A Quote by Deborah Tannen

To say anything about women and men without marking oneself as either feminist or anti-feminist, male-basher or apologist for men seems as impossible for a woman as trying to get dressed in the morning without inviting interpretations of her character. Sitting at the conference table musing on these matters, I felt sad to think that we women didn't have the freedom to be unmarked that the men sitting next to us had. Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.

Deborah Tannen

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Deborah Tannen
American - Sociologist
Born: June 7, 1945

Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.

Deborah Tannen

Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism.

Alice Munro

Naturally, my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by 'feminist.' In the beginning, I used to say, 'Well, of course I'm a feminist.' But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not.

Alice Munro

That's what's always been such a curious thing to me about feminism. They never lost any power. However, when you start talking about this particular area of our population, you're talking about the politicized nature of our country where feminism dominates and all heterosexual men want women. And all men realize you've got to do certain things. If you want to get a woman who happens to be a feminist, then you better do and say, be certain things. Men have gone crazy trying to be what they think women want them to be, and that's men in Washington, gone crazy.

Rush Limbaugh

I don't think women are that vastly different from men. I'm a bit of a woman myself. But I'm not a feminist filmmaker. I'm not making a feminist thesis to prove that women are important. I just happen to make films with strong characters that are women.

Pawel Pawlikowski

Here's my feeling: For everyone, men and women, it's important to be a feminist. It's important to have female characters. It's wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it's just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa. In my line of work, having Greg Daniels be such a great mentor to me is fantastic. Finding a writer's assistant, be it a man or a woman, and encouraging them to think with a feminist perspective, is key.

Mindy Kaling

I really don't see any men sitting in the corner office plotting to keep women out. All the men I know are actively trying to promote women, to get more women involved. These men have wives they care about; they have daughters they desperately care about. So I don't think it's fair to blame men - or I don't think it's accurate to blame men anymore.

Debora Spar

I don't know if I'm a feminist, as much as I really love being a woman and I'm proud to be a woman. I love everything about it. That might come closest. I definitely have nothing against men or men having their power. I do think that the whole thing with equal rights and paying women equally, it's disgusting. I think in this day and age, if you still have issues with women, then that's weird. I'm definitely for women winning. We're such a wild species, we have so much to offer. I'm all about that - being for ourselves.

Macy Gray

I wish you would stop and seriously consider, as a broad and long-term feminist political strategy, the conversion of women to a woman-identified and woman-directed sexuality and eroticism, as a way of breaking the grip of men on women's minds and women's bodies, of removing women from the chronic attachment to the primary situations of sexual and physical violence that is rained upon women by men, and as a way of promoting women's firm and reliable bonding against oppression. . . .

Marilyn Frye

Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.

Joanna Russ

I strongly believe that no one can be a true feminist without being an atheist. All religions are anti-women. No one can be pro-woman while supporting anti-woman dogmas.

Taslima Nasrin

For some reason, when I think feminism, I think, like, 'Well, you can't include men if you're talking about feminism and being a feminist,' so I get a little bit muddled. I find it to be a bit grey. Then if you say you are not a feminist, that means that you're not pro-woman!

Cobie Smulders

Some men don't want their women to speak up, and then other men are attracted to that very thing. But as a woman, you don't want to be just window dressing. I've probably been unattractive to some men because I do say what I feel and what I think. You can be political about it, but I don't have a red flag. I don't have a mechanism in my head that prevents me from saying what I think, or if something upsets me or if I feel like I'm being degraded. I come from a family of very outspoken women. I can't imagine living in a time when you couldn't express what you felt.

January Jones

When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little.

Dale Spender

It's true that in a lot of western feminist movements, you see women working singularly from men. Suffragettes and the women's rights movement in the 60s here, but when I think of the Islamic feminist movement, I think of a lot of men who are very much standing with the women. It really feels like in equal numbers. Women are catching up in the field because we were not given access to knowledge and encouraged into these studies and so these men are helping us and empowering us. They are men of conscience who are fed up with this assumption that they're entitled.

Asra Nomani

I think anyone who wants the social, political and economic equality for women can call themselves a feminist. It does get trickier, of course, when you see anti-woman politicians or pundits claiming the feminist label while working hard to dismantle feminist gains.

Jessica Valenti

A Quote by Deborah Tannen

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