Orla Hegarty

“telling me
not all men
have
bad intentions

doesn't do
anything to
reassure
me.

after i
walk away from you,
nothing will have
changed.

i will still
be scared to
leave my house
after sundown.

i will still
find comfort
in keys resting
between fingers,

i will still
question
the intentoins of
every man i know

i will still
wonder
when i am
to become

a story
meant to warn
other people's
daughters,

& i will still
cry when i turn on
the television
to find

yet
another man
getting away
with

well--
what they
always seem to
get away with.

i am not
the one who
has to change
the way i think
or the way i act.
they are.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One

“What it made me think about above all is how incredibly much we learn from our birthday to last day - from where the horsies live to the origin of the stars. How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters

“What really amazes me is that survivors can be out in the world completely functional using maybe 20 percent of their capacity. Can you imagine what we'll be able to do when we let the other 80 percent out? If we were able to recover, stop the abuse, and heal everyone, the world we live in would be so phenomenal.

If you think of all the ways in which you have been stunted, all the energy you have consumed simply to keep hanging on by your fingernails, all that you might have created or accomplished or simply enjoyed had you not had to stagger under the burden of abuse, you may have a formidable list.

If you multiply that times the number of other women similarly struggling—not only now but also back through the decades and centuries—the result is awesome.

Now, imagine all the women healed—and all that energy no longer used for mere survival but made available for creativity, nurturing relationships, working for peace and equality. The effect on the world would be monumental.

We have never in recorded history lived in a time when women were, as a whole, empowered. We can only begin to imagine the riches.”
― Ellen Bass

“The feminist project is basically an anarchist movement which does not want to replace one (male) power elite by another (female) power elite, but which wants to build up a non-hierarchical, non-centralised society where no elite lives of exploitation and dominance over others.”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour