Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Rebecca Solnit

Quote by Rebecca Solnit

Work

The Mother of All Questions

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer known for her works on environmental, cultural, political, and social issues. Her writing spans a wide range of topics, including nature, travel, gender, and power. Her books include 'Wanderlust', 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost', and 'The Faraway Nearby'. more

You May Also Like

“I think that sexual desire in women, at least in this culture, is socially constructed as that by which we come to want our own self-annihilation. That is, our subordination is eroticized in and as female; in fact, we get off on it to a degree. I'm saying femininity as we know it is how we come to want male dominance, which most emphatically is not in our interest.”

Feminism
Book:Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law
Create image

“Imagine homemade desserts, with pies being the star, made by two older Southern women using time-honored family recipes that elicit a feeling of nostalgia and luxury." Brock snorted as he shook his head. "Food is a crowded field. There's no way---" Micah held up a hand. "Let her finish." Yeah, dumbass. Let me finish. "This is about more than pies and desserts. It's about the story behind the desserts." I was in it now and didn't have a road map to lead me out again. "The backstory is inspiring. Two women of a certain age were married to completely useless men and ultimately forced to fend for themselves." I let that last sentence splash around in the room's testosterone for a second. "They rebuilt their lives by making and selling pies. Creating a business and a community around the pies that later expanded to include other desserts." "So?" Brock excelled at missing the point and didn't disappoint here. "Frankly, they're damn good pies. Right now, they're sold on a small scale all over the South via word of mouth and a website. They're special. Curated. Artisanal." I'd moved into the part of the pitch where I threw phrases together that may or may not have applied to pies, cupcakes, and other assorted dessert items because this room loved fancy buzzwords. "Now imagine taking this small grandma-run business nationwide. Making it the go-to dessert option for special occasions. Putting it in high-end grocery and specialty stores as well as on direct delivery. Creating demand like that lady did with cupcakes a decade or so ago." Big fan. Loved the whole dessert family. And those cupcake vending machines? Genius. Now I wanted a cupcake, so time to wrap this up. "If we focus on the pies for a second, once you convince people they need the pies, they'll pay for anything for those pies. Plus, you have built-in marketing gold in the form of two very feisty, self-made women who people will see as their grandmas.”

FeminismBusiness SuccessBaked GoodsPiesSales PitchGrandmas
Book:The Usual Family Mayhem
Create image

“But it is nonetheless disturbing to find mothers actively engaged in sabotaging one another, blind to their common ground. Think about it: women against poor mothers on welfare; women against rich Zoe Baird. Women against their husbands' first wives; mothers embroiled in endless mommy wars. Working mothers aren't "doing their job" at home, while mothers at home don't have a "real" job. The net effect of all of this belittling is to obscure the larger reality that mothers as a group are performing an enormous amount of essential unpaid labor.”

FeminismMotherhoodGender EqualityGender RolesWage Gap
Book:The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued
Create image

“That women have not been exterminated, and will not be (at least until the technology of creating life in the laboratory is perfected) can be attributed to our presumed ability to bear children and, more importantly no doubt, to the relative truth that men prefer to fuck cunts who are nominally alive. I except here necrophiliacs, those pure and unsullied princes, whose story begins where ours ends.”

FeminismNecrophilia
Book:Woman Hating
Create image

“It is possible, she says, the men in prison are not guilty of the attacks. But are they guilty of not stopping the attacks? Are they guilty of knowing about the attacks and doing nothing?...How should we know what they're guilty of or not?...But we do know,... We do know that the conditions of Molotschna have been created by man, that these attacks have been made possible, even the conception of these acts, the planning of these attacks, the rationale for these attacks within the minds of the men, because of the circumstances of Molotschna. And those circumstances have been created and ordained by the men,...”

Feminism
Book:Women Talking
Create image

“You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don't let it rage into a mountain of light, because that's not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don't you're stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to 'seasonal layers', doomed to 'practicality', doomed to 'this is just the way things are', doomed to 'settling' and 'understanding' and 'reasoning' and 'agreeing' and 'seeing it another way' and 'seeing it his way' and 'seeing it from all the other ways but your own'.”

FeminismFemale RageNightbitch
Book:Nightbitch
Create image