“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”

Source: Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Bell Hooks112

American author, feminist, and social activist 1952

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“The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the sexual object sought by all men, and all women. She is of neither sex for she herself has no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity.”

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“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.”

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“Thus far woman has struggled through life with bandaged eyes, accepting the dogma of her weakness and inability to take care of herself not only physically but intellectually. She has held out a trembling hand and received gratefully the proffered aid. She has foregone her right to study, to know the laws and purposes of government to which she is subject. But there is now awakened in her a consciousness that she is defrauded of her legitimate Rights and that she never can fulfill her mission until she is placed in that position to which she feels herself called by the divinity within. Hitherto she has surrendered her person and her individuality to man, but she can no longer do this and not feel that she is outraging her nature and her God.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

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“She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.”

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“Oh, she takes care of herself
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Oh, and she never gives out
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“I can give her no greater power than she has already," said the woman; "don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.”

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“She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.”

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“Far away in the thirties and forties she (the girl you want to be) is waiting her turn. Her body, brain, her soul are in your girlish hands. She cannot help herself. What will you leave for her? … Will you throw away her inheritance?”

David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) American ichthyologist and educator

As quoted in M. Leonard, The Chaperon and Housemother, Builders of Youth (1947), p. 51

“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”

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