Cynthia Enloe > Quotes

“If something does not look odd, it is less likely to be investigated. That is precisely why “normalcy” serves as such a protective covering for so many patriarchal institutions.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Seriously!: Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered

“Patriarchy is sustained by those co-workers who withhold their valuable support for women colleagues because they see the world as a zero-sum universe: you gain, I lose.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

“Decisions. Exposing decisions and decision-makers is, I think, a feminist commitment. It reveals that the racism, class inequality, and, of course, sexism that commonly pass as "tradition," "nature", and "culture" can be tracked down to deliberate actions by specific individuals who are seeking to protect their own interests or the interests of the institutions they serve. Holding accountable all sorts of decision-makers for their choices –including choosing neglect, denial, and inaction– is crucial, I've come to believe, for sustaining civic trust.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

“Journalist Beatrix Campbell interviewed one British woman who thought of herself as a member of the Conservative Party, the party of Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister who was a chief backer of the U.S. base and its nuclear-headed missiles. But when this woman began thinking about the Greenham women’s peace camp, she recalled that she had developed another sort of political understanding. She had cut her hair short to make it clear to her husband and sons that she identified with the Greenham women: “Before Greenham I didn’t realize that the Americans had got their missiles here. Then I realized. What cheek! It was the fuss the Greenham Common women made that made me realize. . . . The men in this house [her husband and two sons] think they’re butch, queers.” Did she? She thought for a moment. “No.” Would it have bothered her if they were butch or if they were lesbians? She thought again. “No.” Women irritated her men anyway, she said, not without affection. “They never stop talking about Land Rovers and bikes, and they’ve not finished their dinner before they’re asking for their tea.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

“On November 10, 2016, British woman stopped working. Or rather, they stopped being paid what they were worth for their work. Feminist economists had calculated that, as a result of the multiple processes that perpetuate unequal pay between women and men, from November 10 to December 31 that year, British women were working for free.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

“Who is formally categorised as a "skilled worker" and who gets to define what work is "skilled" - together, these are two crucial gears in the machinery of any patriarchal workplace.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

“One woman in a photo makes it harder for us to ignore that the men are men.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics [Updated Edition]

“Taking my mother's experiences seriously led to my exploring the militarisation of marriages. It made me alert to what feminist historians have been telling us now for four decades: pay attention to the feminised silences - not just silences due to oppression, but silence flowing from many women's belief that their wartime experiences don't "matter" - that they are merely private, trivial, apolitical. Men wage war; women simply "cope" with wartime. Coping does not make for exciting history.”
― Cynthia Enloe, Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy