something about each of the women in this book has permitted her not only to exist, but also to obtain and wield power within spheres dominated by men.

A woman navigating the world with the confidence of a man is a beautiful, magnetic, and periodically unnerving sight to behold.

“In other words, only a man’s voice sounds like it tells important truths.”

part of the difficult, essential work of unruliness is shaking the status quo so thoroughly, so persistently, so loudly that everyone—even the very women behind that agitation, many of whom have internalized the understandings they fight so tirelessly against—can see their value within it.

As Weiner puts it, “Any woman who ever put pen to paper, or finger to laptop, has had to deal with sexism, discrimination and double standards, has had to fight harder than a man to get published, to get noticed, to get reviewed, to get profiled. I’m not saying that we all need to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but I wish that there was some recognit

Femininity cloaked power and strength, made it more palatable, less threatening.

I was happy, ostensibly, but every move was motivated by fear.

“Shrillness” is just a word to describe what happens when a woman, with her higher-toned voice, attempts to speak loudly. A pejorative, in other words, developed specifically to shame half of the population when they attempt to command attention in the same manner as men.

some point, every single one of these women has “failed”—or, perhaps more generously, presented inconsistencies—in her resistance. Those moments shouldn’t be read as failures, however, so much as testaments to the sheer tenacity of the ideologies of femininity that shame, alienate, and expel those who refuse them.