Quotes on International Women's Day

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.--Abigail (Smith) Adams (1744-1818)_Letter to John Adams_ [March 31, 1776]

We are obliged to go fair and softly and, in practice, you know we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight.-John Adams , replying to Abigail's March 1776 letter.

I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world- except a woman-governed world. -- Nancy Astor

A man of quality is never threatened by a woman of equality ~ Jill Briscoe

This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humour section. --John Callahan

A liberated woman is one who rises up and says to her menfolk, 'I will not be dictated to,' and proceeds to become a stenographer. - Chesterton

Women are early taught that to appear to yield is the only way to govern. - Sarah Moore Grimke (1792 -1873)

We're tired of having radical feminist ideology passed off as the lock-step view of all women. As heirs of a tradition of strong, capable Christian women, we emphatically affirm that we are beneficiaries, not victims of our strong Christian faith.-Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Her organization criticized the National Organization for Women's (NOW) attack on the PromiseKeepers. Washington Times for Setpember 17, 1997. Front page.

Women's Rights are men's duties. -- Karl Kraus

Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister Newsweek, October 23, 1972

I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.-Robin Morgan, editor of _Ms_ magazine

I resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed, which, by custom and a perverted application of the Scriptures, had been wrested from woman.- Lucretia Mott (1793-1880)

Anyone familiar with academia knows that it breeds ideological cults that are prone to dogma and resistant to criticism. Many women believe that this has now happened to feminism. In her book _Who Stole Feminism?_ the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers draws a useful distinction between two schools of thought. _Equity feminism_ opposes sexual discrimination and other forms of unfairness to women. It is part of the classical liberal and humanistic tradition that grew out of the Enlightenment, and it guided the first wave of feminism and launched the second wave. _Gender feminism_ holds that women continue to be enslaved by a pervasive system of male dominance, the gender system, in which "bi-sexual infants are transformed into male and female gender personalities, the one destined to command, the other to obey." It is opposed to the classical liberal tradition and allied instead with Marxism, postmodernism, social constructionism, and radical science. It has become the credo of some women's studies programs, feminist organizations, and spokespeople for the women's movement.
Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology. Gender feminism is an empirical doctrine committed to three claims about human nature. The first is that differences between men and women have nothing to do with biology but are socially constructed in their entirety. The second is that humans possess a single social motive -- power -- and that social life can be understood only in terms of how it is exercised. The third is that human interactions arise not from the motives of people dealing with each other as individuals but from the motives of _groups_ dealing with other groups -- in this case, the male gender dominating the female gender.--Steven Pinker, _The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of Human Nature_

By its very nature... the women's liberation movement precipitates a series of conflict situations--in the legislatures, in the courts, in the schools, in industry--with man targeted as the enemy. Confrontation replaces co-operation as the watchword of all relationships. Women and men become adversaries instead of partners.-Phyliss Schlafly, "The Power of The Positive Woman", 1977

Something odd began to happen -- mainly to the country, and incidentally to people like me. As feminism and multiculturalism more and more sought to remake society, attacking much that had served humanity well as narrow or even antique, we concluded we could no longer in good conscience remain on that side. There was both too little respect for the accumulated wisdom of the ages and too much playing havoc with truth and common sense.--Harry Stein, _How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace)_, 2000

What the radical feminists have in fact accomplished is projecting a vision and an agenda of sexual 'liberation' that have had the net effect of making it easier for husbands to dump their wives and children. They have also made it harder for new families to form, by creating a contentious atmosphere between the sexes. Women and men have both lost out, in different ways, in all this. Children have of course lost out worst of all from the decline of families. Yet the feminazis have made 'childhood poverty' one of their political cries. They are shameless. Dr. Thomas Sowell

I owe nothing to Women's Lib. Margaret Thatcher The Observer December 1, 1974

Women who complain that [she] was not a feminist because she didn't help other women or openly acknowledge her debt to feminism have a point, but they are also missing something vital. She normalised female success... No one can ever question whether women are capable of single-minded vigour, of efficient leadership, after Margaret Thatcher. She is the great unsung heroine of British feminism.~Natasha Walter, The New Feminism