Multifeminist Studies: Igor Stromajer

"There is no original or primary gender. Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself." — Judith Butler, Inside/Out
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"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active / male and passive / female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact." — Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
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"I'm not ashamed to dress like a woman because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman." — Iggy Pop
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"If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of color?" — Audre Lorde, The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
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"No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body." — Margaret H. Sanger, The Woman Rebel
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"Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over." — Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
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"I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes ... at the end, there are always the damned dishes." — Marilyn French, The Women's Room
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"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
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"What's the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don't hold back, now. You're probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I've even heard the term 'mangina'. Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that's not royally fucked up." — Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism
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"Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships." — Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
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"There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil's advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women's Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally?, ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that's so much fun for them is the stuff of my life." — Melissa McEwan, My Life as a Woman
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"As millions of women know all too well, no one ever avoided a rape by wearing a longer skirt." — Anne K. Ream, The False Modesty Movement
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"It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not." — Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
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"Women may be born free but they are born into a system of subordination. We are not born into equality and do not have equality to eroticise. We are not born into power and do not have power to eroticise. We are born into subordination and it is in subordination that we learn our sexual and emotional responses." — Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution
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"Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them." — Molly Ivins, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?
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"We are the women men warned us about." — Robin Morgan, A Women's Creed
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"In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My 'dream' action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their 'pleasing' smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them." — Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
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"Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison." — Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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"In many areas of physical space, racism, homophobia and misogyny play out systemically rather than overtly. It has fallen out of fashion to openly be a sexist, homophobic bigot, so people carve out marginal spaces where this language can live on." — Angela Washko, Why Talk Feminism in World of Warcraft?

"Men celebrated our sexual liberation — our willingness to freely give and enjoy blow jobs and group sex, our willingness to experiment with anal penetration — but ultimately many males revolted when we stated that our bodies were territories that they could not occupy at will. Men who were ready for female sexual liberation if it meant free pussy, no strings attached, were rarely ready for feminist female sexual agency." — bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
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"Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only'. Not 'as long as'. I matter equally. Full stop." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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"Let's be real: if women were 'naturally' anything, societies wouldn't spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives." — Kameron Hurley, The Geek Feminist Revolution
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"To be rapable, a position that is social not biological, defines what a woman is." — Catharine A. MacKinnon
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"Man fucks woman; subject verb object." — Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
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"The definition of 'crazy' in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore." — Tina Fey, Bossypants
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"When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition." — Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me
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"It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me." — Warsan Shire
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"As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking." — Virginia Woolf, Orlando
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"Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." — Hedy Lamarr
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"Make your own art. Do not expect me to do it for you." — Igor Štromajer, Intima
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"To slur 'feminism' into 'humanism' is to usurp women's voices once again, to make the singular feminine into the so-called universal masculine." — Gina Barreca
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