A Quote by Sheila Jeffreys

Men's ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men's rule over them. They do not represent 'truth' but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology.

Sheila Jeffreys

Quote Topics

About Advantage Assigned Backing Been Biology Caste Characteristics Formed Ideas Justify Masters Men Most Over Patriarchal Position Promoted Represent Rule Ruling Science Them Truth Views Well Were Women Women Are Would

Quote Author

Sheila Jeffreys
Scientist
Born: May 13, 1948

During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men--that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit.

Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Whenever Muslim women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants. It utilizes psychology to say that women are emotional. It utilizes medical science to say that men's brains are formed in such a way that they are better able to understand concepts. These are all hypotheses. None of this has been proven.

Shirin Ebadi

Over the years, the most ponderous problem for women has been that men think that men and women are very different. Another of our massive problems is that women also think that men and women are very different.

Karen DeCrow

Many women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?

Margaret Mead

They wanted black women to conform to the gender norms set by white society. They wanted to be recognized as 'men,' as patriarchs, by other men, including white men. Yet they could not assume this position if black women were not willing to conform to prevailing sexist gender norms. Many black women who has endured white-supremacist patriarchal domination during slavery did not want to be dominated by black men after manumission.

bell hooks

until it had been clearly explained that men were always and always partly wrong in all their ideas, life would be full of poison and secret bitterness. Men fight about their philosophies and religions, there is no certainty in them; but their contempt for women is flawless and unanimous.

Dorothy Richardson

Turkey is a complex country. Most readers are women, of all generations, and they are passionate about books. However, the written culture is mostly patriarchal. In general, men write; women read. I would like to see this pattern changing. More women should write novels, poems, plays, and hopefully, more men will read fiction.

Elif Safak

I'm out about my misogyny. Most men are misogynists, and most women are feminists. I work with a lot of women. They have their finger on the pulse of things. But women do things to other women that men would never do to other men.

Brad Garrett

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites.

Andrew Greeley

In the beginning no power differential existed between male and female. God empowered both with full rights and responsibility to rule outward over all creation, not over each other. As we know all too well, the fall changed everything, precipitating male rule over women and also the rule of some men over other men, a.k.a., patriarchy. Within patriarchy, women no longer derive their value from their Creator, but from men - father, husband, and sons. Within patriarchy, a woman's value is gauged by counting her sons.

Carolyn Custis James

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see, the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.

Sojourner Truth

As both an essayist and science fiction and fantasy novelist, I write about and for the future. I talk about the past to remind us that what we believe has always been true - that men and women are somehow static categories, or that men in power has always been the default, or that same-sex love affairs were always taboo - has not always been thus.

Kameron Hurley

Women lead in ways different from men's. Men, I think, have been programmed to give orders. Women have been programmed to motivate people, to educate them, to bring out the best in them. Ours is a less authoritarian leadership. I think women tend to play hardball less often. This is the trend of office politics anyway: the days of warring factions are over. We're talking now in terms of cooperation, and I think that is the game women play best.

Muriel Fox

In most cultures, men represent tradition and women represent change and future. Women, because of their ability to give birth, are more connected to future. Men tend to keep the status quo.

Asghar Farhadi

Women cannot serve two masters at once who are urgently beaming antithetical orders.... Either we believe in patriarchy the rule of men over women - or we believe in equality.