Silencing Women Quotes

Women have had the power of naming stolen from us.

As soon as woman raises her voice or uses her pen in defense- however cool and earnest- of her own side of the question, there is an immediate outcry made in order to drown her. It is so easy for men to talk of ‘the clamor of shrill voices,’ ‘the cackle of female tongues,’ that in the pleasure of so describing them they occasionally forget that they have not answered their opponents’ argument…

Words like 'bossy,' 'shrill,' and 'moody' are used to describe women who speak up at work and give voice to their passion - but I believe this negative commentary is meant to keep critical thinkers quiet.

Male religion entombs women in sepulchres of silence in order to chant its own eternal and dreary dirge to a past that never was.

I never say 'nagging.' I think that 'nagging' is a term that men created to get women to pipe down some. But, it's a trap that we've created. We created several terms for women to back you down. Nagging means to stop asking me questions, then we get away with more. I think it's a term men created.

Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.

That's violence, terrible violence, to tell a woman to sit down and shut up.

As soon as a women gets to an age where she has opinions and she's vital and she's strong, she's systematically shamed into hiding under a rock.

As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?

When a woman is exhorted to be compliant, cooperative, and quiet, to not make upset or go against the old guard, she is pressed into living a most unnatural life- a life that is self-blinding.. . without innovation. The world-wide issue for women is that under such conditions they are not only silenced, they are put to sleep. Their concerns, their viewpoints, their own truths are vaporized.

As soon as a woman is old enough to have an opinion and have a voice and be unafraid, she's very much encouraged by all sorts of people to crawl under a rock and die. And it's so weird. My crime is not dying.

Oh God, if you want women to never again raise their voices, then create an adult man!

I'd make a comment at a meeting and nobody would even acknowledge me. Then some man would say the same thing and they'd all nod.

Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country.

Sometimes I feel as if four thousand years of silencing women, of the fear of women who were burned in oil or eviscerated in front of their daughters, is imprinted deep within me and has altered my DNA.

There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up.