Second Wave Feminism Quotes

There was an angry wave in the '70s, a strong feminist angry wave. I remember thinking - oh my God - I thought it was the beginning of something, and it all went quiet.

I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.

American feminism's nose dive began when Kate Millet, that imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity, declared Freud a sexist. Trying to build a sex theory without studying Freud, women have made nothing but mud pies.

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.

The women's movement kind of came out of left field in the 1960s and 1970s when they turned on 'Playboy.'

I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is my experience of life.

I believe that hundreds of years from now, history will be divided into pre-1960s and post-1960s.

Well, you know, I was raised by a 1970s feminist. My mom had a consciousness-raising group. I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to them.

When I went to college in the 1970s, the Women's Liberation movement was all the buzz.

In the late sixties, when revolution and upheaval were everywhere, feminists were ridiculed for focusing on housework.

There's a book called The Women's Room by Marilyn French that was a really big part of my personal feminist awakening growing up that I read.

I think women were gradually becoming more independent - the feminist movement of the Sixties didn't just spring out of nowhere.

If smart phones had been around for women in the 1950s, 'The Feminine Mystique' might never have been written. The depression and ennui of housewives would have been blunted by Pinterest and Facebook.

Acknowledging class was always difficult for 'New Democrats' - it was second-wave, it was divisive - but 2008 made retro politics cool again.

I was in college in the '60s, and the whole feminist movement had swept me up.

I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel - especially as I'm trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that's available to me - there are a lot of places where I'm disenfranchised.

Second Wave feminism started with consciousness-raising groups, which sounds "big" but it's really just house parties. Women getting together and saying, "You feel this way?! Me too!" Hanging out is consciousness-raising.

I am a feminist, although I always worry saying that because you then get people asking you about the 1970s.

I loved the late Gilda Radner. I love Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin.

There were a few before me, there was a generation that started a little bit before me of women producers and Sherry Lansing, she was the first woman studio president, and she was really inspiring to me. I was inspired by other women in other fields, I was an adolescent in the 70s with the second wave feminism, and I got very inspired by that and felt like, you know what, there's no reason why I can't do this.

I've always been interested in the history of radical feminism - what happened to those women of the 1960s and '70s.