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Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine

Book by Antonella Gambotto-Burke · 28 quotes · Birth, Feminism, Infancy

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Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine Quotes

“Privileged women continue the tradition of compensating for their authority to men through affectations of disablement – from dieting and other disorders to substance abuse, institutionalised detachment from their children, and so on.”

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“The intensity of this cultural shame demanded a poster boy who would deter ‘bestial’ human behaviours and presentation, and so to the genesis of Satan, ‘the beast’ – a carnal, hairy, lascivious, malevolent, stinking satyr capable of taking sexually suggestive serpentine form: the humanising of the mammalian self.”

ChristianHumanityEvilChristianityShameSatanThe DevilThe BeastAbrahamic ReligionsBeelzebub
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“These associations, between childbirth and feminine effacement, and between feminine silencing and violence, would, for the first time, become imprinted on the subconscious in relation to birth, creating, in place of passionate and proud attachment, a terror-based antipathy between mother and child, and between the feminine and its biology.”

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“The impact of obstetric drugs on the human race cannot be overemphasised. Globally, 500,000 deaths result from illegal drug use, and over 70 percent of these deaths are opioid-related. In 2018, some 58 million people around the world were known to use illegal opioids; the unknown number would be significantly higher. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of fatal opioid overdoses in America increased by 120 percent. Fentanyl and other drugs used in an obstetric context were involved in two-thirds of these deaths; in 2018, there were over 31,335 deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic narcotics alone.”

BirthPatriarchyDrugsOverdoseOpioidsObstetricsFentanyl
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“The relationship between obstetric drugs and sometimes ultimately fatal intoxication in adulthood is not accidental. Through amniotic fluid, the foetus develops a taste for the foods his mother prefers; this transmission is thought to assist the transition to nursing and, after weaning, to solids. The same transmission of preference applies to substances, meaning that a pregnant woman who drinks or uses drugs passes the preference to her foetus. Logically, this principle applies to the placental transference of obstetric drugs.”

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“What this suggests is that ‘widely used’ obstetric and infant drugs such as phenobarbital dysregulate the infant’s dopaminergic (dopamine-activating) system, permanently reducing his potential for pleasure and creating an imbalance he later seeks to redress through dopaminergic compulsions – substance-use disorders involving drugs such as cannabis, heroin, or LSD, say. Or sexual addiction. And, while the nature of pornography is determined by the culturally sanctioned birth abuses of mothers and babies, the impact of pornography is determined by the susceptibility created by drugs given to mothers and children.”

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“Given that observable neurobehavioural characteristics in adulthood are determined in part by GABA-A receptors in early life, and the impact of GABA-acting drugs during pregnancy – in particular, on the construction of the brain – have been said to lead to ‘a cascade of pathogenic consequences’, it’s clear that the long-term effects of phenobarbital regularly administered during infancy would be severe.”

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“The mythicised inhumanity of this attack remains unforgettable not only because it was performed by one mother on another mother – one dark and distorted, the other fair and privileged – but because it encoded the relationship between patriarchal masculinity, drugs, and the resulting – and accelerating – cultural denigration of the feminine and maternal.”

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“In the 21st century, the pornographic vogue of ‘ass to mouth’, in which the feminine, after being sodomised by the masculine, is expected to orally clean the penis, is an eroticised example of the same impulse. Women, who for centuries have metaphorically eaten shit, are now expected to literally do so, like swine.”

FeminismFeministSexismPornographyBrutalityAtmPornographicAss To MouthSexual Brutality
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“Feminists, in vivid essays praising Shulamith Firestone’s legacy, fail to mention this emphatic celebration of incest and paedophilia; had she been male, she would not only have been dismissed by the same women on these very grounds, but her legacy would have been cancelled”

FeminismRadical FeminismIncestCancel CulturePaedophiliaFirestoneShulamith Firestone
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“All this was in contrast to the idea that a newborn, on the basis of cortical immaturity, is a being who remembers and understands nothing: a person only within the context of the mother’s acknowledgment, blank, a species of human cabbage.”

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“What amounts to a plague of mental illness is now addressed as ‘normal’ rather than as an indication that there is something terrifyingly wrong with our culture. The fact that we no longer understand mental illness as a message – that is, as a nondeclarative communication of an imbalance that requires rectification – not only demonstrates the degree of our emotional illiteracy, but our failure to understand the principle of balance as the axis of all existence.”

BalanceMemoryMental IllnessImbalanceDysfunctionWestern CultureDysfunctional FamiliesDesensitizationNormalizationNeuroses
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“The likelihood of my baby being injured during co-sleeping was, in reality, significantly lower than it would have been had I left her in the hospital cot. In the UK, 90 percent more babies die alone in baskets or cots – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – than they do when they securely, rather than hazardously, co-sleep with their mothers.”

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“As Baba Ram Dass (his ‘spiritual name’), Richard Alpert explained human attachment as a ‘clue that there’s work to be done’ – meaning that territoriality was remastered by him as dysfunctional and primitive, and as requiring the curative attentions of a guru, ordinarily an older man.”

WisdomEnlightenmentAttachmentDetachmentTimothy LearyRam DassRichard Alpert
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