Phyllis Chesler > Quotes

“Before I began research for this book I was not consciously aware that women were aggressive in indirect ways, that they gossiped and ostracized each other incessantly, and did not acknowledge their own envious and competitive feelings. I now understand that, in order to survive as a woman, among women, one must speak carefully, cautiously, neutrally, indirectly; one must pay careful attention to what more socially powerful women have to say before one speaks; one must learn how to flatter, manipulate, aree with, and appease them. And, if one is hurt or offended by another woman, one does not say so outright; one expresses it indirectly, by turning others against her.
Of course, I refuse to learn these "girlish" lessons.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“For most women, being seen, having others pay attention to you, is imagined and experienced as more desirable and more powerful than commanding an army or seizing control of the means of production and reproduction.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“The idea that women's strong attachments to each other are what make them so vulnerable is horrifying. I count my close friendships with a few girls that I know as one of the best things I have going for me right now. My love for them leaves me open to hurt, but ... all love does, or at least that's the cliche. Perhaps girls and women do come to love each other too quickly, or once they are trapped into appearing as though they love one another, they don't want to back out of it. That is probably true. But a fear of confrontation in relationships is the downside. The ability to love easily is a positive.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“That these girls avoid use of physical violence in resolving conflict, does not mean that these conflicts are resolved in meaningful and enduring ways. Girls might smile, give in, give up - and then continue the conflict behind their opponents' backs. Girls might also smile, give in, make fatal compromises, because their need to belong (or not to be excluded) is more important to them than sticking to their principles.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“For women not to fear rape because we can successfully defend ourselves against it is not anachronistic but revolutionary. For women to be considered as potential warriors (in every sense of the word, including its physical representation) is not anachronistic but revolutionary. If realized, it might imply a radical change in modern life.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“The chowdry, or burqa -- the Saudi, North African, and Central Asian version of the head, face, and body shroud -- is a sensory deprivation isolation chamber. It is claustrophobic, may lead to anxiety and depression, and reinforces a woman's already low self-esteem. It may also lead to vitamin D deficiency diseases such as osteoporosis and heart disease. Sensory deprivation officially constitutes torture and is practiced as such in the world's prisons.”
― Phyllis Chesler, An American Bride in Kabul

“Women must convert their love for and reliance on strength and skill in others to a love for all manner of strength and skill in themselves”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“Ideal mental health, like freedom, exists for one person only if it exists for all people.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“There is a great sadness in knowing that men of genius are not able to transcend the limits of patriarchy. Had I but known that the works I so cherished had been done by human beings, not gods, and that great women, including feminists, had also once lived and worked, I suspect I might have been able to break free sooner from a whole host of fatally misguided notions. What we don't know can hurt us.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“Submission and humility will not protect you from the injustices of this war. Nothing can. But clarity, and solidarity in action, will allow you to fight back - and to keep sane, no matter what happens.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“Men are taught that it is normal, even desirable, to compete and disagree with each other; when they do so, they do not personalize the argument nor do they think that a friendship or working relationship will be jeopardized by a strong difference of opinion.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Mary, mother of Jesus, pays for her maternity by giving up her body, almost entirely: she foregoes both (hetero) sexual pleasure (Christ's birth is a virgin and "spiritual" birth) and physical prowess. She has no direct worldly power but, like her crucified son, is easily identified with by many people, especially women, as a powerless figure. Mary symbolizes power achieved through receptivity, compassion, and a uterus. (There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a consciously willed "receptivity" to the universe; on the contrary, it is highly desirable, and should certainly include "receptivity" to many things other than holy sperm and suffering.)”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“Psychologically, enviers wish to be the one God loves most, the Chosen One, the one whose being radiates excellence. Many women wish to star in this role, and many do. The male universe has room for many more stars; the female universe is therefore much smaller, and the competition quite fierce for the limited number of starring roles.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Encountering gender apartheid and waged slavery shook me to my roots more than half a century ago in Afghanistan. Oh, the women of Afghanistan, the women of the Muslim world. I was no feminist -- but now, thinking back, I see how much I learned there, how clearly their condition taught me to see gender discrimination anywhere and, above all, taught me to see how cruel oppressed women could be to each other. They taught me about women everywhere.”
― Phyllis Chesler, An American Bride in Kabul

“According to Brown and Gilligan, by the third grade,
expressing a "different" view among girls has already become "too dangerous and risky." A pre-adolescent girl is sometimes willing to speak more directly when only one other girl is present; this changes when a third girl joins them. However, even as girls are learning how to be indirect and nice, they continue
to judge one another. Girls are concerned about who is a true friend and who is only faking it. A girl risks losing her entire social world if she dares to think for herself or if she refuses to back her best friend or her clique even when she thinks they are in the wrong.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Feminism is a way of understanding reality, not just a series of things to do. Feminism challenges our predilection for one right answer, one right God, one size fits all.
As a feminist, one can be spiritual or secular. One can lead an outwardly conservative life and yet, in feminist terms, be profoundly radical. So too, feminist leaders (like everyone else) can be sexist, or racist, or class-blind, in either their professional or personal lives. Or in both.
Feminist of my generation told the truth about women's condition. We were messengers from the past, or from the future. As ever, some people thought that killing, or at least defaming, the messengers was a way of making us and our truths disappear.
I'm counting on you not to do that.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“A harem is not a brothel, as so many Westerners erroneously believe. It is merely the women's living quarters. Male relatives can join them -- but no male nonrelatives may do so. It is hardly a den of eroticism.”
― Phyllis Chesler, An American Bride in Kabul

“women all over the world envy what they perceive as the “prettier” girl—the prom queen, cheerleader, movie star—whom they view as capable of stealing away male interest and therefore frustrating their own chances for well-funded reproductive success.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Once Lola Pierotti earned $24,000 a year and worked long hours as an administrative assistant on Capitol Hill. Now she works longer hours and has even more responsibility- but no pay. What happened? Was she demoted? No, she just married the boss. Her bridegroom, of four years this month, was the senior Republican Senator from Vermont- George D. Aiken. "All he expects of me is that I drive his car, cook his meals, do his laundry and run his office," she enumerated, with a grin.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“It is impossible for a Westerner to imagine the deadening torpor of a protected life under house arrest. Eventually, one is grateful for the smallest outing outdoors -- a lovely picnic in a burqa, being allowed to watch the men and boys fly kites or swim.”
― Phyllis Chesler, An American Bride in Kabul

“Human beings tend to forget what is painful or dangerous. Like sons, daughters were once completely dependent on a female caretaker. Perhaps remembering any conflict with another woman might remind a woman of a primary dependence so total that to have even once contemplated losing it was to contemplate death. Perhaps an infant or a child imagines—or has actually experienced—terror and deprivation at female hands. Perhaps one’s mother or female caregiver was largely absent or malevolently present, over-critical, subject to rages. According to some psychoanalytic theorists, daughters, perhaps even more than sons, respond to perceived and real maternal anger with “guilt.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Go gently into the day. Honor your idealism, resist cynicism. Keep your heart open to the world, try and make the world better. Don't give up.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“Toward that end, you must move beyond words. You must act. Do not hesitate because your actions may not be perfect, or beyond criticism. "Action" is how you put your principles into practice. Not just publicly, or toward those more powerful than you, but also privately, toward those less fortunate than you. Not just toward those who are (safely) far away, but toward those with whom you live and work. If you're on the right track, you can expect some pretty savage criticism. Trust it. Revel in it. It is the truest measure of your success.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“similarity in experience does not necessarily make a juror sympathetic . . . [but] may lead to less objective and more harsh responses.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“If you need to be rescued by someone, become that someone yourself. Become Princess Charming. She is you.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“According to Schafran, many women, including women judges and jurors, “avoid acknowledging their own vulnerability by blaming the victim. This distancing mechanism operates particularly in non-stranger rape cases, because it is in acknowledging the likelihood of these crimes that women jurors feel most at risk.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Love is not love if it forces you to compromise who you are. Love is a process and a discipline. It is not only what you feel for someone else. Like freedom, it is a path, a practice, which no legal contract can guarantee or enforce. . .

Loving freely means first 'seeing' yourself and then your beloved for who she or he uniquely is, not who you need them to be. You cannot love someone and expect them to compromise some core part of their identity because you need them by your side at every major event in your life. Loving involves letting go - and going on, sometimes alone, to those places to which your soul is drawn.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist

“Even if a psychoanalytic understanding of one’s life is potentially liberating—and I think it may be—psychoanalytic therapy, by itself, cannot overcome trauma, or human nature. Nor can psychological healing take place in isolation.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

“when women tell stories about other women who are not their friends, whom they envy, with whom they cannot identify, they seek to destroy. As all women know, gossip can be destructive and terrible. Because we have been forced to separate our aggressive and our erotic drives in relation to men, we locate our aggression in our relations with other women.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman

“Female-female aggression (starving, abusing) causes spontaneous abortions. Hrdy notes that dominant, higher-ranking female primates overtly harass subordinate females. Such behaviors are “implicated in delays in maturation, inhibition of ovulation, or in extreme cases, spontaneous abortion by subordinates.”
― Phyllis Chesler, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman