Quotes

All nicked from FWD/Forward.  Which is a great site that y'all should be reading.

“Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, disabled women, Jewish women, lesbians, old women–as well as white, economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”
–Barbara Smith, “Racism and Women’s Studies,” 1979 (text is available at JSTOR; unfortunately, it’s subscription-only)

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”
- Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage” (1998).


"Being discriminated against or exploited because one is female may be painful and dehumanizing, but it may not necessarily be as painful, dehumanizing, or threatening as being without food or shelter, as starvation, as being deathly ill but unable to obtain medical care."
- bell hooks, Feminist Theory From Margin to Center

 "Definitions of disability affect people’s self-identity. Recognizing yourself as disabled and identifying with other people who are disabled and learning about their experiences can all contribute to understanding and interpreting your own experiences, and to knowing that you are not alone with problems you may have believed were unique to you. But being identified as disabled also carried a significant stigma in most societies and usually forces the person so identified to deal with stereotypes and unrealistic attitudes and expectations that are projected on to her/him as a member of this stigmatized group."


- Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge. 1996. pg 12.