Helen Lewis > Quotes

“Feminism has to fight 'the tyranny of niceness'. It is, and has always been, one of the most potent forces holding women back.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“Your vagina is not a democracy. No one else gets a vote on what you do with it.”
― Helen Lewis

“If feminism doesn't frighten people with power, it is toothless.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“There is no perfect way to make a demand on power. There is no way to do feminism which will protect you from being attacked. You have to be honest with yourself: am I really being unreasonable? Or is the problem with the rest of the world? If it is the latter, then don't be derailed.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“It is deeply conservative to suggest that any sufficiently difficult woman from history -- say, one who rebelled against the constraints of femininity by dressing and acting in a masculine way -- must have been a man.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“These messages are beamed back at us – men are this, women are that – from the moment of birth. No wonder it feels obvious that there are striking, fundamental differences in temperament and interests between the sexes which no social movement can ever overcome. But it seems to me that if women are, on average, less assertive, less aggressive, less difficult than men, then it’s not just down to chromosomes, or hormones. It’s socialisation too. It’s because the only refuge of the powerless is supplication. If you’re in charge, you don’t have to beg. You don’t have to live your life on high alert for the responses of others. The world shapes itself around you. You don’t have to ask nicely. You can be difficult without getting called difficult.”
― Helen Lewis

“This is what I find poisonous about the idea of genius—that people who succeed wildly in one domain stop thinking of themselves as any combination of talented, lucky and hardworking, and instead come to imagine that they are a superior sort of human.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“Then, as now, there is an assumption that superior knowledge and expertise in one domain confers authority in others. It is one of the worst outcomes of the mythology of genius, because it encourages exceptional people to stray far outside their competence—to see themselves as omni-experts, superior minds who have much to contribute on any issue. (Once, when a house guest contradicted him, Shockley snapped back: “What law of nature have you discovered?”)”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“If we can thank the high IQ societies for anything, it is for proving that a ‘genius-level IQ’ does not perfectly correlate with achievement. These societies were set up to demonstrate that their members were superior people with superior brains. But the polls run by Mensa were quickly revealed to be useless- simply having a high IQ does not make you an expert on foreign policy, or economics, or any of a thousand other political questions. In many cases, a self-image as a ‘clever person’ simply makes you more likely to hold your incorrect opinions extremely forcefully.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“The argument over whether Elon Musk is a genius is really an argument about what our society values, and what it is prepared to tolerate. A suite of behaviors that would otherwise be inexcusable are forgiven when they are the price of greatness.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“, Harman rejected the idea that women should see each other as competition. The US feminist Katha Pollitt called this ‘Smurfette syndrome’: just as there is only one female Smurf, we imagine there is only one slot for women at the top table. If she has it, then I can’t: so I have to bring her down.”
― Helen Lewis

“The Fourth Wave [of feminism] was beautifully noisy and attention-grabbing, but now we need concrete victories that will last in a way hashtag campaigns cannot. The public pillorying of a scattershot crew of outright villains, low-level creeps and the occasional innocent man by the #MeToo movement is no substitute for ensuring full and free access to employment tribunals.”
― Helen Lewis

“I want to warn twentysomething women that the old bargain has not changed all that much. You can only have it all if you do it all.”
― Helen Lewis

“Women need time and space to play - particularly when we work so hard”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“If there is to be a Fifth Wave [of feminism], what should our focus be? Here is my own messy, imperfect, difficult answer: structures, structures, structures. Social progress is fast, captivating, enthralling. It is ferociously beautiful to see the world change at the speed of speaking out. But those advances won’t survive unless we do the hard work of economic and legal reform to support them”
― Helen Lewis

“We need to change our idea of what ‘work’ is. Work is not what creates value for an employer. It’s what creates a society. It’s what takes up your time.”
― Helen Lewis

“A genius does not have to play by the rules in pursuit of a great discovery. Hang on though. What if his great discovery turns out to be garbage, perhaps because he bent the rules? Ah, then he wasn’t a genius after all. This kind of circular logic ought to disqualify a scientist from being taken seriously.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“We creep closer to equality, before something drags us back. Misogyny mutates. Sexism and feminism are like bacteria and antibiotics; the latter forces the former to evolve. As soon as one argument against women’s rights becomes useless, another takes its place.”
― Helen Lewis

“I we open up sport to women, it sends a message that wanting leisure time is not being selfish or unreasonable.”
― Helen Lewis

“A factory manager once tried to intimidate her. ‘You can’t win with that sari on,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you change into a miniskirt?’fn5 Desai’s reply took inspiration from Indira Gandhi, then prime minister of India: ‘I’ll tell you something, manager. Mrs Gandhi wears a sari and she runs a country of 600 million people. You can’t even run a little factory.”
― Helen Lewis

“The women’s movement doesn’t hate men. It hates patriarchy – a system created and supported by all of us, where men and women are legally, financially and socially unequal.”
― Helen Lewis

“Als mensen me vragen mijn grootste feministische heldin te noemen, ben ik geneigd te antwoorden: de wasmachine.”
― Helen Lewis

“There’s definitely a feminist version of false consciousness. If you’re trapped as a housewife, you begin to take pride in how shiny your taps are, castigate other women whose taps are not sufficiently shiny, and refuse to contemplate a world in which shiny taps are not the best measure of your worth as a human being. You do not question why, if shiny taps are so important, you’re not being paid to clean them”
― Helen Lewis

“Perhaps you are thinking: I don't care about sport. Well, neither did I. But now I realise that's partly because sport did not seem to have a place for me.”
― Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

“The great psychologist had believed himself a genius, and he had constructed a hall of mirrors to prove himself right.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“Both sides knew that discrediting Burt was an appealing way of discrediting this ideas—even in science, evidence rarely stands or falls on its own merits, but by the reputation of its champions. A genius therefore becomes the human embodiment of a political argument—and smashing the genius’ reputation is a more compelling way of demolishing that argument than a tedious, footnoted appeal to the facts.”
― Helen Lewis, The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea

“the story of gendered time is not one of beastly oppressive men and poor downtrodden women. It’s a story of cultural scripts which we all follow without thinking.”
― Helen Lewis