Barely a week has gone by and already the world has felt the first aftershocks of President Trump's inauguration. In the wake of the Women's March - what seems to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest protest in U.S. history - here are a few words from world renowned feminists to reflect on as we continue treading through these uncertain times.
1. Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men, it does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean that you are a bitch or a dyke. It means that you believe in equality. – Kate Nash
2. I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves. – Emma Watson
3. Though we have the courage to raise our daughters more like our sons, we’ve rarely had the courage to raise our sons like our daughters. – Gloria Steinem
4. In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders. – Sheryl Sandberg
5. I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story – I will. – Amy Schumer.
6. There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. – Madeleine K. Albright
7. Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way women perceive that strength. – G.D. Anderson
8. We are mothers. We are caregivers. We are artists. We are activists. We are entrepreneurs, doctors, leaders of industry and technology. Our potential is unlimited. We rise. – Alicia Keys
9. For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious – or whatever we please. We are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution. – Naomi Wolf
10. The word feminism needs to be taken back. It needs to be reclaimed in a way that is inclusive of men. – Annie Lennox
11. There’s many women now who think, ‘Surely we don’t need feminism anymore, we’re all liberated and society’s accepting us as we are’. Which is just hogwash. It’s not true at all.” – Yoko Ono
12. I’m not nasty, like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booth. I’m nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth. – Ashley Judd
13. My idea of feminism is self-determination, and its very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do. – Ani DiFranco
14. It is time we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are.” – Emma Watson
15. I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. – Mary Shelley
16. “Very early on in writing the series, I remember a female journalist saying to me that Mrs Weasley, 'Well, you know, she’s just a mother.' And I was absolutely incensed by that comment. Now, I consider myself to be a feminist, and I’d always wanted to show that just because a woman has made a choice, a free choice to say, 'Well, I’m going to raise my family and that’s going to be my choice. I may go back to a career, I may have a career part time, but that’s my choice.' Doesn’t mean that that’s all she can do. And as we proved there in that little battle, Molly Weasley comes out and proves herself the equal of any warrior on that battlefield.” – J.K Rowling
17. There’s just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world. – Katheen Hanna
18. I am a Woman/Phenomenally/ Phenomenal Woman,/ that’s me. – Maya Angelou
19. I think every woman in our culture is a feminist. They may refuse to articulate it, but if you were to take any woman back 40 years and say, ‘Is this the world you want to live in?’, they would say ‘No.’ – Helen Mirren
20. Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them. - Anonymous
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