Shulamith Firestone Quotes

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.

Man is the organizer of life, woman is his organ for carrying out plans.

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill.

The modern individual family is based on the open or disguised domestic enslavement of the woman.

The industry is quite chauvinistic generally. Expectations of women, girls, what they should look like, how they should be, what they should say, what they should wear, how their hair should be, what colour their skin should be.

People don't want to see women doing things they don't think women should do.

Men regarded women as a servant class in the community, and that women were going to remain in the servant class until they lifted themselves out of it.

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior: she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

The oppression of women is based on custom and tradition—not religion.

There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

Women's chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy.

The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman.

… male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.

Women to govern men, slaves freemen, are much in the same degree; all being total violations and perversions of the laws of nature and nations.

Patriarchy is a political system just like colonialism was a political system.

Misogyny should be understood as the ‘law enforcement’ branch of a patriarchal order, which has the overall function of policing and enforcing its governing ideology. Sexism wears a lab coat, misogyny goes on witch hunts.... Sexism is bookish; misogyny is combative. Sexism has a theory; misogyny wields a cudgel.

Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property.

[Apostol Paul's] views were translated as, "Your rule is to be kind to black people; you don't beat them." It's very much the way we treated women in the 14th and 15th centuries. A woman was not human, and you should be kind to your wife like you are to all dumb animals. That was the mentality.

Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman.

What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we!

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.