helen Lewis

“The Women’s March had restored my faith as I am sure it has introduced the young generation to the new wave of feminism. A feminist movement that was made up of both sexes and all ages and creeds, one that did away with the arguments and stood arm in arm for a greater cause, a cause which the Arab media did not wish to project.”
― Aysha Taryam

“And, I think, for those of us who came of age with the women's movement, there's always the fear that it's not real, you're not really allowed to determine your own life. It may be pulled back at any moment.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“I couldn't conquer my enemy. I married him,”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“It's a story that many would consider perfectly ordinary...Yet there is another story of my life; one that I believe is as inspiring as any other. I wish I had claimed it more publicly and told it more proudly. It's the story of a revolution. I was born right when everything was changing for women....I came along at just the right moment, like a surfer catching the perfect wave. Everything I am, everything I've done, so much of what I stand for flows from that happy accident of fate.
I know for a lot of people, including a lot of women, the movement for women's equality exists largely in the past. They're wrong about that. It's still happening, still as urgent and vital as ever. And it was and is the story of my life--mine and millions of other women's. We share it. We wrote it together. We're still writing it.”
― Hillary Clinton

“Unless she is shedding tears of joy, a woman is not meant to cry.”
― Emmanuel Louis, IMAGINE WOMEN THE REAL POWER: A Man’s Journey to Praising and Defending Women