In college, educated women (I found out) were frigid; active women (I knew) were neurotic; women (we all knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can always get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world; Woman is the earth-mother; Woman is the eternal siren; Woman is purity; Woman is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the life-force; Woman is selfless love.
"I am the gateway to another world," (said I, looking in the mirror) "I am the earth-mother; I am the eternal siren; I am purity," (Jeez, new pimples) "I am carnality; I have intuition; I am the life-force; I am selfless love." (Somehow it sounds different in the first person, doesn't it?)
Honey (said the mirror, scandalised) Are you out of your fucking mind?
I AM HONEY
I AM RASPBERRY JAM
I AM A VERY GOOD LAY
I AM A GOOD DATE
I AM A GOOD WIFE
I AM GOING CRAZY
Everything was peaches and cream.
Now in my eleven years of conventional life I had learned many things and one of them is what it means to be convicted of rape--I do not mean the man who did it, I mean the woman to whom it was done. Rape is one of the Christian mysteries, it creates a luminous and beautiful tableau in people's minds; and as I listened furtively to what nobody would allow me to hear straight out, I slowly came to understand that I was face to face with one of those feminine disasters, like pregnancy, like disease, like weakness; she was not only the victim of the act but in some strange way its perpetrator; somehow she had attracted the lightening that struck her out of a clear sky. A diabolical chance--which was not chance--had revealed her to all of us as she truly was, in her secret inadequacy, in that wretched guiltiness which she had kept hidden for seventeen years but which now finally manifested in front of everybody. Her secret guilt was this:
She was Cunt.
She had "lost" something.
Now the other party to the incident had manifested his essential nature, too; he was Prick--but being Prick is not a bad thing. In fact, he had "gotten away with" something (possibly what she had "lost").
And there I was at eleven years of age:
She was out late at night.
She was in the wrong part of town.
Her skirt was too short and that provoked him.
She liked having her eye blacked and her head banged against the sidewalk.
I understood this perfectly. (I reflected thus in my dream, in my state of being a pair of eyes in a small wooden box stuck forever on a grey, geometric plane--or so I thought.) I too had been guilty of what had been done to me, when I came home from the playground in tears because I had been beaten up by bigger children who were bullies.
I was dirty.
I was crying.
I demanded comfort.
I was being inconvenient.
I did not disappear into thin air.
Tag: feminism rape victim-blaming
Why is it that when Robert Redford-cum-Denys Finch Hatton flies away in the golden glow out of Africa, he is pursuing his destiny? And when I walk away I'm just a chick who's scared of commitment and on the run, who's weird for ignoring Glamour magazine's predictions of my eggs drying up? Learning is an underrated form of liberation.
Holly MorrisTag: feminism travel adventure-divas
Looking back, it made no sense for my college friends and me to distance ourselves from the hard-won achievements of earlier feminists. We should have cheered their efforts. Instead, we lowered our voices, thinking the battle was over, and with this reticence we hurt ourselves.
Sheryl SandbergTag: feminism career-advice
I know nothing of being a wife, but I have learned much about the running and maintenance of an estate. It may be that you will find my manner too straightforward for your tastes, but, my lord, it is just that - my manner. Would that I die before I give up that part of me.
Denise DomningTag: confidence feminism gender-roles straightforwardness manner
[Eric Schmidt] explained that only one criterion that mattered when picking a job- fat growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters, He told me, "If you're offered a seat on a rocket sip, you don't ask what seat. You just get on.
Sheryl SandbergI realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.
Sheryl SandbergWe need to stop telling [women], "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor.
Sheryl SandbergValue yourself for what the media doesn't - your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it's not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it's an improvement.
Jessica ValentiTag: beauty feminism media body-image
Intelligent resistance keeps the true self alive
Mary PipherTag: inspirational-quotes feminism self-image
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