Gender Texts Flashcards
‘Women will discover…’
‘Women will discover that they have a will; once that happens they will be able to tell us how and what they want’ - Germaine Greer
‘Male energy is…’
‘Male energy is contoured and deformed too, but in a different way, so that it becomes aggression and competitiveness’ - Germaine Greer
‘If women understand by emancipation…’
‘If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counter balance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever escalating speed’ - Germaine Greer
‘Men who are personally most…’
‘Men who are personally most polite women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.’ - Germaine Greer
‘Whenever we treat women’s bodies…’
‘Whenever we treat women’s bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them’ - Germaine Greer
‘Bringing up children is not…’
‘Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought up or not’ - Germaine Greer
‘Liberation will not happen unless individual women…’
‘Liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers that be choose to call them’ - Germaine Greer
‘Every form of subordination…’
‘Every form of subordination suppresses vital understanding which can on,y be achieved and communicated through the liberation of the oppressed group itself’ - Beyond the Fragments
‘Our views are valid…’
‘Our views are valid because they come from within us not because they hold a received correctness…this is the opposite of most left language which is constantly distinguishing itself as correct’ - Beyond the Fragments
‘There is a problem inherent in the slogan…’
‘There is a problem inherent in the slogan ‘the personal is political’ for it tends to imply that all individual problems can find a short term political solution’
What are the key criticisms of both dominant feminist approaches made in ‘the power of women and the subversion of the community’
‘We must change men/ourselves first… not only political struggle is rejected; so is liberation for the mass of women who are too busy working and seeing after others to look for a personal solution’
‘The class analysis has been used to limit the breadth of the movement’s attack and even undermine the movement’s autonomy’
‘A process of socialisation…’
‘A process of socialisation which often makes women, blacks, working class people etc. un confident and suspicious of intellectual work, and makes them doubt the strength and potential of hybrid own language’ - Papers on the Patriarchy Conference London 1976
‘Since during the consumption of labour power…’
‘Since during the consumption of labour power, produced by the housewife, surplus value is extracted from the worker, then the housewife is herself indirectly but literally exploited’ - Roberta Farr Women and Socialism conference Paper, Birmingham 1974
‘What is the relation of women to…’
‘What is the relation of women to capital and what kind of struggle can we effectively wage to destroy it?’ - the power of Women and the subversion of the community
‘I need not hate any man…’
‘I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me’ - Virginia Woolf - Room
‘Genius like Shakespeare’s…
‘Genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people’ - Virginia Woolf - Room
‘Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Bronte…’
‘…they wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal padagogue - write this, think that’ - Virginia Woolf - Room
‘Possibly when the professor insisted…
‘Possibly when the professor insisted a little to emphatically on the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but his own superiority’ - Virginia Woolf - Room
‘Our class…’
‘Our class [educated women] is the weakest of all the classes in the state. We have no weapon with which to enforce our will’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas
‘Our class possesses in its own right…’
‘Our class possesses in its own right and through marriage practically none of the capital, none of the land, nine of the valuables, and none of the patronage in England’
‘The finest education in the world…’
‘The finest education in the world does not teach people to hate force, but to use it’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas
‘What are these ceremonies…’
‘What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us this procession of educated men?’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas
‘Husband and wife are not only…’
‘Husband and wife are not only one flesh, but also one purse.’ - Virginia Woolf, 3 guineas
‘She need not acquiesce…’
‘She need not acquiesce; she can criticise. At last she is possession of an influence that is disinterested.’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas
‘The daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment…’
‘The daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment, ‘feminists’ were in fact the advance guard of your own movement. they were fighting the same enemy that you fighting and for the same reasons’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 guineas
‘Those who expect women’s contribution…’
‘Those who expect women’s contribution to be utterly different from the contribution of men will be disappointed’ - Eleanor Rathbone, Changes in Public Life
‘The invisible ties of common interest…’
‘The invisible ties of common interest in a common purpose … help bind the women of the world together and so help, perhaps just a little to preserve its peace.’ - Eleanor Rathbone - Changes in Public life
‘“Here we have a world” we say…’
‘“Here we have a world” we say “which has been shaped by men to fit their own needs, which are by no means always indent ideal to those of woman. Now that we have secured possession of the tools of citizenship we intend to use them, not to copy men’s models but to produce our own”’ - Eleanor Rathbone, changes in public life
‘Economic dependence of mothers and children…’
‘Economic dependence of mothers and children is the best and by far the greates weapon of masculine dominance’ - Eleanor Rathbone, changes in public life
‘If he is benevolent…’
‘If he is benevolent, here is a field for his benevolence. If he is a tyrant at heart, the power of the purse gives him the means of domineering which meddlesome law makers have sought progressively to filch from him’ - Eleanor Rathbone
‘The mothers and children who are not engaged with the immediate production of wealth…’
‘The mothers and children who are not engaged with the immediate production of wealth but are essential not only to its future production but to the continued existence of the community itself’ - Eleanor Rathbone, The Disinherited Family
‘A woman who has no aptitude for ‘Bairn minding’…’
‘A woman who has no aptitude for ‘Bairn minding’ and much aptitude for some other profession or industry should feel free to follow her bent…provided she does not spoil both jobs by trying to combine them when they are plainly incompatible’
‘Parents…’
‘Parents in short are on strike’ - Rathbone
‘Men have commandeered all the energy…’
‘Men have commandeered all the energy and streamlined it into an aggressive conquistatorial power, reducing all heterosexual contact to a sadomasochistic pattern’ - Germaine Greer
