“It takes a great deal of courage and independence to decide to design your own image instead of the one that society rewards, but it gets easier as you go along.”
― The Female Eunuch
― The Female Eunuch
“It would take a denial of all cultural tradition for women to produce even a true 'female' art. For a woman who participates in (male) culture must achieve and be rated by standards of a tradition she had no part in making - and certainly there is no room in that tradition for a female view, even if she could discover what it was.”
― The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
― The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
“It is often falsely assumed, even by feminists, that sexuality is the enemy of the female who really wants to develop these aspects of her personality, and this is perhaps the most misleading aspect of movements like the National Organization of Women. It was not the insistence upon her sex that weakened the American woman student's desire to make something of her education, but the insistence upon a passive sexual role”
― The Female Eunuch
― The Female Eunuch
“Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room.”
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“All women are supposed to vilify any peer who deviates from the accepted norm of femininity, and most do. What is remarkable is not that most do, but that some do not.”
― Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
― Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
Ilwaddy’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ilwaddy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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