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Quote by Roxane Gay

“Rape was where my rebellion started. His sense that—small as I was, an infant—I needed to be controlled was my hint that I had power that had to be curtailed. That I was alive enough to be annihilated. That my survival was a threat that needed to be contained. Rape and sexual abuse made me nothing, and in doing so made me something.”

Quote by Roxane Gay

Work

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

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Author

Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is an American writer born in 1974. Her works include novels, non-fiction, short stories, and essays. Her notable works are 'Bad Feminist' and 'Hunger'. Her writing style is characterized by humor, honesty, and profound self-reflection. more

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“It took a special kind of guts to be a fuck-up as a woman, I thought. To say to hell with being a nice girl, the responsible one, the one who makes sure the man takes care of himself and eats properly and doesn’t take too many drugs. To be just as nihilistic and self-destructive as a man, knowing all along that you’ll get crucified for it, because somehow, the world will make everything your fault. He’ll be a martyr, and you’ll be a succubus. He’ll be a genius, and you’ll be a groupie. He’ll be a hero, and you’ll be an ugly fat crack whore who deserves to die.”

“...it is not really the difference the oppressor fears so much as the similarity. He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has shit on... . He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different.”

“One might come up with other and kinder distinctions (I shall not be doing so) but the plain fact about the senator from New York is surely that she is a known quantity who has already been in the White House purely as the result of a relationship with a man, and not at all a quixotic outsider who represents the aspirations of an 'out' group, let alone a whole sex or gender.”