Femme Power Quotes

Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent, more perfect than all that a man can invent.

I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.

He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.

A woman is like an ocean; beautiful to look at but dangerous to cross.

My first female lover was a Jewish woman. She was butch, but not in a swaggering macho way- she could pass as a yeshiva boy, pale and intense. Small, almost fragile, she exuded a powerful sense of herself. She had not been to a synagogue in years, but kept the law of kashrut, and taught me my first prayers in Hebrew. She cooked, she read, she ironed her dress shirts and polished her boots meticulously, and admired femme women enormously. She was also the first person ever- including myself- to bring me to multiple orgasms. She taught me to ask for what I wanted in bed, then encouraged me to expect it from her and future lovers. She taught me to get her off with fingers, tongue, lips, sex toys, and my voice. She showed me how to masturbate in different positions, and fisted me during my menstrual cramps to provide an internal massage- and to demonstrate that a sexual act without orgasm was also an acceptable, intimate act. She never separated sexuality from the rest of her life; it was as integral to her as her Judaism. This was how I wanted to be. Not just sexually, although certainly that way too. This is how I wanted to move through the world. -- Karen Taylor (from "Daughters of Zelophehad")

Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent, more perfect than all that a man can invent. When she came to my bed and begged me with sighs not to tempt her towards passion nor actions unwise, I told her I’d spare her and kissed her closed eyes, then unbraided her body of its clothing disguise. While our bodies were nude bathed in candlelight fine I devoured her mouth, tender lips divine; and I drank through her thighs her feminine wine. Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent, more perfect than all that a man can invent.

Blondes are the girlfriend, brunete is the femme fatale, but the heroine, she's the redheaded girl.

We are diamonds in the rough Through the thrust and toil, we come out strong We are the breath of the earth, Our wombs tell of humanity's birth We are seeds splattered on putrid soils Still we sprout, through every storm We are not here to survive, We are here to live... Inward and outward In the incandescence of our existence Yes, our voices may sometimes be broken But our spirit remains indestructible. We are women, unapologetically!

Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow, Around the rocks, and rifted caves; Ye demons of the gulf below! I hear you, in the troubled waves. High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds In night's impenetrable clouds, My solitary watch I keep, And listen, while the turbid deep Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole. Eternal world of waters, hail! Within thy caves my Lover lies; And day and night alike shall fail Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes. Along this wild untrodden coast, Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost; Thro' this unbounded waste of seas, Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze; Mine was the choice, in this terrific form, To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm. Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul, Retain no more their former glow. Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll, I watch the bark, in murmurs low, (While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom) To lure the sailor to his doom; Soft from some pile of frozen snow I pour the syren-song of woe; Like the sad mariner's expiring cry, As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die. Then, while the dark and angry deep Hangs his huge billows high in air ; And the wild wind with awful sweep, Howls in each fitful swell - beware! Firm on the rent and crashing mast, I lend new fury to the blast; I mark each hardy cheek grow pale, And the proud sons of courage fail; Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves, Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves. When Vengeance bears along the wave The spell, which heav'n and earth appals; Alone, by night, in darksome cave, On me the gifted wizard calls. Above the ocean's boiling flood Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood: Low sounds along the waters die, And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky; Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide, While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide. Thrice welcome to my weary sight, Avenging ministers of Wrath! Ye heard, amid the realms of night, The spell that wakes the sleep of death. Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve, Or storms, the polar skies involve; Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck, The raging winds and billows break; On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea, All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency. To aid your toils, to scatter death, Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force, When the keen north-wind's freezing breath Spreads desolation in its course, My soul within this icy sea, Fulfils her fearful destiny. Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait To lead the victims to their fate; With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy, And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.

BDSM, in its nature, is a very intimate and intelligent therapy, if done properly.

The fact was that despite himself, without knowing why or how it had happened and very much against his better judgement, he had fallen hopelessly in love. He had fallen as if into some deep and muddy hole. By nature he was a delicate and sensitive soul. He had had ideals and dreamed of an exquisite and passionate affair. And now he had fallen for this little cricket of a creature. She was as stupid as every other woman and not even pretty to make up for it. Skinny and foul-tempered, she had taken possession of him entirely from tip to toe, body and soul. He had fallen under the omnipotent and mysterious spell of the female. He was overwhelmed by this colossal force of unknown origin, the demon in the flesh capable of hurling the most rational man in the world at the feet of a worthless harlot. There was no way he could explain its fatal and total power.

Doctors who want power will do anything to get it; healers will do anything to get away from it.

The assumption that femininity is always structured by and performed for a male gaze fails to take seriously queer feminine desire. The radical feminist critiques of femininity also disregarded the fact that not all who are (seen as) feminine are women. Crucially, what is viewed as appropriately feminine is not only defined in relation to maleness or masculinity, but through numerous intersections of power including race, sexuality, ability, and social class. In other words, white, heterosexual, binary gender-conforming, able-bodied, and upper- or middle-class femininity is privileged in relation to other varieties. Any social system may contain multiple femininities that differ in status, and which relate to each other as well as to masculinity. As highlighted by “effeminate” gay men, trans women, femmes, drag queens, and “bad girls,” it is possible to be perceived as excessively, insufficiently, or wrongly feminine without for that sake being seen as masculine. Finally, the view of femininity as a restrictive yet disposable mask presupposes that emancipation entails departure into neutral (or masculine) modes of being. This is a tenuous assumption, as the construction of selfhood is entangled with gender, and conceptions of androgyny and gender neutrality similarly hinge on culturally specific ideas of masculinity and femininity.

Medical textbooks never talk about the pain that's caused by anything that doctors do... And many doctors think that the pain is justified "if it's for the patient's good." That is never true. The least we can do, as healers, is everything in our power not to cause pain.

What I’ve come to realize I that I don’t like action for action’s sake. Mindless explosions, super close ups of combat and gore, and unnecessary effects make me zone out incredibly fast. What I do love is a fight that is well choreographed and in which I actually care about the outcome. And hopefully not riddled with cliches. Even more so, I have had a long, deep-seated appreciation for watching chicks kick ass. Watching some lone-wolf-type hero beat the crap out of the bad guys is okay, but watching a BAMF femme do it is 10000% times better.

But the young Count insisted on the Beauty selecting a flower for him. He was waiting impatiently for her second present, the promised kiss — her first kiss. The Beauty looked at the flowers. Once again her face was darkened by a delicate shade of sadness. Suddenly, as if prompted by some strange will, she quickly stretched out a hand, so exquisite in its naked whiteness, and plucked a many-petaled flower. Her hand hesitated, and she bowed her head, and finally with an expression of shy indecision she approached the Count and placed the flower in a buttonhole of his cloak. The powerful and pungent scent wafted into the young Count's face, which grew pale as his head reeled in languid impotence. Indifference and tedium overcame him. He was scarcely aware of himself, he hardly noticed that the Beauty took him by the arm and led him into the house, away from the fragrances of the wondrous Garden. In one of the rooms of the house where all was bright, white and rosy, the Count came to himself. A youthful vitality returned to his face, his black eyes were aflame with passion once again, and he felt the joy of life and the surge of desire anew. But already the inescapable lay in wait for him. A white hand, bare, slender, lay on his neck; and the fragrant kiss of the Beauty was tender, sweet, long. The two blue lightnings of her eyes flashed close to his eyes and were masked with the subtle mystery of her long eyelashes. The sinister fires of some sweet pain swirled like a whirlwind about the heart of the young Count. He raised his arms to embrace the Beauty — but with a soft cry she stepped away and softly, quietly, ran away, leaving him alone. ("The Poison Garden")

The difference between the butch and the queen is rooted in the system of male supremacy. Gay male camp is based not simply on the incongruous juxtaposition of femininity and maleness, but also on the reordering of particular power relationships inherent in our society’s version of masculinity and femininity. The most obvious cause for the minimum development of camp among lesbians was that masculinity was not and still isn’t as incongruous as femininity in twentieth century American culture and therefore not as easily used as a basis for humor. Concomitantly although individual women might be able to sexually objectify a man, women has a group did not have the social power to objectify men in general. Therefore, such objectification could never be the basis for a genre of humor with wide appeal. But why didn’t camp develop and thrive within the lesbian community itself? Because the structures of oppression were such that lesbians never really escaped from male supremacy. In lesbians’ actual struggles in the bars or out on the streets, authority was always male. For queens to confront male authority was a confrontation between two men, on some level equals. The queen was playing with male privilege, which was his by birthright. For women to confront male authority is to break all traditional training and roles. Without a solid organization of all women, this requires taking on a male identity, beating men at their own game. Passive resistance or the fist is most appropriate for the situation, though not a very good basis for theater and humor.

Consumption was understood as a manner of appearing, and that appearance became a staple of nineteenth-century manners. It became rude to eat heartily. It was glamorous to look sickly. “Chopin was tubercular at a time when good health was not chic,” Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in 1913. “It was fashionable to be pale and drained; Princess Belgiojoso strolled along the boulevards … pale as death in person.” Saint-Saëns was right to connect an artist, Chopin, with the most celebrated femme fatale of the period, who did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB-influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks—at a moment when aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“One can never be too rich. One can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.) Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of that distinctively modern activity, promoting the self as an image. The tubercular look had to be considered attractive once it came to be considered a mark of distinction, of breeding. “I cough continually!” Marie Bashkirtsev wrote in the once widely read Journal, which was published, after her death at twenty-four, in 1887. “But for a wonder, far from making me look ugly, this gives me an air of languor that is very becoming.” What was once the fashion for aristocratic femmes fatales and aspiring young artists became, eventually, the province of fashion as such. Twentieth-century women’s fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

I’d learned the lesson loud and clear, one that has been re-taught to me and so many other women and femmes who have been targets of harassment and abuse: The world owes you nothing. If you are so brave as to express your gender in public, you will be harassed, you will be hurt, you may even be assaulted, and no one will have to apologize for how they treated you. They will get away with it every single time. They will make you feel ashamed of feeling hurt. They will make you feel like you are just whining. And speaking up will only make it worse. Watching people who love you—who support you and want the best for you—try to take on the world and fight for you, only to lose, will only make it hurt more. So you stop talking about what you’re facing. You stop talking about how much you’re hurting. You stop telling people how shitty the world is to you because you are gender nonconforming. You end an email with a smile, take the abuse, and pretend it doesn’t hurt you. You learn you have no real power, that the only power you do have is the power not to flinch when you are punched, not to cry when you are stung, not to acknowledge that abuse leads to injury.

You're the medium Weed and I use to communicate, that's all, this set of holes, pleasantly framed, this little femme scampering back and forth with scented messages tucked in her little secret places." She was too young then to understand what he thought he was offering her, a secret about power in the world. That's what he thought it was. Brock was young then too. She only took it as some parable about his feelings for her, one she didn't exactly understand but covered for with the wide invincible gaze practiced by many sixties children, meaning nearly anything at all, useful in a lot of situations, including ignorance.

Woman I is considered to this day to be one of the most anxiety-producing and disturbing images of a woman in the history of art. In this painting de Kooning, who was reared by an abusive mother, creates an image that captures the divergent dimensions of the eternal woman: fertility, motherhood, aggressive sexual power, and savagery. She is at once a primitive earth mother and a femme fatale. With this image, marked by fanglike teeth and huge eyes that echo the shape of her enormous breasts, de Kooning gave birth to a new synthesis of the female. 7.6 The first known female sculpture, the Venus of Hohle Fels, circa 35,000 B.C.

Dii Nvwati (Cherokee). Translation: Skunk medicine. The skunk asks us to defend ourselves effectively, without causing further conflict. Self-protection but do no harm. Gangsterish peace-making. That is the kind of masculinity that I try to embody. With my leadership, with my poise, with my privileges. As my body continues on a journey of thickening, muscle hardening, limbs lengthening, Ayurvedic drying, shorter synapse pathways, fuzzier intuition, and choppier verbal articulation all facilitated by weekly testosterone injections these are poignant lessons to forward. The objective is for men and masculine people to not yield our power to others… Women and femme people don’t need our paternalistic sickle to swath as we ‘tap out.’ We must figure out power without domination. The skunk asks us to use our powers effectively, without wiping ourselves out. Without recapitulating top down, give-less-to-get-more social structures. Just as the skunk does not seek to be the bear, let us not attempt to trade places with the oppressor. Let us navigate a road of paradigm shifting that seeks to salve both current social and economic injuries, but also prepare a sustainable method of being for seven generations to come.

But this is no ordinary village. Every now and then, a shiny four-wheel drive bounces down the dirt track that leads to a refuge center of an organization whose name in French is Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situation Précaire, or AFESIP. (Rough translation: Helping Women in Danger.) Inside the vehicle you may spot a powerful government official, a heavyweight journalist or even an American movie star. They all come to meet with AFESIP's president and co-founder, Somaly Mam, and support her courageous work fighting sex traffickers.

Mais tu as raison. Dès que j’aurai un vaisseau capable de prendre le large, je trouverai, je sauverai et - s’il en est encore temps - j’épouserai la seule femme qui a, pour moi, à la fois un corps et un visage, et avec qui je n’ai pas besoin de renoncer aux miens.

Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin “ideal.” • Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years. •  Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power. •  Oppresses people who don’t match up with its supposed picture of “health,” which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.

...the dark femme de-centers men entirely from her life. If she wants to seduce something, she seduces success. If she wants to slay something, she slays her business/career. She's her own dream girl.

— Ta femme s’en va, mon bonhomme, répondit le brun. Elle vient de comprendre que ses rêves ne se réaliseront jamais. Les prunelles étincelantes, Dista le fixa avec intensité. — Une reine n’a pas de rêves. Elle n’a que les cauchemars dont elle tente de protéger son peuple.

La reine n’était plus régente. Elle avait offert un garçon au trône d’Arcavie et l’avait guidé jusqu’à ce jour fatidique : elle avait accompli son devoir. Désormais, son existence se résumait à un souvenir silencieux. On lui rendrait hommage en érigeant une statue à son effigie dans l’allée des Reines. Tel le bloc de marbre taillé à son image, elle serait impérissable, inaliénable, immortelle. Et par-dessus tout, dépourvue de la parole. En cet instant, Esther rêvait de briser les sculptures de toutes ces femmes de roi à qui l’on avait ôté la voix. Une fois leurs ersatz de pierre détruits, entendrait-on leurs cris révoltés ?

Le cœur de la jeune femme tambourinait dans sa poitrine. Relâchant son poignet gauche, le duc effleura son menton avec une douceur inquiétante. — Le pouvoir coule dans nos veines, et c’est bien moins une grâce qu’une malédiction.

Politically correct sexuality is a paradoxical concept. One of the most deeply held opinions in feminism is that women should be autonomous and self-directed in defining their sexual desire, yet when a woman says “This is my desire,” feminists rush in to say, “No, no, it is the prick in your head; women should not desire that act.” But we do not yet know enough about what women– any women– desire. The real problem here is that we stopped asking questions too early in the lesbian and feminist movement, and rushed to erect what appeared to be answers into the formidable and rigid edifice that we have now. Our contemporary lack of curiosity also affects our view of the past. We don’t ask butch-femme women who they are; we tell them. We don’t explore the social life of working-class lesbian bars in the 1940’s and 1950’s; we simply assert that all those women were victims. Our supposed answers closed our ears and stopped our analysis. Questions and answers about lesbian lives that deviate from the feminist model of the 1970’s strike like a shock wave against the movement’s foundation, yet this new wave of questioning is an authentic one, coming from women who have helped create the feminist and lesbian movement that they are now challenging into new growth. If we close down exploration, we will be forcing some women once again to live their sexual lives in a land of shame and guilt, only this time they will be haunted by the realization that it was not the patriarchal code they had failed, but the creed of their own sisters who said they came in love. Curiosity builds bridges between women and between the present and past; judgement builds the power if some over others. Curiosity is not trivial; it is respect one life pays to another. It is a largeness of mind and heart that refuses to be bound by decorum or by desperation. It is hardest to keep alive in the times it is most needed, the times of hatred, of instability, of attack. Surely these are such times.

Today, for me, her gender seemed a null, a promise, a projection screen; neither masculine nor feminine, or perhaps both at once⁠—but no less erotically powerful or compelling for the confusion I felt when I looked at her.

Diet culture is a system of beliefs that: • Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin “ideal.” • Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years. • Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power. • Oppresses people who don’t match up with its supposed picture of “health,” which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.

Madame docteur nous soupçonne d’être en bonne santé nous sommes aisément reconnaissables habillés avec l’équipement de service. ce sont des gardiens. si on leur donne quelque chose à garder, ils se prennent pour des dieux. elle veut voir si nous avons tout ce qu’il nous faut ou peut-être plus. qui sait. où nous sommes nous séparés et où nous ne sommes plus entiers elle pose toutes sortes de questions sur nos cœurs électriques pour apprendre mon Dieu d’où ça peut bien venir nos femmes de passage fumantes ont une odeur de brioche faite maison elle a pour le contrôle périodique un énorme peigne pour nous arranger et il lui reste de nous une poignée de cheveux avec laquelle elle tresse ses nattes blondes flower power. on nous sert un steak saignant ainsi mollassons et on se sent bien on se fend la poire quand on glisse de la table inclinée ivres que nous sommes. mais madame docteur s’assure qu’on ne se renverse pas nous met un fausset et nous souhaite ad multos annos. (traduit du roumain par Gabrielle Danoux)

Donkey Milk ????

We know too much, so you have to disassociate from us, the shamed woman, the woman who talks too much, the femme who doesn’t give a fuck. We are inherently ruinous for powerful men.