Jessica Cramer

“With familiar archness he waggled his finger at me and said 'tsk tsk'; all that writhing and fussing began again, what fun it was for him to have someone automatically not above reproach, and I knew beyond the shadow of a hope that to be female is to be mirror and honeypot, servant and judge, the terrible Rhadamanthus for whom he must perform but whose judgment is not human and whose services are at anyone's command, the vagina dentata and the stuffed teddy-bear he gets if he passes the test. This is until you're forty-five, ladies, after which you vanish into thin air like the smile of the Cheshire cat, leaving behind only a disgusting grossness and a subtle poison that automatically infects every man under twenty-one. Nothing can put you above this or below this or beyond it or outside of it, nothing, nothing, nothing at all, not your muscles or your brains, not being one of the boys or being one of the girls or writing books or writing letters or screaming or wringing your hands or cooking lettuce or being too tall or being too short or traveling or staying at home or ugliness or acne or diffidence or cowardice or perpetual shrinking and old age. In the latter cases you're only doubly damned.”
― Joanna Russ, The Female Man

“I wonder if you feel it less, with guns. If so many people are killed with so little effort, is it easier to pretend they aren't lives? That everything is fine? It's different, I imagine, from seeing flattened forms like blood ghosts on the sand or hearing the screams in the streets during the parade. No, killing should take longer than a heartbeat. Murder should be unignorable, always.”
― Micaiah Johnson, The Space Between Worlds

“I hear him stop outside the door, afraid to open it but still listening in. I make small stirring noises, so he knows I'm awake, alive.

I fall asleep to the sound of his concern.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“She was right to be cautious about coming to a place like this, I know. These days, the danger of just being alive and in public is practically as American as fireworks on the Fourth or apple pie or voter suppression. But this. This is what it's all about. You take your chances going to the movies or out to eat or to a concert because this is what it feels like to be alive.”
― Leah Johnson, Rise to the Sun