Kathy > Recent Status Updates

this is a trauma memoir. It needs so many content warnings.

“I was so lucky, through all this, to have been blessed with so many good friends who loved me and stood with me through so much, even when I did not deserve it. I was not a good friend at that time, selfish and needy. … I would like to write that it was this great love that saved me, but that’s not true. In the hour you are most alone, all the love in the world is not enough.”

“Where are we in your dystopia?” is OBNOXIOUS. The author just isn’t well read enough and treats it as if the authors she wants to read don’t exist. THEY DO. “Margaret Atwood is the mother of feminist dystopia spec fic and the genre isn’t brown enough” HELLO HAVE YOU HEARD OF OCTAVIA BUTLER?

The first four chapters of this were absolute bangers. Chapter five trails off a bit, which is why I stalled out for a while. Anyway: “Every little act of cruelty, whether intentional or not, makes us a little less than we were, than we would have been. It takes something from us.”

“There is nothing more pleasing to me, more vindicating, more enrapturing, more sublime, than a woman who is absolutely fucking *furious.* […] All our lives, we […] are discouraged from anger. Women are supposed to be ‘nurturers’ and ‘caregivers,’ which is man-speak for ‘physically and emotionally available doormat who never says no and always puts other people first, men especially.’”🔥💕💯

“attention, I quickly learned, was an unforgivable rudeness to refuse. It is as if little girls are somehow the common property of everyone but themselves.”

Incisive. Makes me feel less alone/not insane in my perceptions of misogyny.

Dismissive but still interesting account of queer prisoner life.

“We clasp each other for a fleeting moment. This is no embrace, it is a spasm of pain.”

two takes: (1) this is just harrow/palamedes and (2) grad students would literally rather than go to hell than go to therapy

called it.

This is gonna be one of those miscommunication romance plots 😒🙄🙄🙄🙄

“By denying certain events a place in the historical record, there’s a certain denial of truth. With that denial comes dignity. Belief in one’s basic dignity is like makeup. It helps you leave the house. It protects your real face, the you-est you, against judgments.”

“I want to chipmunk or squirrel away the memory of this event, place it in a tree trunk with the memories of all the other rapes, attempted rapes, and gropes, memories that will never be released or consumed. When a man asks, “What did he do to you?” he’s asking to eat one of these traumatic acorns. Girls never ask for these seeds. They know what it’s like[...]” // Strawberry Picker, Exquisite Corpse

“I slouched behind my Bible, which was propped upright on my desk. I skimmed The Communist Manifesto, which I’d wedged into the Gospels. Vague as it was, I still preferred Marx’s alms-for-everyone utopia to the snow-white heaven we got snapshots of in class. White is so hard to keep clean.”