Phyllis Chesler Quotes

36 Sourced Quotes

How sad that men would base an entire civilization on the principle of paternity, upon the legal owership and presumed responsibility for children, and then never really get to know their sons and daughters very well.

Phyllis Chesler
Gossip reinforces traditional morality, solidifies group identity, excludes "outsiders," and serves as a warning that one may become the focus of gossip if one behaves anti-normatively.

Phyllis Chesler
Gossip reinforces patriarchal ethnic and class solidarity. The prohibition against female gossip serves also as a prohibition against female solidarity.

Phyllis Chesler
We expect mothers to be good; they are all that stands between us and death in a cruel or indifferent world. So we are terrified and outraged when a mother is not only imperfect, but abusive.

Phyllis Chesler
Sisters may control or hurt each other in subtle, rarely visible ways. Some may do so through a raised eyebrow, a turned back, or a sharp, sarcastic tone.

Phyllis Chesler
I now understand that, like marriage, one must consciously work at friendship; it is not a given; it cannot be taken for granted.

Phyllis Chesler
Within a span of thirty-five years, a visionary feminism has managed to challenge, if not transform, world consciousness. Feminist ideals are battling patriarchal institutions and ideology, the world over.

Phyllis Chesler
Competition among women for token positions at prestigious male-dominated universities is very intense.

Phyllis Chesler
Girls and women are as competitive as men, but mainly toward each other.

Phyllis Chesler
Women are often quick to believe the worst about another woman.

Phyllis Chesler
Only the powerless live in a money culture and know nothing about money.

Phyllis Chesler
Many 'natural' events - like early death, disease, hardship - are neither desirable nor necessary.

Phyllis Chesler
Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world's cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.

Phyllis Chesler
Ideal mental health, like freedom, exists for one person only if it exists for all people.

Phyllis Chesler
It is no accident that stock exchange floors - in addition to bedroom floors - bring out the noisy blood, the flushed cheek, and the passionate cries of men. Most men are making love when they make 'magical' amounts of money.

Phyllis Chesler
If women take their bodies seriously and ideally we should then its full expression, in terms of pleasure, maternity, and physical strength, seems to fare better when women control the means of production and reproduction. From this point of view, it is simply not in women's interest to support patriarchy or even a fabled "equality" with men. That women do so is more a sign of powerlessness than of any biologically based "superior" wisdom.

Phyllis Chesler
Afghans excel at fighting Afghans. This is what Afghans do, even when they are not being invaded by foreign powers. They fight each other, tribe against tribe, brother against brother, half-brother against half-brother, cousin against cousin, uncle against nephew, father against son.

Phyllis Chesler
Jews have always yearned for Jerusalem, from which they'd been exiled many times, but they also yearned for each and every one of the countries where they had been persecuted and where their ancestors once lived and are still buried.

Phyllis Chesler
Miracles of consciousness aside, I see no way for women to defeat or transfer patriarchy without achieving power. Unlike male groups, women have little power with which to either avoid or commit violence. Women traditionally are physically weak and politically powerless in a culture that values physical strength and its extended representation in the form of weaponry and money. Women, like men, must be capable of violence or self-defense before their refusal to use violence constitutes a free and moral choice, rather than "making the best of a bad bargain." Survival is the characteristic property of power.

Phyllis Chesler
To those who think I am suggesting that we have a war between the sexes, I say: but we've always had one....

Phyllis Chesler
The West has funded the war against itself by buying Arab oil. It is as simple and as tragic as that.

Phyllis Chesler
Women … do not have to forsake the "wisdom of the heart" and become men. They need only transfer the primary force of their supportiveness to themselves and to each other—but never to the point of self-sacrifice.

Phyllis Chesler
For women not to fear rape because we can successfully defend ourselves against it is not anachronistic but revolutionary. For women to be considered as potential warriors (in every sense of the word, including its physical representation) is not anachronistic but revolutionary. If realized, it might imply a radical change in modern life. .... What would it mean for a woman to be a warrior today? How could modern women control the means of production and reproduction?

Phyllis Chesler
Most of the views that Spender attributes to me … are still my views. Some are not. For example,.... I am probably more of a feminist-anarchist than ever before; more mistrustful of the organisation of power into large bureaucratic states than I once was.

Phyllis Chesler
Should or can there be a single standard of behavior for both sexes? Is there such a thing as a biologically rooted female culture that should remain separate from male culture, partly because it is different than or superior to male culture? Women must convert their love for and reliance on strength and skill in others to a love for all manner of strength and skill in themselves.

Phyllis Chesler
Women must begin to "save" themselves and their daughters before they "save" their husbands and their sons; before they "save" the whole world.

Phyllis Chesler
Most mother-women give up whatever ghost of a unique and human self they may have when they 'marry' and raise children.

Phyllis Chesler
… It is clear that women who are feminists must gradually and ultimately dominate public and social institutions—so as to ensure that they are not used against women. I say "dominate" because I don't think that "equality" or "individuality" will be possible for women who have never experienced supremacy in public institutions as men have.... The point is to have our entire social drama played out as fully by women as by men. And it is revolutionary by definition to have women "out of the biological home," both psychologically and actually. Whatever happens after that is then a matter for... everyone.

Phyllis Chesler
Perhaps only some young women, perhaps only a minority of all women, will be able to effect such changes through consciousness alone, through the strength of understanding, which, if transformed into wisdom, always means the performance of necessary actions.

Phyllis Chesler
I am not saying that a female-dominated or Amazon society based on the oppression of men is any more "just" than is a male-dominated society based on the oppression of women. I am merely pointing out in what ways it is better for women. Perhaps someday a choice between forms of injustice will not be necessary.

Phyllis Chesler