Challenging Traditional Gender Roles Quotes

When people were very concerned about the violence against women, I encouraged people to stick with it because it was going somewhere and there was a reason why. It's all a commentary on gender roles and women and having to be the damsel or to stay on the ranch or to stay at home.

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because, the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.

I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up.

Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful--but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away.

Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. … Gender equality is your issue, too. … I've seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a men—or less of a man. I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don't have the benefits of equality, either.

I came to the realization that a strong female is frightening to everybody, because all societies are male-dominated, black societies, poor people, rich people, any racial group, they're all dominated by men. A strong female is going to threaten everybody across the board...

No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.

I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man.

I sincerely believe patriarchy to be at the root of all of our social diseases and feminism, it's antidote, to be a prerequisite to peace on earth. feminism provides an alternative way of thinking and structuring things that focuses on and prioritizes relationships and de-emphasizes hierarchy, separation and domination.

I have genuine respect for women and I want to win their respect. I don't want them to look at me and say, 'Oh, another man with the same attitudes as most men.'

a revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.

In other words, let's give our young women the right weapons to fight with as they charge naked into battle, instead of ordering them to get back in the house and put some goddamn clothes on.