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

“The politics of time was clarified in my women's liberation group in the 1970's when one of us, a mother of small children, found herself single. Parenting and providing seemed irreconcilable. Within a generation it had become the norm. By 2010 single parents comprised 25 per cent of all families and 60 per cent had a paid job. The agenda this implies is obvious: not the trick of work-life balance that assigns responsibility to women but a political economy that has at its heart not a breadwinner who is an unencumbered, cared-for man but a mother.

Women's appeal to men to share parenting has, of course, been answered by millions of men. They attend the birth of their babies, they fall in love with them and then soon, too soon, before they have even got acquainted, they leave the babies and the mother's from morning till night and go back to their paid jobs. Nowhere have men reciprocated women's paid work and unpaid care by initiating mass movements for men's equal parental leave or working time that synchronizes with children and women; nowhere have men en masse shared the costs—in time and money—of childhood.”
― Beatrix Campbell, End of Equality

“The opposite of passion
is not virtue
but routine.

- Daphne with her Thighs in Bark”
― Eavan Boland, Treelines: A Collection of Poems

“I wish we could stop using the word belief in matters of fact, leaving it where it belongs, in matters of religious faith and secular hope. I believe we'd avoid a lot of unnecessary pain if we did so.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters