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

“Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.”
― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

“Some children spend their days climbing trees. I spent mine in books. This was how I drowned the inconsolable sorrow in which my father's abandonment had left me. Romance and passion filled my imagination. I was far too young for the novels I read, and I understood little of them except that love makes you suffer. Why would anyone want to be destroyed so prematurely?”
― 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