If you run into trouble doing what's expected, people sympathize with you, while if you try something else and flop everyone says, You see? Katha Pollitt More Quotes by Katha Pollitt More Quotes From Katha Pollitt If a woman says, I am getting these breast implants to gain self confidence, then I have to ask, What kind of a society do we live in where a woman's self-confidence depends on having a dangerous, expensive and painful operation on a perfectly healthy body? Katha Pollitt self-confidence healthy body While woman sheds the Blood of Life each moon at menstruation, man can only shed the blood of death through warfare and killing. Katha Pollitt moon men blood For me, religion is serious business - a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom. Katha Pollitt pie humble enemy funny how ready people are to believe that counseling, which even when voluntary takes years to modify garden-variety neuroses, can work wonders in months with resistant patients who hate each other. Katha Pollitt garden hate believe For many people, feminism is one of those words of which, as St. Augustine said about time, they know the meaning as long as no one is asking. Katha Pollitt feminism long people For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question 'Are women human?' with a yes. Katha Pollitt feminism feminist answers Right now religion has the romantic aura of the forbidden - Christ is cool. We need to bring it into the schools, which kids already hate, and associate it firmly with boredom, regulation, condescension, makework and de facto segregation ... Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn't kill Christ - a little on the late side, isn't it? Katha Pollitt hate prayer school Like Broadway, the novel, and G-d, feminism has been declared dead many times Katha Pollitt feminism broadway novel My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. Katha Pollitt block daughter war Thanks to feminism, women can now acquire status in two ways: through marriage or their own achievements. Cure cancer or marry the man who does, either way society will applaud. Unless he marries into the British royal family, it doesn't work that way for men. Wives shed no glory on their husbands. Having tea with Nancy Reagan is an honor; having tea with Denis Thatcher is a joke. Katha Pollitt cancer husband men Abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it's not a good idea to bring them into the world. Katha Pollitt good caring mother children In the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights. To force women to undergo pregnancy and childbirth against their will is to deprive them of the right to make basic decisions about their lives and well-being, and to give that power to the state. Katha Pollitt end abortion women power Most Americans probably have no idea how hostile anti-abortion sidewalk counseling outside clinics can be. There's a reason pro-choicers volunteer to escort patients as they make their way past angry crowds to the clinic door. Katha Pollitt door angry way past I put out a call on Twitter and Facebook and email for women to tell me their stories about their abortions. And many women said, 'I told my boyfriend I was pregnant, and that was the last I ever heard of them.' Katha Pollitt tell me women said I think women have the right to consult their own wishes, needs, and capacities and produce only loved, wanted children they can care for - or even no children at all. I think we would all be better off as a society if we respected women's ability to make these decisions for themselves and concentrated on caring well for the born. Katha Pollitt women society caring children Women who give up their children for adoption are years and years later talking about how painful it was, much more than women who have abortions. Katha Pollitt women painful talking children We want to make sure that women have a way to use all their gifts in society, to get educated, to be all they can be in the workforce, to really develop as people in all the ways that they can. We want this for men too! And we want this for children. Well this can't happen if this can be sandbagged by an ill-timed and unwanted pregnancy. Katha Pollitt women men children people Ariel may look a lot like Barbie, and her adventure may be limited to romance and over with the wedding bells, but unlike, say, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, she's active, brave and determined, the heroine of her own life. She even rescues the prince. And that makes her a rare fish, indeed, in the world of preschool culture. Katha Pollitt brave beauty life culture Everyone will be happier if fewer women are tied to abusive men, drop out of school, and live impoverished lives because of a random pregnancy. Katha Pollitt random women men school Abortion opponents know full well that the public would not abide putting women in prison en masse. Politically, it's more palatable to portray them as irrational, ignorant, and childlike, perhaps even temporarily insane. Katha Pollitt know abortion women prison
