Feminism

• Perkins Human Nature

  ‘A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband.’
• Perkins State

  Destruction of traditional nuclear family -> avoid ‘domestic slavery.’
• Perkins Society

  'And women should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.’
• Perkins Economy

  'The labour of women in the house certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could.’
• Beauvoir Human Nature

  ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’

  ‘Female characteristics are a myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed state.’
• Beauvoir State

  ‘All oppression creates a state of war’

  ‘I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.’
• Beauvoir Society

  ‘Her ovaries condemn  her to live for ever on her knees.’

  ‘Society, being codified by man, decrees that women is inferior, she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the males superiority.’
• Beauvoir Economy

  ‘This liberation can only be a collective one, + it demands above all that the economic evolution of the feminine condition must be completed.’
• Millett Human Nature

  ‘So as long as every female is forced to be the sole character of childhood, she is prevented from being a free human being.’

  ‘Many women do not recognise themselves as being discriminated against.’
• Millett State

  'Patriarchy, reformed or unreformed. Is patriarchy still.’

  ‘Patriarchy’s greatest weapon is its universality + longevity.’
• Millett Society

  ‘Male + female are really two cultures.’

  ‘The complete destruction of traditional marriage + the nuclear family is the revolutionary goal to feminism.’

  ‘The nuclear family is the key tool of the patriarchy.’
• Millett Economy

  ‘The toil of working class women serves the purpose of making cheap labour in the factory.’
• Rowbotham Human Nature

  ‘Men will often admit other women are oppressed, but not you.’
• Rowbotham State

  ‘A revolution within a revolution is required.’
• Rowbotham Society

  ‘It is only when women start to organise in large numbers that we become a political force… move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave.’
• Rowbotham Economy

  ‘It is only when women start to organise in large numbers that we become a political force… move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave.’
• Hooks Human Nature

  ‘As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realised.’
• Hooks State

  'Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation + oppression.’
• Hooks Society

  ‘No other group in America has had their identity socialised out of existence as have black women.’

  ‘Reel to reel, they have power over us, we have no power over them.’

  ‘Love is an action, never simply a feeling.’

  ‘We had been socialised as females by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior.’
• Hooks Economy


  ‘The economic plight of women may ultimately be the issue that unites all women.’
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935 -> Socialist
• Simone De Beauvoir 1908-86 -> 2nd Wave + socialist
• Kate Millett 1934 -> Radical
• Sheila Rowbotham 1943 -> socialist
• Bell Hooks 1952 -> Post-Modern