If one woman told the Truth about
Her life the world would split open!²
A Feminist is: a woman or a man who says there’s
A Problem with Gender and we must fix it—³
Who shall dis-inter the Girls to Love
The Women they were to become?⁴
Women’s wealth, thought & labor
Have cemented the stones of every
Monument man has reared to Liberty.⁵
The Rising of Women is the rising of the race:⁶
Women as man’s Equal is unspeakably
More valuable than women as inferior,
Both as a moral and intellectual being.⁷
There’s no mark on the wall to
Measure the precise height of Women—
No yard measures that one can lay
Against the qualities of a good Mother or the
Devotion of a Daughter or fidelity of a Sister.⁸
Women are bright Stars
Whose Light penetrates dark clouds:⁹
A woman knows the only Wrong is to Hurt others—
And that the meaning of life is Love.¹⁰
¹ Laura Hershey, And She Will Also Want to Draw the Water
² Muriel Rukeyser, Käthe Kollwitz
³ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
⁴ Audre Lorde, Suffer the Children
⁵ Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights for Women
⁶ James Oppenheim, Bread and Roses
⁷ Sarah Grimke, Letter on the Equality of Sexes
⁸ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
⁹ Huda Sha’arawi, Women Are Bright Stars
¹⁰ Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto