A Quote by Wendy McElroy
The Great Truth is that women in our society constitute one of the most privileged and powerful classes of human beings on earth. The challenge is to make women believe in their power. "Woman as victim" is an idea whose time has passed. The idea of woman as a survivor and a success must take its place.
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The modern challenge to motherhood is the eternal challenge--that of being a godly woman. The very phrase sounds strange in our ears. We never hear it now. We hear about every other type of women: beautiful women, smart women, sophisticated women, career women, talented women, divorced women. But so seldom to we hear of a godly woman--or of a godly man either, for that matter. I believe women come nearer to fulfilling their God-given function in the home than anywhere else.
There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.
Women sometimes really love to look at other beautiful women on the screen. But they don't look at a woman the way a man looks at a woman. They want to be that woman. They like if a woman is beautiful or sexy, especially if she's powerful. They like to see her catch a man, or to be powerful in the world. I think this is why a lot of women love noir films and classic films because they can really identify with these really strong, beautiful women. That's the kind of power that women have lost culturally.
In acknowledging woman-to-woman help it is important to recognize that power, within the family and elsewhere, can be used vindictively, and that it is not only powerful men who abuse women; women with power may also abuse other women.
We need to humanize women instead of making the idea of a woman be so stigmatized. That's what's interesting to me as a writer and a director - being able to tell stories that represent women as human beings and don't relate specifically to their gender. I want to just allow them to have their journeys.
The feminist movement is not about success for women. It is about treating women as victims and about telling women that you can't succeed because society is unfair to you, and I think that's a very unfortunate idea to put in the minds of young women because I believe women can do whatever they want.
Birth
is what women do. Women are privileged to stand in such power! Birth
stretches a woman's limits in every sense. To allow such stretching
of one's limits is the challenge of pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
The challenge is to be fully present and to allow the process because of
inner trust.
I read a lot of studies about the fact that there is a bias in the way health care is doled out, down to the fact that most medical studies are done on men, not women, so most dosages are planned for men, not women, and on and on. And more than that, women's pain is gauged differently and their complaints are received differently. And the idea that there's a place where you can go where everything is geared toward you, as a woman, is great. But it's a shame that we need to find places that are "safe" when the world, the whole world, should be a safe place.
What we are saying is we have to be smart about the ideology that is putting this idea into the world that a woman must be defined by her idea of modesty, that she is the vessel for honor in a community. And I believe that we have to be very pragmatic, too, about the consequence of this. Women in Iran and Saudi Arabia are jailed, punished and harassed if they don't cover themselves legally, according to the standard of those countries. So the consequences for many women is oftentimes very dark.
For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled.
I never set out to write a book to change women's lives, to change history. It's like, 'Who, me?' Yes, me. I did it. And I'm not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.
In my world, a woman was the most powerful thing that I knew. Still is. A woman made the money in my house; a woman made my food. A woman beat my ass when I wasn't a good kid. Women were behind a lot of what spurred South Africa toward democracy.
When God created man and woman, he was thinking, 'Who shall I give the power to, to give birth to the next human being?' And God chose woman. And this is the big evidence that women are powerful.
Even as a woman who has a voice in the world, I struggle to find it, to use it, to keep it, to stretch it, to take risks with my words. And I don't think I'm alone. I think the most powerful women among us struggle with how to use their voice. Because I think what every woman knows, is that when she speaks her truth she is at risk - whether it's Hillary Clinton or a rural woman in Rwanda.
And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women - except, of course - those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape 'kit 'n' stuff. But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know - actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster.
I think it was the same thing that really makes the premise of this film [Women of Wall Street] compelling: the idea of a woman negotiating issues around power and money, which are two things that have historically been denied to women. To see a woman operate successfully, but still find those barriers a result of that historical and systemic bias in her pursuit to the top, is a really interesting struggle.
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