“Sexist oppression is of primary importance not because it is the basis of all other oppression, but because it is the practice of domination most people experience, whether their role be that of discriminator or discriminated against, exploiter or exploited. It is the practice of domination most people are socialized to accept before they even know that other forms of group oppression exist…Unlike other forms of oppression, most people witness and/or experience the practice of sexist domination in family settings. We tend to witness and/or experience racism or classism as we encounter the larger society, the world outside the home.” – bell hooks (Feminist Theory from Margin to Center)

“Boys are more likely to be influenced by other boys - not teachers and not girls…That is because a woman is perceived as just another mother, while a man is a Man. Women, even women teachers who are in positions of authority, are perceived as just “moms,” so who cares what they think? Men are more interesting, are higher in status, and worthy of boys attention.” - Kristin J. Anderson (Modern Misogyny: Anti-feminism in a Post-feminist Era)

“Homophobia and heterosexism are everyone’s problem, if for no other reason, heterosexuals should worry about it because if they step out of the rigid gender roles our society has in place, they face being gay-baited themselves…If your son goes to preschool with polish on his fingernails, he can be a target of anti-gay discrimination. Homophobia and heterosexism keep everyone in their narrowly defined place.” - Kristin J. Anderson (Modern Misogyny: Anti-feminism in a Post-feminist Era)

“Most people in the United States think of feminism, or the more commonly used term “women’s lib,” as a movement that aims to make women the social equals of men. This broad definition, popularized by the media and mainstream segments of the movement, raises problematic questions. Since men are not equals in a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to? Do women share a common vision of what equality means? Implicit in this simplistic definition of women’s liberation is a dismissal of race and class as factors that, in conjunction with sexism, determine the extent to which an individual will be discriminated against, exploited, or oppressed.” - bell hooks (Feminist Theory from Margin to Center)

“White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism, but racism enables them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as these two groups, or any group, defines liberation as gaining social equality with ruling-class white men, they have a vested interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others.” – bell hooks (Feminist Theory from Margin to Center)

“When a theory is transformed into an ideology, it begins to destroy the self and self-knowledge. Originally born of feeling, it pretends to float above and around feeling. Above sensation. It organizes experience according to itself, without touching experience. By virtue of being itself, it is supposed to know. To invoke the name of this ideology is to confer truthfulness. No one can tell it anything new. Experience ceases to surprise it, inform it, transform it. It is annoyed by any detail which does not fit into its world view. Begun as a cry against the denial of truth, now it denies any truth which does not fit into its scheme. Begun as a way to restore one’s sense of reality, now it attempts to discipline real people, to remake natural beings after its own image. All that it fails to explain it records as its enemy. Begun as a theory of liberation, it is threatened by new theories of liberation; it builds a prison for the mind.” - Susan Griffin

“Women need to know (and are increasingly prevented from finding out) that feminism is not about dressing for success, or becoming a corporate executive, or gaining elective office; it is not being able to share a two-career marriage and take skiing vacations and spend huge amounts of time with your husband and two lovely children because you have a domestic worker who makes all this possible for you, but who hasn’t the time or money to do it for herself; it is not opening a Women’s Bank, or spending a weekend in an expensive workshop that guarantees to teach you how to become assertive (but not aggressive); it is most emphatically not about becoming a police detective or CIA agent or marine corps general. But if these distorted images of feminism have more reality than ours do, it is partly our own fault. We have not worked as hard as we should have at providing clear and meaningful alternative analyses which relate to people’s lives, and at providing active, accessible groups in which to work.” – Carol Ehrlich