Top 100 Not A Feminist Quotes
#1. You hear younger women say, 'I don't believe I'm a feminist. I believe women should have equal right and I believe in fighting for the rights of other women, but I'm certainly not a feminist. No, no, not that!' It's just a word. If you called it 'Fred' would it be better?
Gail Collins
#2. When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.
Caitlin Moran
#3. I'm not a feminist,' some women say sternly as they march off to work where equal opportunity legislation protects them ... Women who say they are not feminists and act like individuals with basic human rights have just got their terminology wrong.
Kaz Cooke
#4. I have met many feminists who were not Lesbians but I have never met a Lesbian who was not a feminist.
Martha Shelley
#5. The war gave women like her opportunities, not a feminist movement, and if the opportunities dwindled after the war, she feels that it was because women didn't want them.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
#6. I'm not a feminist. I hail men, I love men.
Lady G
#7. If you consider sexual desire and romantic love between men and women to be natural and healthy, you are not a feminist . There is nothing natural about sex, according to feminist ideology, no biological urge that causes women to be attracted to men.
Robert Stacy McCain
#8. When I talk to girls, they go, 'I'm not a feminist.' And I say: 'What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations : you are a feminist.'
Caitlin Moran
#9. So many girls out there say, "I'm not a feminist" because they think it means something angry or disgruntled or complaining or they picture, like, rioting and picketing. It is not that at all. It just simply means that you believe that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities.
Taylor Swift
#11. Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.
Elizabeth Moon
#12. If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
Jon Krakauer
#13. Women saying, 'I'm not a feminist' is my greatest pet peeve. Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you're a feminist.
Lena Dunham
#14. I'm not a feminist, but I just think it's a really cool process working with a woman as a director.
Melanie Griffith
#15. One of the reasons so many women say "I'm not a feminist but ... " (and then put forward a feminist position), is that in addition to being stereotyped as man-hating Amazons, feminists have also been cast as antifamily and antimotherhood.
Susan J. Douglas
#16. I took a page from [the playwright] Wendy Wasserstein's book. She said 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.'
Sarah Jessica Parker
#17. If you are not a feminist in love, you fail to recognise someone who does not love you. Feminism makes love easier. Otherwise, there is the danger of feeling romantically drawn to someone who does not see you as an equal.
Gloria Steinem
#18. I am absolutely not a feminist, I am against stupidity, and if it comes from males or females, it doesn't change anything. If it means that women and men, they are equal, then OK, certainly I am a feminist.
Marjane Satrapi
#19. If you say you're not a feminist, you're almost denying your own existence.
Margaret Cho
#20. I am a humanist not a feminist. There's a big difference.
Lydia Lunch
#22. Any woman who says she's not a feminist is just someone who's afraid of being penalised for saying she wants to advocate for women.
Antony Hegarty
#23. I am not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women.
Katy Perry
#24. I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.
Callie Khouri
#25. What I often say to people who are quick to say I'm not a feminist is if you think you're not a feminist, give it all back.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
#26. No, I'm not feminist. I'm not, not a feminist.
Lily Rabe
#28. I mean, how can you not be a feminist if you have a brain in your head? If you're not a feminist, then you're a problem.
Jon Krakauer
#29. I'm not a feminist that hates men by any means.
Imelda May
#30. I am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don't like that.
Marina Abramovic
#31. Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, 'Just wait.'
Gloria Steinem
#33. I'm a workaholic and I don't believe in 'no.' If I'm not sleeping, nobody's sleeping.
Beyonce Knowles
#34. I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
Roxane Gay
#35. You are the most powerful army in the world; you are the future of this planet. You cannot, you will not spend one more minute of your time looking in a mirror wishing you looked different.
Jamie Le Fay
#36. The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one's viewpoint.
Bell Hooks
#37. Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
Bell Hooks
#38. I'm a feminist, of course, and I feel as if I'm very politically correct, although I do question what's P.C. and what's not - I don't just accept what I'm told.
Beth Ditto
#39. In using terms like patriarchy, hermeneutics, and sexual/textual, I do not wish to misrepresent the Qurn as a feminist text; rather, the use of such terminology shows my own intellectual disposition and biases.
Asma Barlas
#40. I'm a feminist so I believe in inhabiting contradictions. I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both.
Angela Davis
#41. I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just ... womanish.
Alice Walker
#42. Feminism is not a one size fits all kinda thing but anyone can wear it.
Jess
#43. The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy ... Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.
Phyllis Schlafly
#44. Empowertising not only builds on the idea that any choice is a feminist choice if a self-labeled feminist deems it so, but takes it a little bit further to suggest that being female is in itself something that deserves celebration.
Andi Zeisler
#45. It's not always easy being a full-time feminist - especially as a young woman - when you're constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I'm on the defense all the time.
Jessica Valenti
#46. I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same opportunities as men.
Ayelet Waldman
#47. What is frustrating is being told that no matter how hard I've worked, it counts less than my appearance. Although if you're not considered conventionally attractive, that also becomes an issue: you know, you're a feminist because you couldn't get a man.
Gloria Steinem
#48. I am not a Damsel In Distress who needs a Prince Charming. I am more of Rani Laxmi Bai who rides a Sturdy Horse.
Nikita Dudani
#49. The question of whether one has one's own political power or goes to work for someone else is not only a feminist question.
Gloria Steinem
#50. Beyonce is not above critique. As a feminist herself, I hope Beyonce would welcome it.
Roxane Gay
#51. This is the way dissent is handled in feminist realms: a contrary opinion or argument is actually an attack. This stems from the belief that your truth is the only truth, that your sense of trauma and oppression does not need to be examined or questioned. In
Jessa Crispin
#52. Through college she had been a feminist - basically: she shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say.
Lorrie Moore
#53. But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
#54. Patriarchy is bestowed on men at birth. Whether you want it or not, you have a privilege as a man, and you either fight against it and reject it by becoming a feminist man, or you enjoy the privileges that come with it.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
#55. I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie.
Dorothy Allison
#56. I thought liberation had to do with going out into the world and assuming male duties, not with delegating part of my load. The result was a terrible fatigue, as witnessed today by the millions of women of my generation who question feminist movements.
Isabel Allende
#57. I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate.
Janine Di Giovanni
#58. A feminist is a person who answers 'yes' to the question 'Are women human?' Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men ... It's about justice, fairness, and access to the broad range of human experience.
Katha Pollitt
#59. I'm not at all an active feminist. On the contrary, I'm a bourgeois. I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day.
Carla Bruni
#60. I shook my head. "Calling my boyfriend." "You need a guy to come rescue you?" I waggled my gun. "I have that part covered, but given the situation, I'm going to let someone know where I am. I'm a feminist; I'm not an idiot.
Kelley Armstrong
#61. I'm a fiction writer, and I do write essays, but I am not a poet. And I absolutely reject the phrase 'woman writer' as anti-feminist. I wrote an essay about this as far back as 1977, at the height of the neo-feminist movement.
Cynthia Ozick
#62. As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.
Rachel Held Evans
#63. I do feel it's crucial that women's opinions be taken equally with men's. But still'I have not been accepted by the American white feminist writers and activists, and frankly I don't care to be, so I am a womanist. I am feisty and I am given to womanish behavior.
Kola Boof
#64. How can one be a woman and not be a feminist? That's my question.
Debbie Harry
#65. For better or worse, there is not a situation in one's daily life that does not have feminist subtext, superstructure, implications and one is constantly aware of it, even when you want to rest it stands up and hits you in the face.
Margo Jefferson
#66. I don't like calling myself a "feminist" only because I don't think I've done anything active enough to call myself one. It'd be like calling myself a civil rights activist just because I'm not racist.
Bo Burnham
#67. I don't understand that about Taylor Swift, or about Joan [Mitchell] - how can she not say she's a feminist?! People don't understand what the word means. It simply means equal rights before the law.
Ronee Blakley
#68. The second tool is a question: Can you reverse X and get the same results? ... If the answer is yes, then your choosing to forgive him can be a feminist choice because it is not shaped by a gender inequality.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#69. The old lessons of submissiveness and fragility made us victims. Women are so much more than that. You can be a businesswoman, a mother, an artist, and a feminist - whatever you want to be - and still be a sexual being. It's not mutually exclusive.
Beyonce Knowles
#70. It is living, not thinking, as a feminist that has become the challenge.
Rachel Cusk
#71. The feminist notion that the whole of human history has been nothing but a vast intricate conspiracy by men to enslave their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters presents us with an intellectual neurosis for which we do not yet have a name.
Edward Abbey
#72. I am not Lyme disease, that's not who I am, I'm still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I'm not going to keep it out to look cooler.
Kathleen Hanna
#73. We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth.
I will honor my mother and take care of my family.
Yes, I think. I am just a woman.
Kristen Simmons
#74. Boys need healthy self-esteem. They need love. And a wise and loving feminist politics can provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children. Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so they would all be well.
Bell Hooks
#75. Mary Woolley wasn't only a suffragist; she was also a feminist. "Feminism is not a prejudice," she said, "It is a principle.
Jill Lepore
#76. You know, you're a feminist." It was not a compliment. I could tell from his tone - the same tone with which a person would say, "You're a supporter of terrorism.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#77. Absolutely, but let me qualify that-I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.
Christine O'Donnell
#78. Once you've got a big feminist and political justification for talking about how you went round to Benedict Cumberbatch's house and did period all over his sofa, then there's no reason not to tell that anecdote in the middle of a dinner party.
Caitlin Moran
#79. I'm a feminist because I believe in women ... it's a heavy word, feminism, but it's not one I think we should run from. I'm proud to be a feminist.
Sheryl Sandberg
#80. Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle.
James Hillman
#81. With still, underneath, the old respectable-girl-versus-slut thing. It's OK to fuck around if you're a feminist but it's also not OK to fuck around because most guys aren't feminists and won't respect you and won't call you again if you fuck around.
David Foster Wallace
#82. Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.
John Kelly
#83. My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.
Leila Janah
#84. I do not need some guy around in order to get inspiration, in order to make a great record, in order to live my life, in order to feel okay about myself. And I wanted to show my fans the same thing.
Taylor Swift
#85. I don't agree with a core statement by most feminists, the statement by Simone de Beauvoir: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one." Even as a schoolgirl I wasn't convinced by the claim that gender has nothing to do with biology and is only shaped by one's environment.
Kristina Schroder
#86. Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There's nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world - like we are called the Third World.
Buchi Emecheta
#87. When I said I was born a feminist, I was born thinking woman are equal to men, if not stronger than men. That's the way I always was.
Ingrid Michaelson
#88. I was put out there as a spokesperson for the new feminist revolution. It was very difficult because I was either too feminist or not feminist enough, depending on who you spoke to.
Sarah McLachlan
#89. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#90. I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.
Kathleen Hanna
#91. Feminists believe that men and women should have the same opportunities. If you are a feminist you believe in equal rights as a whole. That's not a concept you can really shoot down.
Lena Dunham
#92. Riley made a simple but telling observation about both feminist and nonfeminist rape deniers. "They are all talking about sex and promiscuity," she said. But, she observed, "Rape is not about sex at all.
Jody Raphael
#93. So I decided I would now be a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men And Who Likes To Wear Lip Gloss And High Heels For Herself And Not For Men. Of
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#94. I think feminist pedagogy should not simply expose students to a particularized academic scholarship but that it should also envision the possibility of activism and struggle outside the academy.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
#95. I've been feminist for most of my life, it is a constantly evolving idea, not something static.
Bonnie Greer
#96. I am a feminist. And I'm so glad that Lena Dunham exists, because she is one too, and she's quite vocal about it. Yes, women have more freedom and more influence than ever, but it's hardly equal. It's just not.
Claire Danes
#97. There's lots of different feminist groups. It's not as straightforward as just looking like a plumber.
Jo Brand
#98. I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.
Joyce Carol Oates
#99. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are "sensitive" and branded as "feminist," a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for "woman who does not tolerate bullshit.
Roxane Gay
#100. Controlling women as the means of reproduction is made even more necessary by any race or caste or class system. It just comes together, it's just like life. And therefore it's not even practical to be a feminist without being anti-racist or against classism. It just doesn't work.
Gloria Steinem
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