Margaret Cho Quotes

So, when the discussion about not using the term feminist came up at a conference workshop, I couldn't believe it. The more I listened, the more I felt the need to express my passion about my identity as a feminist.

You can't be a woman and not be a feminist, I don't think. If you care about the world and the world you exist in and your rights.

I realize now that I was a feminist and the minute I heard the word I certainly knew it meant me, but at that time I don't think we had the label yet. But there's no doubt about it that I was born a feminist.

If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, 'I'm a feminist. '

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

To be a feminist, you could cut your hair really short. You have to be really angry about something.

I try my hardest to push the point that I am a feminist.

As far as I'm concerned, you're a feminist by default if you're born in the Western world right now.

The idea of what a feminist is has changed so much that there needs to be a new word for it.

I am a feminist - I just think the label reflects my beliefs - but, you know, we say 'Rookie' is a website for teenage girls, not a feminist website for teenage girls. That's not because I'm not proud to call myself a feminist, but when you're calling attention to a project, you can very easily be pigeonholed by choosing certain identifiers.

How can you not be a feminist if you have a brain in your head? If you're not a feminist, then you're a problem.

I do feel that I have to use my voice for those that don't have one. I have to do the best I can in my own work to represent my culture, represent the women of my country, of Latin America. What we stand for. What we're made of.

We have to think about the state of women in a more holistic way going forward. We can't be segregated by class and race as we have been. Because even the women at the top can do something about violence against women, right?

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, - a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.

I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when I'm accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between 'community' and 'women,' I always choose the women.

If I were black, I could say I'm proud. If I were Asian, I could say I'm proud. If I were any other ethnicity, I could say I'm proud, because that's how our culture is, but if I'm white and I say I'm proud, the media will go nuts.

There's this ridiculous idea that I'm a gender traitor because I'm not a feminist. I'm supposed to be part of a sisterhood: you're automatically supposed to support all women just because you have the same genitals as them, which doesn't make sense.

One of the things that we've got to understand... is that politics of identity has never gone away. And where people have had a strong identity, geographically, culturally, in terms of their employment... if that's gone and not being replaced by something else, then I think the right-of-centre's got to wake up to that.

Growing up as a South Asian-American, I didn't have any female role models.

If you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.

I have never seen white people who would sit, who would, who would approach a solution to their own problems nonviolently or passively. It's only when they are so-called "fighting for the rights of Negroes" that they nonviolently, passively, and lovingly, you know, approach the situation.

The truth is even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface we have huge issues at play that really do affect women. It's time for all the women in America and all the women that love women and all the gay people and the people of color that we've all fought for to fight for us now.

Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who use to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with any more. It doesn't matter who the individual women are.

You must address the historical and political differences in race and ethnicity in this country before you hold tenaciously to insubstantial, and unsubtantiated, beliefs.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.