Betty Friedan: Quotes about sex

Betty Friedan was American activist. Explore interesting quotes on sex.

Betty Friedan: 66 quotes9 likes

“Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgastic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 11 "The Sex-Seekers".

“Friedan: A celebration of women's bodies is all right with me so long as there is no denial of the personhood of women. I suppose sometimes women are sex objects -- and men are too, by the way. It's the definition of women just as sex objects that bothers me. Women can celebrate themselves as sex objects, they can celebrate their own sexuality and can enjoy the sexuality of men as far as I'm concerted. Let's have men centerfolds. [.. ] Playboy's centerfold is fine. It's holding onto your own anachronism and it is not pornographic, though many of my sisters would disagree. It's harmless. […] Playboy strikes me as an odd mixture of sex -- sometimes juvenile --- and forward intellectual thoughts.”

The Playboy Interview (1992)

“A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex but neither should she 'adjust' to prejudice and discrimination.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for women".

“A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".