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" I'm a big believer in debate and difference of opinion. "
Naomi Wolf
Opinion
Debate
Difference
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" After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. "
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" In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of 'overpermiticisation' - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment. "
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" Madonna is that forbidden thing, the Nietzschean creative woman. Her preoccupation with a high level of work doesn't allow her to follow the usual script that powerful women are expected to follow - 'don't hate me for my success, don't hate me for my power.' "
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" From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.' "
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" No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society. "
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" Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our 'beauty' so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air. "
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" Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we're the best, the city on the hill. In fact the great American task is self-scrutiny. "
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" The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle. "
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" For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am just much more likely to try to link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts. "
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Change
Together
Power
" It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers. "
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Power
Great
Limits
" The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted. "
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Way
Process
Pace
" I don't think most men do hate women at all - I think most men are trying their best and facing a culturation into masculine behaviour that forces them to deny their own humanity and to exaggerate distance from the world of women. "
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" To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality. "
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Become
Thin
Sexuality
" Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness. "
Naomi Wolf
Thinking
Patience
Obstacles
" It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger. "
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Sometimes
Real
Practice
" There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests. "
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Had
Early
Become
" In the U.S., the '50s and '60s marked the documentary's golden age, especially at CBS, where pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow, immortalised in George Clooney's 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' produced such landmark investigations as the CBS Reports programme 'Hunger in America.' "
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Luck
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Age
" It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic. "
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Smart
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" Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark. "
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" The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone. "
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America
Value
President
" Let's dare to release our immature fantasies of a magically faultless U.S. system and a magically protected election process. We have been lucky as a nation, but sometimes continued luck depends on action. "
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Process
" Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop. "
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Romantic
" If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy - and important for the vote always to turn out 'their way.' "
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You
Control
Way
" What, after all, is the narrative of 'the American Dream?' It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era. "
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Waves
American
American Dream
" As a free-speech advocate, I believe that adults should have access to any material they want. As a parent, and a community member, I think people should be able to protect their homes from imagery - much of it violent - that is, I feel, a form of child abuse when adult society inflicts it upon children. "
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Children
Community
Society
" We often feel a twinge of guilt over our own fascination with presidential candidates' wives - as if we are secretly reading the 'Star' for our campaign information instead of the policy journals. "
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Feel
Reading
Guilt
" Protesters should make their own media and not rely on mainstream media to cover them. "
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Make
Them
Should
" We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day - go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society. "
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Day
You
Society
" For Gore 2000, I was a formal campaign adviser: contrary to RNC mythology, my brief was not 'wardrobe,' but rather policy on women's issues, and messaging. I was also married to a Clinton speechwriter, and observed the message decision-making process from the perspective of a spouse. "
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Process
Policy
Perspective
" My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do. "
Naomi Wolf
Notice
Job
Same