Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of supporting and validating women's experiences instead of dismissing them.
Adrienne Rich's quote highlights the historical struggle of women whose realities and instincts have often been dismissed in a male-centric culture. It calls for solidarity among women to uphold each other's truths and perceptions, warning against the harmful practice of 'gaslighting' that undermines their shared reality for convenience or conformity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a women's empowerment seminar to highlight the importance of mutual support.
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!'
Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
The more two people open to each other, the more this wide-openness also brings to the surface all the obstacles to it: their deepest, darkest wounds, their desperation and mistrust, and their rawest emotional trigger points. Just as the sun's warmth causes clouds to arise by prompting the earth to release its moisture, so love's pure openness activates the thick clouds of our emotional wounding, the tight places where we are shut down, where we live in fear and resist love.
No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.
You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me.
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