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Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement

Book by Robin Morgan · 8 quotes · Feminist, Men, Radical Feminist

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Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement Quotes

“I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white hetero- sexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary- vested-interest-power. But then, I have great difficulty examining what men in general could possibly do about all this. In addition to doing the shitwork that women have been doing for generations, possibly not exist? No, I really don't mean that. Yes, I really do.”

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Book:Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement
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“I am not a lady I live in an elevator in a big department store America. “Your floor, lady?” “I don't have a floor, I live in the elevator.” “You can't just live in an elevator.” They all say that except for the man from Time magazine who acted very cool. We stop and let people into dresses, better dresses, beauty, and on the top floor, home furnishings and then the credit office, suddenly stark and no nonsense this is it. At each floor I look out at the ladies quietly becoming ladies and I say “huh” reflectively. My hair is long and wild full of little twigs and cockleburrs. I visit the floors only for water. I make my own food from the berries and frightened rabbits— I pray forgive me brother as I eat— that grow wild in the elevator. Once every three months, solstice and equinox, a cop comes and clubs me a little. The man from Time says I articulate my generation something wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop Yesterday pausing at childrens I saw another lady take off all her clothes and go to live in #7. We are waiting to fill all thirteen.”

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Book:Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement
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“It Hurts To Be Alive and Obsolete: Often when men are attracted to me, they feel ashamed and conceal it. They act as if it were ridiculous. If they do become involved, they are still ashamed and may refuse to appear publicly with me. Their fear of mockery is enormous. There is no prestige attached to having sex with me. Since we are all far more various sexually than we are supposed to be, often, in fact, younger men become aware of me sexually. Their response is similar to what it is when they find themselves feeling attracted to a homosexual: they turn those feelings into hostility and put me down. Listen to me! Think what it is like to have most of your life ahead and be told you are obsolete! Think what it is like to feel attraction, desire, affection towards others, to want to tell them about yourself, to feel that assumption on which self-respect is based, that you are worth something, and that if you like someone, surely he will be pleased to know that. To be, in other words, still a living woman, and to be told that every day that you are not a woman but a tired object that should disappear. That you are not a person but a joke. Well, I am a bitter joke. I am bitter and frustrated and wasted, but don’t you pretend for a minute as you look at me, forty-three, fat, and looking exactly my age, that I am not as alive as you are and that I do not suffer from the category into which you are forcing me.”

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Book:Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement
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