ʚ bree ɞ ♡ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ♡

“Indeed, any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression?”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“When I say that I am unattractive or ugly, I am not internalizing the dominant culture’s assessment of me. I am naming what has been done to me. And signaling who did it.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“When oppressed people become complicit in their oppression, joining the dominant class in their ideas about what we are, it is symbolic violence. Like all concepts, symbolic violence has a context that is important for using it to mean what we intend to mean. It is not just that internalizing the values of the dominant class violently stigmatizes us. Symbolic violence only makes sense if we accept its priors: all preferences in imperial, industrialized societies are shaped by the economic system. There aren’t any “good” preferences. There are only preferences that are validated by others, differently, based on social contexts.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays