Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to 'choose' between public justice and private happiness.
Interpretation
Feminism seeks to ensure that women can achieve both their personal happiness and public justice without having to sacrifice one for the other.
In this quote, Susan Faludi emphasizes that feminism advocates for the rights of women to pursue their personal aspirations and happiness while also striving for social justice and equality. The essence of feminism is to dismantle the societal pressures that force women to make a choice between their private lives, often defined by personal fulfillment and domestic responsibilities, and their public identities, which encompass their roles in social, political, and professional spheres.
In practice
During a speech on gender equality, I might quote Susan Faludi to highlight the importance of addressing women's rights.
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.
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.
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.
Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
I would much rather be the obnoxious feminist girl than be complicit in my own dehumanization.
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.
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.
I think the history of western feminism is one that is fraught with racism, and I think it's important to acknowledge that and, at the same time, to say that feminism is not the western invention, that my great-grandmother in what is now south-western Nigeria is feminist.
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