Habits Quote by Sheila Jeffreys

“Women incorporate the values of the male sexual objectifiers within themselves. Catharine MacKinnon calls this being "thingified" in the head (MacKinnon, 1989). They learn…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Men have been adjudicating on what women are, and how they should behave, for millennia through the institutions of social control such as religion,…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Girls learn to love and have sexual feelings in a position of low status, and the eroticization of powerlessness is a normal part of…

— Sheila Jeffreys

As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members…

— Sheila Jeffreys

“The main problem for women trying to emulate male sexuality is that as a ruling-class sexuality, it is constructed around the fact that they…

— Sheila Jeffreys

“Both the veil and makeup are often seen as voluntary behaviours by women, taken up by choice and to express agency. But in both…

— Sheila Jeffreys

“Men's sexual freedom has depended, and still does to a large extent, upon their ownership of women's bodies. Men have bought, sold and traded…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Men's ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Pornography is not egalitarian and gender-free. It is predicated upon the inequality of women and is the propaganda that makes that inequality sexy. For…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations.…

— Sheila Jeffreys

Male supremacy is centered on the act of sexual intercourse, justified by heterosexual practice.

— Sheila Jeffreys

Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.

— Sheila Jeffreys