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Daily Inspiration Quote by Robin Morgan

"We are the women men warned us about"

About this Quote

A single sentence that turns fear into fuel. Robin Morgan’s line works because it hijacks the tone of a warning and repurposes it as a badge. “The women men warned us about” isn’t a neutral description; it’s a caricature of the supposedly dangerous woman: too loud, too political, too unwilling to play along. By claiming that label without apology, Morgan collapses the distance between accusation and identity. The threat is no longer looming in the future tense. It’s here, it’s plural, and it’s self-aware.

The subtext is a history of social control disguised as protection. “Men warned us” implies a paternal script: behave, or become that. The warning is less about safety than containment, a reminder that women’s ambition and anger will be pathologized as chaos. Morgan answers with a rhetorical judo move: if your system is built on keeping us small, then your nightmares are simply our growth. The line smuggles in solidarity too. “We” is a rallying pronoun, converting private dissent into a collective identity sturdy enough to absorb backlash.

Context matters: Morgan came up through second-wave feminism, when women organizing for bodily autonomy, workplace power, and cultural legitimacy were routinely painted as man-haters, home-wreckers, extremists. The sentence reads like a chant because it’s designed to travel: on posters, in marches, across generations. Its intent isn’t to reassure; it’s to announce a boundary. If equality looks frightening to those invested in hierarchy, that fear is not a reason to retreat. It’s evidence you’re pressing on the right pressure point.

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TopicEquality
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We Are the Women Men Warned Us About - Robin Morgan
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About the Author

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Robin Morgan (born January 3, 1941) is a Activist from USA.

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