Status Updates From Times Square Red, Times Squ...

"Tolerance—not assimilation—is the democratic litmus test for social equality."

"It is naive to think that these developers, who make a city space safe for one class of women by actively driving out another class [sex workers], have any concern for women *as a class*. The Times Square developers’ concern for women and women’s safety extends no further than seeing women as replaceable nodes with a certain amount of money to spend in a male-dominated economic system."

"As in the name of “safety,” society dismantles the various institutions that promote interclass communication, attempts to critique the way such institutions functioned in the past to promote their happier sides are often seen as... at worst, a pernicious glorification of everything dangerous: unsafe sex, neighborhoods filled with un-desirables..."

"Was commercial film pornography sexist? Certainly. Was it anywhere near as sexist as the legit films playing across the nation’s screens in the same years? Not unless you simply took sexist and sexy as synonyms."

"I don't see any reason that a woman... couldn't take any (or every) role I've already described or will go on to describe for any (and every) male theater patron...though it does unmitigated violence to the West’s traditional concept of “women.” But I believe it is only by inflicting such violences on the concept that we can prevent actual violence against women’s bodies and minds in the political, material world."

Rereading 4 book club! Yay I love this book