Paulina

“When I was in high school, I would drive into Seattle to see bands and sip coffee late into the night, and I always ended up taking the long way home. I'd be a little anxious about stalling my Datsun on one of the hills around the city, so when I saw Denny Way, I always turned onto it, even though it led away from my home to Seattle's Capitol Hill district. From there I navigated winding hills and eventually ended up at home. A quick look at a map would have revealed the freeway that heads straight to my house, but since my circuitous route was familiar, I stuck to it. I should have known better, but I was just a kid. What excuse does the richest nation on earth have for driving around in the dark like an adolescent? Just because our familiar arguments over how best to help families and the economy lead us along well-trod paths doesn't make them the best ones we could be taking.”
― Heather Boushey, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict

“She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that, because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“...the belief that the threat of rape is everywhere, that it can happen at any time, that it is the worst fate that can befall women, is enough to make us police ourselves and restrict our own mobility. But on the other hand, feminists also want to demystify rape, to begin to see it not as a unique and life-destroying form of violation from which one can never recover, but as (merely) another kind of violence against person.”
― Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist

“I am not a cynic. I love you, I love the world and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful-the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you-the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you never will know.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me