“Because she is woman, the girl knows that the sea and the poles, a thousand adventures, a thousand joys, are forbidden to her: she is born on the wrong side.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Tag: Feminism
The Woman Who Told the Truth
“The story of Cassandra, the woman who told the truth but was not believed, is not nearly as embedded in our culture as that of the Boy Who Cried Wolf—that is, the boy who was believed the first few times he told the same lie. Perhaps it should be.”
— Rebecca Solnit, “Cassandra Among the Creeps“
A Question
All of this raises a question: why has feminism, which managed to win so many battles—the notion of a woman with a career has become perfectly unexceptionable—remained anathema to millions of women who are the beneficiaries of its success?
— Ariel Levy, “Lift And Separate”
Man is Defined
Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female—whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
The Quintessential Figure
Eve not only deserves punishment but becomes the quintessential figure of unruly, transgressive nature, a nature that neither woman nor man can altogether contain and both would prefer to repudiate.”
— Lisa Appignanesi, Introduction to The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
This is a Pattern
“And so what I believe is that having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man, and when a decent man messes up as we all are bound to do, he tries his best and does apologize. Not to save face, not to win a vote. He apologizes genuinely to repair and acknowledge the harm done so that we can all move on.”
I have watched this video through dozens of times just in the past couple of days. As frustrated and infuriated as I am with what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to go through I’m happy she was able to respond in this way.
She took her personal but not at all unique experience and brought it to the national stage in a way we can all identify with, internalize, and learn from. She is showing us all how to stand up and speak up, how to hold others accountable for dehumanizing language, and articulated perfectly the very real harm that this language inflicts on all of us.
I only hope Rep. Ted Yoho and men like him learned something too…
A Luxury and a Major Problem
[I]f the father works and the mother works, nobody is left to watch the kids. In societies where these families constitute the majority, either government acknowledges the situation and helps provide child care (as many European countries do) or child care becomes a luxury affordable for the affluent, and a major problem for everyone else.
— Ariel Levy, Lift And Separate
The Radicals
The radicals taking over feminism, many of whom were active in the civil-rights and antiwar movements, wanted to overthrow patriarchy, which would require transforming almost every aspect of society: child rearing, entertainment, housework, academics, romance, business, art, politics, sex.”
— Ariel Levy, Lift And Separate
Joan Didion
Joan Didion
To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone ‘oppressed’ to break them.”
— Joan Didion, The Women’s Movement
Lisa Marie Blair 