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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.