The media and the rest of popular culture weren't recording people's reactions to 9/11; they were forcing made-up reactions down people's throats.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that feminism seeks to empower women to define their own identities and balance personal happiness with societal expectations.
Susan Faludi's quote highlights the fundamental aim of feminism, which advocates for women's autonomy and the freedom to define their own lives. It challenges the societal pressures that force women to make difficult choices between their personal fulfillment and the roles imposed by a patriarchal culture, emphasizing the importance of individual identity over collective definitions shaped by society or men.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a talk about gender equality, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of women defining their own paths.
More from Susan Faludi
All quotes →The women's movement hit my neighborhood like a freight train. Everybody got divorced. You wonder what would have happened to women if the suburbs hadn't been built.
The system of heroism depends on women to be weak so men can be strong.
As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.
When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.
Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to 'choose' between public justice and private happiness.
Similar quotes
When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.
I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
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.
People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.