Feminist Quotes

Adrienne Rich - addressing white feminists

False rebellion is to varying degrees in varying places acceptable to the white fathers. True rebellion is something that, with each step we take, cuts us further off from identification with racist patriarchy, which has rewarded us for our loyalty and which will punish us for becoming disloyal.  It does not matter how we change our names or what music we listen to, or whether we celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or the solstice, or how many books by women we teach. So long as we identify only with white women, we are still connected to that system of objectification and cruelty called racism. And that system is not simply a “patriarchal mindfuck,” an idea, which the feminist can assume she has tossed out along with “mankind” and “God the Father”. It is a material reality of the flesh and nerves, and our relation to it as white feminists is a complex function […] Only as white women begin to understand both our obedience and complicity, and our rebellions, do we begin to have the tools for an ongoing response to racism which is neither circular, rhetorical, or resentful.      

From Adrienne Rich, ‘Disobedience and Women’s Studies’ (1981), in Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose (1979 - 1985), p. 80.