“
Women joked amongst themselves: 'Why do you think a bride cries on her wedding day? It's for the love that this marriage is putting an end to for all eternity. Men may think a woman has no past- "you were born and then I married you"- but men are fools.
”
”
Nadeem Aslam (Maps for Lost Lovers)
“
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.
”
”
William Morris (The Well At The World's End: Volume I)
“
Witches, the townsfolk whispered, husbands wide-eyed and disbelieving as the women took to the skies, red cloaks billowing. Witches amongst us all this time.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
“
When we too are armed and trained, we can convince men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours; and although we may be delicate and soft, some men who are delicate are also strong; and others, coarse and harsh, are cowards. Women have not yet realized this, for if they should decide to do so, they would be able to fight you until death; and to prove that I speak the truth, amongst so many women, I will be the first to act, setting an example for them to follow.
—Veronica Franco 1546-1591
”
”
Veronica Franco
“
Amongst all the beautiful women in this world..
There's always an idiot ex-boyfriend, who still expects her love again
”
”
69rascal
“
The rise of selfie culture isn’t about vanity; it’s about women taking back control of our images—and our self-images. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Discuss amongst yourselves.
”
”
Paris Hilton (Paris: The Memoir)
“
A day will come when a woman will be elected to the top of the pyramid, to be a prime minister or a president, and the whole world will know her and hear about her. She may be sitting here amongst us.
”
”
Efrat Israeli (Her Promised Road: A Novel)
“
Men are all the same. Novelty amongst themselves displeases and upsets them – but if the novelty is wearing a skirt, they go crazy for it.
(Les hommes sont tous les mêmes. L'étrangeté leur déplaît, d'homme à homme, et les blesse ; mais si l'étrangeté porte des jupes, ils en raffolent.)
”
”
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (Les Diaboliques)
“
Love comes in many forms—self-love, love between friends, familial love and romantic love, amongst them. In fact, this book itself is my love letter—to you, to black women, to women and to all those who understand the beauty that comes through struggle and the benefit of doing their own work to heal, to understand, to grow, and most importantly, to love more fully.
”
”
Jayne Allen (Black Girls Must Die Exhausted)
“
As looking down from great heights brings the urge to fall and end the terror of falling, so his very watching put pressure on them to make a slip as they dried and stacked the plates and cups.
”
”
John McGahern (Amongst Women)
“
Life does not anchor the romantic for long. You will soon be adrift amongst impracticalities. Romance is of the surface of life, a feather floating on a rough and troubled sea.
”
”
Kate Rose (The Angel and the Apothecary)
“
To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes.
”
”
John McGahern (Amongst Women)
“
You would be completely okay with being married to a stranger? You’d be okay with marriage in general? You do know you have a horrible reputation amongst women, don’t you?”
He glares at me. “I wouldn’t call it horrible.”
“You’re a manwhore, playboy, womanizer.” I tick off my fingers. “Wannabe Cassanova.”
“Wannabe? I think I’ve fully achieved Cassanova status at this point.
”
”
Karina Halle (The Wild Heir (Royal Romance, #2))
“
Here’s to the women we’ve met, and to the women we’ve fucked, And to those amongst us who’ve had no such luck. Here’s to beer in the glass, and vodka in the cup, Here’s to pokin’ her in the ass, so she won’t get knocked up. Here’s to all of you, and here’s to me, Together as friends we’ll always be, But if we should ever disagree, Then FUCK ALL OF YOU, HERE’S TO ME!
”
”
Tucker Max (Sloppy Seconds: The Tucker Max Leftovers)
“
For the girls the regular comings and goings restored their superior sense of self, a superiority they had received intact from Moran and which was little acknowledged by the wide world in which they had to work and live. That unexplained notion of superiority was often badly shaken and in need of restoration by the time they came home.
”
”
John McGahern (Amongst Women)
“
tattooing amongst women was not regarded with such lenience: a tattoo on a woman’s body not only flouted conventions of feminine purity and beauty, but also rendered her masculine.
”
”
Hallie Rubenhold (The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper)
“
Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt’s oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
Those in the System, would like us to share their belief that all the changes [we are witnessing] are not connected: they are simply anomalies, isolated symptoms to be treated or preferably ignored, before the all-powerful Western capitalist patriarchal model goes on to ever greater heights and grander ejaculations. Most are numb to it, caught in fear, denial or resistance.
But we, Burning Woman, know this process intimately. Amongst Burning Women and Men, there is a fierce, quiet knowing that these are both the death pangs of the old, and the birthing pangs of the new.
”
”
Lucy H. Pearce (Burning Woman)
“
There’s a sense amongst liberals — who read identity politics into most everything — that conservative women are somehow traitors to their gender (much the same way that black conservatives are traitors to their race and young conservatives are traitors to their generation). To be a conservative woman in the 21st century is to be...ripe for scorn and ridicule by the demonstrably intolerant left.
”
”
S.E. Cupp
“
A day will come when a woman will be elected to the top of the pyramid, to be a prime minister or a president, and the whole world will know her and hear about her. She may be sitting here amongst us.
”
”
Her Promised Road
“
The “Relationships are work” meme is a feminine Social Convention. How often do you hear men say these words? This convention has filtered into popular consciousness even amongst men now. For the LTR men who subscribe to this I’d also speculate that many of them are in relationships where they are “doing the work” for the women who are giving them the ‘grade’ so to speak. And of the single men who subscribe to this mythology, each had to be conditioned to believe this is the case in LTRs by women.
”
”
Rollo Tomassi
“
The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a grey taffeta frock with a very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her old diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women, Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful - more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women - and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men, is like a righteous man working at his good deeds even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward.
”
”
Karen Blixen
“
Dear Young Black Males, Show respect for our young sistas. They are young Queens, and you’re young Kings. Black is beautiful, period. If you’re one of those young men who put light-skinned women on a pedestal, but look down on dark-skinned young ladies, stop it! Black women come in all shades, and all black families have all shades within their families. It’s one thing to have a preference, and that’s okay, but don’t belittle the other. Respect, appreciate, and protect our sistas. In closing: We already have to deal with race related crap from other ethnic groups, so why add to it amongst our own? We need to build each other up and be united as one, no matter what our skin tone is. Don’t physically or mentally abuse your young Queen. Respect her just like you’d like your mother, grandmother, or sister to be respected by another male. There’s nothing attractive or cool about mistreating a woman. Nothing at all!
”
”
Stephanie Lahart
“
Each generation has shouted behind him, Nigger! as he walked our streets; it is he whom we would rather our sisters did not marry; he is banished into the vast and wailing outer darkness whenever we speak of the “purity” of our women, of the “sanctity” of our homes, of “American” ideals. What is more, he knows it. He is indeed the “native son”: he is the “nigger.” Let us refrain from inquiring at the moment whether or not he actually exists; for we believe that he exists. Whenever we encounter him amongst us in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.
”
”
James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son)
“
I am in too great doubt to rule. To prepare or to let be? To prepare for war, which is yet only guessed: train craftsmen and tillers in the midst of peace for bloodspilling and battle: put iron in the hands of greedy captains who will love only conquest, and count the slain as their glory? Will they say to Eru: "At least your enemies were amongst them?" Or to fold hands, while friends die unjustly: let men live in blind peace, until the ravisher is at the gate? What then will they do: match naked hands against iron and die in vain, or flee leaving the cries of women behind them? Will they say to Eru: "At least I spilled no blood?"
-- Tar-Meneldur in Armenelos, Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth)
“
Amongst silly GAMES people play...BLAME is the poorest!
JUDGMENT comes a close second..CYNICISM is for losers..
#Games People Play
”
”
Abha Maryada Banerjee (Nucleus - Power Women: Lead from the Core)
“
I suppose that's how you get old. You find yourself not doing a whole lot of things you once did without thought.
”
”
John McGahern (Amongst Women)
“
Time should have stopped with the clocks but instead it moved in a glazed dream of tiredness without their ticking insistence.
”
”
John McGahern (Amongst Women)
“
Amongst all the beautiful women in this world..
there always an idiot ex-boyfriend, who still expects her love again
”
”
69rascal
“
If i had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found even in the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
“
When I lived on the Bluff in Yokohama I spend a good deal of my leisure in the company of foreign residents, at their banquets and balls. At close range I was not particularly struck by their whiteness, but from a distance I could distinguish them quite clearly from the Japanese. Among the Japanese were ladies who were dressed in gowns no less splendid than the foreigners’, and whose skin was whiter than theirs. Yet from across the room these ladies, even one alone, would stand out unmistakably from amongst a group of foreigners. For the Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by a slight cloudiness. These women were in no way reticent about powdering themselves. Every bit of exposed flesh—even their backs and arms—they covered with a thick coat of white. Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water. Between the fingers, around the nostrils, on the nape of the neck, along the spine—about these places especially, dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. But the skin of the Westerners, even those of a darker complexion, had a limpid glow. Nowhere were they tainted by this gray shadow. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their fingers the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling.
”
”
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (In Praise of Shadows)
“
I am persuaded from long years of experience amongst women of many nationalities that good midwifery is essential for the true happiness of motherhood – that good midwifery is the birth of a baby in a manner nearest to the natural law and design – and good midwifery, next to wise and healthy pregnancy, sets the pattern of the newborn infant and its relationship to its mother.
”
”
Grantly Dick-Read (Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth)
“
We were informed that in this incarnation we would use the interconnectedness of new media and communication to create a mass spiritual awakening in the Western world. Many of us would begin our careers in different fields of media where we would learn the skills to speak out, forming a sort of supportive sisterhood amongst like-hearted women and men – moved by Divine Feminine. We
”
”
Rebecca Campbell (Light is the New Black: A Guide to Answering Your Soul's Callings and Working Your Light)
“
If I could see not one single soul in that wilderness of desolation all around me, then the six of us - mounts and riders, both - could boast amongst us not one soul, either, since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things when the good Lord opened the gates of Eden and let Eve and her familiars thumble out.
”
”
Angela Carter (The Tiger's Bride)
“
There, at the top of the table, alone amongst all these women, stooped over his ample plateful, with his napkin tied around his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, drips of gravy drbibbling gravy from him lips. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a little pigtail tied up with a black ribbon. This was the Marquis' father-in-law... he had led a... Read more tumultuous life of debauchery and duelling, of wagers made and women abducted, had squandered his fortune and terrified his whole family... Emma's eyes kept coming back to this old man with the sagging lips, as though to something wonderfully majestic. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of a queen!
”
”
Gustave Flaubert
“
[T]he power of generalizing ideas, to any great extent, is not very common amongst men or women. But this exercise is the true cultivation of the understanding; and every thing conspires to render the cultivation of the understanding more difficult in the female than the male world.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
“
Alcenith Crawford (a divorced ophthalmologist): "We women doctors have un-happy marriages because in our minds we are the superstars of our families. Having survived the hardship of medical school we expect to reap our rewards at home. We had to assert ourselves against all odds and when we finally graduate there are few shrinking violets amongst us. It takes a special man to be able to cope. Men like to feel important and be the undisputed head of the family. A man does not enjoy waiting for his wife while she performs life-saving operations. He expects her and their children to revolve around his needs, not the other way. But we have become accustomed to giving orders in hospitals and having them obeyed. Once home, it's difficult to adjust. Moreover, we often earn more than our husbands. It takes a generous and exceptional man to forgive all that.
”
”
Adeline Yen Mah (Falling Leaves)
“
And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in areas of contested electoral turbulence from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the rapes transmits the AIDS virus. We don’t know how high that percentage is. We know only that women are subjected to the most dreadful double jeopardy.
The point must also be made that there’s no such thing as the enjoyment of good health for women who live in constant fear of rape. Countless strong women survive the sexual assaults that occur in the millions every year, but every rape leaves a scar; no one ever fully heals.
This business of discrimination against and oppression of women is the world’s most poisonous curse. Nowhere is it felt with greater catastrophic force than in the AIDS pandemic. This audience knows the statistics full well: you’ve chronicled them, you’ve measured them, the epidemiologists amongst you have disaggregated them. What has to happen, with one unified voice, is that the scientific community tells the political community that it must understand one incontrovertible fact of health: bringing an end to sexual violence is a vital component in bringing an end to AIDS.
The brave groups of women who dare to speak up on the ground, in country after country, should not have to wage this fight in despairing and lonely isolation. They should hear the voices of scientific thunder. You understand the connections between violence against women and vulnerability to the virus. No one can challenge your understanding. Use it, I beg you, use it.
”
”
Stephen Lewis
“
Social prejudices are in the process of disappearing. More and more, nature is reclaiming her rights. We're moving in the proper direction. I've much more respect for the woman who has an illegitimate child than for an old maid. I've often been told of unmarried women who had children and brought these children up in a truly touching manner. It often happens amongst women servants, notably. The women who have no children finally go off their heads.
It's somewhat striking to observe that in the majority of peoples the number of women exceeds that of men. What harm is there, then, in every woman's fulfilling her destiny? I love to see this display of health around me. The opposite thing would make me misanthropic. And I'd become really so, if all I had to look at were the spectacle of the ten thousand so-called élite. Luckily for me, I've always retained contacts with the people. Amongst the people, moral health is obligatory. It goes so far that in the country one never reproaches a priest for having a liaison with his servant. People even regard it as a kind of guarantee : the women and girls of the village need not protect themselves. In any case, women of the people are full of understanding; they admit that a young priest can't sweat his sperm out through his brain.
The hypocrites are to be found amongst the ten-thousandstrong élite. That's where one meets the Puritan who can reproach his neighbour for his adventures, forgetting that he has himself married a divorcée. Everybody should draw from his own experience the reasons to show himself indulgent towards others. Marriage, as it is practised in bourgeoise society, is generally a thing against nature. But a meeting between two beings who complete one another, who are made for one another, borders already, in my conception, upon a miracle.
I often think of those women who people the convents—because they haven't met the man with whom they would have wished to share their lives. With the exception of those who were promised to God by their parents, most of them, in fact, are women cheated by life. Human beings are made to suffer passively. Rare are the beings capable of coming to grips with existence.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
“
My dress, which dazzled me as I paraded alone in my white-and-gold drawing-room, was barely noticeable amidst the gorgeous finery of most of the married women. Each had her band of faithful followers, and they all watched each other askance. A few were radiant in triumphant beauty, and amongst these was my mother. A girl at a ball is a mere dancing-machine — a thing of no consequence whatever.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
“
She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot.
”
”
Lillian White (The Mill Owner's Son)
“
The Rothschilds have been closely involved with the global elite since the inception of this group. The oldest known Rothschild went by the name of Uri Feibesch who lived in the early sixteenth century. His great great great grandson was Moses Bauer, who lived in the early eighteenth century. A well-known ancestor of this banking family was Mayer Amschel Bauer, an asset manager in Frankfurt am Main. Among other things he represented the money and assets of sovereign Wilhelm von Hessen. He became very rich, because he attended to the conveyance of the capital that belonged to this sovereign during the French Revolution. Mayer Amschel Bauer chose, without exception, women from very influential families that belonged to the global elite, for his sons. In the same way, his daughters married prominent bankers who also belonged to the global elite. All these families acted in the same way as the royal families: they married amongst themselves. Bauer’s sons were known as the “five Frankfurter”: they became bankers of five European countries.
”
”
Robin de Ruiter (Worldwide Evil and Misery - The Legacy of the 13 Satanic Bloodlines)
“
Arrested and imprisoned, Madame du Barry was judged and condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal at the end of 1793. She was the only woman, amongst the numbers of women who perished in those days, who was unable to face the scaffold; she wept, she implored mercy from the horrible crowd which surrounded her, and that crowd was so affected by her entreaties that the executioner hastened to put an end to her agony. I am convinced that had the victims of that awful time not died so courageously, the Terror would have ceased much sooner.
”
”
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Memoirs of Madame Vigee Lebrun)
“
Well might I ask when he offered fraternity—“Dare I rely on you?” Well might he, doubtless knowing himself, withhold all pledge. True, he had bid me make my own experiments—tease and try him. Vain injunction! Privilege nominal and unavailable! Some women might use it! Nothing in my powers or instinct placed me amongst this brave band. Left alone, I was passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten—my lips would not utter, nor my eyes dart a reminder. It seemed there had been an error somewhere in my calculations, and I wanted for time to disclose it.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
“
After the punches, I went over how to kick. The deer women were at an extreme advantage when it came to kicking. Not only were their legs super powerful and full of muscles from all the climbing and running they did, but they were way longer than any dragon woman’s or orc’s legs could ever hope to be. One well placed kick from the deer women could stop an orc in his tracks, and he’d never even get close to her. “Always remember, aim for the balls,” I instructed while I walked amongst the group. “It’ll hurt like hell and almost definitely send your attacker to his knees. Then, you can come in with a spear, or bow and arrow, whatever you want.
”
”
Logan Jacobs (Monster Girl Islands 4 (Monster Girl Islands, #4))
“
In her book claiming that allegations of ritualistic abuse are mostly confabulations, La Fontaine’s (1998) comparison of social workers to ‘nazis’ shows the depth of feeling evident amongst many sceptics. However, this raises an important question: Why did academics and journalists feel so strongly about allegations of ritualistic abuse, to the point of pervasively misrepresenting the available evidence and treating women disclosing ritualistic abuse, and those workers who support them, with barely concealed contempt? It is of course true that there are fringe practitioners in the field of organised abuse, just as there are fringe practitioners in many other health-related fields. However, the contrast between the measured tone of the majority of therapists and social workers writing on ritualistic abuse, and the over-blown sensationalism of their critics, could not be starker. Indeed, Scott (2001) notes with irony that the writings of those who claimed that ‘satanic ritual abuse’ is a ‘moral panic’ had many of the features of a moral panic: scapegoating therapists, social workers and sexual abuse victims whilst warning of an impending social catastrophe brought on by an epidemic of false allegations of sexual abuse. It is perhaps unsurprising that social movements for people accused of sexual abuse would engage in such hyperbole, but why did this rhetoric find so many champions in academia and the media?
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
When text messaging first came about, it was still a one-to-one negotiation: I propose an idea or something to you, you exchange back to me. When you get to 2010/2011, this new model of communication that exists is that you put something out there into the world and then you wait for a reaction. Now, if you look at the depression rates amongst young men, the correlation between these two things is very measurably concise, and amongst young women it’s insane. I’m not necessarily an empiricist, I believe in nuance and subtext and context, but I think that if there’s evidence like that, I mean — I’m sure we could really map depression on to the sale of avocados, too — but I do feel like that’s got something to do with it and it kind of freaks me out.
”
”
Matty Healy
“
Naturally, at first, one is inclined to regard such differences as mere individual idiosyncrasies. But anyone with the opportunity of gaining a fundamental knowledge of many men will soon discover that such a far-reaching contrast does not merely concern the individual case, but is a question of typical attitudes, with a universality far greater than a limited psychological experience would at first assume. In reality, as the preceding chapters will have shown, it is a question of a fundamental opposition; at times clear and at times obscure, but always emerging whenever we are dealing with individuals whose personality is in any way pronounced. Such men are found not only among the educated classes, but in every rank of society; with equal distinctness, therefore, our types can be demonstrated among labourers and peasants as among the most differentiated members of a nation. Furthermore, these types over-ride the distinctions of sex, since one finds the same contrasts amongst women of all classes. Such a universal distribution could hardly arise at the instigation of consciousness, ie. as the result of a conscious and deliberate choice of attitude. If this were the case, a definite level of society, linked together by a similar education and environment and, therefore, correspondingly localized, would surely have a majority representation of such an attitude. But the actual facts are just the reverse, for the types have, apparently, quite a random distribution. In the same family one child is introverted, and another extraverted.
”
”
C.G. Jung
“
Female short- and long-term mating strategies may be another candidate for this kind of frequency-dependent selection. Some women adopt a restricted sexual practice which enables them to evaluate the likelihood that the male will commit to long-term investment as a partner and parent. Others, who look for gene quality in their male partners rather than investment, will be prepared to have intercourse after only a short delay with attractive men. The dynamic that holds the strategies in equilibrium is their relative frequencies. As the number of unrestricted women rises so do the number of “sexy sons” that they produce and hence the value of selecting for good genes diminishes. But as the number of restricted women begins to rise in response, the competition amongst them increases and advantages begin to accrue to women who do not waste time and effort searching for providing fathers.
”
”
Anne Campbell (A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women)
“
From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease.
Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered.
The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials.
As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.
”
”
Sarah Helm (Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women)
“
There is a difference between having your own movement and cutting yourself off politically from all other movements. This last form of feminist isolationism is attractive in its simplicity. It appears to offer an option which implies that you concentrate on your own struggle and wait for some absolute future when men and women have progressed towards equality. It is of course a profoundly liberal utopian notion. ‘Progress’ is seen as some kind of single linear advance towards a goal. There is no sense of a movement living and working in history, learning though a dialectical interaction of its own efforts in objective circumstances. It forgets that the consciousness of particular groups amongst the oppressed is only partial. While this consciousness must be realized and expressed in their own movement, if the attempt is not continually to extend and connect this partial consciousness to the experience of other oppressed groups, it cannot politicize itself in a revolutionary sense. It becomes locked within its own particularism.
”
”
Sheila Rowbotham (Women, Resistance & Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World)
“
On the 27th morning, at around 8 a.m. the train left Godhra Station. The karsevaks were loudly chanting the Ram Dhoon. The train had hardly gone a few meters, when it suddenly stopped. Somebody had perhaps pulled the chain to stop the train. Before anybody could know what had happened, we saw a huge mob approaching the train. People were carrying weapons like Gupti, Spears, Swords and such other deadly weapons in their hands and were throwing stones at the train. We all got frightened and somehow closed the windows and the doors of the compartment. People outside were shouting loudly, saying ‘Maro, Kato’ and were attacking the train. A loudspeaker from the Masjid (i.e. Mosque) closeby was also very loudly shouting ‘Maro, Kato, Laden na dushmano ne Maro.’ (“Cut, kill, kill the enemies of Laden”)These attackers were so fierce that they managed to break the windows and close the doors from outside before pouring petrol inside and setting the compartment on fire so that nobody could escape alive. A number of attackers entered the compartment and were beating the karsevaks and looting their belongings. The compartments were drenched in petrol all over. We were terrified and were shouting for help but who was there to help us? A few policemen were later seen approaching the compartment but they were also whisked away by the furious mob outside. There was so much of smoke in the compartment that we were unable to see each other and also getting suffocated. Going out was too difficult, however, myself and Pooja somehow managed to jump out through the windows. Pooja was hurt in her back and was unable to stand up. People outside were trying to hold us to take us away but we could escape and run under the burning train and succeeded in crawling towards the cabin. I have seen my parents and sisters being burnt alive right in front of my eyes.” Luckily, Gayatri was not hurt too badly. “We somehow managed to go up to the station and meet our aunty (Masi). After the compartments were completely burnt, the crowd started withering. We saw that even amongst them were men, women and youngsters like us, both male and female.
”
”
M.D. Deshpande (Gujarat Riots: The True Story: The Truth of the 2002 Riots)
“
Hartung tells of a horrifying study by the Israeli psychologist George Tamarin. Tamarin presented to more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren, aged between eight and fourteen, the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua: Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction . . . But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.’ . . . Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword . . . And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. Tamarin then asked the children a simple moral question: ‘Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?’ They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 per cent gave total approval and 26 per cent total disapproval, with rather fewer (8 per cent) in the middle with partial approval. Here are three typical answers from the total approval (A) group: In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim. In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways. Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth. The justification for the genocidal massacre by Joshua is religious in every case. Even those in category C, who gave total disapproval, did so, in some cases, for backhanded religious reasons. One girl, for example, disapproved of Joshua’s conquering Jericho because, in order to do so, he had to enter it: I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse. Two others who totally disapproved did so because Joshua destroyed everything, including animals and property, instead of keeping some as spoil for the Israelites: I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves. I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites. Once again the sage Maimonides, often cited for his scholarly wisdom, is in no doubt where he stands on this issue: ‘It is a positive commandment to destroy the seven nations, as it is said: Thou shalt utterly destroy them. If one does not put to death any of them that falls into one’s power, one transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said: Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth!
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
“
And immediately we rushed like horses, wild with the knowledge of this song, and bolted into a startingly loud harmony:
'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; Britons, never-never-ne-verr shall be slaves!'
and singing, I saw the kings and the queens in the room with us, laughing in a funny way, and smiling and happy with us. The headmaster was soaked in glee. And I imagined all the glories of Britannia, who, or what or which, had brought us out of the ships crossing over from the terrible seas from Africa, and had placed us on this island, and had given us such good headmasters and assistant masters, and such a nice vicar to teach us how to pray to God - and he had come from England; and such nice white people who lived on the island with us, and who gave us jobs watering their gardens and taking out their garbage, most of which we found delicious enough to eat...all through the ages, all through the years of history; from the Tudors on the wall, down through the Stuarts also on the wall, all through the Elizabethans and including those men and women singing in their hearts with us, hanging dead and distant on our schoolroom walls; Britannia, who, or what or which, had ruled the waves all these hundreds of years, all these thousands and millions of years, and kept us on the island, happy - the island of Barbados (Britannia the Second), free from all invasions. Not even the mighty Germans; not even the Russians whom our headmaster said were dressed in red, had dared to come within submarine distance of our island! Britannia who saw to it that all Britons (we on the island were, beyond doubt, little black Britons, just like the white big Britons up in Britannialand. The headmaster told us so!) - never-never-ne-verr, shall be slaves!
”
”
Austin Clarke (Amongst Thistles and Thorns (Caribbean Modern Classics))
“
I have always been a teller of stories. When I was a young girl, my mother carried me out of a grocery store as I screamed about toes in the produce aisle. Concerned women turned and watched as I kicked the air and pounded my mother’s slender back. “Potatoes!” she corrected when we got back to the house. “Not toes!” She told me to sit in my chair—a child-sized thing, built for me—until my father returned. But no, I had seen the toes, pale and bloody stumps, mixed in among those russet tubers. One of them, the one that I had poked with the tip of my index finger, was cold as ice, and yielded beneath my touch the way a blister did. When I repeated this detail to my mother, something behind the liquid of her eyes shifted quick as a startled cat. “You stay right there,” she said. My father returned from work that evening, and listened to my story, each detail. “You’ve met Mr. Barns, have you not?” he asked me, referring to the elderly man who ran this particular market. I had met him once, and I said so. He had hair white as a sky before snow, and a wife who drew the signs for the store windows. “Why would Mr. Barns sell toes?” my father asked. “Where would he get them?” Being young, and having no understanding of graveyards or mortuaries, I could not answer. “And even if he got them somewhere,” my father continued, “what would he have to gain by selling them amongst the potatoes?” They had been there. I had seen them with my own eyes. But beneath the sunbeam of my father’s logic, I felt my doubt unfurl. “Most importantly,” my father said, arriving triumphantly at his final piece of evidence, “why did no one notice the toes except for you?” As a grown woman, I would have said to my father that there are true things in this world observed only by a single set of eyes. As a girl, I consented to his account of the story, and laughed when he scooped me from the chair to kiss me and send me on my way.
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)
“
Hearth to hearth, the Flame of War went. Over snow-blasted mountains and amongst the trees of tangled forests, hiding from the enemies that prowled the skies. Through long, bitterly cold nights where the wind howled as it tried to wipe out any trace of that flame. But the wind did not succeed, not against the flame of the queen. So hearth to hearth, it went. To remote villages where people screamed and scattered as a young-faced woman descended from the skies on a broom, waving her torch high. Not to signal them, but the few women who did not run. Who walked toward the flame, the rider, as she called out, “Your queen summons you to war. Will you fly?” Trunks hidden in attics were thrown open. Folded swaths of red cloth pulled from within. Brooms left in closets, beside doorways, tucked under beds, were brought out, bound in gold or silver or twine. And swords—ancient and beautiful—were drawn from beneath floorboards, or hauled down from haylofts, their metal shining as bright and fresh as the day they had been forged in a city now lying in ruin. Witches, the townsfolk whispered, husbands wide-eyed and disbelieving as the women took to the skies, red cloaks billowing. Witches amongst us all this time. Village to village, where hearths that had never once gone fully dark blazed in answer. Always one rider going out, to find the next hearth, the next bastion of their people. Witches, here amongst us. Witches, now going to war. A rising tide of witches, who took to the skies in their red cloaks, swords strapped to their backs, brooms shedding years of dust with each mile northward. Witches who bade their families farewell, offering no explanation before they kissed their sleeping babes and vanished into the starry night. Mile after mile, across the darkening world, the call went out, ceaseless and unending as the eternal flame that passed from hearth to hearth. “Fly, fly, fly!” they shouted. “To the queen! To war!” Far and wide, through snow and storm and peril, the Crochans flew.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass)
“
Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of 'satanic ritual abuse' legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women's movement and the child protection movement. In efforts to characterise social workers and therapists as hysterical zealots, 'satanic ritual abuse' was, quite literally, 'made fun of': it became the subject of scorn and ridicule as interest groups sought to discredit testimony of sexual abuse as a whole. The groundswell of support that such efforts gained amongst journalists, academics and the public suggests that the pleasures of disbelief found resonance far beyond the confines of social movements for people accused of sexual abuse. These pleasures were legitimised by a pseudo-scientific vocabulary of 'false memories' and 'moral panic' but as Daly (1999:219-20) points out 'the ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as the "merely ideological"'.
The media spotlight has moved on and social movements for people accused of sexual abuse have lost considerable momentum. However, their rhetoric continues to reverberate throughout the echo chamber of online and 'old' media. Intimations of collusion between feminists and Christians in the concoction of 'satanic ritual abuse' continue to mobilise 'progressive' as well as 'conservative' sympathies for men accused of serious sexual offences and against the needs of victimised women and children.
This chapter argues that, underlying the invocation of often contradictory rationalising tropes (ranging from calls for more scientific 'objectivity' in sexual abuse investigations to emotional descriptions of 'happy families' rent asunder by false allegations) is a collective and largely unarticulated pleasure; the catharthic release of sentiments and views about children and women that had otherwise become shameful in the aftermath of second wave feminism. It seems that, behind the veneer of public concern about child sexual abuse, traditional views about the incredibility of women's and children's testimony persist. 'Satanic ritual abuse has served as a lens through which these views have been rearticulated and reasserted at the very time that evidence of widespread and serious child sexual abuse has been consolidating. p60
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
In temperament the Second Men were curiously different from the earlier species. The same factors were present, but in different proportions, and in far greater subordination to the considered will of the individual. Sexual vigour had returned. But sexual interest was strangely altered. Around the ancient core of delight in physical and mental contact with the opposite sex there now appeared a kind of innately sublimated, and no less poignant, appreciation of the unique physical and mental forms of all kinds of live things. It is difficult for less ample natures to imagine this expansion of the innate sexual interest; for to them it is not apparent that the lusty admiration which at first directs itself solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate attitude to all the beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and plant. Parental interest also was strong in the new species, but it too was universalized. It had become a strong innate interest in, and a devotion to, all beings that were conceived as in need of help. In the earlier species this passionate spontaneous altruism occurred only in exceptional persons. In the new species, however, all normal men and women experienced altruism as a passion. And yet at the same time primitive parenthood had become tempered to a less possessive and more objective love, which among the First Men was less common than they themselves were pleased to believe. Assertiveness had also greatly changed. Formerly very much of a man's energy had been devoted to the assertion of himself as a private individual over against other individuals; and very much of his generosity had been at bottom selfish. But in the Second Men this competitive self-assertion, this championship of the most intimately known animal against all others, was greatly tempered. Formerly the major enterprises of society would never have been carried through had they not been able to annex to themselves the egoism of their champions. But in the Second Men the parts were reversed. Few individuals could ever trouble to exert themselves to the last ounce for merely private ends, save when those ends borrowed interest or import from some public enterprise. It was only his vision of a world-wide community of persons, and of his own function therein, that could rouse the fighting spirit in a man. Thus it was inwardly, rather than in outward physical characters, that the Second Men differed from the First. And in nothing did they differ more than in their native aptitude for cosmopolitanism. They had their tribes and nations. War was not quite unknown amongst them. But even in primitive times a man's most serious loyalty was directed toward the race as a whole; and wars were so hampered by impulses of kindliness toward the enemy that they were apt to degenerate into rather violent athletic contests, leading to an orgy of fraternization. It would not be true to say that the strongest interest of these beings was social. They were never prone to exalt the abstraction called the state, or the nation, or even the world-commonwealth. For their most characteristic factor was not mere gregariousness but something novel, namely an innate interest in personality, both in the actual diversity of persons and in the ideal of personal development. They had a remarkable power of vividly intuiting their fellows as unique persons with special needs. Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another. But the Second Men, more intensely and accurately self-conscious, were also more intensely and accurately conscious of one another. This they achieved by no unique faculty, but solely by a more ready interest in each other, a finer insight, and a more active imagination.
”
”
Olaf Stapledon (The Last and First Men)
“
The opponent seemed to shift slightly in the seat. His index finger tapped a card, just a couple strokes. There it was the card that ruined his hand. Her hazel eyes release the player across from her to steal a glance registering the emotion of observers around the table then to her best friend. Sophie looks like a Nervous Nelly-she, always worries. She knows the girl will put too much emphasis on a lost hand. The striking man with his lusty brown eyes tries to draw Sophie closer. Now that he has folded and left the game, he is unnecessary, and the seasoned flirt easily escapes his reach. He leaves with a scowl; Sophie turns and issues knowing wink. Ell’s focus is now unfettered, freeing her again to bring down the last player. When she wins this hand, she will smile sweetly, thank the boys for their indulgence, and walk away $700 ahead. The men never suspected her; she’s no high roller. She realizes she and Sophie will have to stay just a bit. Mill around and pay homage to the boy’s egos. The real trick will be leaving this joint alone without one of them trying to tag along. Her opponent is taking his time; he is still undecided as to what card to keep—tap, tap. He may not know, but she has an idea which one he will choose. He attempts to appear nonchalant, but she knows she has him cornered. She makes a quick glance for Mr. Lusty Brown-eyes; he has found a new dame who is much more receptive than Sophie had been. Good, that small problem resolved itself for them. She returns her focuses on the cards once more and notes, her opponent’s eyes have dilated a bit. She has him, but she cannot let the gathering of onlookers know. She wants them to believe this was just a lucky night for a pretty girl. Her mirth finds her eyes as she accepts his bid.
From a back table, there is a ruckus indicating the crowd’s appreciation of a well-played game as it ends. Reggie knew a table was freeing up, and just in time, he did not want to waste this evening on the painted and perfumed blonde dish vying for his attention. He glances the way of the table that slowly broke up. He recognizes most of the players and searches out the winner amongst them. He likes to take on the victor, and through the crowd, he catches a glimpse of his goal, surprised that he had not noticed her before. The women who frequent the back poker rooms in speakeasies all dress to compete – loud colors, low bodices, jewelry which flashes in the low light. This dame faded into the backdrop nicely, wearing a deep gray understated yet flirty gown. The minx deliberately blended into the room filled with dark men’s suits. He chuckles, thinking she is just as unassuming as can be playing the room as she just played those patsies at the table. He bet she had sat down all wide-eyed with some story about how she always wanted to play cards. He imagined she offered up a stake that wouldn’t be large but at the same time, substantial enough. Gauging her demeanor, she would have been bold enough to have the money tucked in her bodice. Those boys would be eager after she teased them by retrieving her stake. He smiled a slow smile; he would not mind watching that himself. He knew gamblers; this one was careful not to call in the hard players, just a couple of marks, which would keep the pit bosses off her. He wants to play her; however, before he can reach his goal, the skirt slips away again, using her gray camouflage to aid her. Hell, it is just as well, Reggie considered she would only serve as a distraction and what he really needs is the mental challenge of the game not the hot release of some dame–good or not.
Off in a corner, the pit boss takes out a worn notepad, his meaty hands deftly use a stub of a pencil to enter the notation. The date and short description of the two broads quickly jotted down for his boss Mr. Deluca. He has seen the pair before, and they are winning too often for it to be accidental or to be healthy.
”
”
Caroline Walken (Ell's Double Down (The Willows #1))
“
As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has.
In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love.
But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering.
Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.
”
”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“
The omega point of a system is the point of a pure circulation of energies destined, by the very fact of that circulation, to indifference and death. In such a system exchange becomes impossible owing to an immanent equivalence - every particle is in suspense before the only possible event: the meeting with the antiparticle which will cancel it out. It is at this point that the entire system nears the alpha point of another mechanism. Beyond a certain phase the whole system tends towards this fatal point.
Radical objectivity is the exact opposite of the objectivity of science. The one addresses the rationality of partial processes, the other the irony of the overall process.
Women constitute a secret society. They are all involved together in secret discussions. Those I have known - none of whom have known the others except by accident - nonetheless weave amongst themselves a collusive web of seduc tion. They signal to each other, as the events in a lifetime signal to each other in their apparently indifferent spiral. Moreover, each one, with an unacknowledged fervour, envelops all her rivals, past and future, in the same field of jealousy, fascination and complicity - and in turn she is all the others together, those whom you have kept apart in life, finally united in the only real secret society - the dream society, the society of women.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard
“
Amongst the twelve women‚ chained together by the waist in sixes‚ was one whose demeanour was so at odds with her situation that in any other circumstances I would have taken her for a person of the highest rank. She was visibly distressed and her clothes were filthy‚ but these things detracted so little from the impression she made that I found myself filled with respect and pity for her. She was trying‚ as far as the chains would permit‚ to turn away from the onlookers and this attempt to conceal her face from them was so natural that it seemed inspired by female modesty.
”
”
Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles (Manon Lescaut (Dedalus European Classics))
“
And it also seems likely that many Scots are directly descended from the hunter-gatherer communities of the western refuges. Very recent ancestral DNA research shows that more than 40 per cent carry markers from the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups identified as H, H1 and HVO, all of which originated amongst the people of the painted caves. Each of us carries a great deal of information in our DNA but two small parts of our genomes are especially informative about ancestry. Men carry a Y-chromosome marker inherited from their fathers and their fathers before them, away back in time, and they also inherit mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from their mothers and their mothers, again away back in deep time. Women carry only mtDNA but they pass it on to their children of both genders. So, men carry mtDNA too but can only pass on their Y-chromosome marker, their fatherline, to their sons. In the act of reproduction, when the 6 billion letters of DNA we carry are passed on, tiny errors of copying are made. These are known as DNA markers and both their origin and the date when they arose can be calculated. Therefore, it is possible to say with considerable certainty that more than 40 per cent of all Scots, men and women, carry the
”
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Alistair Moffat (Scotland: A History from Earliest Times)
“
Interestingly, single women were prominent amongst rentiers, investors and money lenders, suggesting that wealthier women had long found trade an unappetizing option. 11
”
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Amanda Vickery (The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England)
“
Soon the whole fading plain is covered with them and on the other side of the street lie nothing but graves, and dark, veiled women who bustle amongst the dead in shapes of grief.
”
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Annemarie Schwarzenbach (Morte na Pérsia)
“
But there’s a kind of freedom that comes with official neglect, especially if you’re someone who’s usually the subject of official disdain. So to the Folly came Jews and Nonconformists, foreigners, and criminals and, of course, women.
”
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Ben Aaronovitch (Amongst Our Weapons (Rivers of London, #9))
“
Almost as soon as he was inaugurated, Jackson waged war against the Cherokee people with such savagery (he recommended, amongst other things, that Cherokee women and children should be killed as part of policy of extermination) that he was given the nickname “Indian Killer” in the U.S. administration. His policy proved popular with the American people, and he was re-elected to serve a second term as president in 1832.
”
”
Hourly History (Trail of Tears: A History from Beginning to End (Native American History))
“
Of all the Balkan subject peoples, the Albanians were most inclined to convert to Islam. The majority of converts, however, were men, whilst women often retained their Christian beliefs even when married to Muslims, and were a factor in maintaining goodwill between the members of the two faiths.9 At various times whole villages voluntarily renounced the religion of their forefathers for political advantage. The ability to gain a timar or avoid donating a precious healthy son to the devshirme were but two of many reasons for abandoning Christianity. The majority of conversions took place in the lowlands, around the Shkumbi river, where direct Ottoman pressure could most easily be exerted. Amongst the Albanians of Kosova there appears to have been a far greater readiness to accept Islam, perhaps because of the pressure of their close proximity to the Serbs, who by the 1830s had achieved their own autonomous state. Albanians who wished to retain their Christian faith after the Ottoman conquest often found it difficult to compete with those who had converted. To make their already difficult lives easier, therefore, many Albanians gradually adopted at least the outer signs of the Islamic faith, thus obtaining such privileges as the right to bear arms.
”
”
Miranda Vickers (The Albanians: A Modern History)
“
Men talked about things that happened in the world, about events; women, by contrast, talked amongst themselves about being in the world. The difference was crucial.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (Bertie Plays the Blues (44 Scotland Street #7))
“
In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings.
pg200
And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure.
Pg224
The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I.
This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality.
Pg226
On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption!
Pg227
A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.”
Pg229
The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work.
Pg230
“The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses.
Pg237
The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.
Thus ends the Sword.
A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.
”
”
Edouard de Beaumont (The Sword And Womankind: Being A Study Of The Influence Of The Queen Of Weapons, Upon The Moral And Social Status Of Women (1900))
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Ibn Ishaq has recorded that Makkan ladies were once gathered around Ka’abah on the occasion of a festival. Hubal’s idol was set up in the vicinity of Ka’abah along with numerous smaller idols. Pilgrims not only circumambulated Ka’abah, but also prostrated before the idols and invoked them to fulfill their needs. Khadijah (May Allah be pleased with her) was also present on the occasion. The gathering of women, consisting of old as well young, rich as well as poor, assumed divinity in the idols and paid them respects. A Jewish man who witnessed the occasion observed the women for some time, then spoke, “Respected ladies! A Messenger of God is due to arrive amongst you. Whoever of you finds the opportunity to marry him should do so.” The chitchat of the ladies was suspended for a moment. They were astonished by what the man had just said. They wondered who this man was and what he meant. Then some of them said he was not one of the Makkans. They thought he had mocked them and insulted their deities. Some of them started yelling at him. Others picked up stones and pebbles and hurled at him. With the exception of Khadijah, every other woman participated in scorning the man. It is recorded that Khadijah (May Allah be pleased with her) chose not to speak in defense of the false deities and remained silent. Khadijah (May Allah be pleased with her) did not sympathize with the idols and the false deities even before Islam.
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Abdul Malik Mujahid (Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah (R.A))
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A common misconception, especially amongst women, is that lifting weights - regular resistance training - will cause your muscles to bulk up, creating a larger appearance and a higher number on the scales. The requirements for creating such a physique are actually quite difficult. Bodybuilders and athletes need to be eating in a calorie surplus to see muscle growth, meaning they're eating well above the number of calories they're burning. For those of us eating at maintenance or in a calorie deficit, muscle growth in this way is far more challenging. In addition, the difference in hormone concentrations between men and women means it's even harder for women to look 'bulky'. Instead, lifting weights as a woman in a calorie deficit will help to create a toned appearance.
Growing a bit of muscle can actually help with overall fat loss. As muscle uses more calories than fat tissue, people with more muscle have a higher metabolic rate.
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Anonymous
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I realize that sharing seems to be all the rage amongst the women of Bliss, but you should know that I will not be jumping on that particular bandwagon. Don’t go looking for a third.” That was the furthest thing from her mind. She could barely handle Stef, much less a friend of his. “You’re safe. I know Callie and Rachel go on and on about how hot the sex is, but they have to do the laundry, too. Other women see hot double penetration, and all I see is double the underwear to clean. And I bet they eat a lot, too.” Stef laughed,
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Sophie Oak (One to Keep (Nights in Bliss, Colorado, #3))
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Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves” (pg.33)
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Alexander McCall Smith
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The light of water showed through the tree trunks as they drew close to the narrow wood along the lake but once on the fringe of the trees they lost all resentment at the sight of the thick floor of bluebells beneath the trees.
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John McGahern (Amongst Women)
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I was a young girl, a virgin, and therefore men denied me rationality just as they denied it to all those who were not exactly like themselves, in all their unreason. If I could see not one single soul in that wilderness of desolation all around me, then the six of us-mounts and riders both-could boast amongst us not one soul, either, since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things when the good Lord opened the gates of Eden and let Eve and her familiars tumble out. Understand, then, that though I would not say I privately engaged in metaphysical speculation as we rode through the reedy approaches to the river, I certainly meditated on the nature of my own state, how I had been bought and sold, passed from hand to hand. That clockwork girl who powdered my cheeks for me; had I not been allotted only the same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll-maker had given her?
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Angela Carter
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When I look at the world today, from the physician's point of view, from the health point of view, what do we see? We see a society, not just in North America, but as globalization extends its reach around the world, we see increasing levels of certain illnesses, certain mental illnesses like ADHD, which didn't use to exist in certain countries and now, all of a sudden, they have a problem with it.
Auto-immune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease that didn't use to exist in certain societies, now exist in these societies. If you look at North America, if you look at multiple sclerosis in the 1930s or 40s, the gender ratio was about 1 woman to every man. Now that ratio is about 3 and a half women for every man. If you look at something like asthma which is rising amongst kids... a study in the United States last year showed that the more episodes of racism a black American woman experiences, the greater the risk for asthma. We've known for a long time that the more stress the parents have, the greater the risk of the child having asthma.
In North America millions of kids are on medication now, for depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more and more kids are being medicated all the time. If you look at something like autism spectrum disorder, it is now being diagnosed 40 times as often as it was 30 or 40 years ago. Anxiety is the fastest growing diagnose in North America amongst young people.
The usual medical explanations for any of these phenomena just doesn't hold. Because medicine, for the most part, sees all of these problems as simply biological issues. Multiple sclerosis being a disease of the nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease being a malaise of the gut. ADHD, depression, anxiety, addiction.. these are problems of the brain. And, for the most part, we like to rely on genetic explanations, that it is genes that are causing these things, or, if it is not genes, we don't know what is causing it.
Of course, if you just look at that one little fact that I told you about the ratio of women and men in multiple sclerosis.. you know right away it can't be genetic. Because genes don't change in a population over 7 years and if they did, why would they change more for one gender than the other? Nor it can be the climate nor the diet because that also hasn't changed more for one gender than the other. Something else is going on. For ADHD and the fact that many more kids are being diagnosed.. that can't be genetic, cause genes don't change in a population over 10 years or 5 years or 15 years.
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Gabor Maté
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JUSTIFYING OPPRESSION While history has proven Malthusianism empirically false, however, it provides the ideal foundation for justifying human oppression and tyranny. The theory holds that there isn’t enough to go around, and can never be. Therefore human aspirations and liberties must be constrained, and authorities must be empowered to enforce the constraining. During Malthus’s own time, his theory was used to justify regressive legislation directed against England’s lower classes, most notably the Poor Law Act of 1834, which forced hundreds of thousands of poor Britons into virtual slavery. 11 However, a far more horrifying example of the impact of Malthusianism was to occur a few years later, when the doctrine motivated the British government’s refusal to provide relief during the great Irish famine of 1846. In a letter to economist David Ricardo, Malthus laid out the basis for this policy: “The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.” 12 For the last century and a half, the Irish famine has been cited by Malthusians as proof of their theory of overpopulation, so a few words are in order here to set the record straight. 13 Ireland was certainly not overpopulated in 1846. In fact, based on census data from 1841 and 1851, the Emerald Isle boasted a mere 7.5 million people in 1846, less than half of England’s 15.8 million, living on a land mass about two-thirds that of England and of similar quality. So compared to England, Ireland before the famine was if anything somewhat underpopulated. 14 Nor, as is sometimes said, was the famine caused by a foolish decision of the Irish to confine their diet to potatoes, thereby exposing themselves to starvation when a blight destroyed their only crop. In fact, in 1846 alone, at the height of the famine, Ireland exported over 730,000 cattle and other livestock, and over 3 million quarts of corn and grain flour to Great Britain. 15 The Irish diet was confined to potatoes because—having had their land expropriated, having been forced to endure merciless rack-rents and taxes, and having been denied any opportunity to acquire income through manufactures or other means—tubers were the only food the Irish could afford. So when the potato crop failed, there was nothing for the Irish themselves to eat, despite the fact that throughout the famine, their homeland continued to export massive amounts of grain, butter, cheese, and meat for foreign consumption. As English reformer William Cobbett noted in his Political Register: Hundreds of thousands of living hogs, thousands upon thousands of sheep and oxen alive; thousands upon thousands of barrels of beef, pork, and butter; thousands upon thousands of sides of bacon; and thousands and thousands of hams; shiploads and boats coming daily and hourly from Ireland to feed the west of Scotland; to feed a million and a half people in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in Lancashire; to feed London and its vicinity; and to fill the country shops in the southern counties of England; we beheld all this, while famine raged in Ireland amongst the raisers of this very food. 16 “The population should be swept from the soil.” Evicted from their homes, millions of Irish men, women, and children starved to death or died of exposure. (Contemporary drawings from Illustrated London News.)
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Robert Zubrin (Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism)
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Hope is something worth practising. Hope makes each day go down as easy as a cold martini or a cup of gazpacho or a spicy shrimp salad or a big, hearty roast chicken shared amongst friends. I wish we were having this conversation in this real life, but i am grateful to have had this feast with you all the same. And I will let Maya Angelou give us a benediction from that stage in New York decades ago. Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older, that's the truth of it. They honour their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It's serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail, and maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs. Anybody can have that. I mean, in truth. That's what I write. What it really is like. I'm just telling a very simple story, feast by feast, friend by friend, nightcap by nightcap, hope by hope. Let's grow up together, just telling our simple stories over a good meal, learning from those who've done it before us.
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Alissa Wilkinson (Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women)
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trying to get their stories filed without getting stuck here on OT.” A few of Sarah’s coworkers glanced up from their screens as she guided Dez and Sully through the newsroom, a couple of the women offering gleeful waves. Dez imagined Sully was a regular topic of conversation amongst some of the staff around here these days. Sarah led them into a large room filled with shelves and cabinets, then through to a row of microfiche machines and a lone computer. Dez eyed the microfiche
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H.P. Bayne (The Hanged Man (The Braddock & Gray Case Files #6))
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I’d never had an issue being confident amongst men—and women—alike. I’d walk into any room and fucking own it, because everything is yours if you believe it is. This is different. With him, it’s always so fucking different.
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Meagan Brandy (Fate of a Royal (Lords of Rathe, #1))
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The self-feeling bears no relation, amongst quite normal men and women, to physical fact. The nature of their particular physique, is not that the last thing of which they think ? Look, an intensely ill-favoured woman she will frequently behave as if she were very attractive. No one is surprised—for they in their turn are they not beauties too ? stunted puny men, to turn to men, do they not possess the assurance of a champion athlete ? Well then, all these people have the sensations of being what they are not : whatever happens, a something more favourable than the facts isn’t it ! This is the rule of the normal average.
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Wyndham Lewis (The Apes of God)
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[She Stoops to Conquer] seems to be a comedy of pure plot; yet there is also psychological acuity under the mathematical ingenuity. This is seen most clearly in the character of Marlow, who is painted as a palpable victim of the English class system. His dilemma is that he is a tongue-tied wreck amongst women of his own class but brimming with sexual bravura with a barmaid or college bedmaker. He himself expresses his dilemma with painful clarity:
MARLOW: My life has been chiefly spent in a college or an inn, in seclusion from that lovely part of the creation that chiefly teach men confidence. I don't know that I was ever familiarly acquainted with a single modest woman except my mother. But among females of another class, you know -
HASTINGS: Ay, among them you are impudent enough of all conscience.
Marlow himself rightly calls this 'the English malady': a paralysing fear, resulting from a monastic education, of women of his own class and an ability to be at ease only with social inferiors whom he can bully, dominate or treat as purchasable commodities. It took an observant Irishman to pin down the damage done to the English male psyche by a punitive educational system.
[...]
And there is further evidence of Marlow's split personality when Kate accosts him in the guise of a household drudge. Marlow the psychological wreck turns into a brazen lech who, within seconds, is asking to taste the nectar of Kate's lips. Not only that. He is soon bragging of his sexual exploits at a louche London club attended by the likes of Mrs Mantrap, Lady Betty Blackleg, the Countess of Sligo, Mrs Langhorns and old Miss Biddy Buckskin.
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Michael Billington (The 101 Greatest Plays: From Antiquity to the Present)
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The aroma of paper envelops me like a warm blanket, one that feels like home. Safety. I’m so comforted in this moment, tears begin to prick my eyes. I run my fingers along the spines of the books, reading each title with care as if greeting a dear friend. I am, in truth. For here I am amongst my true peers. Men and women who’ve been swept beneath the tides of love, overcome by its grief and madness, in all its glorious stupidity.
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Tessonja Odette (Curse of the Wolf King (Entangled with Fae, #1))
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When I was about twelve or thirteen, the Peabodys had a party just like this one—just like any of their parties, I guess. They are social creatures, the Families. They like to gather amongst their kind for luncheons or cocktails or dinners or bridge, any excuse will do. Because they generally prefer their dogs to their children, the three of us Winthrops used to sneak away and join Amory and Shep to watch the grown-ups at play the way you watched animals at a zoo, from the banister if the party were indoors, and if it were out on the terrace, we’d hide among the rocks. I remember the smell of perfume and cigarettes, how the women wore these colorful gowns, how their hair frizzled from their hairdos in the salt air, how they dangled their cocktail glasses between their fingers and smoked their cigarettes, stained with lipstick. I used to practice with rolled-up paper squares in the mirror at home.
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Beatriz Williams (The Beach at Summerly)
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women amongst them?
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John Gwynne (Malice (The Faithful and the Fallen, #1))
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It’s an unusual question, though not as unusual as you might think amongst women who have had children. Once you’ve been slit open by a surgeon or taken a shit in a birthing tub, a whole glittering world of conversational topics emerges.
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Kimberly King Parsons (We Were the Universe)
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I know that when you have your debut, you’ll be surrounded by a sea of ordinary. Of women who were told to not smile too widely, or laugh too loudly, and who perfectly followed those terrible dictates from cold instructors. And amongst them all, there will be you, with a smile like sunshine and a spirit not crushed by the constraints society placed upon every other woman, whose light will be so very dim in the bright rays that emanate from you.
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Christi Caldwell (The Duke Alone (The McQuoids of Mayfair, #1))
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But pretending that sex does not exist has serious consequences. Surveys establish that 50 per cent of children in India are exposed to some form of sexual abuse and 20 per cent to extreme forms. Fearful parents unwilling to deal with the widespread presence of sexual predators amongst us expose their uneducated and therefore unprotected children to sexual danger.
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Deepa Narayan (Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women)
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Who Were the Sutas The narrator of the Mahābhārata as we know it is Rishi Ugrashravā Sauti. He was the son of Rishi Lomaharshan and belonged to the Suta community. Hence, the appellation ‘Sauti’. The community was considered a ‘mixed jāti’8 of offsprings of a Brāhmin mother and Kshatriya father. Sutas were considered expert sārthis9. The role of the charioteer was significant in ancient India. Charioteers were usually those who were close friends and confidants of the person they worked with. Their role became even more important in a war. They were to not just steer the chariot but also ensure the warrior they were driving stayed safe and motivated. They acted as guides in the war. The importance of a charioteer becomes evident from the fact that Arjuna asked Krishna to be his charioteer. To match Krishna, Karna asked Shalya, the old king of Madra, to drive his chariot. In addition, Sutas were engaged as storytellers, history keepers and ministers in royal courts. Many were also warriors and commanders. Famous Sutas in the Mahābhārata are: 1. Sanjay, the narrator of the Bhagavad Gitā and the Kurukshetra war to Dhritarāshtra. He played the role of charioteer, friend, trusted messenger and mentor to Dhritarāshtra. 2. Sudeshnā, the queen of King Virāta of Matsya desh, Uttarā’s mother and Abhimanyu’s mother-in-law. She was the maternal grandmother of Parikshita. 3. Keechak, the commander of King Virāta of Matsya desh. He was the brother of Sudeshnā and amongst the most powerful men in Matsya. 4. Karna, though born to Kunti, was raised in a Suta family of Adhiratha and Rādhā. He married women from the Suta community and his children were brought up as Sutas. Duryodhana crowned him the King of Anga desh. A great warrior, considered equal to Arjuna in archery, he was the commander of the Kaurava army after the death of Dronāchārya. Not only Karna but the sons of his foster parents were also trained warriors. They had participated in the Mahābhārata war on the side of the Kauravas. 5. Rishi Bandi, a great sage whose story is narrated in the Vana Parva of the Mahābhārata. In the Rāmāyana, one of the closest confidants and an important minister of King Dashratha of Ayodhyā is Sumantra, who belonged to the Suta community.
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Ami Ganatra (Mahabharata Unravelled: Lesser-Known Facets of a Well-Known History)
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Like other matters in the US, suffering was a communal phenomenon made private. It ought to have been aired out and understood as something that existed amongst social relations—between parent and child, person amongst peers, women amongst men, white amongst Black, boss amongst worker—and yet it was removed from this context and rearticulated as a personal burden of genetically disadvantaged people. For lack of a better phrase, “just deal with it” was the governing mantra. Some could deal with it—that is, repress it—and did not speak to it outside of the trust of a few intimate confidants. Others had a more precarious, vulnerable disposition to insanity, and the individualization of suffering came at a tremendous personal cost.
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M.V. Perry (A Revolution of the Mind)
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Like other matters in the US, suffering was a communal phenomenon made private. It ought to have been aired out and understood as something that existed amongst social relations—between parent and child, person amongst peers, women amongst men, white amongst Black, boss amongst worker—and yet it was removed from this context and rearticulated as a personal burden of genetically disadvantaged people. For lack of a better phrase, “just deal with it” was the governing mantra.
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M.V. Perry (A Revolution of the Mind)
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I imagine that writing about erotica is just about the most boring thing in the world. Your timing has to be just right. Men and women have to fall in love with your characters. Your characters have to be believable. That's why the 50 Shades trilogy intrigued both men andwomen across the world. It was a rubbish book that had a phenomenal
following amongst mostly women whose partners were physically, mentally, verbally towards them. Does this include sodomy, and rape? We must, MUST ask ourselves that question. What happens to men when they are wounded (for their transgressions or otherwise). What happens when a man is wounded by gender abuse. Is that what happened to his partner in another life. This raises more questions about transcendental meditation, questions about Siddhartha (the Buddha), the occult and sacrifice. 50 shades covers arousal, stimulation, the woman being submissive, role play (much like the roles both men and women play in society, don't you think). Men behaving badly or men behaving like women (like the homosexual also known as gay). 50 shades (no, I don't watch rubbish like that but I do understand that a lot of couples, heterosexual and homosexual watch pornography and pornography is not meant for children, look out for censorship here again when it comes to the sexual impulse, sexuality, gender bias and gender discrimination).
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Abigail George
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It was a shame that black women hated on the next woman so much. There was enough hatred from other races, but to have it amongst each other was pitiful. Demi
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Nako (Pointe Of No Return: Giving You All I Got (The Underworld Book 2))
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The summers were a sight better, for we moved—the lot of us—outdoors to my father’s booleys. These were makeshift structures, long and narrow, and thatched with rushes, built new each year and set in the midst of our upland pastures amongst our herds. Aye, we lived with our animals, somethin’ the English could never fathom. But it was a marvelous thing, livin’ so close to the land with the very beasts that were so great a source of our wealth. ’Twas very green and the weather soft, and the booley house smelled of fresh rushes. The women would spin and weave. And sometimes we’d hunt with our hounds, or hawk with our falcons. There
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Robin Maxwell (The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate O'Malley)
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I was slowly becoming aware that chauvinism and sexism was just as marked among many of the Western attendings as it was amongst many of the Saudi and other Arab physicians, as though the climate of the workplace promoted an infectious transmission of male supremacy.
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Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
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you got me a little dog,” I say. “It’s a puppy,” Rhone says again. His voice is lost amongst the others in the room who are all shouting out names. The puppy starts barking. “I am going to train you and you are going to be even better than Leo,” I say to the puppy as she tilts her head to the side. “Of course she’ll be better than Leo, females are much smarter than males,” Jacquiline says, matter of fact. The other women in the room shout their agreement. “Olina’s a female, and she’s talking to a dog,” Sanjay says in response, pointing a finger at me. “It’s a puppy, Sanjay,” I say, not taking my eyes off the squirming animal. “I told you they’re stupid,” Jacquiline says to me in a loud confiding whisper.
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Kelly St. Clare (Fantasy of Frost (The Tainted Accords, #1))
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At such times a young couple found it difficult to believe that in a few hours the whistle would call them, two slaves amongst a multitude of slaves, when they felt that each other was the most important person in the world! They walked on air, and saw the stars shine , and even poverty could not numb their hearts, but let them stray for a short time in that fairy garden whose gate opens but once , and , once closing, nevermore! Miss Nobody- Ethel Carnie
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Ethel Carnie Holdsworth
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The new Pharaoh surpassed his father Malol and all the former kings in wickedness, and he made heavier the yoke upon the children of Israel. He went to Goshen with his servants, and increased their labor, and he said unto them, "Complete your work, each day's task, and let not your hands slacken from the work from this day forward, as you did in the day of my father." He placed officers over them from amongst the children of Israel, and over these officers he placed taskmasters from amongst his servants. And he put before them a measure for bricks, according to the number they were to make day by day, and whenever any deficiency was discovered in the measure of their daily bricks, the taskmasters of Pharaoh would go to the women of the children of Israel, and take their infants from them, as many as the number of bricks lacking in the measure, and these babes they put into the building instead of the missing bricks. The taskmasters forced each man of the Israelites to put his own child in the building. The father would place his son in the wall, and cover him over with mortar, all the while weeping, his tears running down upon his child.
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Louis Ginzberg (The Legends of the Jews Vol 1-4)
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Over the coming days, one of the things that shocked the British most was the nonchalant way that the surviving prisoners lived their lives amongst the corpses, as if such sights were perfectly normal. One horrified medical officer described several such vignettes: a woman too weak to stand propping herself against a pile of corpses, as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels; a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated.36
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Keith Lowe (Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II)