“Do I need someone to be of use to, in order to justify my existence? she wonders. Do I need someone to desire me, in order to feel alive? Do men ever think like this?”
Source: Say My Name
“She feels the boundaries of her self expand, filling the space around her, leaving no lack, no gap where a man should be.”
Source: Say My Name
“Pagani e giudei potevano avere idee diverse su Dio, ma sulla donna avevano di sicuro la stessa. Il problema non era il fatto che Dio fosse «solo uno», ma chi dovesse essere il suo corrispettivo sociale, cioè l'uno che nella società aveva il potere di occupare la casella di Dio con la sua faccia. Se qualche categoria doveva essere esclusa, era più logico fosse una sottomessa, impossibilitata a opporsi al suo annichilimento. Sia nel mondo giudaico di partenza sia in quello greco-romano di arrivo c'erano persone - donne e bambini, schiavi, poveri e stranieri - che erano meno persone di altre, o non lo erano affatto, e a stabilirne la dignità erano gli uomini, cittadini, i patriarchi e i ricchi padroni. Per chi era già alI'apice della scala sociale, la svolta storica del cristianesimo di Stato fu una manna dal cielo: disegnare Dio a propria immagine fu il modo in cui le classi privilegiate riuscirono a rendere letteralmente sacrosanto il dislivello dei diritti che c'era da prima.”
Source: God Save the Queer: Catechismo femminista
“What a politician she’d have made if she had been born a man!”
Source: Throne of Glass
“Between the purported sex appeal of tuberculosis and its special deadliness in young people, being afflicted with the disease—or at least, looking like you were—became associated with a certain status. This was a moment at which a woman’s value was strongly tied to femininity, fragility, and purity alike. The consumptive girl lived at the tantalizing nexus of all three: being made at once sexually desirable by sickness yet also too sick to consummate that desire. And her death, heartbreaking as it was, only cemented her status as a sort of archetype of female purity, unsullied by the usual forces that conspired to slowly rob a woman of her value. It was possible, in this moment, to imagine that tuberculosis patients were destined for something greater, something more meaningful, than the ordinary vagaries of a mortal life: when the consumptive girl passed, it would be in a state of unpolluted grace”
Source: All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
“The idea was just this: that there is something beautiful, and wonderfully feminine, and powerful and empowering at once, about a woman who can’t breathe.”
Source: All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today
“Medicine is supposed to be unbiased," she says. "But when we look at the bigger picture of it, we can see that it is far from that.”
Source: Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage
“don’t mistake a lack of sophistication for sweetness”
Source: Birds of America: Stories
“Anyway, the trick is simply this: No matter what happens, keep your heart open. Wide open. The heart is made of love, and love is indestructible, and only the arrogance of ego would presume that it requires protection. To open your heart is to reduce your ego, and this is the only magic that is ever required to experience the naked truth.”
Source: Nine Kinds Of Naked
“If I fall off a cliff, believe me, I'll get back up. If I'm pushed off a cliff, still believe I'll get back up. But I'll never forgive the muthafucka that pushed me.”
Source: We Are the Scribes