檳榔嶼

- In its earliest inception feminist theory had as its primary goal explaining to women and men how sexist thinking worked and how we could challenge and change it.
- In those days most of us had been socialized by parents and society to accept sexist thinking. We had not taken time to figure our the roots of our perceptions. Feminist thinking and feminist theory urged us to do that.
- So-called great literature by men is critiqued only to show the biases present in the assessment of aesthetic value. Feminist critiques of all-male canons of scholarship or literary work expose biases on gender.
- Simply being the victim of an exploitative or oppressive system and even resistin it does not mean we understand why it's in place or how to change it.
- It was as if a large body of feminist thinkers banded together to form an elite group writing theory that could be understood only by an "in" crowd.
  - Women and men outside the academic domain were no longer considered an important audience. Feminist thinking and theory were no longer tied to feminist movement.
  - Feminist theory began to be housed in an academic ghetto with little connection to a world outside.
    - Work was and is produced in the academy that is oftentimes visionary, but these insights rarely reach many people.
- Literature that helps inform masses of people, that helps individuals understand feminist thinking and feminist politics, needs to be written in a range of styles and formats.
  - No one produces this work in academic settings.
  - We need feminist studies that is community-based. Imagine a mass-based feminist movement where folks go door to door passing out literature, taking the time (as do religious groups) to explain to people what feminism is all about.
- Childrens' literature is one of the most crucial sites for feminist education for critical consciousness precisely because beliefs and identities are still being formed. And more often than not narrow-minded thinking about gender continues to be the norm on the playground.
  - Public education for children has to be a place where feminist activists continue to do the work of creating an unbiased curriculum.
- Future feminist movement must necessarily think of feminist education as significant in the lives of everyone.
  - Despite the economic gains of individual feminist women, many women who have amassed wealth or accepted the contribution of wealthy males, who are our allies in struggle, we have created no schools founded on feminist principles for girls and boys, for women and men.
  - By failing to create a mass-based educational movement to teach everyone about feminism we allow mainstream patriarchal mass media to remain the primary place where folks learn about feminism, and most of what they learn is negative.
  - Masses of folks lack the skills to read most feminist books. Books on tape, songs, radio, and television are all ways to share feminist knowledge.
- Most people have no understanding of the myriad ways feminism has positively changed all our lives. Feminist knowledge is for everybody.