Noémie

“What if I’m a beautiful wound people dance inside of?”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A Minor Chorus

“At the end of class, he stops me on my way out the door and hands me my essay on Lavinia from Titus Andronicus. I focused on her torn-out tongue and torn-off hands, her subsequent silence, the failure of language in the face of rape.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I saw the rape in his eyes. I was wearing my white dress and laughed to myself, thinking how anyone would say I kept asking for it. I’d opined often with other women and with men that every man has a degree of rape in him. Women didn’t understand what I meant. They were alternately disgusted and confused. They thought I was stupid. But the men didn’t. I think they were impressed that I understood.”
― Lisa Taddeo, Animal

“That moment in my body when the teacher put his hand on my knee to comfort me was the understanding of all of that--that in order to be attractive, irresistible, to be worthy of notice, was to be both beautiful and in open need, to be damaged.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita