1
" Only women could bleed without injury or death; only they rose from the gore each month like a phoenix; only their bodies were in tune with the ululations of the universe and the timing of the tides. Without this innate lunar cycle, how could men have a sense of time, tides, space, seasons, movement of the universe, or the ability to measure anything at all? How could men mistress the skills of measurement necessary for mathematics, engineering, architecture, surveying—and so many other professions? In Christian churches, how could males, lacking monthly evidence of Her death and resurrection, serve the Daughter of the Goddess? In Judaism, how could they honor the Matriarch without the symbol of Her sacrifices recorded in the Old Ovariment? Thus insensible to the movements of the planets and the turning of the universe, how could men become astronomers, naturalists, scientists—or much of anything at all? "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
3
" Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature. To uncover the difference between what is and what could be, we may need the “Aha!” that comes from exchanging subject for object, the flash of recognition that starts with a smile, the moment of changed viewpoint that turns the world upside down. "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
6
" AGE IS SUPPOSED TO create more serenity, calm, and detachment from the world, right? Well, I’m finding just the reverse. The older I get, the more intensely I feel about the world around me, including things I once thought too small for concern; the more connected I feel to nature, though I used to prefer human invention; the more poignancy I find not only in very old people, who always got to me, but also in children; the more likely I am to feel rage when people are rendered invisible, and also to claim my own place; the more I can risk saying “no” even if “yes” means approval; and most of all, the more able I am to use my own voice, to know what I feel and say what I think: in short, to express without also having to persuade. "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
8
" Looking at international economic life brings to mind the ancient image of the world riding on the back of a turtle—only in reality, the turtle is a woman. She inches along, laboring just beneath the level of economic visibility, often blaming herself for not being able to bear more weight. Occasionally, she retreats into her shell, as if withdrawal were the only form of rebellion. But only when she upsets its balance will the world roll off her back. "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
9
" There is also the less-well-known double standard of testing for steroids and other strength-enhancing drugs. “Because they think women can’t get hard and muscular without drugs—which is wrong, some women can—” Bev said, “they started by testing all the contestants at every Olympia. Then they substituted random testing, which means you can be tested at any time during the year, without warning. But it’s only for the women. The men, they don’t test. They did it one year, and everyone looked so crappy they stopped it. "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
10
" Take General Electric, for instance. Its happy ad jingle, “We Bring Good Things to Life,” doesn’t tell you that GE has been (1) a major maker of nuclear weapons parts, "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
11
" There is a quality about Bev that evokes a Zen master. She says things that would seem too simple, were they not coming from someone who has earned the right to say them. No one could have worked harder toward a goal; yet about her unfair defeat, she said, “In the end, it’s better to feel at peace with yourself.” No one could have created more whole-body transformations over the course of a decade—changes she literally had to eat, sleep, and breathe every day—yet after being denied recognition in what would have been an especially humiliating way for most women, she remained philosophical. "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
12
" But here’s a clue about what’s coming. Sigmund Freud himself, the Father of Psychoanalysis, may have been the only man in his trade to exempt himself from therapy. Indeed, he continued all his life to ignore colleagues who could have supervised his analysis. He also destroyed his personal and professional papers several times in his life, plotted when he was an obscure twenty-eight-year-old to leave any future biographers in the dark, kept his emotional life hidden, and falsified details of his dreams when he did write about them so they couldn’t be analyzed. Why? Because he insisted he’d analyzed himself.* "
― Gloria Steinem , Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender
