Jess Zimmerman Books & Quotes

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“What was it like for the sirens on their lonely rock, watching everyone who tried to love them drown?”

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“...and Athena, it must be admitted, has never been much of a friend to her fellow women. The war-like goddess of wisdom, who wasn't even gestated by a women (she sprang fully grown from her father's head), is the original "not-like-the-other-girls" girl.”

War Wisdom Feminism Mythology Goddess Athena Internalized Misogyny

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“Women have been monsters, and monsters have been women.”

Women Feminism Mythology Monsters

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“The harpy wants to win, which means a man must lose. She wants justice, which means a man must be punished. She wants space that could be taken by a man. Are we really willing to make that sacrifice? What makes a woman's ambition predatory, we are told, is that it overflows its natural bounds. It treads on the lands that men have marked as theirs.”

Feminism Ambition Mythology Sexism Harpy

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“Before Lamia killed children, her children were killed. The root of her violence, like the root of so much violence, is grief.”

Women Grief Mythology Monsters Child Death Lamia

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“...and Athena, it must be admitted, has never been much of a friend to her fellow women. The war-like goddess of wisdom, who wasn't even gestated by a woman (she sprang fully grown from her father's head), is the original "not-like-the-other-girls" girl.”

War Wisdom Feminism Mythology Goddess Athena Internalized Misogyny

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“For women, the boundaries of acceptability are strict, and they are many. We must be seductive but pure, quiet but not aloof, fragile but industrious, and always, always small. We must not be too successful, too ambitious, too independent, too self-centered—and when we can’t manage all the contradictory restrictions, we are turned into grotesques. Women have been monsters, and monsters have been women, in centuries’ worth of stories, because stories are a way to encode these expectations and pass them on.”

Women Feminism Monsters

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“The monsters of myth have been stationed at those borders in order to keep us out; they are intended as warnings about what happens when women aspire beyond what we’re allowed.”

Women Feminism Monsters

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“Women may look harmless on the face, they said, but look at their snake hair and dog crotches and claws. Look at them crouched over a male victim, ready to bite. Beware their ambition, their ugliness, their insatiable hunger, their ferocious rage.”

Women Feminism Monsters Female Rage

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“Beauty is demonstrably a cheat code for a slightly easier life. People just a little more likely to do you a favor, love just a little easier to access, the world just a little more welcoming.”

Love Beauty Feminism

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“You can tell a lot about what a culture considers deformed by looking at its villains. They're more likely to be disabled in some way, but also more likely to be dark, old, fat, or fey.”

Culture Racism Bigotry Homophobia Villains Ableism Fatphobia

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

“For double X humans, our motley nature is usually less obvious, but we are genetic calicos. Every cell hosting a dormant sister. Every cell with the echo of what it could've been. Inside each of us, another animal, sleeping.”

Women Cells Genes Genetics Calico

Book:Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

Jess Zimmerman Books

Women and Other Monsters: Building a Ne...

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