REBECCA SOLNIT  MEN EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME

“One evening over dinner, I began to joke, as I often had before, about writing an essay called “Men Explain Things to Me.” Every writer has a stable of ideas that never make it to the racetrack, and I’d been trotting this pony out recreationally every once in a while. …

“That was April 2008 and it struck a chord.  It still seems to get reposted more than just about anything I’ve written …

“Young women subsequently added the word “mansplaining” to the lexicon. Though I hasten to add that the essay makes it clear mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck.

“The battle for women to be treated like human beings with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of involvement in cultural and political arenas continues, and it is sometimes a pretty grim battle.” 

https://www.guernicamag.com/author/rebecca-solnit/

REBECCA TRAISTER GOOD AND MAD: THE REVOLUTIONARY POWER OF WOMEN

“Among the trickiest and most central dynamics between angry women is the degree to which they have often been angry at one another, and often for very good reason, chief among them, the racial, economic, and sexual inequities that have contributed to making solidarity between women so elusive, so difficult, and often so painful.”

TONI MORRISON THE BLUEST EYE

“The distaste must be for her, her blackness. All things in her are flux and anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes.”

 ISABEL WILKERSON CASTE THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENT

“Caste puts the richest and most powerful of the dominant caste at a remove, in the penthouse of a mythical high-rise, and everyone else, in descending order, on the floors beneath them,  It consigns people in the subordinate caste to the basement, amid the flaws in the foundation and the cracks in the stonework that it appears others choose not to see.”

SAIDIYA HARTMAN WAYWARD LIVES, BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS: INTIMATE HISTORIES OF RIOTOUS BLACK GIRLS, TROUBLESOME WOMEN, AND QUEER RADICALS

“Waywardness is a practice of possibility at a time when all reads, except the ones created by smashing out, are foreclosed. It obeys no rules and abides no authorities. It is unrepentant. It traffics in occult visions of other worlds and dreams of a different kind of life. Waywardness is an ongoing exploration of what might be; it is an improvisation with the terms of social existence, when the terms have already been dictated, when there is little room to breathe, when you have been sentenced to a life of servitude, when the house of bondage looms in whatever direction you move. It is the untiring practice of trying to live when you were never meant to survive.”

EDITH WHARTON THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

“Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.” “We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed until we drop.”

 MARY BEARD WOMEN AND POWER

“We don't have a model or a template for what a powerful woman looks like.  We only have templates that make them men.”

BELL HOOKS THE WILL TO CHANGE

“To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”

ANNIE ERNAUX HAPPENING

“I will write to avenge my people.”