Outrageous Acts And Everyday Rebellions Quotes

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I’m using it to light the torches of others.

How long before both women and men are allowed to see self-respecting rebellion as a lifelong possibility?

The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.

Power is being redefined. Women often explain with care that we mean power to control our lives, but not to dominate others.

People now ask me if I'm passing the torch. I always explain that no, I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much. And I'm using it to light the torches of others. Because the truth is that the old image of one person with a torch is part of the problem, not the solution. We each need a torch if we are to see where we're going. And together, we create so much more light.

Perhaps that's the first Survival Lesson we need to remember if we are to keep going: serious opposition is a measure of success. Women have been trained to measure our effectiveness in love and approval, not in conflict and resistance.

PLANNING AHEAD IS A measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

For sad if obvious reasons, women (especially white women who are seduced by access to the powerful) are the only discriminated-against group whose members seem to think that, if they don’t take themselves seriously, someone else will.

Native nations were often matrilineal: that is, clan identity passed through the mother, and a husband joined a wife’s household, not vice versa. Matrilineal does not mean matriarchal, which, like patriarchal, assumes that some group has to dominate—a failure of the imagination.

If each person in the room promises that in the twenty-four hours beginning the very next day she or he will do at least one outrageous thing in the name of simple justice, then I promise I will, too. It doesn't matter whether the act is as small as saying, "Pick yourself up" (a major step for those of us who have been our family's servants) or as large as calling for a strike. The point is that, if each of us does as promised, we can be pretty sure of two results. First, the world one day later won't be quite the same. Second, we will have such a good time doing it that we will never again get up in the morning saying, "WILL I do anything outrageous?" but only "WHAT outrageous act will I do today

It doesn’t matter if you love the people society says you shouldn’t love or do or don’t have children with more than one of them; it doesn’t matter if you have money, go to church, or obey the law; what matters is that you’re not cruel or wasteful, that you don’t keep the truth from those who need it, suppress someone’s will or talent, take more than you need from nature, or fail to use your own talent and will.

When David Susskind and Germaine Greer were guests on the same historic television talk show, for instance, Susskind used general, pseudoscientific statements about women’s monthly emotional changes as a way of excusing the injustices cited by this very intelligent woman. Finally, Greer turned politely to Susskind and said, “Tell me, David. Can you tell if I’m menstruating right now—or not?” She not only eliminated any doubts raised by Susskind’s statements, but subdued his pugnacious style for the rest of the show.

Patriarchy in all its forms is still about controlling reproduction, and thus the bodies of women, which is why invading a female body is still less likely to be punished by law than invading private property.

It wasn’t the victory of one man or the death of another. It was the death of the future, and of our youth, because we might be rather old before the conservers left and the compassionate men came back. Saturday.

When she visited me in New York during her sixties and seventies, she always told taxi drivers that she was eighty years old (“so they will tell me how young I look”), and convinced theater ticket sellers that she had difficulty in hearing long before she really did (“so they’ll give us seats in the front row”).

In retrospect, the second cause for delay makes less feminist sense: the long popularity of assertiveness training. Though most women needed to be more assertive (or even more aggressive, though that word was considered too controversial), many assertiveness courses taught women how to play the existing game, not how to change the rules.

(I remember with gratitude the banner carried by some very old and bawdy women who led the parade while I was a student: hardly a man is now alive, who remembers the girls of ’95.)

For the future we should understand that this process of democratizing a state legislative system takes time. Changing a few faces is not enough, just as earning majority support of a legislator's constituents doesn't help if he has been put there by special interests. You have to be around long enough to out-organize the special interests, and change the legislature's leadership.

It is truly amazing how long we can go on accepting myths that oppose our own lives, assuming instead that we are odd exceptions.

Historians seem to pay little attention to movements among the powerless. Perhaps the intimate, majority challenge presented by women of all races and men of color was (and still is) too threatening to the power of a white male majority.

The problem is that the degradation of women of all races is still thought to be normal.

In fact, one measure of women's ingenuity is the wide variety of ways we have found to invoke male authority, economic circumstance, or other good reasons to justify doing what we want to do anyway. This subterfuge allows us to maintain a passive, "feminine" stance while secretly rebelling. Like most deceptions, it is a gigantic waste of talent, invention, and time.

Even if a girl looks silly," she said, "boys should know that she's smart.

I am continually moved to discover I have sisters. I am beginning, just beginning, to find out who I am.

If we're ever to have educated children," we were told at Smith in the 1950s, "we must have educated mothers.

In fiction and in reality, perhaps men should think twice before making widowhood our only path to power.

Besides, as my mother would say, "Democracy is a seed that can only be planted where you stand.

What outrageous act will I do today?

And we who are older are useful because we remember when things were way worse, so we bring hope. Those of you who are younger are crucial because you see clearly what's wrong, and bring fresh anger and the time to set it right.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields- "For Those Light Bachelor Days.