I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
In a way, women are a psychic immigrant group.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that women possess a unique perspective shaped by their experiences, similar to that of immigrants adapting to a new environment.
Gloria Steinem's quote highlights the idea that women often navigate and adapt to societal expectations and challenges in a manner reminiscent of immigrants. Just as immigrants bring diverse perspectives and cultures to a new place, women contribute their insights and experiences, often rooted in struggles for equality and recognition. This analogy underscores the resilience and depth of women's experiences in different social contexts.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about gender equality, one could use this quote to emphasize the unique insights women bring to conversations.
More from Gloria Steinem
All quotes βIf women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
Age brings a freedom. When you're young, you're much more subject to the idea of what feminine is or how you should look or how you should behave.
All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women - from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace.
Similar quotes
I greatly fear some of America's greatest and most dangerous enemies are such as think themselves her best friends.
Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, 'morality.' Morality is the 'idea' of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an 'intellectual' man, a so-called independent, a 'freethinker.'
Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?
While the Nation has forbidden monopoly by one set of laws it has been creating them by another. Patent laws, valuable as they may be in some respects, often father monopoly.
The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.
The same is the case when you enter a womb, enter into a fresh body, and start the journey of desires. But if you die alert, in that alertness not only the body dies, all desires evaporate. Then there is no entering into a womb. Then entering a womb is such a painful process, it is so painful that consciously you cannot do it; only unconsciously you can do it.