Wendy Shalit Quote
Who told women that they couldn’t be round, that they had to cut themselves off from their bodies? Who told women that even if they wanted to stay home with their children, they shouldn’t be allowed to? It wasn’t the patriarchy. If you flip open to any page of The Second Sex or The Feminine Mystique, you are bound to find more misogyny than in the writings of Aristotle and Norman Mailer combined—sexist as they might have been, at least these men never called women parasites. Simone de Beauvoir: What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites. Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.
Who told women that they couldn’t be round, that they had to cut themselves off from their bodies? Who told women that even if they wanted to stay home with their children, they shouldn’t be allowed to? It wasn’t the patriarchy. If you flip open to any page of The Second Sex or The Feminine Mystique, you are bound to find more misogyny than in the writings of Aristotle and Norman Mailer combined—sexist as they might have been, at least these men never called women parasites. Simone de Beauvoir: What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites. Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.
Related Quotes
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all wri...
About Wendy Shalit
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she is the sister of writer Ruth Shalit and Mina Shalit. She graduated from Williams College with a BA in philosophy.
Her articles on cultural and literary topics have appeared in Commentary, The Wall Street Journal and Slate.
A Return to Modesty has attracted much controversy, most notably earning her attacks from Katha Pollitt in The New York Times and Larry Flynt in Hustler magazine. By contrast, George Will reviewed the book positively in Newsweek.
But, according to the website D1NT, Shalit received many letters of support from young women who were disenchanted with the sexual revolution, prompting her to start an online support forum called ModestlyYours with 20 bloggers "of all ages and backgrounds whose voices are not normally heard in the mainstream (or even non-mainstream) media."
Mona Charen has called ModestlyYours an "antidote to the vulgarity that is shoved in our faces from magazine covers, television, raunch radio, movies, and shows ... Shalit names a 'rebel of the month' on the site, choosing young women who exemplify modesty, intelligence, and integrity. They are the counter counterculture—and not a minute too soon."
Shalit's second book, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good, was released on June 26, 2007.