What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.
Caitlin MoranRead
Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Women should engage in joyful activities freely and in a safe environment, embodying the spirit of feminism.
Caitlin Moran emphasizes that feminism is rooted in the freedom for women to pursue joy and express themselves in a safe and supportive environment. By highlighting a simple act like dancing to a favorite song, she illustrates how such freedoms are central to the feminist movement, advocating for women's rights to enjoy life on their own terms without societal constraints.
Themes
FeminismJoyFreedomExpressionSafety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about women’s empowerment, I would use this quote to emphasize the importance of joy and self-expression.
More from Caitlin Moran
All quotes →People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it's a really unstoppable combination.
Caitlin MoranRead
For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.
Caitlin MoranRead
If every woman who's had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.
Caitlin MoranRead
I don't think there should be anything that women are embarrassed to talk about in the 21st century, because for the last 100,000 years, men have said everything that's on their minds and described everything they have done.
Caitlin MoranRead
A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.
Caitlin MoranRead
Similar quotes
Feminism's agenda is basic: it asks that women not be forced to "choose" between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves-instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.
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I think the history of western feminism is one that is fraught with racism, and I think it's important to acknowledge that and, at the same time, to say that feminism is not the western invention, that my great-grandmother in what is now south-western Nigeria is feminist.
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We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries. The feminist of the fin de si?cle will be bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational, in the prankish Sixties way.
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I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included
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I think the world is ambivalent about feminism. So I can't blame college students. I think they're reflecting the greater culture's attitude toward feminism. So what I can do is, in ways that are appropriate, advocate for feminism and help the students learn what feminism is about.
Roxane GayRead