Language can't solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas. Gloria Steinem More Quotes by Gloria Steinem More Quotes From Gloria Steinem In the late '60s, people were saying we need power to, not power over. Power to do, accomplish, create, not power over other people. Gloria Steinem accomplishpeopleneeds I feel that the people I see in the media are sometimes more real than I am, which is utter bullshit. Gloria Steinem mediarealpeople We need to raise our sons more like our daughters. We need to relieve them of this burden of the idea that to be masculine they have to be superior, which is what they get addicted to, and why both racism and sexism are crimes that I call superiority crimes. Gloria Steinem daughterideasson Helping begins with listening. Gloria Steinem listeninghelping A movement happens when people are inspired by somebody, but they do it themselves. You don't wait for someone else. You do it yourself. Gloria Steinem movementwaitingpeople I think my role is as a writer, especially, and then also as a speaker, an organizer, and an entre- preneur of social change. My role isn't to make choices for people-each individual or group needs to do that on their own. But as a writer and a speaker, you can describe possibilities that perhaps haven't been visible before, and aren't in other public dialogues or in the rest of the media. So I suppose I think of myself mainly as an organizer and as someone who describes possibilities. Gloria Steinem mediapeoplethinking The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters - because we never know which things might. Gloria Steinem mattermightart Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home. Gloria Steinem husbandhomemen If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? Gloria Steinem emotionalmenlong We all have good instincts unless they're beaten out of us or shamed out of us in childhood. Gloria Steinem beateninstinctchildhood Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world. Gloria Steinem curiosityshiningdark To punish the individual for the sins of the system makes no sense. We're responsible for changing it, yes. But we can't actually invent another universe, so we have to start where we are. Gloria Steinem responsibleindividualsin I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words. Gloria Steinem bravecouragemoving The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary. Gloria Steinem resistancesocialfirsts Girls are taught to view their bodies as unending projects to work on, whereas boys from a young age, are taught to view their bodies as tools to master their environment Gloria Steinem girlviewsboys The young women seem to think that they can only go out with or marry a man who is superior to them. The problem there is that they are wanting to be defeated, as opposed to finding a partner. Gloria Steinem problemmenthinking I think if we could raise one generation of kids without violence and shaming, we don't know what might be possible. Gloria Steinem generationskidsthinking The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. Gloria Steinem homemenchildren A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. Gloria Steinem feminismfeministreading We are still in various kinds of patriarchal systems. The very definition of patriarchy is that men control women as the means of reproduction, so the idea that a woman's main role is to have children often means society wants more workers, more soldiers. The idea that how many children we have should be controlled by the family, the church, the nation - by anyone but women themselves - is still very deep and very strong. Gloria Steinem strongmeanchildren
