Status Updates From Intercourse

being “dead folks,” in baldwin’s world, is nothing so simple as being white. being dead is being ignorant, refusing to know the truth, especially about oneself. remaining ignorant about oneself through a life of inevitable experience is hard; it requires that one refuse to know anything about the world around one, especially who is dying there and why and when and how.

slavery is in the exploitation itself, any kind of forced labor that is done because people who are stronger want it done, including forced sex labor by women simply in response to male desire: “‘therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labour of others and should consider it a sin and a shame.’”

the violence in his marriage—the violence of feeling and the final act of killing—had for him an internal logic and inevitability, because intercourse distorts and ultimately destroys any potential human equality between men and women by turning women into objects and men into exploiters.

Possession- sex is an annihilation and a death for men. It mirrors almost exactly the relationship between Christ and the Church where the imperiled and vulnerable one who dies does ultimately have authority over the other.

The first two pages of Communion she’s really feeling herself and her writing, you can tell. And she’s funny af

I’ve got no idea what to make of the Skinless chapter