The Straight Mind

..."woman" has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems. Lesbians are not women. (from "The Straight Mind" 1980, p. 32)

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes. ("The Category of Sex")

there is no 'feminine writing' ... and one makes a mistake is using and giving currency to this expression. ("The Point of View: Universal or Particular?" 1980)

men are not born with a faculty for the universal and ... women are not reduced at birth to the particular. The universal has been, and is continually, at every moment, appropriated by men. It does not happen by magic, it must be done. It is an act, a criminal act, perpetrated by one class against another. It is an act carried out at the level of concepts, philosophy, politics. ("The Mark of Gender" 1985)

For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. ("The Category of Sex")

The basic agreement between human beings, indeed what makes them human and makes them social, is language. ("On the Social Contract" 1989)

The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. (from "The Category of Sex" 1982)

There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself. ("One Is Not Born a Woman")

it is quite possible for a work of literature to operate as a war machine upon its epoch. ("The Trojan Horse" 1984)

What does "feminist" mean? Feminist is formed with the word "femme," "woman," and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fight for woman and her defense – for the myth, then, and its reenforcement. ("One Is Not Born a Woman" 1981)