Naomi Alderman Quotes

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

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

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Women are so powerful they're scary, and the incentive to squash this has been going on for so long that some of us actually believe we're subordinate.

Everyone has to learn how to live in an environment that has not made it easy for women to claim their place, so I think it's all women's responsibility to step forward.

I'm not a strong woman at all. And I'm not a feminist. In fact, I'm very weak.

The pedestal is immobilizing and subtly insulting whether or not some women yet realize it. We must move up from the pedestal.

Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.

Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

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.

The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.

Feminists are in an untenable position, defending something they no longer believe in, and which history will force them to recognize was destructive of most of the central pillars of civilization. I'm just the first one to point it out publicly.

Everything about women is in perpetual crisis.

The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

I'm very curious to witness the historic transformation of Chinese women.

One of the things that interests me about the Regency period is how women began to stir under the thumbs of men, wanting more and bigger freedoms.

Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.

Whether it's repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common - they exist to keep women 'in their place.' To make sure that we're acting 'appropriately,' whatever that means.

It's an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.

There must be a world revolution which puts an end to all materialistic conditions hindering woman from performing her natural role in life and driving her to carry out man's duties in order to be equal in rights.

There are also just as many, if not more, women who are anxious to hold down the status quo.

Horror stories give us a way of exhausting our emotions around social issues, like a woman's right to an abortion, which I always thought was the core of 'Rosemary's Baby,' or the backlash against feminism which I always thought was the core to 'Stepford Wives.'

The women's movement is taking a different form right now, and it is because it has been so effective and so successful that there's a huge counter movement to try to stop it, to try to divide women from one another, to try to almost foment divisiveness.