Marina’s Reviews > Bad Feminist > Status Update

"If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions. There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman."

"This tension—the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman—is ongoing and pervasive."

"The tools of the modern age afford us many privileges, but they also cost us the privilege of time and space and distance to properly think through tragedy, to take a deep breath, to feel, to care."

"The tools of the modern age afford us many privileges, but they also cost us the privilege of time and space and distance to properly think through tragedy, to take a deep breath, to feel, to care.

"We want to be the best. We want the best of everything. All too often, we are aware of the gaping distance between who we are and whom we aspire to be and we desperately try to close that distance."

"What this debate shows us is that even in this day and age, the rights of women are not inalienable. Our rights can be and are, with alarming regularity, stripped away"

"Restrictive abortion legislation, in whatever form it takes, is a rather transparent ploy. If these politicians can’t prevent women from having abortions, they are certainly going to punish them. They are going to punish these women severely, cruelly, unusually for daring to make choices about motherhood, their bodies, and their futures."

"Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the “female problem” by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate."

"We cannot lose sight of what happened on June 25 because we are so consumed by what happened next, nor can we lose sight of what happens today in favor of what tomorrow will bring."