We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.
Interpretation
Every woman should have control over her own body and life, leading to a transformative society.
In this quote, Adrienne Rich emphasizes the importance of women having autonomy over their bodies and lives, suggesting that such empowerment would result in profound societal change. She envisions a world where women's roles are not confined to societal norms, allowing them to redefine relationships, creativity, and the essence of existence itself. This change would catalyze a reimagining of interconnected domains such as motherhood, sexuality, and community, ultimately altering how humanity perceives itself and interacts with the universe.
In practice
In a women's conference discussing personal agency and empowerment.
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!'
It's true that globalization, with all its fantastic improvements in the world and the technological progress linked to it, has increased inequality at country level, especially inside countries. And there are people that were left behind - people, sectors, regions - that has created a sense of frustration in the rust belts of the world.
There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality. If you don't know where you really are, it is impossible to get where you need to be.
Resolve to be a master of change rather than a victim of change.
To be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image - from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust.
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