If women take their bodies seriously—and ideally we should—then its full expression, in terms of pleasure, maternity, and physical strength, seems to fare better when women control the means of production and reproduction. From this point of view, it is simply not in women's interest to support patriarchy or even a fabled "equality" with men. That women do so is more a sign of powerlessness than of any biologically based "superior" wisdom.
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Women and Madness (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, rev'd & updated ed., 1st ed., 2005, ISBN 1-4039-6897-7), pp. 337–338 (page break within "reproduc-"/"tion") (emphases in original), and Women and Madness (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972, ISBN 0-385-02671-4), p. 287 (emphases in original).Phyllis Chesler
» Phyllis Chesler - all quotes »
... [I]t is clear that women who are feminists must gradually and ultimately dominate public and social institutions—so as to ensure that they are not used against women. I say "dominate" because I don't think that "equality" or "individuality" will be possible for women who have never experienced supremacy in public institutions as men have.... The point is to have our entire social drama played out as fully by women as by men. And it is revolutionary by definition to have women "out of the biological home," both psychologically and actually. Whatever happens after that is then a matter for . . . everyone.
Phyllis Chesler
Buck's efforts on behalf of equality included tireless support for women's rights. She promoted modern birth control and called her friend Margaret Sanger "one of the most courageous women of our times," a person whose name "would go down in history" as a modern crusader for justice. In the 1930s and 1940s, Buck also spoke out repeatedly in support of an Equal Rights Amendment for women, at a time when opposition to it included the majority of organized women's groups.
Pearl Buck
Berlin says: "... You cannot combine full liberty with full equality—full liberty for the wolves cannot be combined with full liberty for the sheep...." .... Are women sheep ("led like sheep to the slaughter")? Must women become wolves? Is violence against women a direct result of the fact that there is no inevitable, painful, retaliatory consequence for hurting women?
Andrea Dworkin
Miracles of consciousness aside, I see no way for women to defeat or transfer patriarchy without achieving power. Unlike male groups, women have little power with which to either avoid or commit violence. Women traditionally are physically weak and politically powerless in a culture that values physical strength and its extended representation in the form of weaponry and money. Women, like men, must be capable of violence or self-defense before their refusal to use violence constitutes a free and moral choice, rather than "making the best of a bad bargain." [¶] Survival is the characteristic property of power.
Phyllis Chesler
Chesler, Phyllis
Chessman, Caryl
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