Men think it's a women's word. But what it means is that you believe in equality, and if you stand for equality, then you're a feminist. Sorry to tell you. You're a feminist. You're a feminist. That's it.
Emma WatsonRead
Those who are so eager for women and girls to go back to the kitchen might think again about just what it is we might be up to in there. You can plan a lot of damage from a kitchen. It’s also where the knives are kept.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the notion that women should be confined to traditional roles in the home, suggesting there is more power and potential in women's spaces than typically acknowledged.
Laurie Penny's quote challenges the reductive view that women's roles should be limited to domestic tasks. By emphasizing that the kitchen can be a space of empowerment and even rebellion, she highlights the potential for women to orchestrate significant change. The mention of 'knives' symbolizes both the tools of domesticity and the power women can wield when they reclaim their spaces, thus urging society to reconsider its stereotypes regarding women's capabilities and aspirations.
Themes
WomenKitchenPowerGenderRoles
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech promoting gender equality, a leader could use this quote to challenge stereotypes about women’s roles.
Similar quotes
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. … Gender equality is your issue, too. … I've seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a men—or less of a man. I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don't have the benefits of equality, either.
Emma WatsonRead
In a patriarchal society like ours, women have to fight hard for a seat at the table. Boys are privileged over girls from birth. Equal opportunity and access for both girls and boys must become the norm.
Shabana AzmiRead
When a woman is exhorted to be compliant, cooperative, and quiet, to not make upset or go against the old guard, she is pressed into living a most unnatural life- a life that is self-blinding.. . without innovation. The world-wide issue for women is that under such conditions they are not only silenced, they are put to sleep. Their concerns, their viewpoints, their own truths are vaporized.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesRead
I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?
Sheryl SandbergRead
Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves.
Betty FriedanRead