My All-Time Favorite Gloria Steinem Quotes.

Below are my all-time favorite Gloria Steinem quotes. I am not saying I agree with them all. But some of them are thought-provoking...

“A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.”

“So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? Street guys would invent slang 'He’s a three-pad man' and 'give fives' on the corner with some exchange like, 'Man you lookin’ good!' 'Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!'”

“Women need men like fish need a bicycle.”

“We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.”

“The surest way to be alone is to get married.”

“We've begun to raise daughters more like sons, but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

“Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, Just wait.”

“Being misunderstood by people whose opinions you value is absolutely the most painful.”

“Men should think twice before making widowhood woman's only path to power.”

“The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary.”

“America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.”

“All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.”

“The Miss America Pageant reinforces a belief that women are merely how they look and how they please.”

“A bad facelift is like a bad toupee.”

“I think that we have successfully said that rape is not sex, it’s violence. But what we have not successfully said is that pornography is not erotica. Porn means female slaves. I fear that pornography is taking over sex when in fact it’s way more about domination.”

“It was horrible. There was nothing fun about it. It's really hard work. You know, you're carrying trays. You have three-inch high heels on. You're paid very little. The trays are heavy. Your feet hurt. I learned what it's like to be hung on a meat hook. That's essentially the emotional experience.” (on working undercover at the Playboy Club).

“A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.”

“Transsexuals are paying an extreme tribute to the power of sex roles. In order to set their real human personalities free, they surgically mutilate their own bodies. Instead of serving more lifesaving but often less lucrative needs for their surgical and hormone-therapy skills, some physicians are aiding individuals who are desperately trying to conform to an unjust society.” (1983)

“I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine,’ and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.” (2013)

“A gender-equal society would be one where the word 'gender' does not exist: where everyone can be themselves.”