Laurie Penny Quotes

Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings.

If all women on earth woke up tomorrow feeling truly positive and powerful in their own bodies, the economies of the globe would collapse overnight.

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's I refuse to burn my energy adding extra magic and sparkle to other people’s lives to get them to love me. I’m busy casting spells for myself.

Stories matter. Stories are how we make sense of the world, which doesn't mean that those stories can't be stupid and simplistic and full of lies. Stories can exaggerate and offend and they always, always matter.

The best way to stop girls achieving anything is to force them to achieve everything.

Everyone who was ever told a fairytale knows what happens to women who do their own magic.

That's how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because changing it seems like too much bother. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turn away or yell, as a child might, that it's not your fault. Of course it isn't your fault. I'm sure you're lovely. That doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to do something about it.

Public 'career feminists' have been more concerned with getting more women into 'boardrooms,' when the problem is that there are altogether too many boardrooms, and none of them are on fire.

Those who are so eager for women and girls to go back to the kitchen might think again about just what it is we might be up to in there. You can plan a lot of damage from a kitchen. It’s also where the knives are kept.

The reason the word Feminism has power is because the concept has power and the reason it has power is because people are still afraid of it.

The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we've created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages.

The fact that ‘attention seeking’ is still considered a slur says much about the role of women in public life, on every scale.