Serina

“Such a fantasy has long been a ruling-class obsession, no matter what particular form—feudal or capitalist or patriarchal—that rulership has taken. Every master lives in mortal fear of his own slaves, bile roiling in him night after night as he clings to his ideologies of superiority, falling asleep with prayers on his lips that the slaves continue to believe in their own inferiority as much as he does. The master loathes the slaves, reviles and resents them for his own weakness, his own dependence on their existence, his presumed supremacy spiraling further and further into contempt and hatred. Yet even as he deludes himself to the point where he begins to doubt the slaves’ worth entirely, convincing himself that his salvation lies in the destruction of those who enable his own mastery, he still cannot bring himself to so much as rear back for the killing blow. For the master remains aware that he only exists because his slaves do, realizes that his identity, his being, his self-conception all depend on the continued existence of the slaves. If there were no slaves, no one for him to subjugate, to contrast himself with, to define himself against, he too would cease to be. Unfortunately for him, sooner or later, the slaves realize this too.”
― Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem

“Whereas the concept patriarchy denotes the historical depth of women’s exploitation and oppression, the concept capitalism is expressive of the contemporary manifestation, or the latest development of this system. Women’s problems today cannot be explained by merely referring to the old forms of patriarchal dominance. Nor can they be explained if one accepts the position that patriarchy is a ‘pre-capitalist’ system of social relations which has been destroyed and superseded, together with ‘feudalism’, by capitalist relations, because women’s exploitation and oppression cannot be explained by the functioning of capitalism alone, at least not capitalism as it is commonly understood.”
― Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

“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