Serina

“How did former socialist states become bastions of right-wing religious conservatism? It may be partly because nations need their populations to grow. They have always leaned on families to have as many children as possible, and enforcing strict gender norms and promoting heterosexual marriage have been useful in achieving that end. It’s as true today as it was in ancient Athens, creating a constant tension for those in power.”
― Angela Saini, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality

“Wittig’s assertion is based on her analysis of heterosexuality as a regime, not merely the ‘default’ sexuality, but a political institution that has structured and continues to structure the organization of society, philosophical modes of thought, and even language itself. She conceptualizes the state of women as an enrollment, at birth, into the heterosexual contract, analogous to Rousseau’s social contract: an arrangement into which they are all entered without consent, whose terms and conditions are never explicated but are enforced all the same, set up to extract all benefits and return precious little (if any) compensation to women-as-a-class. To Wittig, the goal of feminist struggle is not an attempted rehabilitation of ‘womanhood’, a category that was and remains subordinate in its very conceptualization. Rather, the struggle for liberation is a struggle for abolition of this category, a mutual annihilation of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ such that social existence is no longer defined by a relation of extractive parasitism.”
― Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem

“The vast majority of conservative women are not in fact ignorant about patriarchy or their limited role in it, but have adopted a certain fatalistic attitude. To them, liberation from patriarchy is neither possible nor worth fighting for, as it would be no better than tilting at windmills. Better to accept that a woman is modest, domestic, a home-maker and child-rearer, and to perform according to those standards. In exchange, they receive the stability and security that a man who has claimed them can provide, a certain safety located within having to manage a single man’s desires and needs. This ‘traditional’ life protects them, shelters them from the wider world which remains hostile and misogynistic, and is thus the ‘smart’ choice, one that all women ought to wisely and maturely accept.”
― Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem

“I interpret autonomy as this innermost subjectivity and area of freedom – small as it may be – without which human beings are devoid of their essential human essence and dignity, without which they become puppets or organisms without an element of free will and consciousness, or mere assemblies of organic matter, as is the model of reproductive engineers today. In the concept autonomy, therefore, the feminist aspiration to maintain and strengthen or recreate this innermost subjective human essence in women is expressed and preserved. On the other hand, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that capitalism, by focussing on the atomized individual in its marketing strategies has, to a large extent, perverted the humanist aspiration inherent in the concept of autonomy.”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour