quoterary - Tumblr blog

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When you go for months or years without a dude (or any love interest) ever noticing you, you can begin to feel invisible. And feminist principles about how the patriarchy has made us beholden to beauty culture do nothing to assuage the desire we all have to be seen and affirmed.

Brittney C. Cooper, Eloquent Rage

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How do we balance the impulse to think that having degrees equips us to speak for people in their absence with the fact that the degrees in most cases actually do mean we have something of value to contribute that we might not otherwise have had?

Brittney C. Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

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May your rage be a force for good. What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down. When the struggle feels unwinnable, may you never forget this one thing: You got this. We got this.

Brittney C. Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower

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the extremity of a riot only ever reflects the extremity of the living conditions of said rioters

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

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We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power.

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

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Feminism is not about equality, and certainly not about silently slipping into a world of work created by and for men. Feminism, at its best, is a movement that works to liberate all people who have been economically, socially and culturally marginalised by an ideological system that has been designed for them to fail. That means disabled people, black people, trans people, women and non-binary people, LGB people and working-class people. The idea of campaigning for equality must be complicated if we are to untangle the situation we’re in. Feminism will have won when we have ended poverty. It will have won when women are no longer expected to work two jobs (the care and emotional labour for their families as well as their day jobs) by default.

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

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An intention was inside of me already when I traveled from infinity to a kitchen with a windowsill, to a wish, to a woman.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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I died that day that I knew was Valentine’s Day and I knew it was Valentine’s Day because it has always been my goal to be in love and to get a proper valentine and to not be lonely but to have someone who loves me so much that they miss me when I’m not there.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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I’m stuck here in a cycle and I am getting older but I am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad or is soft because too many hands have squeezed it but then put it back down not because I am not ready but because they were not ready for my type of fruity flesh. I felt so ripe and sweet—what was off? The truth is, I was forcing myself into people’s mouths. I jumped out of their hands and into their mouths and I yelled EAT ME way before they even had a chance to get hungry and notice me and lift me up.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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I am tired of sinking down to a lower place to be with men. I am tired of throwing a tarp over some of my personality so that the shape of my identity suits some gross man a little better, for whatever shitty things he needs to do in order to keep his boring identity erect and supreme. I have many grievances and no place to set them down, and I am cranky from having to shoulder this burden of reactions, like I am a fucking ox that should carry your unsellable wares. I am tired of buying my own flowers. I am tired of having to hold my breath through Valentine’s Day the way you do when you drive past a graveyard. I want a valentine from a normal person who is horny. I want a prize for how well I can love. I want to be a prize for love.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?

Jenny Slate, LIttle Weirds

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Please come close enough so that I can see you, and then I will try to do the rest for both of us, because I have not learned my lesson yet and do not possess the faith to believe in the partner who does his side of the thing.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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It is hard to even describe what it’s like to have someone use your own revelation of suffering as a way to accuse you of being cruel.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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Write a note of encouragement to yourself and put it in a drawer that you use a lot. Later in the day, when you go to get a spoon or a sweater, there it will be, looking up at you, saying something like “You are a little sweetheart, aren’t you?” or something like that. It will be good to feel a little embarrassed by the heightened emotion of the note. It will be good to have a treat and a non-gross secret like this note.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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I tried to write down how I felt. I recently found the note I wrote to myself, and all it said was “I’m too overwhelmed to say any more and I’m too scared to say any more and I feel too foolish, but I must not forget this, so I’m writing this down and this is the best that I can do.”

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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It occurs to me as I fight so hard with myself that these cruel and persistent voices are the echoes of trauma from the times when people treated me like I am now treating myself. And that, perhaps, it is possible to close an inner door and shut out voices that are not mine. In the last light of a long day, I sit on a chair on my porch and watch the sky drain colors down and out and I realize I want to hear my voice and only mine. Not the voice of my voice within a cacophony of old pains. Just mine, now. And then, at the end of this day, in the start of another night, at the first lip-lick of this appetite for hearing myself clearly, it really hits me: I never really want to argue with anyone ever again, nor am I under any sort of obligation to do so. It occurs to me that I just never want to argue with a single person ever again and I will do anything I can to prevent it. Will I discuss? Yes. And will I disagree? Yes, I will also do that. I will also most likely feel classic lava-flows of anger. But it is suddenly clear: I know what I want to hear when I hear myself in this life, and I am feeling very certain that there is absolutely no good reason to ever be disrespectful, no matter how upset you are. I do not need to hear bullying voices ever again and there is no reason to ever do that sort of emotional violence to anyone. There is no good rationale behind calling names or being tricky or cutting or scary or to say a ton of swears. That was never my style, but I let other people do it to me, and then I did something to them, too. And now, no.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

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The Code of Hammurabi is the first evidence of legalized patriarchy. Does that send a shiver through your bones? Does that make you feel like we are currently ruled by fucking mummies who hate our mommies? Because that is what it is.

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds