Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the significance of lesbian existence in challenging societal norms and male dominance.
Adrienne Rich's quote speaks to the dual nature of lesbian identity as both a defiance of traditional societal expectations and a critique of the patriarchal structures that dictate women's roles. By embracing a lesbian identity, individuals not only break societal taboos but also resist the gendered confines that define their existence, reclaiming autonomy and challenging male privilege over women.
In practice
A speaker during a pride event could use this quote to emphasize the importance of embracing one's identity.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its national rights.
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.
In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists.
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