Maia

“We experience specific traumas that affect us profoundly. And we are living amidst institutional standards, family systems and normative practices that perpetuate sexual violence, segregation and domination. A host of macro and micro-aggressions punish sexual identities and experiences outside a norm that almost no one fits inside. Neglect of our sexuality is also vigorously enforced. Most children are born into a world that disregards their sexuality and admonishes or exploits its expression. Adults typically have their sexual experiences rationed to occasional and unsatisfying exchanges. It is well past time we recognize that this neglect in itself is traumatizing. By working and playing to transform our personal neurobiology, we also look to understand and transform the social context.”
― Caffyn Jesse, Science for Sexual Happiness

“I cannot have a sufficiency of books. Indeed, I have more than I should... Books give utter delight: they talk with us... and are bound to us by lively and witty intimacy, and do not just insinuate themselves alone on their readers but present the names of others, and each one creates a longing for another.”
― Francesco Petrarca, Selected Letters, Volume 1

“A humour of reading books, except those of devotion or housewifery, is apt to turn a woman's brain... All affectation of knowledge beyond what is merely domestic, renders them vain, conceited and pretending.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Instead of being blind to race, color blindness makes people blind to racism, unwilling to acknowledge where its effects have shaped opportunity or to use race-conscious solutions to address it.”
― Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together