On Women Quotes

“So far as women heed the stereotypes of ‘feminine’ behaviour, they cannot behave as fully responsible, independent adults.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Dividing time into Past, Present, and Future suggests that reality is distributed equally among three parts, but in fact the past is the most real of all. The future is, inevitably, an accumulation of loss, and dying is something we all do in our lives.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Any serious program of liberating women must start from the premise that liberation is not just about equality (the liberal idea). It is about power. Women cannot be liberated without reducing the power of men. Their liberation not only means changing consciousness and social structure in ways that will transfer to women much of the power monopolized by men. The nature of the power itself will thereby change, since throughout history power has itself been defined in sexist terms.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Women have to feel, and learn to express, their anger.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Any already "liberated" woman who complacently accepts her privileged situation participates in the oppression of other women.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“To be a woman is to be an actress. Being feminine is a kind of theater, with its appropriate costumes, decor, lighting, and stylized gestures. From early childhood on, girls are trained to care in a pathologically exaggerated way about their appearance and are profoundly mutilated (to the extent of being unfitted for first-class adulthood) by the extent of the stress put on presenting themselves as physically attractive objects.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Being thirty-nine is also hard; a whole year in which to meditate in glum astonishment that one stands on the threshold of middle age. The frontiers are arbitrary, but not any less vivid for that. Although a woman on her fortieth birthday is hardly different from what she was when she was still thirty-nine, the day seems like a turning point. But long before actually becoming a woman of forty, she has been steeling herself against the depression she will feel. One of the greatest tragedies of each woman’s life is simply getting older; it is certainly the longest tragedy.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“Deprived of all economic, religious, and educational functions, the family exists solely as a source of emotional warmth in a cold world.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“The privileges of beauty are immense," said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; it is not the power to do but the power to attract. It is a power that negates itself. For the power is not one that can be chosen freely - at least, not by women - or renounced without social censure.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“One often hears that the liberation of women cannot take place without the liberation of men. The cliché is true, up to a point. Women and men share the same ultimate aim: to gain genuine autonomy, which means participating in (and being let alone by) a society that is not based on alienation and repression. But the cliché is also dangerous, for it implicitly denies that there are stages in the struggle to liberate women. Like many clichés which are true, it disarms thoughts and pacifies rage. It encourages a passive and merely reformist view of the problem.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women

“La belleza, la ocupación de las mujeres en esta sociedad, es el teatro de su esclavitud. Y solo se aprueba un canon de belleza femenina: la jovencita. La gran ventaja de los hombres en nuestra cultura es que permite dos cánones de belleza masculina: el jovencito y el hombre. La belleza de un jovencito se parece a la de una jovencita. En ambos sexos se trata de un tipo de frágil belleza florecida naturalmente solo en la primera parte del ciclo vital.”
― Susan Sontag, De las mujeres (Serie ENDEBATE)

“The modern “nuclear” family is a psychological and moral disaster. It is a prison of sexual repression, a playing field of inconsistent moral laxity, a museum of possessiveness, a guilt-producing factory, and a school of selfishness.”
― Susan Sontag, On Women