I Call Myself a Feminist – do you?

We want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who sent us their favourite feminist quotes back in June. We loved them all, and a few even managed to make their way into the final manuscript of I Call Myself a Feminist. To find out which ones made the cut, you’ll just have to read it . . .

There were so many we enjoyed reading, and not enough space for all of them in the book, so we wanted to share a selection here for you to enjoy too. Thanks for every one of these wonderful suggestions.

@ailahahmedJun 5

“I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that’s me.”
From our very own Maya Angelou

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‏@catharinebee Jun 6

“A word after a word after a word is power.” @MargaretAtwood#ICallMyselfAFeminist

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‏@WGSEnglish Jun 6

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat” Rebecca West #ICallMyselfAFeminist

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‏@ThatNikkiBi Jun 5

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” – Virginia Woolf #ICallMyselfAFeminist

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‏@George_Eliot6 Jun 5

“don’t worry: everyone gets to be a man in the afterlife” – Eve Sedgwick ‘The Warm Decembers’

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‏@AliceStainer Jun 5

Barrett Browning’s passionate & provocative feminist epic Aurora Leigh remains inspirational, but hard to mine for brief quotes

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‏@KatalinaWatt Jun 5

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel” – Charlotte Brontë #ICallMyselfaFeminist

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‏@seasideslut Jun 5

@ViragoBooks ‘well behaved women seldom make history’ – laurel thatcher ulrich

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‏@msjademoulds Jun 5

@ViragoBooks “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” – Gloria Steinem

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Margaret Baxter, via Facebook 

One of my favourite quotes is by Simone de Beauvoir ” Let her swim, climb mountain peaks,pilot airplanes,battle against the elements,take risks,go out for adventure, and, she will not feel before the world…timidity.”

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‏@LotusFlowerBook Jun 5

@ViragoBooks “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking”. Virginia Woolf.

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WomenCanSee ‏@WomenCanSee Jun 5

“Feminism requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power” Andrea Dworkin @ViragoBooks

If you missed our call for feminist quotes, don’t worry – there are still so many ways you can get involved with this campaign . . .

1. Look out for the twenty-five contributors, five editors, bloggers, journalists. and Virago and Little, Brown teams tweeting the reasons they call themselves feminists on the hashtag #Icallmyselfafeminist, and join in.

2. Send in questions for the contributors on Wednesday 11th November, when they will be doing a Twitter takeover of @ViragoBooks – again, use the hashtag #Icallmyselfafeminist and they will pick it up on the day.

3. Follow the HUGE #Icallmyselfafeminist blog tour, which kicks off on 5th November.

Finally, if you fancy giving your social media channels a feminist makeover as the book’s contributors have done, click the links to download a Facebook cover, Twitter header, and profile picture/Instagram image to let everyone know that you support the cause.