“Women are defined from the outside, in terms of how they seem to men, rather than from the inside, as thinking, feeling subjects. They are not fellow people, not even a different or worse variety of person, but simply the opposite of men, and hence, the opposite of human.”
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“It seems highly unlikely that any mother operating within patriarchy has not received sufficiently stressful messaging about her “duties.” But the bad mother is patriarchy’s saving throw, its ultimate loophole; by moving the blame for male violence back one generation, it makes guilty parties out of the women who are its victims.”
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“We would rather see girls stopped dead—stuck in a constant childhood that never decays—than let them grow into women who can pursue their desires.”
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“Female monstrosity inspires terror because it really can end the world—or our current version of it, anyway. But our world is not the only one, or the best one, and in fact, the more time I spend with monsters, the more I think its destruction is overdue.”
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
― Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“But whatever its origins, when we look hard and clearly at the extent and elaboration of
measures designed to keep women within a male sexual purlieu, it becomes an inescapable question whether the issue we have to address as feminists is not simple "gender inequality," nor the domination of culture by males, nor mere "taboos against homosexuality," but the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economical, and emotional access.”
― Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
measures designed to keep women within a male sexual purlieu, it becomes an inescapable question whether the issue we have to address as feminists is not simple "gender inequality," nor the domination of culture by males, nor mere "taboos against homosexuality," but the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economical, and emotional access.”
― Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
Leara’s 2025 Year in Books
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