Karena Bakas

“The role that G liked to give himself in his books was that of benefactor, responsible for the initiation of young people into the joys of sex... In reality, this exceptional talent was limited to not making his partner suffer. And where there is neither pain nor coercion there is no rape... Physical violence leaves a memory for a person to react against. It's appalling but tangible. Sexual abuse on the other hand is insidious and perverse, and the victim might be barely aware it is happening. Noone speaks of sexual abuse between adults. Of the abuse of the vulnerable, yes. Of an elderly person, for example. Vulnerability is precisely that infinitesimal space into which people with the psychological profile of G can insinuate themselves. It's the element that makes the element of consent so beside the point. Very often in the case of sexual abuse or abuse of the vulnerable, one comes across the same denial of reality, the same refusal to consider oneself a victim. And inded, how is it possible to acknowledge having been abused when it's impossible to deny having consented? Having felt desire for the very adult that was so eager to take advantage of you?”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“a ring of jailhouse informants-- or 'snitches'--... allegedly received lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives... It's not difficult to imahine why a prisoner-informant would lie about overhearing a confession when it means real material benefits... [and] prosecutors are often motivated to make those informants sound believable to a judge. Testimony from a single jailhouse informant is enough to convict a person for a charge as serious as murder... [Snitch] testimony [is] the leading cause of wrongful convictions in US capital cases."
-- Aaron Miguel Cantu”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters one’s “normal” state, and occasions a radical intimacy with—and radical alienation from—one’s body? How can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolize or enact the ultimate conformity? Or is this just another disqualification of anything tied too closely to the female animal from the privileged term (in this case, nonconformity, or radicality)?”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts