Womanism Quotes

“I am a strong and powerful woman.
I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman.
I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else.
I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman.
I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way.
Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities.
I can do anything I set my mind to.
I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.”
― idowu koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.”
― Audre Lorde

“Stop the idea that a woman’s beauty is for a man’s gaze, that you have the right to touch her. This idea that she must smile and accept unwanted approaches even when she is clearly uncomfortable. Just because you call a woman beautiful does not mean you have the right to behave like her beauty belongs to you. There are women healing from scars gotten from men who have called them beautiful yet offered them pain. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone. There are triggers for some women, respect this and know this. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“We are diamonds in the rough
Through the thrust and toil, we come out strong
We are the breath of the earth,
Our wombs tell of humanity's birth
We are seeds splattered on putrid soils
Still we sprout, through every storm
We are not here to survive,
We are here to live...
Inward and outward
In the incandescence of our existence
Yes, our voices may sometimes be broken
But our spirit remains indestructible.
We are women, unapologetically!”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“There is so much false spirituality around us these days, calling itself goddess-worship or "the way." It is false because too cheaply bought and little understood, but most of all because it does not lend, but rather saps, that energy we need to do our work. So when an example of the real power of healing love comes along such as this one, it is difficult to use the same words to talk about it because so many of our best and most erotic words have been so cheapened.

Perhaps I can say this all more simply; I say the love of women healed me.”
― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

“The patriarchal/kyriarchal/hegemonic culture seeks to regulate and control the body – especially women’s bodies, and especially black women’s bodies – because women, especially black women, are constructed as the Other, the site of resistance to the kyriarchy. Because our existence provokes fear of the Other, fear of wildness, fear of sexuality, fear of letting go – our bodies and our hair (traditionally hair is a source of magical power) must be controlled, groomed, reduced, covered, suppressed.”
― Yvonne Aburrow

“A woman determined to succeed in her life is unstoppable.”
― Luffina Lourduraj

“Women were expected to sit in the pews, receiving messages from men in the pulpit. Their role was to recognize God in their pastor, not to expect or demand that he recognize God in them.”
― Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

“Aquí he dejado de esperar al hombre de mi vida, para dar lugar a la mujer de mi vida: yo.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Womanism is feminism's vulgate. It asserts that women are the oppressed or the victims and never the collaborators in the 'bad' things that men do. It entails a double standard around sexuality where women's sexual self-expression is seen as necessary and even desirable, but men's is seen as dangerous or even disgusting. Womanism is by no means confined to a tiny, politically motivated bunch of man-hating feminists, but is a regular feature of mainstream culture.”
― Rosalind Coward, Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium?

“To a woman, the first kiss tells all about a relationship.”
― Aman Jassal, Rainbow - the shades of love

“Feminism is a woman's vehicle to human agency and fully fulfilling her chosen destiny without interruption.”
― Fee Scott

“Cuida tu cara. Retenla todo lo que puedas. Igual se irá de tu lado, pero al menos le habrás sacado provecho.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Convivamos con nuestros ovarios. Hagamos de cuenta que son dos cerebros más.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Ser feliz tiene que ver con (des) encontrarse una misma. Suena cursi, lo sé. Pero pensándolo bien, todas las verdades suenan cursis.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Y que, si queremos ser personas felices, debemos ser, primero, mujeres felices: diosas, apariciones luminiscentes, oráculos. No por gusto todas las culturas ancestrales representaban a la mujer como la luna y al hombre como el sol. Ella es misteriosa por naturaleza. Tiene un lado oscuro al que nadie ha podido llegar. Y a la vez es tan predecible que tiene calendario de apariciones (y desapariciones). Él, en cambio, sale cuando quiere. No existe calendario solar, pero si protección n solar. Y vaticinios de su brillo.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“A WOMAN WITHOUT A BRAIN IS LIKE A GUN WITHOUT A BULLET...
JUST A TOY.”
― KAMILAH WILLACY

“Stop the idea that a woman’s beauty is for a man’s gaze, that you have the right to touch her. This idea that she must smile and accept unwanted approaches even when she is clearly uncomfortable. Just because you call a woman beautiful does not mean you have the right to behave like her beauty belongs to you. There are women healing from scars gotten from men who have called them beautiful yet offered them pain. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone. There are triggers for some women, respect this and know this. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“A Jewish woman in exile in the 1930s is an antihero.”
― Núria Añó

“Probably the commonest form of non-criminal rape is rape by fraud - by phoney tenderness or false promises of an enduring relationship, for example.”
― Germaine Greer, The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings

“An ideal feminist world would not be one in which abortions were free and common, but one in which women would have greater control over pregnancy, and in which the circumstances that make pregnancies unwanted, would have been transformed. Until then, in a hugely imperfect, unfair and sexist world, I believe feminists must defend women's access to legal and safe abortions, whenever they decide to have them, whatever the reason for their decision.”
― Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist

“Me dare con que soy simplemente una mujer, una de carne y hueso. Que soy, como (casi) todas las de mi genero, una diosa metida en el cuerpo de un mamífero hembra. Hembra, hembron, embrague, acelerador, freno. Animal, estrella fugaz, ama de casa profesional, geisha matriarca, lideresa de comedor popular, activista, consumista voraz. Una bestia de la profesión n. Toda una (neo)(anti)(post) feminista. Un solo de contradicciones.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Nunca tan malas ni tan buenas. Nunca tan arpias, tan ratas, tan hienas. Ni tan perras. Somos complejas. Más s interesantes cuando tenemos pasado. Lo somos todo. Podemos serlo todo. He ahí i nuestro poder. Y nuestro dilema.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Reímos cuando nos dicen que el hombre piensa mientras que la mujer da que pensar, que el hombre siente y no llora, y la mujer llora y no siente, que el hombre va al teatro formando parte de los espectadores para ver la comedia, la mujer va al teatro formando parte de la comedia para ver al público.”
― Josefina Barron, Malabares en taco aguja

“Feminism sounds great when advocated by men.”
― Raheel Farooq

“When people ask what I would tell my younger self, the budding writer at the beginning of her career, it is always the same: I wish I could have prepared myself for what happens to a writer when she is brutally honest, when she speaks truth to power in a raw and emotional way. The literary establishment continues to privilege work that’s just a touch removed, “refined” they would call it. Writers who tone down their anguish, their rage, their nontraditional, “deviant choices are perceived as more skilled, more worthy of critical acclaim. This often has a lot to do with racism and sexism, and the stories we are “allowed” to tell as people of color. The classification is not a new phenomenon nor is the marginalization of powerful autobiographical stories that demand engagement. I wish I had known all this, not because I would have done things differently, but because I would not have been so surprised by some of the dismissive responses to my work. I would have been more prepared.”
― Rebecca Walker, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“while white women are an oppressed group, they still wield more power than any other group of women—including the power to oppress both men and women of color.”
― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“I had danced before, but this was the first time I danced out of anger and frustration. It was what my body knew how to do, so I did it. I danced until my body felt like mine again.”
― Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch, Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play

“There can be a story told of Black women that speaks to their compassion and care of all humanity, not just how well they cook and clean.”
― Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch, Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play

“Play recalls us not only to our humanity and the humanity of others but also to our embodied realities.”
― Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch, Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play