Here We Are Quotes

“You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls ("You are not like other girls," the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You're not like other girls.”
― Sarah McCarry, Here We Are

“It's critical we examine the kind of standards we hold fictional girls to and consider how it reflects in the way we treat real girls and, most important, what kind of emotional impact that has on them. What are we saying to girls when we cannot accept difficult, hurting female characters as being worthy of love because they are difficult and hurting?”
― Courtney Summers, Here We Are

“But here’s the thing: other people’s opinions are not the truth. We live in a world that puts us into boxes and labels them with Sharpies, yet those boxes are lies. They flatten us; they limit who we really are. Feminism”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“And society will want to vilify her for loving herself and for the choices she will make in pursuit of that love.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Feminism helped me understand that my body was not up for public debate and discussion. Feminism reminds us that people have inherent worth for who they are, not how they look.”
― Angie Manfredi, Here We Are

“It will take you long, lonely years, but one day you will grow tired. Tired of boys, tired of contempt, and then where will you be? All these girls around you with their stories and their lives, the solace of one another, and you will be as far away from them as an anthropologist among a foreign people, curious but unable to make contact. Have faith: you will learn.”
― Sarah McCarry, Here We Are

“The fact that you have lived through every single one of your most awful days is legitimate proof that you can do it again. Statistics are on your side. You got this.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Feminism is about recognizing power and fighting to distribute it equally, regardless of race or class or ability or gender. Feminism is not static, and it never has been. In fact, feminism demands change.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“When I choose to love my body, to look at it with compassion and remember all the awesome things it can do, I am rebelling against a system that wants to keep me down. I am actively protesting the status quo that aims to keep me self-obsessed, self-critical, and self-oppressing.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“By redefining what it means to be a “woman,” feminism also redefines what it means to be a “man.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“It's not a silly pursuit to read beyond what's handed to you, to seek out new voices and leap over the usual books everyone's already talking about and see what you can find on your own.
Making definitive choices about what we spend our time on as readers can make a statement, a difference. We can lift other writers up, give space and attention to more voices than the ones that already have all the space and attention.
There is power in what we choose to consume as readers, and there is power in what we choose to amplify, celebrate, and share.”
― Nova Ren Suma, Here We Are

“The boys who have done you harm are surrounded by girls you will choose never to be. girls who are disgusting, who bleed and weep and wail. Girls who spend too much time in the bathroom. Girls who are never ready on time. Girls who titter, who are soft, who wear pretty clothes that are easily dirties, girls in hoop earrings and perfect wings of black eyeliner, girls who don't know what's cool. Girls who read the wrong books, twirl their hair around, are pursued, are hunted. You will remake yourself into something else: a boys' girl, a tough girl, a girl without needs or feelings, a girl who wisecracks and drinks whiskey in the backseat of cars, a girl cool as the first frost in winter, a girl so totally unlike other girls. If you cannot be loved and safe, you will be clever, mean, a girl as vicious as the serrated edge of a hunting knife. If you cannot be pretty, you will disdain beauty and its trappings. If you cannot be heard, you will be silent on purpose. You will find your knights again, a different set of boys, this time united against a common enemy: the softness and fragility of girls, of anything girlish within you, of anything girlish in any other girl. Against girls who are sad and silly and weeping (you don't cry), girls who complain (you protest nothing), girls who make demands (you never ask). This time, however, you will not be queen. Some of these boys will never even know your name.”
― Sarah McCarry, Here We Are

“As an awake man, I need to acknowledge that feminism benefits me. Feminism seeks to dismantle all gender stereotypes. By redefining what it means to be a 'woman,' feminism also redefines what is means to be a 'man.' And to live in a world where men are encouraged to express their full range of emotions, where they are encouraged to be their own unique selves without being anchored down to some narrow, societal definition of 'masculinity'? Count. Me. In.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are

“Isn't it wild the way our puritanical culture represses women's love of their own bodies, their discovery and the joy of their sexual experiences? All the things that my kid should be able to naturally be, she is going to have to defend. She is going to have to become skilled as dismantling the information that comes in, sifting through it the noise and the human collision, and not allowing it to reshape her in the image of the distorted sexist lens of our culture.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are

“The idea, the very notion, that a modern woman should choose to prostrate herself five times a day before a divine presence is, to many, one of the reasons that we need to denounce the patriarchy.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“I’ve been advised to worry about feminism less and my own individual freedoms more. I’ve been informed that, as a woman tethered to the outdated concept of religion, I am still firmly under a patriarchal thumb, albeit a divine one. To be taken seriously—to be a real sister, acknowledged by the cause—I should bow my head, unpin my scarf, and allow myself to be the rescue project rather than the active leader.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“There was one boyfriend who, on Valentine’s Day, bought me the corniest card he could find at the drugstore and completely defaced it, rubbing away the pink paper inside with an eraser so it left behind a hand flipping the bird. I thought this was so ridiculous, so hilarious, so untraditional, so perfectly me.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“I really struggled, wondering if losing my virginity could still be a special moment if it wasn’t with someone special and I hadn’t particularly cared one way or the other.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“I’ve been told by prospective readers that they’re interested in my work, but the only thing holding them back from picking it up is my choice of main character; they think they’re just not going to be able to relate to a female protagonist because she is female.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“I continue to marvel at how pathetic the lives of online trolls must be if they find pleasure in puking online-hatred.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“I am also hopeful that as the women and men growing up in a world with robust YA literature become parents, we will finally have a generation that is not afraid to talk to their children about all aspects of human sexuality. I suspect that children who grow up in homes where there are ongoing conversations about consent are less likely to become rapists and more likely to approach sexual intimacy in a healthy and informed way.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchanges is always going to be blurred,”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“YOU HAVE SURVIVED 100 PERCENT OF YOUR WORST DAYS.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Maybe my “meddling” words did little to change the teacher’s private view, but at least I identified myself as an advocate for the student.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Feminism isn’t a glass slipper that fits only one perfect woman; it is an umbrella that has to become big enough to protect us all, even from one another.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“If he loves you, then he will respect you, and what more perfect way is there for him to demonstrate that love and respect than by supporting your advocacy on behalf of feminism?”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Ask the young man in your life to prove his love for you twenty-first-century style, by embracing feminism. After all, feminism is no more than advocating for equal rights and opportunities for women everywhere . . . all women everywhere, no matter their race, religion, disability, or sexual orientation.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“Disavowing body obsession is also a political act because it refuses to pay money and time to a billion-dollar “beauty” industry that benefits directly from women’s insecurity”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World

“It made me realize I never really wanted to look like my friends at all. They were beautiful, but it wasn’t any specific trait that made them beautiful: it was that I felt like they were the only definition of pretty.”
― Kelly Jensen, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World