Jasper Hendy’s Reviews > Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches > Status Update

“Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for then while dismissing us for the same supposedly inferior capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear.” (p. 74)

“To imply, however, that all women suffer the same oppression because we are women is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy. It is to ignore how those tools are used by women without awareness against each other.” (p. 67)

“The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been… [confused] with its opposite, the pornographic… a direct denial of the power of the erotic for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.” (p. 54)

“This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.”

“And it is never without fear- of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But I have lived through all of those already, in silence… if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.” (p. 43)

“For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men.” (Poetry Is Not A Luxury, p. 39)

This whole essay hit so many times but that passage… damn one of many deep cuts. Love her work