Phyllis Schlafly Anti-Feminist Quotes

What Did Phyllis Schlafly Say From Her Anti-Feminist Position?

Schlafly speaks to press after US Supreme Court's decision in 'Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,' Washington DC, June 29, 1992
Schlafly speaks to press after US Supreme Court's decision in 'Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,' Washington DC, June 29, 1992. CNP / Getty Images

Phyllis Schlafly was perhaps most famous for her successful mobilization against the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution in the 1970s.  She is often associated with the backlash against the so-called second wave of feminism.  Before that, she was active in the ultraconservative wing of the Republican party, and she remained active on many conservative issues.

See also: biography of Phyllis Schlafly

About the ERA

"ERA means abortion funding, means homosexual privileges, means whatever else."  1999

About Feminism

"The cry of 'women's liberation' leaps out from the 'lifestyle' sections of newspapers and the pages of slick magazines, from radio speakers and television screens. Cut loose from past patterns of behavior and expectations, women of all ages are searching for their identity -- the college woman who has new alternatives thrust upon her via 'women's studies' courses, the young woman whose routine is shattered by a chance encounter with a 'consciousness-raising session,' the woman in her middle years who suddenly finds herself in the 'empty-nest syndrome,' the woman of any age whose lover or lifetime partner departs for greener pastures (and a younger crop)."  1977

"The women's liberationist... is imprisoned by her own negative view of herself and of her place in the world around her.... Someone - it is not clear who, perhaps God, perhaps the 'Establishment,' perhaps a conspiracy of male chauvinist pigs - dealt women a foul blow by making them female. It becomes necessary, therefore, for women to agitate and demonstrate and hurl demands on society in order to wrest from an oppressive male-dominated social structure the status that has been wrongfully denied to women through the centuries." 1977

"Confrontation replaces cooperation as the watchword of all relationships. Women and men become adversaries instead of partners.... Within the confines of the women's liberationist ideology, therefore, the abolition of this overriding inequality of women becomes the primary goal." 1977

"And the first commandment of feminism is: I am woman; thou shalt not tolerate strange gods who assert that women have capabilities or often choose roles that are different from men's."

"Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature."

“The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy.... Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.”

"The Women's Lib movement has sealed its own doom by deliberately hanging around its own neck the albatross of abortion, lesbianism, pornography and Federal control."

"News flash: one reason a woman gets married is to be supported by her husband while caring for her children at home. So long as her husband earns a good income, she doesn't care about the pay gap between them."

Characterizing feminists: "Someone, it is not clear who, perhaps God, dealt women a foul blow by making them female."

"Men should stop treating feminists like ladies, and instead treat them like the men they say they want to be."

"Another silliness of the women's liberationists is their frenetic desire to force all women to accept the title Ms in place of Miss or Mrs. If Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan want to call themselves Ms in order to conceal their marital status, their wishes should be respected. But most married women feel they worked hard for the 'r' in their names; and they don't care to be gratuitously deprived of it..." 1977

Women's "Nature"

"Without woman's innate maternal instinct, the human race would have died out centuries ago....The overriding psychological need of a woman is to love something alive. A baby fulfills this need in the lives of most women. If a baby is not available to fill that need, women search for a baby-substitute. This is the reason why women have traditionally gone into teaching and nursing careers. They are doing what comes naturally to the female psyche. The schoolchild or the patient of any age provides an outlet for a woman to express her natural maternal need." 1977

"Men are philosophers, women are practical, and 'twas ever thus. Men may philosophize about how life began and where we are heading; women are concerned about feeding the kids today. No woman would ever, as Karl Marx did, spend years reading political philosophy in the British Museum while her child starved to death. Women don't take naturally to a search for the intangible and the abstract."  1977

"Where man is discursive, logical, abstract, or philosophical, woman tends to be emotional, personal, practical, or mystical. Each set of qualities is vital and complements the other." 1977

About Women and the Military

"Putting women in military combat is the cutting edge of the feminist goal to force us into an androgynous society."

"No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war."

"Every country that has experimented with women in actual combat has abandoned the idea, and the notion that Israel uses women in combat is a feminist myth."

"Much of the demand for women in combat comes from female officers who are eager for medals and promotions."

"The purpose of our military is to field the finest troops possible to defend our nation and win wars. The goal of feminists however, is to impose a mindless equality, regardless of how many people it hurts." 2016

About Sex and Sexuality

"If man is targeted as the enemy, and the ultimate goal of women's liberation is independence from men and the avoidance of pregnancy and its consequences, then lesbianism is logically the highest form in the ritual of women's liberation." 1977

"Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions."

About why condoms should not be available to young women: "It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind or brain-damage [sic] baby (even ten years later when she may be happily married)."

“How did the court feel empowered to put new limits on the settled law of Meyer-Pierce and give public schools the power to override parents on teaching about sex? Simple. The three liberal judges based their decision on 'our evolving understanding of the nature of our Constitution.'"  2012

About Transgender Issues

"Anyone with a child knows that children learn about the world through binary options: up or down, hot or cold, big or little, inside or outside, wet or dry, good or bad, boy or girl, man or woman. But the radical feminists, who staff women's studies departments at most colleges, have propagated the idea that we have to get rid of the 'gender binary' along with the expectation of distinct roles for men and women."

About Sexual Harassment

"Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women."

About the Republican Party

"[F]rom 1936 through 1960 the Republican presidential nominee was selected by a small group of secret kingmakers who are the most popular opinion makers in the world." 1964

About International Issues

"It should be clear that teaching Americans we are now part of a global economy and teaching schoolchildren they are citizens of the world is a deceitful message to con us into a plan to add the poor countries around the Earth to our list of welfare handout recipients." 2013

About the United Nations: "We certainly don't need a committee of foreigners who call themselves 'experts' to dictate our laws or customs."  2012

"It is a mystery why any Americans would support the concept of the EU."

About Multiculturalism, Diversity, Race, Immigrants

"The United States is the world's most stunning example of a nation that has peaceably and successfully assimilated people from many disparate cultures. So why are some people trying to separate us into factions, emphasizing what divides us instead of what unites us?" 1995

"You can't be an American if you don't speak English. Our public schools should be mandated to teach all children in English."

"The most dangerous area where our laws are not being faithfully executed are the laws designed to protect Americans against the millions of aliens who enter our country illegally every year."

"How can we protect homeland security unless the government stops the invasion of illegal aliens?"

"Birth on U.S. territory has never been an absolute claim to citizenship."

"In a world of inhumanity, war and terrorism, American citizenship is a very precious possession."

"It's not the physical location of birth that defines citizenship, but whether your parents are citizens, and the express or implied consent to jurisdiction of the sovereign."

About Climate Change

"Of course, climate changes. Many changes are due to factors over which humans have no control, such as winds, ocean currents and sun activity. But the liberals want us to believe that climate change is also caused by gases expelled when humans burn so-called fossil fuels."  2011

About the Family

“The American nuclear family made America great, but few are now defending it against forces determined to destroy it. If America continues to have many immigrants with different family types, we are less likely to maintain American values of personal freedom, individualism, and limited government.” 2014

"What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother."

"People think that child-support enforcement benefits children, but it doesn't."

"First of all, I want to thank my husband Fred, for letting me come -- I always like to say that, because it makes the libs so mad!"

The United States: Exceptionalism

"The United States is a giant island of freedom, achievement, wealth and prosperity in a world hostile to our values."

Education, Schools

"The cornerstone of the political correctness that dominates campus culture is radical feminism."

"The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom."

"After Big Media, U.S. colleges and universities are the biggest enemies of the values of red-state Americans."

"Parents, are you ready to teach your kids arithmetic?" 2002

"National Standards was not a narrative of past events but was leftwing revisionism and Political Correctness."

"It is long overdue for parents to realize they have the right and duty to protect our children against the intolerant evolutionists."

"Our public school system is our country's biggest and most inefficient monopoly, yet it keeps demanding more and more money."

"The most frequent complaint I hear from college students is that professors inject their leftist political comments into their courses even when they have nothing to do with the subject."

"Behind frequent protestations by public officials about local control of the schools, a federal curriculum has been quietly imposed by law. All the pieces are now in place for this major goal of the Clinton administration. Elementary and secondary school education used to be organized around subjects such as reading, math, history, geography, language and science. While smatterings of those subjects are still taught, the focus has been shifted from academic subject matter to teaching attitudes, beliefs, values, themes, behaviors and job skills. This is indoctrination, not education. Left-wing professors write the textbooks and the teachers unions control the public schools, so the ideology is what those groups deem politically correct." 2002

About Government, Judges

"Congress should pass legislation to remove from the federal courts their jurisdiction to hear these outrageous challenges to the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance."

"Under the nanny state of the left, nothing remains 'private' for long." 2012

"The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography."

About Obama

“Obama has compiled a record of hostility to religion that is unmatched by any other president in American history." 2012

“Obama did not want to join a historically Christian black church in Chicago that took traditional Christian doctrines seriously. Rather, he sought out a liberal church that would help him advance his budding political career.” 2012

"Should Obama win a second term, the justices he appoints will almost certainly unveil a bogus new constitutional right to gay marriage, discovered within the 'penumbras' of Lawrence v. Texas. At which point Obama, drawing upon the faux-pained honesty he has perfected, can regurgitate what he wrote in his memoirs: that he was once on 'the wrong side of history” but has now happily come into the light.' 2012

Others About Schlafly

Betty Friedan in a 1973 debate with Schlafly: "I would like to burn you at the stake.... I consider you a traitor to your sex, an Aunt Tom."

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Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Phyllis Schlafly Anti-Feminist Quotes." ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/phyllis-schlafly-anti-feminist-quotes-4084041. Lewis, Jone Johnson. (2021, February 16). Phyllis Schlafly Anti-Feminist Quotes. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/phyllis-schlafly-anti-feminist-quotes-4084041 Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Phyllis Schlafly Anti-Feminist Quotes." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/phyllis-schlafly-anti-feminist-quotes-4084041 (accessed March 29, 2024).