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Katha Pollitt

Katha Pollitt Books

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“I think I would like to be a word - not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away like the roughness on a pebble in a creekbed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core.”

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Author:Katha Pollitt
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“(...) w Ameryce jest pełno spraw, które wielu ludziom wydają się szkaradne, odrażające i złe, a jednak nikt nie strzela do ekip kręcących porno, nie podpala kasyn ani nie zaczepia mężczyzn idących do agecji towarzyskiej. Bankierzy inwestycyjni, którzy spowodowali ogólnoświatowe załamanie finansowe, może i są znienawidzeni przez miliony, ale nie muszą chodzić do pracy w kamizelkach kuloodpornych.”

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Book:Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
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“Nie chodzi więc jedynie o fizyczne zdrowie kobiet, ale o funddamentalne zakwestionowanie tradycyjnego obrazu kobiety. Aborcja nie zawsze miała takie znaczenie: dopóki kobiety pozostawały silnie uwiązane w obrębie rodziny jako żony i matki o niewielu prawach i niedużej władzy społecznej, aborcja pozostawała legalna i była tolerowana jako metoda ratowania niezamężnych córek przed hańbą, ograniczania wielkości rodziny i chronienia wyczerpanych matek przed mordęgą kolejnych ciąż i porodów. Była częścią niesmacznych, kobiecych spraw, takich jak menstruacje, poronienia i rodzenie dzieci – w które mężczyźni najlepiej nie powinni się mieszać. Ale białe kobiety z klasy średniej zaczęły się emancypować i angażować w życie publiczne i polityczne – nawet jeśli ograniczało się to do uczestnictwa w klubach kobiecych albo prowadzenia działalności charytatywnej – aborcja nabrała współczesnego znaczenia, związanego z decydowaniem o sobie i czynnym podejmowaniem decyzji. Takie wartości to absolutna podstawa dla amerykańskich mężczyzn, ale nie dla kobiet, które powinny być skłonne do samopoświęcenia, zorientowane na innych, macierzyńskie i zależne.”

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Book:Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
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“I'm anticlerical, not antireligion. If somebody believes there is God, I'm not interested in trying to persuade that person there is no intelligent design to the universe. Where I become interested and wake up is about the temporal power of religion, things like prayer in schools, or Catholic-secular hospital mergers.”

IfsTryingBelievePersonsSchoolUniversePrayerAtheismDesignWake UpIntelligentCatholicPositive AtheismHospitalsNot InterestedSecularIntelligent DesignMergersPrayer In School
Author:Katha Pollitt
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“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.”

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Author:Katha Pollitt
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“Right now religion has the romantic aura of the forbidden - Christ is cool. We need to bring it into the schools, which kids already hate, and associate it firmly with boredom, regulation, condescension, makework and de facto segregation ... Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn't kill Christ - a little on the late side, isn't it?”

NeedsLittlesKidsSchoolHateSidesChristPrayerAtheismRight NowLateJewPositive AtheismBoredomRegulationOffenseAssociatesForbiddenSegregationAurasBlandCondescensionInfuriatingEcumenism
Book:Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
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“Thanks to feminism, women can now acquire status in two ways: through marriage or their own achievements. Cure cancer or marry the man who does, either way society will applaud. Unless he marries into the British royal family, it doesn't work that way for men. Wives shed no glory on their husbands. Having tea with Nancy Reagan is an honor; having tea with Denis Thatcher is a joke.”

MenWayDoeTwoWifeFeminismHe ManHonorHusbandAchievementGloryJokesCancerBritishCuresThanksTeaAcquireShedRoyalTwo WaysNancyRoyal Family
Author:Katha Pollitt
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“We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it’s good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary. When we gloss over these truths we unintentionally promote the very stigma we’re trying to combat.”

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“My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.”

ThinkingWorldShouldWarSchoolDaughterHigh SchoolWindowTradeBlockPatriotismMy DaughterFlagsVengeanceWorld TradeWorld Trade CenterAmerican FlagJingoism
Book:Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time
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“Young women need to know that abortion rights and abortion access are not presents bestowed or retracted by powerful men (or women) - Presidents, Supreme Court justices, legislators, lobbyists - but freedoms won, as freedom always is, by people struggling on their own behalf.”

PeopleKnowsMenNeedsYoungChoicesPresidentJusticePowerfulStruggleRightsCourtAccessSupremeAbortionYoung WomenSupreme CourtBehalfLegislatorsLobbyistsAbortion RightsPowerful ManSupreme Court JusticeCourt JusticePro Choice Abortion
Book:Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
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“When you consider that God could have commanded anything he wanted--anything!--the Ten [Commandments] have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people's countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beating, stoning, treating women--or anyone--as chattel or inferior beings.”

PeopleChildrenHas BeensDifferentWarCountryGodWantedOpportunityWomenMoralChristianityHistoryWifeMoralityTenSlaveryWorkersTyrannyCrueltyCommandAll TimeExploitationInferiorsCommandmentsForbiddenTen CommandmentsWife Beating
Author:Katha Pollitt
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“Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, and she needs a note from God not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door.”

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Book:Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
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