Rachel Werz

“Ignorance is a terrible thing. It causes families to lose their center and causes people to lose their control. Ignorance knows no binds. Old people, young people, middle-aged, black, white, can all be ignorant.”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalized groups small and quiet.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power