"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place."
- MARGARET MEAD
"I was horrified to read that men are turned on by the peculiar unnaturalness of the walk of a woman in high heels. It excites them, it makes her butt move in a certain way, and it makes her helpless. She can't run, he feels so solid beside her. There are all kinds of ways that women who love men cripple themselves like that."
- by Alma Routsong (pseud. Isabel Miller) in 1975
"Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance.
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.
The above forms of human blindness stem from the same root - the inability to recognize or tolerate the notion of difference as a beneficial and dynamic human force, and one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self."
-Audre Lorde
Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.
-Andrea Dworkin
"The mother and the lesbian are two polarized images on which male subjectivity has projected some of its deepest fears and hatred of women. The lesbian mother is a contradiction; she is not supposed to exist...her existence suggests that no woman, even one who has married and borne children, necessarily belongs to a man or men."
- by Adrienne Rich in 1977