Inspirational Female Quotes

In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.

A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.

What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.

Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom.

We live in deeds, not years.

A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must. A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty. This is the rightful order.

Advice to my younger self: 1 Start where you are with what you have 2 Try not to hurt other people 3 Take more chances 4 If you fail, keep trying

When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.

You must come to terms with the reality that nothing outside ourselves, be it people or things is actually responsible for our happiness.

I hate society’s notion that there is something wrong with sex. Something wrong with a woman who loves sex.

Say to yourself, I am perfect, the way I am. Say to yourself, I am beautiful the way I am. Say to yourself, those who do not accept me the way I am, do not deserve me in their life.

When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.

Whatever you are physically, male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy – all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.

Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

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

I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human—I only love to be so.

My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer.

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust. If women and girls in patriarchal culture are taught to see every male, including the males with whom we are intimate, as potential rapists and murderers, then we cannot offer them our trust, and without trust there is no love.

just want to read more books and be a knowledgeable female.

My courage is faith--faith in the eternal resilience of me--that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high and my eyes wide--not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often--and the female hell is deadlier than the male.

How dare a person tell a woman, how to dress, how to talk, how to behave! Any being who does that, is no human.

The material world is all feminine. The feminine engergy makes the non-manifest, manifest. So even men (are of the feminine energy). We have to relinquish our ideas of gender in the conventional sense. This has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with energy. So feminine energy is what creates and allows anything which is non-manifest, like an idea, to come into form, into being, to be born. All that we experience in the world around us, absolutely everything (is feminine energy). The only way that anything exists is through the feminine force.

Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.

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

The representation of women in the society, especially through mass media has been the most delusional act ever done on the grounds of human existence.

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

Women are no sheep. Women are no fragile showpiece to be placed above the fire-place. Women of the thinking society are the builders of nations. Women of the sentient society are the builders of the world.

All the bloodsheds in human history have been caused by men, not women.

There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation.

No matter who you are, big or small, female or man, brave or not brave, you can still be empowered and feel strong.

Women instinctually know how to nourish each other, and just being with each other is restorative

If there is any indication of how an author and her books can affect change, look at the proof of her works on society. And ignore the critics and the trolls. -Strong by Kailin Gow on How Her Indie Success helped motivate and inspired others to become authors and how her books with strong women leads helped the film industry to portray more strong women leads

The female brain itself is a highly intuitive emotion-processing machine, which when put to practice in the progress of the society, would do much more than any man can with all his analytical perspectives.

With right fashion, every female would be a flame.

. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives." "The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling." "Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex.

You only fix something, when it’s broken. And you - are far from broken.

When you make things too easy on someone, you’re giving them a discount on your worth; and this causes them to regard you as inferior.

One of the main reasons Jesus wanted Mari [Mary Magdalene] to start her own following of female disciples was because in those times, Jewish women had no probative value in society and were therefore not even given a basic education. Their intellect was considered decidedly inferior to men's and apart from this, women's far superior intuition was interpreted as a characteristic that associated them to the devil since the men could not quite understand this inner knowledge or find a plausible explanation for it...

Some women seem so voluptuous in every sense, richly bountiful and fertile with generous gifts of plenty, sensual and confident in their female strength that they are called "earth mothers." That’s how some days feel—when they are bountiful and fertile with the power of our imagination.

A strong woman just needs to be loved strongly

Given the same honor and dignity as men, women can build a much better and more harmonious world.

Why do you write strong female characters? Because you're still asking me that question.

Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.

Once I asked my dad how you know when you're in love. He said you just know, and that if you have to ask the question then you haven't been in love yet. And he's right. Because there aren't words for this. No combination of letters could ever represent what she is to me.

A society where feminine beauty is defined not by the human self on genuine intellectual and sentimental grounds, but by a computer software on the grounds of economic interest, is more dead than alive. It is a society of human bodies, not human beings.

A personalized God can be a mere idol carved in our own image- a projection of our limited needs, fears, and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or seems even to desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel. A facile belief that a disaster is the will of God can make us accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable. The very fact, as a person, God has a gender is also limiting: It means that the sexuality of half the human race is sacralized at the expense of the female and can lead to neurotic and inadequate imbalance in human sexual mores. A personal God can be dangerous, therefore. Instead of pulling us beyond our limitations, “he” can encourage us to remain complacently within them; “he” can make us cruel, callous, self-satisfied and partial as “he” seems to be. Instead of inspiring the compassion that should characterize all advanced religions, “he” can encourage us to judge, condemn, and marginalize.

It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.

You can’t expect any woman to be a lady if you’re not being a gentleman, and vice versa.

Female Mercenary. This will be a companion on your Tour. She is usually tall, thin and wiry, silent, and neurotic. Sex scares her. This is because she either came from a nunnery or was raped as a child. Or both. Somehow this inspired her to become a mercenary and she is very good at her job. You can rely on her absolutely in a fight. She can usually kill two people at once while guarding your back in between. The rest of the time, she will irritate you with lots of punctilious weapons cleaning and a perpetual insistence that a proper watch be kept. Mostly, she will have no magic talents, but sometimes, in an emergency, she will come up with a gift or vision. You will end up grudgingly admiring her.

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died." There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did." "Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world." There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly. "A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?" "Longevity?

I am a scientist who studies the human mind, including the sexual differences in mental faculties, and I am telling you, ten female thinkers can teach humanity lessons equivalent to the teachings of a hundred male thinkers of history.

You are not born to follow the society, you are born to inspire it - you are born to teach it - you are born to build it.

When you fear nothing, you have nothing to fear

Don't give up on yourself when life gets a little harder. Instead, love harder those who do value your life

They wore their professional clothes like armor. They wielded their work like weapons, warding off the presumption of inferiority because they were Negro or female.

It’s because our friendships – female friendships are just a hop to our sisterhood, and sisterhood can be a very powerful force, to give the world … the things that humans desperately need

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust.

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.

Beauty is an illusion.

He who sacrifices his respect for love basically burns his body to obtain the light.

Just because I’m not there, doesn’t mean I’m not here for you.

Any book that spreads weakness in the heart of one gender, and authoritarianism in the other, must be burnt to ashes.

O my Courageous Sister! You have to become the beacon of hope for all women around you and then for the whole society.

I pride myself on making my own decisions, sir," she said. "I do not welcome gentlemen making them for me.

You’re young. You’re female. You’re nobody—use that.

Because of the lingering discrimination, many women still lack confidence. They live in fear of stepping beyond what they feel is acceptable 'female' behavior. I can remember feeling that I wasn't 'normal' because I was aggressive, had dreams and goals, and wanted do do great things...I am glad now that I found courage to do something radical and chase my dreams.

Female monstrosity inspires terror because it really can end the world—or our current version of it, anyway. But our world is not the only one, or the best one, and in fact, the more time I spend with monsters, the more I think its destruction is overdue.

As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. “What can we do for these people?” Corrie whispered. “Show them that love is greater,” Betsie replied. In that moment, Corrie realized her sister’s focus was on the prison guard, not the victim she was watching. Betsie saw the world through a different lens. She considered the actions of greatest moral gravity to be the ones we originate, not the ones we suffer.

A unifying factor between the different traditions and lineages of Tantra, is that it is feminine in nature. It acknowledges the feminine as the basis from which all the practices spring. Therefore, Tantra is by its nature, the understanding that all phenomenal existence, the universe, or cosmos, that we experience is feminine in nature.

Do your best in the day, for the day, and then work on tomorrow when it comes. Show yourself grace and laugh at yourself.

Remember, for a society to truly progress we don't need woman or man, we need a fully-fledged human - nothing short of that would do.

Any nation that does not learn to place women on the same pedestal of respect and dignity as men, will never in a thousand years attain greatness.

I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two and wear my dagger with the braver grace

Don't just write a strong female protagonist. Be one.

Dresses don't look beautiful on hangers.

The feminism of equality, of toughness, of anti-discrimination, has been overwhelmed by one of victimhood and demands for special treatment....At a certain point, when we demand an equal ratio of men to women in certain fields, what we’re criticizing is not “the system,” but the choices that women themselves are making.....let’s keep our eye on the question of equal opportunity and stop obsessing about equal outcomes, lest we find ourselves trying to cure society, not of sexism, but of free choice.

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts— that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman.

The world doesn't need a good woman who is meekly obedient to the uncivilized social norms that advocate female inferiority. The world needs those bad women who can think for themselves, to break the primeval norms of the society that consistently drag the human civilization back to the stone-age.

Society doesn't owe us anything. I don't need someone to pay for my female hygiene products to feel empowered. Can we work? Yes. Can we vote? Yes. Do we have the same rights and opportunities as men? Yes. What rights are they [feminists] fighting for? What are they specifically? What don't they have?

Gender equality is not a belief, it is not an idea - it is a key element of the society that will define whether we the humans shall march ahead towards glory and advancement, or sink into the abyss of an existential doom.

We ladies will vote. It’s inevitable. We have emancipated the Negro. We females will be freed from bondage next.

I won’t lose hope. I won’t be broken.

You can torture us, bombard us, set fire to our districts. But you see that? Fire is catching. And if we burn, you burn with us.

You should never feel afraid to become a piece of art. It’s exhilarating.

You know a woman is strong, beautiful, and secure by the way she empowers and inspires others.

What is deemed as “his-story” is often determined by those who survived to write it. In other words, history is written by the victors...Now, with the help of the Roman historian Tacitus, I shall tell you Queen Boudicca’s story, her-story……

Glass ceilings can't stop me. Glass slippers don't interest me. Glass mirrors don't define me. I decide who I will or I will not be. And I choose to be unbreakable untakeable unshakeable me.

Jen smiled at them, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Do you hear that, Desdemona, last of the witches? I have so named you! Hear me now," Jen yelled into the dark forest, the wind and thunder still rolling around her. "Your time is drawing near! We are coming. Throw back your head in your tiny victory, laugh at our short-lived defeat, but we are coming. The night will be filled with our howls, the ground will shake with the stomping of our feet! We are coming. We are coming for you, Desdemona, and death follows!" Jen lifted her head and let out a howl worthy of an Alpha female. The others joined. And as their howls died down, for a brief moment before the silence took over, they heard howls beyond the earthly realm, howls filled with grief and triumph, pain and fear, anger and love-howls from those caught in the jaws of the In Between. They had heard their females' cries and they had answered.

Listen my dear sister! You only fix something, when it’s broken. And you - are far from broken. Say to yourself, I am perfect, the way I am. Say to yourself, I am beautiful the way I am. Say to yourself, those who do not accept me the way I am, do not deserve me in their life.

For thousands of years, the dumb, uncivilized, stone-age society has reduced women to mere prizes to be won, objects to be shown off, and playthings to be abused and toyed with. Now is the time to stop this primitive madness.

Bessie Stringfield epitomised the Carefree Scamp. She wasn’t trying to be any sort of inspiration for black women or female bikers. She was just living her life. It was her road and she knew that no one else could ride it for her

I stepped out of the box because I'm a woman who breaks locks. I break glass ceilings too, the sky knows my flair, boo. Where you see the word 'groundbreaking', know it's me being breathtaking. I'm a woman; I gave birth to all men.

Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.

What a hundred caring, courageous and conscientious women can achieve in ten years, would take a thousand men a hundred years.

I am the essence of magic, its mysteriousness, its beauty and its ability to make things happen when people couldn't see how!

Smart people are always learning something new. Stupid people just stay stupid. Remember that.

The idea of synchronizing her outer movements with the natural rhythms of her body inspired her,

She is a chaos that will never be tamed.

There isn't a safety net I haven't fallen through, so feel my back on the Earth and know I can stand longer than you.

Women have been mighty since the moon first met the night

I Am Female. Empowered, powerful, and greatness!

In 1924, Nikola Tesla was asked why he never married? His answer was this: "I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship. But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization. Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again. Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it - and there is striking evidence at hand that they do - then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history. Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects - a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me." Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.

I’d loved women who were old and who were young; those extra kilos and large rumps, and others so thin there was barely even skin to pinch, and every time I held them, I worried I would snap them in two. But for all of these: where they had merited my love was in their delicious smell. Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.

Women of the thinking society are the builders of nations. Women of the sentient society are the builders of the world. And given the same honor and dignity as men, women can build a much better and more harmonious world. Harmony and conflict-solving run in their veins. Whereas men have evolved into more authoritarian creatures.

[Marilyn] Monroe, the consummate sexual doll, is empowered to act but afraid to act, perhaps because no amount of acting, however inspired, can convince the actor herself that her ideal female life is not a dreadful form of dying. She grinned, she posed, she pretended, she had affairs with famous and powerful men. A friend of hers claimed that she had so many illegal abortions wrongly performed that her reproductive organs were severely injured. She died alone, possibly acting on her own behalf for the first time. Death, one imagines, numbs pain that barbiturates and alcohol cannot touch.

A handful of brave tigresses, fortified with the power of will, can take the society to such heights of advancement, that it will become a standard of progress for thousands of generations yet to come.

In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets.

Only by remembering to say 'no' will the women of 21st century regain their voice and remember their power. 'No' is the most important word in a woman's dialectic arsenal, and it is the one word that our employers, our leaders, and quite often, the men in our lives would do anything to prevent us from saying. No, we will not serve. No, we will not settle for the dirty work, the low-paid work, the unpaid work. No, we will not stay late at the office, look after the kids, sort out the shopping. We refuse to fit the enormity of our passion, our creativity, and our potential into the rigid physical prison laid down for us since we were small children. No. We refuse. We will not buy your clothes and shoes and surgical solutions. No, we will not be beautiful; we will not be good. Most of all, we refuse to be beautiful and good.

There were just four things a woman could be (five at most): daughter, wife, mother, widow, and slut. That was it. There were no other roles for them—no free and independent women, no feminism, no selfsufficiency. If you didn’t like it, you could be branded a witch and executed.

Our pioneers gave us a head start. They prepared us to fight many battles for decades to come as they left the map for us to continue on the path of their greatness. As quoted by the great Susan B. Anthony, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.” The shade of our skin might be a bit darker or lighter, but we share the same rejections and discriminations as we are treated unfairly because we are women. Our religions might very well be different; however, we share the same identity, being females productively working for change for a greater cause.

Few of her achievements have been recognised, and when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons ... In terms of groundbreaking achievements, political sincerity and personal courage, Empress Dowager Cixi set a standard that has barely been matched.

I think if you had been born a boy, perhaps you would have been satisfied with what the world offered you. That is how we are alike. We saw everything that was not ours, and we hungered. Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.

…When you’re in the darkness, know that the light will come. We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change…. When you are in the light, don’t step back into the darkness. Live in that light, and breathe it in fully. I’ve spent so much of my life going over and over the sadness and fear of the past. But we don’t need to go there when we’re not there. When we are in the light, be here, now.

Some women think being arrogant, selfish, bitter and looking down on others are qualities of being an Independent, strong, powerful and successful business women. No matter how high you are in life. Never look down on others and never forget humanity.

I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.

Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notion of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most frightening of all things, a clean slate. And then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am. This is the hard work of life in the world, to acknowledge within yourself the introvert, the clown, the artist, the homebody, the goofball, the thinker. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.

I believe in women uplifting other women. The only thing that makes our gender weaker, is the fact that we are the gender less likely to stand up for the other. We are the gender more likely to try and make another look bad, and when one of us is already bad, instead of being kind, we pound them into the ditches. And that's what makes us weak, nothing else. If we can change this, we can change the whole structure of our being female, I truly believe this. Personally, I grew up admiring other women and wanting to be friends with them, but unfortunately, I learned the hard way that they were the ones who would hurt me. Women hurt other women all too often, and that's a fact. I'd like to see not just us not hurting one another; but us actually making a conscious effort to be happy for another when she is happy, to hope the best for another when she has better, and to lift another up when she is down. We know that so many of us are harsh, cold and selfish, and we try to protect ourselves from one another, that's the reality. But it's also a reality that what is real can change. So that means we can change it.

There's no being out too late in Whileaway, or up too early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers -- the web is world-wide. In all of Whileaway there is no one who can keep you from going where you please (though you may risk your life, if that sort of thing appeals to you), no one who will follow you and try to embarrass you by whispering obscenities in your ear, no one who will attempt to rape you, no one who will warn you of the dangers of the street, no one who will stand on street corners, hot-eyed and vicious, jingling loose change in his pants pocket, bitterly bitterly sure that you're a cheap floozy, hot and wild, who likes it, who can't say no, who's making a mint off it, who inspires him with nothing but disgust, and who wants to drive him crazy.

She hated prisons, whether it was in the dungeon or in the open air.

you grow a bird in a cage and then humiliate it by telling - 'you can't fly'.

Write the story of your life. Sharpen your pencil, freshen the ink & get to it. You are the author, the world your pages. The hero or the villain. You decide

We don’t know what’s coming next, but we can go to it with purpose. We can go to it dancing.

Neglect of women is the major cause for the society’s downfall.

Education for women is something that has plagued the world for a very long time. When I saw this problem firsthand, I knew I had to write about it.

Where a woman's faith in herself ends; so too does her joy.

Perhaps it is the setting; rules tend to reduce their grip when you cross borders.

Behind every great woman... is another great woman.

People view celebrities from a place of envy and inferiority. Instead of being personally inspired by their great artistry they see them in a position they could never attain

Differences simply act as a yarn of curiosity unraveling until we get to the other side.

My skin is beautiful but it also serves as a huge barrier for so many opportunities that I want to pursue in life.

You can’t be the only superhero around here. I can do that too. – Hope Danielles

Recognizing that you have a bias and blind spots is essential to personal growth.

She doesn’t need the spotlight, because she is the light wherever she goes.

Why a girl can't be our protector? It's not that she can't be. it's just that no one wants her to be.

I shall become a collector of me and put meat on my soul

I am living in world full of lost hope and discrimination. I am living a life in which social equality does not exist and I am not sure that it ever can, or if once upon a time it ever did.

Women are more powerful than most of us give ourselves credit for. When we actually decide to stop the jealousy and the finger pointing, and band together to laugh with one another and understand one another, it's like a beautiful firework display on the Fourth of July in Vegas, baby!

Rich or poor, married or single, employed or unemployed, young or old, male or female, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, or Buddhist, you are the soul coming to know the Essential Self as love.

American can mean anything you want it to mean. It can mean that you live in America. It can mean that you are privileged. Being American can also mean that you are diverse. In many ways, the title American is an oxymoron because one may look it on the outside but not feel it on the inside.

She was an open book. She had nothing to hide. She had an air about her. An air of conviction. She had lived and had no regrets. She was compulsively unapologetic about the choices that she had made.

A well-dressed, self-assured business executive steps into a quiet corner of the conference room, crowded with people. Everyone there is aware of her presence. She's dark-haired, petite, and alluring. She is quick to smile, and when she does, her whole face lights up. Her enthusiasm is infectious. Young men and women nod as they pass by, briefly breaking off their conversations with colleagues. The executive looks down at her compact electronic device and quickly texts: "Smile. Talk into the mic. Good luck.

Deep within every modern American female, whether she will admit it or not, lingers the image of an ideal man. It isn't necessarily photo quality, it rarely involves specific physical characteristics. No, this image is more like the promise of a feeling, a swept-off-your-feet, powerless-to-control-it, how-awesome-is-this-guy sentiment that she hopes someone special will someday inspire. Left to its own devices, the brain will keep this feeling dormant until truly warranted by a real-life flesh-and-blood person.

Father Brendan Flynn: "A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes,' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast,' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!

You know, all poetry may be a cry of generalised love, for this, or that, or the universe - which must be loved in its particularity, not its generality, but for its universal life in every minute particular. I have always supposed it to be a cry of ;unsatisfied love; - and so it may be indeed - for satisfaction may surfeit it and so it may die. I know many poets who write only when in an exalted state of mind which they compare to ;being in love;,when they do not simply state, that they are in love, that they seek love - for this fresh damsel - or that lively young woman - in order to find a fresh metaphor, or a new bright vision of things in themselves. And to tell you the truth, I have always believed I could diagnose this state of ;being in love; which they regard as ;most particular;, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, ;item;, one graceful attitude of body or mind, ;item;, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say 1821-1844 – I have always believed this ;in love; to be of something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet who assumes and informs both.

For Heaven's sake, Cousin, resumed Arabella, laughing, how have you spent your Time; and to what Studies have you devoted all your Hours, that you could find none to spare for the Perusal of Books from which all useful Knowlege may be drawn; which give us the most shining Examples of Generosity, Courage, Virtue, and Love; which regulate our Actions, form our Manners, and inspire us with a noble Desire of emulating those great, heroic, and virtuous Actions, which made those Persons so glorious in their Age, and so worthy Imitation in ours?

I read things that male relationship experts write about women and I read things that female relationship experts write about men, then I feel a true sadness in my heart. Why can’t there be a simple, pure, direct openness? Why can’t there be a simple, real, open trust? The truth is that male or female, gay or straight— we are all people— we have all been broken and put back together in so many different ways... it’s really just about learning how to recognize the sound of the other one's cracks. And that’s what it’s really about, just that.

The voice came from a female, the delicacy and elegance of whose figure inspired the Youths with the most lively curiosity to view the face to which it belonged. This satisfaction was denied them. Her features were hidden by a thick veil; But struggling through the crowd had deranged it sufficiently to discover a neck which for

When somebody touches you...and you really don’t wanna be touched, that’s not really being touched. You still got you inside of you. And nobody has touched you. Not really. You still got you inside of you. You believe that.

Male rats don’t experience the hormonal changes that trigger maternal behavior in female rats. They never normally participate in infant care. Yet put a baby rat in a cage with a male adult and after a few days he will be caring for the baby almost as if he were its mother. He’ll pick it up, nestle it close to him as a nursing female would, keep the baby rat clean and comforted, and even build a comfy nest for it.29 The parenting circuits are there in the male brain, even in a species in which paternal care doesn’t normally exist.30 If a male rat, without even the aid of a William Sears baby-care manual, can be inspired to parent then I would suggest that the prospects for human fathers are pretty good.

The problem with today’s world is that we’re so used to fucking labels we must identify as something, whatever, anything— but HUMANS. The day we stop this obsession with male, female, black, white, godly, godless, conservative, liberal, gay, straight, rich, poor, and just call ourselves HUMANS, this desperate blue planet will become a better place for all.

It is charged that pornography objectifies women: It converts them into sexual objects. Again, what does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing at all because objects don't have sexuality; only human beings do. But the charge that pornography portrays women as "sexual beings" would not inspire rage and, so, it has no place in the anti-porn rhetoric.

I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine", so we suppress it-until it overflows.

Every woman needs these three things: Self-Esteem, Self-Love, and Self-Confidence. A female that possess all three is an empowered and unstoppable Queen. She knows her worth! Everything about her represents quality. Her happiness comes from within, first. She respects herself. She values who she is. She’s not easily impressed or persuaded by people or things. She has purpose and direction! An admirable being is what she is: Extraordinary and highly desirable. She’s an Unparalleled Woman.

Most females are dissatisfied with how they look and battle with countless insecurities, not realizing that you look most beautiful when you think you don’t. I wish that women and girls all over the world knew just how uniquely beautiful that we ALL are. Loving yourself for who YOU are is empowering! There’s great freedom in being unbothered by other people’s opinion of you.

...women are conditioned to waste hours, days, weeks, months (although, truth be told, it's most likely years) doubting, undermining, and ultimately hating parts, if not all, of themselves based solely on "problems" with their bodies that can be solved by buying products from an industry that invented these problems in the first place. How fucking convenient. And when all is said and done, what is the prize for this self-torture? Fitting neatly within society's destructive narrative about the female body.

Dear Exquisite Black Queen… Being a Strong Black Woman doesn’t mean that you can’t be vulnerable. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay if you’re having a bad day. It’s okay if some days you feel like giving up. It’s okay if you need to ask for help. It’s okay if you’re feeling stressed out. It’s okay if you’re feeling a little depressed. It’s okay if you’re not quite sure about what you’re going to do next. It’s okay if you fall short sometimes. It’s okay if you don’t have all the answers. It’s okay to show your true emotions and not feel weak. I encourage you to not be so hard on yourself! Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, and know that it’s okay. You’re human, and you’re doing your VERY best, Queen. Love, respect, and appreciate the Black Queen you are!

Girls, here's the truth about the Ban Bossy campaign: It's being spearheaded by a privileged group of elite feminists who have a very vested interest in stoking victim politics and exacerbating the gender divide. They actually encourage dependency and groupthink while paying lip service to empowerment and self-determination. They traffic in bogus wage disparity statistics, whitewashing the fact that what's actually left of that dwindling pay gap is due to the deliberate, voluntary choices women in the workforce make.

There comes a time in life, when you walk away from all the drama and the people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good. So, love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is part of LIFE ...... Getting back up is LIVING.  Female Imagination website

Stop telling me I’m oppressed.....I’m not a victim. I don’t know why feminists are so hellbent on characterizing me as one.....Feminists don’t speak for me. They’re not my voice. They’re not my representation. I owe them nothing, except maybe a shred of sympathy. How miserable must they be to see oppression at every turn?...You DON’T speak for me. You DON’T represent me or my concerns....We’re living proof that the modern day feminist movement is a crock. Feminists are victims of their own delusions, and we’ll never buy what they’re selling.

The length of the friendship never brought astonishment. After all, the majority of Baby Boomers could likely claim a long-standing friendship in their lives. No, it was always the letters: the-pen-on-paper, inside a-stamped-envelope, mailed-in-a-mailbox letter that was awe inspiring. “You’ve been writing a letter every week for almost thirty years?” The question always evokes disbelief, particularly since the dawn of the Internet and email. We quickly correct the misconception. “Well, at least one letter, but usually more. We write each other three or four letters a week. And we never wait for a return letter before beginning another.” Conservatively speaking, at just three letters a week since 1987, that would equal 4,368 letters each, but we’d both agree that estimate is much too low. We have, on occasion, written each other two letters in a single day.

By morning, Adelaide was beginning to understand why she'd never completely understood how God worked. Given that He had made the bewildering, maddening, incomprehensible species that was man from His own image, it stood to reason that the Creator would be a complicated mass of logic never meant to be understood by the female mind. That, or the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had taken them even further off the path than she'd ever realized

But I'm not running away. I'm running toward... toward adventure, toward discovery, toward diversity. And while I was in Mexico I discovered something intruiging: Once I leave the U.S., I am not bound by the rules of my culture. And when I am a foreigner in another country, I am exempt from the local rules. This extraordinary situation means that there are no rules in my life. I am free to live by the standards and ideals and rules I create for myself.

But the female mind has demonstrated a capacity for all the mental acquirements and achievements of men, and as generations ensue that capacity will be expanded; the average woman will be as well educated as the average man, and then better educated, for the dormant faculties of her brain will be stimulated to an activity that will be all the more intense and powerful because of centuries of repose. Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.

If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do even without formal power, education, or rights, in a world dominated by men. They are inspirational examples of the strength of the female spirit.

Robyn: [narrating] Animal lovers, especially female ones, are often accused of being neurotic and unable to relate to other human beings. More often than not, those pointing the finger have never had a pet. It seems to me the universe gave us three things to make life bearable: hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these gifts was dogs.

Unleash your inner goddess.

Don't just write a strong female protagonist. Be one.

Hunger is worse, whether it's in the belly or in the heart.

My body comes to life in the presence of my former lover.” ~ Kat Roberts

Perhaps if by chance I was seen arranging the shop window in my underpants, some lady in need of strong literary emotions would be drawn in and inspired to part with a bit of hard cash. According to expert opinion, the future of literature depends on women and as God is my witness the female is yet to be born who can resist the allure of this stupendous physique.

[These] powerful women understood that success in imperfect. What would happen if we all started speaking honestly and openly about our priorities and the choices we make about how we spend our time? How inspiring would it be to the young women in our offices if they saw female executives who don't pretend to do it all, but are open and honest about the balls they have dropped to get where they are today? Women need to support one another by being honest about the compromises we make and by speaking openly about the help we require from our partners and other support systems.

Female. One that is brave and strong and determined. If there’s one thing I’ve learned thee past months, it’s that I don’t need to be male to be those things. But a female is more than that. And she’s more than just a curvy figure. She’s a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife. She inspires; she loves. And she’ll do what’s right no matter what. She knows when to quit, and she is not afraid to keep trying.

But I do believe if you put things out there enough, they will start to come to you. If you do the work, you're determined, persistent, and do it the right way, the things that you want will want you too.

No specification is necessary—to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it for ever.

Áine’s blue eyes narrowed. Bree had never seen her aunt look so angry. ‘Because you are your mother now. You will take her place. Because the flame is yours. Because she lives through the flame. She lives through you.

Watanabe-san and Sadie exchanged gifts. She brought him a pair of carved wooden Ichigo chopsticks that their Japanese distributor had had made to celebrate the release of the second Ichigo in Japan. In return, he gave her a silk scarf with a reproduction of Cherry Blossoms at Night, by Katsushika Ōi, on it. The painting depicts a woman composing a poem on a slate in the foreground. The titular cherry blossoms are in the background, all but a few of them in deep shadow. Despite the title, the cherry blossoms are not the subject; it is a painting about the creative process---its solitude and the ways in which an artist, particularly a female one, is expected to disappear. The woman's slate appears to be blank. "I know Hokusai is an inspiration for you," Watanabe-san said. "This is by Hokusai's daughter. Only a handful of her paintings survived, but I think she is even better than the father.

The guilt and anxiety induced by hunting, combined with frustration resulting from ritual celibacy, could have been projected onto the image of a powerful woman, who demands endless bloodshed.27 The hunters could see that women were the source of new life; it was they – not the expendable males – who ensured the continuity of the tribe. The female thus became an awe-inspiring icon of life itself – a life that required the ceaseless sacrifice of men and animals.

When the earth is body of Goddess, the radical implications of the image are more fully realized. The female body and the earth, which have been devalued and dominated together, are resacralized. Our understanding of divine power is transformed as it is clearly recognized as present within the finite and changing world. The image of the earth as the body of the Goddess can inspire us to repair the damage that has been done to the earth, to women, and to other beings in dominator cultures.

unlucky lover’s soul; while he is walking around Rome, a woman emerges at every turn of the page; by the regrets, desires, sadnesses, and joys women awakened in him, he came to know the nature of his own heart; it is women he wants as judges: he frequents their salons, he wants to shine; he owes them his greatest joys, his greatest pain, they were his main occupation; he prefers their love to any friendship, their friendship to that of men; women inspire his books, female figures populate them; he writes in great part for them. “I might be lucky enough to be read in 1900 by the souls I love, the Mme Rolands, the Mélanie Guilberts …” They were the very substance of his life. Where did this privilege come from? This tender friend of women—and precisely

Women are taught to sacrifice, to play nice, to live an altruistic life because a good girl is always rewarded in the end. This is not a virtue; it is propaganda. Submission gets you a ticket to future prosperity that will never manifest. By the time you realize the ticket to success and happiness you have been sold isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, it will be too late. Go on, spend a quarter of your life, even half of your life, in the service of others and you will realize you were hustled. You do not manifest your destiny by placing others first! A kingdom built on your back doesn’t become your kingdom, it becomes your folly. History does not remember the slaves of Egypt that built the pyramids, they remember the Pharaohs that wielded the power over those laborers. Yet here you are, content with being a worker bee, motivated by some sales pitch that inspires you to work harder for some master than you work for yourself, with this loose promise that one day you will share in his wealth. Altruism is your sin. Selfishness is your savior. Ruthless aggression and self-preservation are not evil. Why aren’t females taught these things? Instead of putting themselves first, women are told to be considerate and selfless. From birth, they have been beaten in the head with this notion of “Don’t be selfish!” Fuck that. Your mother may have told you to wait your turn like a good girl, but I’m saying cut in front of that other bitch. Club Success is about to hit capacity, and you don’t want to be the odd woman out. Where are the powerful women? Those who refuse to play by those rules and want more out of life than what a man allows her to have? I created a category for such women and labeled them Spartans. Much like the Greek warriors who fought against all odds, these women refuse to surrender and curtsy before the status quo. Being

With experience comes resilience, and this is key in starting up. You need to be able to take a knock, get up and get on. Whether you’re trying something completely new or setting up in an industry you’ve worked in before, resilience gives you that competitive edge.

Many men are fascinated by the consciously evolving female who makes them feel free inside. But they're too unsure of their own standing to actually stay with such women. They want a sheepish, sort-of-dumb woman at home for them, then they imagine themselves being swept off their feet by a goddess somewhere outside. These are the kinds of men that aren't worth being with. You want to have a man who can sail a ship just as well as you can, a man who puts both his feet in the same boat at the same time, someone whose manhood is never defined by female docility.

Amongst the twelve women‚ chained together by the waist in sixes‚ was one whose demeanour was so at odds with her situation that in any other circumstances I would have taken her for a person of the highest rank. She was visibly distressed and her clothes were filthy‚ but these things detracted so little from the impression she made that I found myself filled with respect and pity for her. She was trying‚ as far as the chains would permit‚ to turn away from the onlookers and this attempt to conceal her face from them was so natural that it seemed inspired by female modesty.

...I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of being in love, which they regard as most particular, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, item, one graceful attitude of body or mind, item, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say, 1821-1844--I have always believed this in love to be something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet, who assumes and informs both. I wd have told you--no, I do tell you--friendship is rarer, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love.

Seek joy. Seek more questions than answers. Seek jobs, friends, lovers, homes in which or with whom you feel utterly yourself. Better yet, seek experiences that challenge you to become even more yourself — that is, to grow. And if you should find more growth in movement, do not stop moving. And if you should find more meaning in stillness, stay still. And if at the end you still should wonder if you ever did find your calling, look back over the one inimitable path behind you, and ask your footsteps what you have learned. Hint: The right questions lead not to answers, but to doors. We don’t find our calling, we walk it.

Aimlessness isn’t purposelessness. Not to me. Aimlessness isn’t meaningless. Quite the contrary. Aimlessness isn’t absence from life, it is full-bodied presence in it. To wander aimlessly is to move through the world without the conceit that we actually know what is coming next. That is, to move through the world with grace.

A man is NOT weak if he cries. A man is NOT a punk if he cries. A man is NOT acting like a little b*tch if he cries. He’s a Man! And he’s allowed to have and show his true feelings without feeling less than. Ladies, some of you need to do better. Learn to be compassionate, loving, supportive, and understanding. There’s NOTHING wrong with a man being vulnerable. I encourage you to be his joy, peace, and his safe place. Lift him up and be mindful NOT to tear him down. If you truly care for and love your man, do and say everything with love. Let him know that it’s okay to cry and that he doesn’t have to pretend to be okay when he’s not. Real men DO cry! They experience sadness, disappointments, pain, and many other feelings. A man shouldn’t have to suppress his emotions. That’s pure nonsense! A man that can cry, smile, and let his guards down is a keeper in my book. I couldn’t imagine acting hard all of the time. That’s so unfair! Ladies, strive to be a Queen of substance. PEACE.

The racial oppression that inspired the first generations of the civil rights movement was played out in lynchings, night raids, antiblack pogroms, and physical intimidation at the ballot box. In a typical battle of today, it may consist of African American drivers being pulled over more often on the highways. (When Clarence Thomas described his successful but contentious 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing as a “high-tech lynching,” it was the epitome of tastelessness but also a sign of how far we have come.) The oppression of women used to include laws that allowed husbands to rape, beat, and confine their wives; today it is applied to elite universities whose engineering departments do not have a fifty-fifty ratio of male and female professors. The battle for gay rights has progressed from repealing laws that execute, mutilate, or imprison homosexual men to repealing laws that define marriage as a contract between a man and a woman. None of this means we should be satisfied with the status quo or disparage the efforts to combat remaining discrimination and mistreatment. It’s just to remind us that the first goal of any rights movement is to protect its beneficiaries from being assaulted or killed. These victories, even if partial, are moments we should acknowledge, savor, and seek to understand.

She is fragile as the morning dew melting in the warmth of a child's smile; stirring at the lonely, lovely waft of a butterfly's wings; tender as the curve of a wildflower petal. She is fierce as a summer storm now raging against the fiery sky; now raining tears to soothe the sun-scorched earth. She is soft as a midnight breeze swaying to the sound of waves breaking on distant shores; whispering comfort to a world steeped in the dark night of inhumanity. She is brilliant as the rising Phoenix lifting the suffering from the ashes; her own suffering woven into wings of fire in the long watches of the night. She is serene and turbulent as the silvered water hiding currents unknown beneath the gentle gaze of a human who has walked a thousand miles and still has more to go.

The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

Feminist silence about love reflects a collective sorrow about our powerlessness to free all men from the hold patriarchy has on their minds and hearts. It reflects our shock at male betrayal. It has not been that difficult to show women the ways in which their continued allegiance to patriarchal thinking hurts them and other women. It has been hard to inspire them to give up that allegiance when it provides them common ground on which to meet and bond with men.

Scheherazade may lack the mobility and appetites of male cultural heroes, but she transcends the narrow domestic space of the bedroom through her expansive narrative reach and embraces bold defiance as she sets about remaking the values of the culture she inhabits, using words alone. She not only arouses curiosity but also turns herself into a storytelling transvaluation machine, for she understands at the deepest level that words can change you. Behind her transformative art lurks the ruse of the disempowered, and Scheherazade, despite the physical constraints placed on her, uses language in ways that reveal what the philosopher J. L. Austin referred to as its “perlocutionary” power, its ability to persuade, teach, or inspire. Scheherazade operates at a level that is culturally productive and also biologically reproductive. Creative and procreative, she produces children with Shahriyar and also sets the stage in powerful ways for the literary progeny that spring from her story—the many female storytellers whom we will encounter in the chapters that follow.

G. Eliot. -- They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there. We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth--it stands and falls with faith in God. When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.

Many modern readers assume teachings about wives submitting to their husbands appear exclusively in the pages of Scripture and thus reflect uniquely “biblical” views about women’s roles in the home. But to the people who first heard these letters read aloud in their churches, the words of Peter and Paul would have struck them as both familiar and strange, a sort of Christian remix on familiar Greco-Roman philosophy that positioned the male head of house as the rightful ruler over his subordinate wives, children, and slaves. By instructing men to love their wives and respect their slaves, and by telling everyone to “submit to one another” with Jesus as the ultimate head of house, the apostles offer correctives to cultural norms without upending them. They challenge new believers to reconsider their relationships with one another now that, in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The plot thickens when we pay attention to some of the recurring characters in the Epistles and see a progression toward more freedom and autonomy for slaves like Onesimus and women like Nympha, Priscilla, Junia, and Lydia.

Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or seems even to desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel. A facile belief that a disaster is the will of God can make us accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable. The very fact that, as a person, God has a gender is also limiting: it means that the sexuality of half the human race is sacralized at the expense of the female and can lead to a neurotic and inadequate imbalance in human sexual mores. A personal God can be dangerous, therefore. Instead of pulling us beyond our limitations, “he” can encourage us to remain complacently within them; “he” can make us as cruel, callous, self-satisfied and partial as “he” seems to be. Instead of inspiring the compassion that should characterize all advanced religion, “he” can encourage us to judge, condemn and marginalize. It seems, therefore, that the idea of a personal God can only be a stage in our religious development. The world religions all seem to have recognized this danger and have sought to transcend the personal conception of supreme reality.

The unfortunate truth is that right now men's voices dominate and we see the results. Popular products from the tech boom - including violent and sexist video games that a generation of children has become addicted to - are designed with little to no input from women. Apple's first version of its highly touted health application could track your blood-alcohol level but not menstruation. Everything from plus-sized smart phones to artificial hearts have been build at a size better suited to male anatomy. As of late 2016, if you told one of the virtual assistants like Siri, S Voice, and Google Now, 'I'm having a heart attack,' you'd immediately get valuable information about what to do next. If you were to say, 'I'm being raped,' or 'I'm being abused by my husband,' the attractive (usually) female voice would say, 'I don't understand what this is.

Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invited the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the class of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights assists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak...Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

Questions and Topics for Discussion This book is written in an oral history format. Why do you think the author chose to structure the book this way? How does this approach affect your reading experience? At one point Daisy says, “I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man’s great idea….I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.” How does her experience of being used by others contribute to the decisions she makes when she joins The Six? Why do you think Billy has such a strong need to control the group, both early on when they are simply the Dunne Brothers and later when they become Daisy Jones & The Six? There are two sets of brothers in The Six: Eddie and Pete Loving, and Billy and Graham Dunne. How do these sibling relationships affect the band? Daisy, Camila, Simone, and Karen are each very different embodiments of female strength and creativity. Who are you most drawn to and why? Billy and Daisy become polarizing figures for the band. Who in the book gravitates more toward Billy’s leadership, and who is more inclined to follow Daisy’s way of doing things? How do these alliances change over time, and how does this dynamic upset the group’s balance? Why do you think Billy and Daisy clash so strongly? What misunderstandings between them are revealed through the “author’s” investigation? What do you think of Camila’s decision to stand by Billy, despite the ways that he has hurt her through his trouble with addiction and wavering faithfulness?

We’ve known his family forever. He doesn’t seem to care about the scandal in ours, and he’s an excellent shot-“ “That would certainly be at the top of my list of requirements for a husband,” Minerva broke in, eyes twinkling. “’Must be able to hit a bull’s-eye at fifty paces.’” “Fifty paces? Are you mad? It would have to be a hundred at least.” Her sister burst into laughter. “Forgive me for not knowing what constitutes sufficient marksmanship for your prospective mate.” Her gaze grew calculating. “I heart that Jackson is a very good shot. Gabe said he beat everyone today, even you.” “Don’t remind me,” Celia grumbled. “Gabe also said he won a kiss from you.” “Yes, and he gave me a peck on the forehead,” Celia said, still annoyed by that. “As if I were some…some little girl.” “Perhaps he was just trying to be polite.” Celia sighed. “Probably. I didn’t kiss you “properly” today because I was afraid if I did I might not stop. “The thing is…” Celia bit her lower lip and wondered just how much she should reveal to her sister. But she had to discuss this with someone, and she knew she could trust Minerva. Her sister had never betrayed a confidence. “That wasn’t the first time Jackson kissed me. Nor the last.” Minerva nearly choked on her chocolate. “Good Lord, Celia, don’t say such things when I’m drinking something hot!” Carefully she set her cup on the bedside table. “He kissed you?” She seized Celia’s free hand. “More than once?” Celia nodded. Her sister cast her eyes heavenward. “And yet you’re debating whether to enter into a marriage of convenience with Lyons.” Then she looked alarmed. “You did want the man to kiss you, right?” “Of course I wanted-“ She caught herself. “He didn’t force me, if that’s what you’re asking. But neither has Jackson…I mean, Mr. Pinter…offered me anything important.” “He hasn’t mentioned marriage?” “No.” Concern crossed Minerva’s face. “And love? What of that?” “That neither.” She set her own cup on the table, then dragged a blanket up to her chin. “He’s just kissed me. A lot.” Minerva left the bed to pace in front of the fireplace. “With men, that’s how it starts sometimes. They desire a woman first. Love comes later.” Unless they were drumming up desire for a woman for some other reason, the way Ned had. “Sometimes all they feel for a woman is desire,” Celia pointed out. “Sometimes love never enters into it. Like Papa with his females.” “Mr. Pinter doesn’t strike me as that sort.” “Well, he didn’t strike me as having an ounce of passion until he started kissing me.” Minerva shot her a sly glance. “How is his kissing?” Heat rose in her cheeks. “It’s very…er…inspiring.” Much better than Ned’s, to be sure. “That’s rather important in a husband,” Minerva said dryly. “And what of the duke? Has he kissed you?” “Once. It was…not so inspiring.” She leaned forward. “But he’s offering marriage, and Jackson hasn’t even hinted at it.” “You shouldn’t settle for a marriage of convenience. Especially if you prefer Jackson.” I don’t believe in marriages of convenience. Given your family’s history, I would think that you wouldn’t, either. Celia balled the blanket into a knot. That was easy for Jackson to say-he didn’t have a scheming grandmother breathing down his neck. For that matter, neither did Minerva.