Allan G. Johnson Quotes

#1. Women's potential to disrupt patriarchy and make men vulnerable is why it's so easy for women to make men feel foolish or emasculated through the mildest humor that focuses on maleness and hints at women's power to stop going along with the status quo.

Allan G. Johnson

#2. As a system, patriarchy encourages men to accept male privilege and perpetuate women's oppression, if only through silence.

Allan G. Johnson

#3. The public response to feminism has been ferociously defensive precisely because feminism touches such a deep nerve of truth and the denial that keeps us from it. If feminism were truly ridiculous, it would be ignored. But it isn't ridiculous, and so provokes a vigorous backlash.

Allan G. Johnson

#4. Male experience is what patriarchal culture uses to represent human experience, even when it is women who most often live it.

Allan G. Johnson

#5. There is no such thing as doing nothing. There is no such thing as neutral or uninvolved. At every moment, social life involves all of us.

Allan G. Johnson

#6. subordinate groups are often pitted against one another in ways that draw attention away from the system of privilege that hurts them all.

Allan G. Johnson

#7. If we are serious about change, we have to dig - preferably with plenty of company and with a full appreciation of the fact that although we did not start the fire, it belongs to us now.

Allan G. Johnson