Quote by Anna Burns

“Brother-in-law was now seriously cross and I was touched by his crossness. Somebody McSomebody was wrong then. People in this place did give a fuck. But there was something else about brother-in-law, something linked to that strange, communally diagnosed mental aberration that he had around women. For all his idolatry, all his belief in the sanctity of femaleness, of women being the higher beings, the mystery of life and so on, he couldn't grasp any abuse towards them other than what he termed rape. Rape for brother-in-law wasn't categorised. It wasn't equivocations, rhetorical stunts, sly debater tricks or a quarter amount of something or a half amount of something or a three-quarter amount of something. It was not a presentation package. Rape was rape. It was also black eyes. It was guns in breasts. Hands, fists, weapons, feet, used by male people, deliberately or accidentally-on-purpose against female people. "NEVER LIFT A FINGER TO A WOMAN" - if ever it had existed - third brother-in-law's teeshirt, to everyone's embarrassment, would have said. According to his rulebook - mine too, at least before the predations upon me by the community and by Milkman - the physical-contact aspect could be the only aspect. That meant that what was not of that trespass, not that kind of physical - stalking without touch, tracking without touch, hemming-in, taking over, controlling a person with no flesh on flesh, no bone on bone ensuing - could not then be happening. So it came about that of everybody who had heard of the wooing of me by Milkman, third brother-in-law was the only one who, unquestioningly, hadn't considered it to have taken place. Not seeing mental wreckage then, seemed one of his downsides.”

Quote by Anna Burns