Louise

“When your truth is so inherently questioned, it is easier to say nothing than anything at all.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“The Life Ruiner alone didn't ruin me. The world that made him did—the place that continues to manufacture replicas of him and continues to create the circumstances in which he and his replicas thrive.
What is there to do about that?”
― Nora Salem, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I've been in a room with a woman who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. "What right do I have to be angry, when I'm alive? she said.

Anger is a privilege of the truly broken, and yet I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry. An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her anger must be picked over, examined, and debated. My anger must stand the scrutiny of the court of law, of evidentiary procedures. I must prove it comes from somewhere justified and not just because one time some man touched my sister. Or because one time some man touched some woman and will continue on and on.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Perhaps the most horrifying thing about nonconsensual sex is that, in an instant, it erases you. Your own desires, your safety and well-being, your ownership of the body that may very well have been the only thing you ever felt sure you owned—all of it becomes irrelevant, even nonexistent. You don’t need to be a helpless, innocent child to be changed by that.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture