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.
A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote illustrates the conflict between one's values and the content consumed, highlighting contradictions in beliefs.
Gloria Steinem uses a provocative analogy to express the discomfort and moral conflict that arises when individuals, particularly women, engage with material that is fundamentally at odds with their beliefs or identities. By comparing a woman reading Playboy to a Jew reading a Nazi manual, she underscores the potential harm and exploitation represented in media that objectifies women, suggesting that such consumption can feel both degrading and contradictory to one’s principles.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing media representation during a women's rights workshop.
More from Gloria Steinem
All quotes →If 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
One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.
Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for “intelligent agreement” or at least for “intelligent disagreement.” I found neither. Today, I am not looking for “intelligent disagreement” any longer ... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement.
During Lent, let us find concrete ways to overcome our indifference.
Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant or unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them . . . it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and the world within.
Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.