Aenea Jones

“Since my father had fallen off the radar, I had begun desperately trying to attract men's attention. It was a waste of effort. I was completely unattractive; I lacked the slightest physical allure.”
― Vanessa Springora

“Yet they must have loved each other once. At the end of an interminable corridor, screened by a bedroom door, their sexuality is like a monster crouching just beyond my field of vision: omnipresent (my father's outbursts of jealousy are the daily evidence) but completely covert (I have no memory of the slightest embrace, the slightest kiss, the tiniest gesture of affection between my parents).”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“At around the same time a man in a pub told me gender equality was impossible, as long as a man continued to be the active party in penetrative sex, the doer, the woman the done to. I’d tried telling him that surely a woman could just as actively cover a man, but he didn’t look convinced. Even then, it had all felt pointless, word games that changed nothing.”
― Megan Hunter, The Harpy

“I was six years old. A studious little girl, bright and hardworking, obedient and well behaved, and vaguely melancholy, as is often the case with the children of divorced parents.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent