Feminism Quote by Erich Fromm
““Women have been so thoroughly oppressed that they have accepted unconsciously the role that the ruling sex, man, gave to them. They have even believed in male propaganda, which is very much the same as the propaganda in other wars, wars against colonial people, etc. Women have been considered to be naive: Freud said that they were narcissistic, unrealistic, cowardly, inferior to man anatomically, intellectually, morally. The fact is that women are less narcissistic than men, for the simple reason that there is almost nothing that man does which has not some purpose of making an impression. Women do many, many things without this motive and in fact what you might call women's vanity is only the necessity to please the victors. As far as the lack of realism in women is concerned, what should we say about male realism in an epoch in which all western governments, consisting of men, are spending their money building atomic bombs, instead of taking care of threatening famine, instead of avoiding the catastrophes which threaten the whole world...””
About This Quote
Source Essay: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 1973
The passage critiques how women have been socially conditioned to accept subordinate roles, challenging sexist stereotypes and highlighting systemic oppression.
In simple terms: Women have been forced into limiting roles by patriarchal propaganda.
Question and dismantle gendered narratives.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- activism
- education
- policy reform
- media analysis
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- In what ways can individuals resist imposed gender roles?
- How can societies reshape narratives about gender?
The argument may overgeneralize and overlook individual agency and cultural variation.