The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.
Interpretation
Women reclaiming control over their bodies is more transformative for society than workers taking control of production.
Adrienne Rich argues that the empowerment of women through bodily autonomy is a revolutionary force that can bring about significant societal changes. This notion suggests that personal freedom and self-determination are foundational to broader societal progress, emphasizing that control over one's body is integral to creating a just and equitable society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about women's rights at a rally.
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.'β
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!'
Revolutionaries were depressed and close to emotional breakdown; after the failure, they left successively.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States - old as well as new - North as well as South.
Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of βbusiness as usual.β That is WHY it is effective.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters
When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.
It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.
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