Top 60 Soraya Chemaly Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is not a woman alive who does not understand that women’s anger is openly reviled.”

— Soraya Chemaly

2. “Girls’ and women’s thinking is impaired by self-objectification. Sexualized pictures, for example, lead women to spend mental resources managing their body surveillance, shame, and self-esteem.”

— Soraya Chemaly

3. “Women often endure infertility, pregnancy, infant loss, miscarriages, and stillbirths in isolation, because while sadness is a socially palatable response to these often life-altering events, rage, frustration, jealousy, and guilt are not.”

— Soraya Chemaly

4. “Rage became a layer of my skin.”

— Soraya Chemaly

5. “Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful. The women I admire most... have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from deliberation to liberation.”

— Soraya Chemaly

6. “Everyday discrimination against girls and women is bound so tightly with prevailing cultural norms and “family-friendly” traditions that we barely see it for what it is: a massive social injustice perpetrated at every level of society.”

— Soraya Chemaly

7. “Single, childless women are the only women who report that they have the time and freedom to pursue interests, ambitions, and hobbies at the same rate as married heterosexual men do.”

— Soraya Chemaly

8. “A society that does not respect women’s anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.”

— Soraya Chemaly

9. “The ugly truth is that more people are still motivated by the desire to prioritize men’s income generating and reputations than they are by the desire to ensure women’s rights and safety.”

— Soraya Chemaly

10. “Women are just as motivated by the desire for power as men; it’s just that our cultural ideas about power don’t associate it with femininity.”

— Soraya Chemaly

11. “Because the truth is that anger isn’t what gets in our way – it is our way. All we have to do is own it.”

— Soraya Chemaly

12. “The first women we know are our mothers, and yet we sometimes treat them, especially when they are angry, with the least compassion. That becomes a model for how we treat other women.”

— Soraya Chemaly

13. “I wanted to own my anger, because it brought me back to myself. It gave me clarity and purpose.”

— Soraya Chemaly

14. “Age shame is also a problem primarily for women. As women approach and go through menopause, naturally gaining weight as fat-to-muscle ratios shift, they exhibit many of the same anxieties and symptoms that teenage girls do. The process of growing older makes women’s ‘flaws’ more visible and acute, thus, aging, a natural process, becomes frightening, disorienting, and difficult for many women.”

— Soraya Chemaly

15. “The challenge we face is in being unapologetic about our desires and decisions and in not judging other women’s choices. It is in rechanneling the anger, guilt, and shame that we often encounter into creating a culture that no longer conflates the word woman with mother and the word mother with sacrifice.”

— Soraya Chemaly

16. “When a woman shows anger in institutional, political, and professional settings, she automatically violates gender norms.”

— Soraya Chemaly

17. “Improving maternal outcomes means valuing women not only as reproductive engines but also as human beings – something that is still, quite apparently, a problem.”

— Soraya Chemaly

18. “In my experience, it is difficult for many adults to accept that boys can and should control themselves and meet the same behavioral standards that we expect from girls. It is even harder to accept that girls feel angry and have legitimate rights not to make themselves cheerfully available as resources for boys’ development.”

— Soraya Chemaly

19. “We are so busy teaching girls to be likeable that we often forget to teach them, as we do boys, that they should be respected.”

— Soraya Chemaly

20. “Anger is usually about saying “no” in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “no.”

— Soraya Chemaly

21. “In a study of children’s toy and television preferences, researchers Isabelle Cherney and Kamala London found that, when left alone, half of boys ages five through thirteen picked “girl” and “boy” toys equally – until they thought they were being watched. They were especially concerned about what their fathers would think if they saw them. Over time, boys’ interests in toys and media become more rigidly masculinized and codified, whereas girls’ stay relatively open ended and flexible.”

— Soraya Chemaly

22. “Anger is a forward-looking emotion, rooted in the idea that there should be change. Resentment, on the other hand, is locked in the past and usually generates no meaningful difference in the situation.”

— Soraya Chemaly

23. “Women who are actively aware of discrimination and develop a comfort level in speaking about it openly are the most likely to challenge aggressions in their daily lives and report higher levels of “closure” and satisfaction than those who don’t.”

— Soraya Chemaly

24. “As women, we are continuously told to live in the cracks of a world shaped by and for men, without complaining or demanding. Without being angry. So we adapt, and when we do, we use familiar minimizing expressions to describe what we feel: ‘It was annoying.’ ‘I was so frustrated.’ ‘I can’t believe he said that.’ ‘I’m so disappointed.”

— Soraya Chemaly

25. “Nice is something you do to please others, even if you have no interest, desire, or reason to. Kindness, on the other hand, assumes that you are true to yourself first.”

— Soraya Chemaly

26. “The importance and visibility of women’s collective anger can’t be overstated. This anger takes determination, thoughtfulness, and work. It means respecting our own anger and being willing to respect the anger of other women.”

— Soraya Chemaly

27. “How many times does a woman say, “I’m so tired,” because she cannot say, “I am so angry!” How many times is women’s anger deliberately miscast as exhaustion?”

— Soraya Chemaly

28. “The core issue is that, no matter where you may live in the world, dominant norms of masculinity are actively constructed out of women’s vulnerabilities.”

— Soraya Chemaly

29. “We are called Sad Asian Girls, Hot-tempered Latinas, Crazy White Women, and Angry Black Women. It goes without saying that “angry women” are “ugly women,” the cardinal sin in a world where women’s worth, safety, and glory are reliant on their sexual and reproductive value to men around them.”

— Soraya Chemaly

30. “Instead of having lost her mind, I thought it more likely that it was the only thing she had managed to keep to herself.”

— Soraya Chemaly

31. “Had my daughter responded with a disruptive, loud display of anger, the focus of the discussion probably would have concerned her behavior, not the boy’s. It would have been falsely equated with, or even prioritized over, the boy’s lack of control or empathy, instead of being seen as a justifiable response to his bad behavior.”

— Soraya Chemaly

32. “Demanding fairness and describing a problem doesn’t make you a “victim.” Silencing, denial, mockery, intimidation, and callousness might, though.”

— Soraya Chemaly

33. “Women should be angry about the violence and fear that inform so much of our lives. So should men.”

— Soraya Chemaly

34. “We minimize our anger, calling it frustration, impatience, exasperation, or irritation, words that don’t convey the intrinsic social and public demand that ‘anger’ does. We learn to contain our selves: our voices, hair, clothes, and, most importantly, speech. Anger is usually about saying “no” in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “no.”

— Soraya Chemaly

35. “Harassment and the ever-present suggestions of violence at this scale constantly reminds women and girls of their place. For the most part, girls’ and women’s experiences with harassment are still cloaked in silence, and we continue, as a global society, to peddle dangerous advice to girls about “staying safe.” This isn’t about safety. If it were, we’d teach boys, who are also subject to childhood molestation and risk, the same lessons, but we don’t. It’s about social control.”

— Soraya Chemaly

36. “Women’s anticipation of negative responses is why so many women remain silent about what they need, want, and feel, and why so many men can easily choose ignorance and dominance over intimacy.”

— Soraya Chemaly

37. “Anger is like water. No matter how hard a person tries to dam, divert, or deny it, it will find a way, usually along the path of least resistance.”

— Soraya Chemaly

38. “Contrary to the idea that anger clouds thinking, properly understood, it is an astoundingly clarifying emotion.”

— Soraya Chemaly

39. “Girls learn to smile early, and many cultures teach girls explicitly to “put on a pretty face.” It is a way of soothing the people around us, a facial adaptation to the expectation that we put others first, preserve social connections, and hide our disappointment, frustration, anger, or fear. We are expected to be more accommodating and less assertive or dominant. As girls’ smiles become less authentic, so, too, does their understanding of themselves.”

— Soraya Chemaly

40. “In the classroom, it was almost certainly the case that the women were managing a double bind that we face constantly: conform to traditional gender expectations, stay quiet and be liked, or violate those expectations and risk the penalties, including the penalty of being called puritanical, aggressive, and”humorless.”

— Soraya Chemaly

41. “It took me too long to realize that the people most inclined to say “You sound angry” are the same people who uniformly don’t care to ask “Why?” They’re interested in silence, not dialogue. This response to women expressing anger happens on larger and larger scales: in schools, places of worship, the workplace, and politics. A society that does not respect women’s anger is one that does not respect women – not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.”

— Soraya Chemaly

42. “Every girl learns, in varying degrees, to filter herself through messages of women’s relative cultural irrelevance, powerlessness, and comparative worthlessness. Images and words conveying disdain for girls, women, and femininity come at children fast and furiously, whereas most boys’ passage to adulthood – even for boys disadvantaged by class or ethnicity – remains cloaked in the cultural centrality of maleness and masculinity.”

— Soraya Chemaly

43. “Becoming a parent is the riskiest financial decision a woman can make.”

— Soraya Chemaly

44. “It is not just a coincidence that we are at an uncomfortable strategic inflection point for the rights of girls and women just as we face grave threats to democratic values and the health of the planet. One cannot be separated from the other. This is an era of angry women and women willing to make noise. This is not a luxury but a necessity. Be angry. Be loud. Rage becomes you.”

— Soraya Chemaly

45. “It goes without saying that “angry women” are “ugly women,” the cardinal sin in a world where women’s worth, safety, and glory are reliant on their sexual and reproductive value to men around them. None of this leads us to think of anger as the moral or political property of women.”

— Soraya Chemaly

46. “It is hard to overstate how problematic the transfer of anger, as a resource, from girls to boys and from women to men is – not only to us as individuals but to our society. This transfer is critical to maintaining white supremacy and patriarchy. Anger remains the emotion that is least acceptable for girls and women because it is the first line of defense against injustice.”

— Soraya Chemaly

47. “Researchers found “significant, but very small gender differences” in boys’ and girls’ expression and experience of emotions, but significant differences in how their emotions were treated by others.”

— Soraya Chemaly

48. “One of the most powerful effects of learning to prioritize other people’s perspectives above your own is that you lose the ability to see others as blameworthy, even when they are openly acting as aggressors.”

— Soraya Chemaly

49. “Women are more likely to be targeted with hateful violence simply because they are women, every day.”

— Soraya Chemaly

50. “When a man becomes angry in an argument or debate, people are more likely to abandon their own positions and defer to his. But when a woman acts the same way, she’s likely to elicit the opposite response. For some of us, considered angry by nature and default, the risks of asserting ourselves, defending ourselves, or speaking out in support of issues that are important to us can be significant.”

— Soraya Chemaly