14 Valentines, Day 4
Today's topic at 14valentines is reproductive rights and motherhood.
I got mixed up and thought the topic for today was something else, so I don't have anything in particular to say about this; I'll just note that as someone who has never wanted children, reproductive rights are incredibly important to me personally, and I feel that every woman should have the same right to choose that I have.
What I do have for today is a bunch of quotes by women that I've jotted down over the years. Got your own favorite quotes by women? Please leave them in the comments!
"Travel does what good novelists do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art." -- Freya Stark
"It's much more difficult for a thinking girl to swallow tradition than for a thinking boy. Tradition supports his dignity and undermines hers." -- Willa Muir, Imagined Corners
"What is a family, after all, except memories? -- haphazard and precious as the contents of a catchall drawer in the kitchen." -- Joyce Carol Oates
"Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." -- Madeleine L'Engle
"Love someone and they're yours forever, no matter how much time intervenes." -- Brian Kinney Alice Hoffman
"Many women say that verbal violence causes more harm than physical violence because it damages self-esteem so deeply. Women have not wanted to hear battered women say that the verbal abuse was just as hurtful as the physical abuse: to acknowledge that truth would be tantamount to acknowedging that virtually every woman is a battered woman. It is difficult to keep strong against accusations of being a bitch, stupid, inferior, etc., etc. ... When we internalize these messages, we call the result 'low self-esteem,' a therapeutic individualized term. It seems to me we should use the more political expression: when we internalize these messages, we experience internalized sexism, and we experience it in common with all women living in a sexist world." -- Suzanne Pharr, "Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism"
"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." -- Miriam Beard
"I unlatched the shutters. The light was as intense as a love affair. I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is just as extravagant as a world can be. We are the ones obsessed by measurement. The world just pours it out." -- Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
"Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens." -- Cathy Guisewite
"Stop looking for rational explanations of the absurd. That is what maturity means. Accepting the absurd. Not with resignation, but with love." -- Madeleine L'Engle, The Love Letters
"I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternatives present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world." -- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
I got mixed up and thought the topic for today was something else, so I don't have anything in particular to say about this; I'll just note that as someone who has never wanted children, reproductive rights are incredibly important to me personally, and I feel that every woman should have the same right to choose that I have.
What I do have for today is a bunch of quotes by women that I've jotted down over the years. Got your own favorite quotes by women? Please leave them in the comments!
"Travel does what good novelists do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art." -- Freya Stark
"It's much more difficult for a thinking girl to swallow tradition than for a thinking boy. Tradition supports his dignity and undermines hers." -- Willa Muir, Imagined Corners
"What is a family, after all, except memories? -- haphazard and precious as the contents of a catchall drawer in the kitchen." -- Joyce Carol Oates
"Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." -- Madeleine L'Engle
"Love someone and they're yours forever, no matter how much time intervenes." -- Brian Kinney Alice Hoffman
"Many women say that verbal violence causes more harm than physical violence because it damages self-esteem so deeply. Women have not wanted to hear battered women say that the verbal abuse was just as hurtful as the physical abuse: to acknowledge that truth would be tantamount to acknowedging that virtually every woman is a battered woman. It is difficult to keep strong against accusations of being a bitch, stupid, inferior, etc., etc. ... When we internalize these messages, we call the result 'low self-esteem,' a therapeutic individualized term. It seems to me we should use the more political expression: when we internalize these messages, we experience internalized sexism, and we experience it in common with all women living in a sexist world." -- Suzanne Pharr, "Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism"
"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." -- Miriam Beard
"I unlatched the shutters. The light was as intense as a love affair. I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is just as extravagant as a world can be. We are the ones obsessed by measurement. The world just pours it out." -- Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
"Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens." -- Cathy Guisewite
"Stop looking for rational explanations of the absurd. That is what maturity means. Accepting the absurd. Not with resignation, but with love." -- Madeleine L'Engle, The Love Letters
"I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternatives present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world." -- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry