Quotes About Empowerment

One might think that living in an all-female society would have prepared me for this eventuality. But the opposite was true. No one ever discussed intimate matters. I didn't have the faintest idea of what was happening to me.

I opened my own place in June of 1977. I named it Club Hollyhock.

Los quimonos son nuestra vida. Lléveselo si lo desea, pero tendrá que llevarme también a mí. ¡Puede ocupar mi país, pero jamás ocupará mi alma!

That's just it, Eva said with a gleam in her eyes that matched the rhinestones on her glasses, you had to get somebody to teach you, to facilitate. Literacy wasn't like a piece of my mama's lemon cake you handed over to somebody on a plate.

Equal rights meant just that, rights for both blacks and women, with the association working for both at the same time. Women should not be told to stand back and wait. [Frederick] Douglas said that women should be generous and allow the Negro to get his vote first. A young woman in the audience replied that she did not think it generous to compel women to yield on all questions ... simply because they are women.

I entered a precarious profession where a short, fat, Jewish girl with no neck dared to think she could stand on a stage and be successful.

In short, women have been deprived of their history—thus, their group identity.

Remember what mom used to say? "Shred the guilt.

Between 2005-2009, more than 300 girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days. Finally, Leisl Neustandter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler twine.

I understand that if you say a certain word over and over and it begins to make you feel bad then you should goddamn stop saying that word.

None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave?

La Mariche Loewen alça la mà. […] Diu que opina que el més importat no és preguntar-se si les dones són animals sinó si les dones s'han de venjar del mal que se'ls ha fet. O bé si han de perdonar els homes i, amb això, aconseguir que se'ls obrin les portes del cel.

Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave?

Men and women will make all decisions for the colony collectively. Women will be allowed to think. Girls will be taught to read and write. The schoolhouse must display a map of the world so that we can begin to understand our place in it. A new religion, extrapolated from the old but focused on love, will be created by the women of Molotschna.

We don't always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

All we women have are our dreams—so of course we are dreamers.

Public enemy number one for these men was a girl with a book

Nos sentiremos angustiadas y apenadas, y sentiremos incertidumbre, y tristeza, pero no culpabilidad, dice Agata. Mariche corrige: Puede que nos sintamos culpables, pero sabremos que no lo somos Podríamos tener sentimientos homicidas, pero sabremos que no somos asesinas. Podríamos sentir sed de venganza, pero sabremos que no somos mapaches. Podríamos sentirnos perdidas, pero sabremos que no somos unas perdidas.

Everytime I looked at it I was reminded that I was, at that very moment, not bleeding from my face. And those are powerful words of hope, really. - Nomi

Tal com ho veig jo, el que hem decidit nosaltres, les dones, és que volem tres coses, i que hi tenim dret. Quines?, pregunta la Greta. Volem seguretat per als nostres fills, diu la Mariche. Se li escapa alguna llàgrima i li costa de parlar, però continua. Ens volem mantenir fermes en la nostra fe. Volem poder pensar.

Les dones del paller m'havien ensenyat que la consciència era resistència, que la fe era l'acció, que el temps s'esgota.

Li vaig preguntar què en traurien, ella i la resta de dones, de les actes, si cap no sabia llegir? (I ella, per la seva banda, em podia haver preguntat: Què en traiem de viure si no som al món?)

La Mariche explica que a la Mejal li ha vingut l'atac arran del pensament que les dones podrien fer el seu propi mapa. No es tracta d'un temor conscient d'això de fer un mapa, precisa, sinó del que implica la qüestió: que som mestresses del nostre propi destí. Que ens n'anirem cap a un espai desconegut.

we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.