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Quote by Catharine MacKinnon

Author

Catharine MacKinnon
Catharine MacKinnon

Catharine MacKinnon is a distinguished lawyer and feminist scholar recognized for her work on women's rights and sexual harassment law. Born on October 7, 1946, she has made significant contributions to the legal and academic fields, particularly in advocating for gender equality and challenging patriarchal norms. more

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“Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable - not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.... You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent - you learn, in a word, femininity.”

“There is no knowing beyond that membrane, the meniscus of death. What can be seen from here is distorted, refracted. All we can know are those untrustworthy glimpses--that and rumour. The prattle. The dead gossip: it is the reverberation of that gossip against the surface tension of death that the better mediums hear. It is like listening to whispered secrets through a toilet door. It is a crude and muffled susurrus.”

“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”