Deborah Tannen Quotes

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

I'm very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don't even like the word 'feminism' because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I'm not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don't want to embrace manhood; I want to embrace my womanhood.

The women's movement will present a growing threat to patriarchal religion less by attacking it than by simply leaving it behind.

Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.

Of all the social revolutions now abroad in the world, that of the American women is the least dynamic, the least predictable, the most aimless and divided – in short the most feminine…. As a class, they are today themselves the greatest obstacle to their own advancement.... They are simply ridiculous.

The world will not change overnight, and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them.

I don't think I was a catalyst for the women's movement.

The #MeToo and Time's Up movements have been a roar on behalf of women, and the voices are genuinely empowered now. I really feel that.

When I was growing up, the current of feminism was strong. You just had to step off the bank, and you'd be swept up. There was an active women's movement. My mother was a part of it.

How can feminism be pro-women without being pro-motherhood? There is nothing more unique about being a woman.

I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included

There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.

I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.

If the preservation of the home means the enslavement of women, economically or morally, then we had better break it.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

The women's movement burst forth when I was fifteen. That was when I began to believe that life might semi-work out after all. The cavalry had arrived. Women were starting to say that you got to tell the truth now, that you had to tell the truth if you were going to heal and have an authentic life.

The whole world is starting to realize that it was the most unwise thing for our society to have ignored women power, to run the society with male priorities.

The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

I really think that women should be allowed to be more European, in this country.

At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet.

I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.

I'm never going to be the woman behind the man.

'Power' is an explosive word, particularly when applied to women.

We women are going to bring change. We are speaking up for girls' rights, but we must not behave like men, like they have done in the past.

For whatever reason, various outlets and individuals are committed to making the world think that young girls don't talk or care about feminism anymore, that it's totally over. But it's not.