Dominant Husband Quotes

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Life is never going to be boring with Christian, and I’m in this for the long haul. I love this man: my husband, my lover, father of my child, my sometimes Dominant……my Fifty Shades.
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3))
Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it," urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room. That is no excuse," returned Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
Formerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old form, women were forced to obey an overbearing husband in the privacy of an unjust marriage. In the new form, the working single mother is economically abandoned by her former husband and ignored by a patriarchal society at large.
Arlie Russell Hochschild (The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home)
If I were marooned here till it suited my overbearing, domineering, pig-headed jackass of a husband to finish risking his stupid neck, I'd use the time to see what I could spot.
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
Sounds to me you just haven’t found the right man, is all,” Sage proposed. “When the time comes, it will be when you least expect it. My late husband died three years ago, and Nick and Niki came into my life unexpectedly. My husband ran a background check on me before we met, which was understandable. He had been through a messy divorce. He tried to stay away from me but couldn’t. I’m blessed to have them, including this bundle of joy,” she shone with pleasure.
Sharon Carter (Love Auction II: Love Designs)
Diane
Domina Dixon (Making The Perfect Housewife: Part One: Dominating and Feminizing Her Husband)
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
The books were old and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken through in its middle, and it was held together with a few threads. "Everything is so dirty here," said K., shaking his head, and before he could pick the books up the woman wiped some of the dust off with her apron. K. took hold of the book that lay on top and threw it open, an indecent picture appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on a sofa, the base intent of whoever drew it was easy to see but he had been so grossly lacking in skill that all that anyone could really make out were the man and the woman who dominated the picture with their bodies, sitting in overly upright postures that created a false perspective and made it difficult for them to approach each other. K. didn't thumb through that book any more, but just threw open the next one at its title page, it was a novel with the title, What Grete Suffered from her Husband, Hans. "So this is the sort of law book they study here," said K., "this is the sort of person sitting in judgement over me.
Franz Kafka (The Trial)
Everybody is trying to dominate. That is the nature of the ego: to make every effort to dominate the other – whether the other is husband, wife, or children, or friends, makes no difference – to dominate, to find ways and means to dominate. And if everybody is trying to dominate and you are also trying to dominate there will be struggle. The struggle is not because others are trying to dominate; the struggle is because you are not trying to understand how the ego functions. You drop out of it! The others cannot be changed, and you will be unnecessarily wasting your life if you try to change the others. That is THEIR problem. They will suffer if they are not understanding, why should you suffer? You simply understand that everybody is trying to dominate, "I drop out of it, I will not try to dominate"... your struggle disappears. And a very beautiful thing happens.
Osho (Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing)
I surrender to the pain because it pleases my Master and I know he enjoys giving it to me and that he needs to give it to me in order for him to feel content. That, Dylan, is what appeals to me about BDSM. Pleasing you, my Master, owner and husband, and cherishing you for the Dominant that you are, and feeling a sense of pride in the pleasure and joy that I give to you when I’m obedient and things are perfect and just the way you want them to be. BDSM gives me that sense of purpose and that purpose is to submit to you completely and to accept your gift of submission to me.
Ella Dominguez (The Art of Control (The Art of D/s, #3))
Some men, certainly, have used the beauty myth abusively against women, the way some men use their fists; but there is a strong consciousness among both sexes that the real agents enforcing the myth today are not men as individual lovers or husbands, but institutions, that depend on male dominance.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.
Alison Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (World Leaders Past & Present))
Take them off," I order and without hesitation she removes them and drops them on the floor. She lifts her cami so I can see her, then rubs her hand over her tummy and over the top of her mound while she watches me. When I look into her eyes she's licking her lips. "Do you like what you see?" she asks playfully. "You know I do." "Good. When you apologize, you can have some." Oh, hell no. "Let me remind you, as your husband and your Master, I don't need your permission. I'll have some with or without an apology, but because I love you and because it was a shitty thing for me to accuse you of, I'll apologize anyway. So for what's worth - I'm sorry for accusing you of hitting on Sawyer. I love you. Now open your legs like a good wife and let me fuck you.
Ella Dominguez (The Art of Domination (The Art of D/s, #2))
One more point. The aspect of Venus is most favorable and potentially dominant over that of Mars. Venus symbolizes yourself, of course, but Mars is both your husband and young Smith—as a result of the unique circumstances of his birth. This throws a double burden on you and you must rise to the challenge; you must demonstrate those qualities calm wisdom and restraint which are peculiarly those of woman.
Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
   'Not all women have the failings that I must have had, given that I have not succeeded in tying you to me,' she said, and added, with a sigh, 'or else not all husbands are like you.'    'Wives...false, jealous, domineering, flirtatious, or devout...husbands, wicked, inconstant, cruel or despotic: that in a nutshell is how all individuals on earth are, Madame; do not expect to find any paragons of virtue.'   
Marquis de Sade (Incest)
Native nations were often matrilineal: that is, clan identity passed through the mother, and a husband joined a wife’s household, not vice versa. Matrilineal does not mean matriarchal, which, like patriarchal, assumes that some group has to dominate—a failure of the imagination.
Gloria Steinem (Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions)
You know about trauma bonding, right?” the agent asked abruptly. “Forget kidnapping victims, you see it all the time with battered women. They’re isolated, at the mercy of their dominating spouse, going through intense spells of abject terror followed by even more emotionally draining periods of soul-wrenching apologies. The trauma itself creates a powerful bonding element. The things these two have gone through together, how could anyone else ever understand? It becomes one more thing that makes a woman stay, even after her husband has beat the crap out of her again.
Lisa Gardner (Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren, #8))
We are slaves of Time. So we have inherent tendency to become master of others. Even in a family, a power play goes on in the name of love and duty (between parents-children, husband-wife). We must thank the pet dogs for absorbing this tendency of human beings and making home environment healthier.
Shunya
She was remarkably beautiful. And yet there was something in her eyes that I didn't like. A bit of...no...I don't want to say falsity...that would be too...it was--I don't know how to explain it -- it was something like triumphant cunning. Odile needed to dominate. She wanted to impose her will, her version of the truth. Her beauty had given her a lot of self-confidence and she believed, almost in good faith, that if she said something then it became true. This worked with your husband, who adored her, but not with me, and she resented me for that.
André Maurois (Climats)
You raise one eyebrow and regard me with another intense stare. “Start by stripping please Jenna.” I hear what you say and yet on some level I can’t quite process it. “Strip?” I ask, as though I don’t understand your demand. “Yes, strip. Take off all of your clothes. I want to see you naked. Now please.” I feel dazed, yet I let my jacket fall to the floor, and start work on my shirt buttons. Your eyes never leave me. I can feel them mining into me whilst I tackle the third button. Why is this so weird? You’re my husband after all. You’ve seen me undress and naked countless times. Yet this is different. I am not just undressing, I am stripping. It’s not my decision; it’s at your command. You are not just Oliver now; you’re my Husband – some dominant entity now in charge. For some strange reason, I am finding it really hot! The look in your eyes is not just appreciative; it’s carnal. Waves begin to rise in my pool of desire.
Felicity Brandon (Friday's Lesson)
One doesn’t have to invoke dominance to explain why Genghis Khan inseminated so many women that his Y chromosome is common in Central Asia today; it’s enough to observe that he killed the women’s fathers and husbands.
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
Many feminists have a serious blind spot. We’re ready to criticize patriarchy, and men’s misuse of power in a flash, but we ignore our own abuses of power. We see matriarchal control as gentle and kind, but the role of wife and mother can be just as authoritarian as a marine drill sergeant. We seldom acknowledge the power that women have over children and we almost never speak about wives who dominate their husbands. In many homes, the authoritarian mother is a force to be reckoned with. Her rigid standards of sexual morality and her righteous indignation when her rules are broken make her a formidable adversary who is unbending, unyielding, and sometimes even violent.
Betty Dodson (Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving)
My dearest Elle, I vow to love you as you deserve, protect you from those who seek to harm, and nurture you for all my days on this earth, as long as air fills my lungs. I vow, not just as your husband, but as your Dom, to worship you with every fiber of my being, my sweet sub, to free you from your emotional cage and help you discover the woman you are destined to become. I vow to be everything you need, friend, lover, mentor, keeper of your mind, body, and soul. I vow my life and everything I am to you, my world.
Lena Black (A Dominant Fallen (Dominant, #2))
In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, writing in The Communist Manifesto, declared: “In bourgeois society . . . the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”13 This view is shared by contemporary statists, including the current occupants of the White House. On May 14, 2008, the future First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, while campaigning for her husband, Barack Obama, proclaimed: “We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history. We’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.”14 On October 30, 2008, when the polls showed him the likely winner of the upcoming presidential election, Barack Obama shouted during a campaign stop days before the vote: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”15
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
Many MRAs believe that women should stop clamoring for professional positions (particularly within traditionally male-dominated areas like STEM, for which our brains are apparently not well suited) and accept the biological imperative to stay at home, care for our husbands, and raise our children.
Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all)
One thing should be clear, but apparently it is not: if this were indeed our nature, we would be living in paradise. If pain, humiliation, and physical injury made us happy, we would be ecstatic. If being sold on street corners were a good time, women would jam street corners the way men jam football matches. If forced sex were what we craved, even we would be satisfied already. If being dominated by men made us happy, we would smile all the time. Women resist male domination because we do not like it. Political women resist male domination through overt, rude, unmistakable rebellion. They are called unnatural, because they do not have a nature that delights in being debased. Apolitical women resist male domination through a host of bitter subversions, ranging from the famous headache to the clinical depression epidemic among women to suicide to prescription-drug tranquilization to taking it out on the children; sometimes a battered wife kills her husband. Apolitical women are also called unnatural, the charge hurled at them as nasty or sullen or embittered individuals, since that is how they fight back. They too are not made happy by being hurt or dominated. In fact, a natural woman is hard to find. We are domesticated, tamed, made compliant on the surface, through male force, not through nature. We sometimes do what men say we are, either because we believe them or because we hope to placate them. We sometimes try to become what men say we should be, because men have power over our lives.
Andrea Dworkin (Life and Death)
It took me years to grapple with the concept that most of my wife’s bizarre actions were beyond her control. She was not able to make any other decision at the time other than the one that was usually the most counterintuitive and destructive. At her worst, the BPD was in a position of absolute dominance over her.
Robert Page (BPD from the Husband's POV: The Roses and Rage of My Wife’s Borderline Personality Disorder (Roses and Rage BPD))
What makes a successful relationship? . . . Research shows that when a partner dominates another through the abuse of power, it is a prime deterrent to a successful relationship (Greenberg and Goldman 2008). When a controlling partner uses coercive tactics to overpower you, it is a setup for the relationship to fail - without exception. Research about marital relationships in general reveals that husbands are likely to receive more support from their spouse and this fair far better, while women tend to receive less support and experience greater stress from giving support. These are among the conditions that contribute to the higher rates of depression in women.
Carol A. Lambert (Women with Controlling Partners: Taking Back Your Life from a Manipulative or Abusive Partner)
Something similar often happens to people who develop an anxiety disorder, such as agoraphobia. People with agoraphobia can become so overwhelmed with fear that they will no longer leave their homes. Agoraphobia is the consequence of a positive feedback loop. The first event that precipitates the disorder is often a panic attack. The sufferer is typically a middle-aged woman who has been too dependent on other people. Perhaps she went immediately from over-reliance on her father to a relationship with an older and comparatively dominant boyfriend or husband, with little or no break for independent existence. In the weeks leading up to the emergence of her agoraphobia, such a woman typically experiences something unexpected and anomalous.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
Their physical features hadn’t changed much over the years—Alessandra possessed the same flawless skin and stunning bone sculpture, Dominic the same golden hair and chiseled jaw—yet I hardly recognized the people in the photo. In it, Alessandra’s face glowed with joy, and her new husband gazed down at her with obvious adoration. They looked young and happy and so incredibly in love.
Ana Huang (King of Pride (Kings of Sin, #2))
How could you do such a thing to your husband?" Toni looked at Melisande with shocked eyes. "Quite simply because he bored me. He agreed with everything I ever said, and not once in our four years together did he give me a bruise. He knelt to me when I wanted him to dominate me. He let me make a fool of him with a dozen men, but Luque was, on that point, a perfect Spaniard. He turned his back on me and so I stabbed him!
Violet Winspear (Satan Took a Bride)
She was intelligent, well read, and a shrewd judge of character. During the coup, she had shown determination and courage; once on the throne, she displayed an open mind, willingness to forgive, and a political morality founded on rationality and practical efficiency. She softened imperial presence with a sense of humor and a quick tongue; indeed, with Catherine more than any other monarch of her day, there was always a wide latitude for humor. There was also a line not be crossed, even by close friends. She had come to the throne with the support of the army, the church, most of the nobility, and the people of St. Petersburg, all of whom assisted her because her personality and character offered stark contrasts to the domineering ineptitude of her husband. The coup itself created few enemies, and in the first weeks of her reign, she faced no opposition.
Robert K. Massie (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman)
About the time that I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of disastrous import to the colored people. The slave Hamlin, the first fugitive that came under the new law, was given up by the blood-hounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population. The great city rushed on its whirl of excitement, taking no note of the "short and simple annals of the Poor." But while fashionables were listening to the thrilling voice of Jenny Lind in Metropolitan Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many families, who had lived in the city for twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before—that her husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own safety. Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as "the child follows the condition of its mother," the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery. Every where, in those humble homes, there was consternation and anguish. But what cared the legislators of the "dominant race" for the blood they were crushing out of trampled hearts?
Harriet Ann Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)
Male domination—where a husband forcefully asserts dominance in physically, emotionally, or spiritually abusive ways and treats his wife harshly without godly love—is a sinful distortion of male headship. A wife becoming slave-like is also a sinful distortion that undermines the value, dignity, beauty, and worth of a wife and warps the picture of what godly femininity is supposed to be. Male passivity is a sinful distortion of biblical masculinity that abandons God-given responsibility and accountability and endangers a man’s wife and family.
April Cassidy (The Peaceful Wife: Living in Submission to Christ as Lord)
Imran Khan came across as an arrogant, rude, and rather illmannered man. Even back then, I disliked this attitude of arrogance and female subjugation I could certainly relate to the young girl marrying this domineering older man. Imran Khan came across as everything I detested in a man, yet he was everything men like my husband aspired to be. A close friend even gifted me an Imran Khan coffee table book in an effort to convert me. I passed it on without reading it. Perhaps this was a mistake. Reading up on people who do not appeal to you can come in handy later in life.
Reham Khan (Reham Khan)
Almost every woman had a primary role in the “female-dominated” family structure; only a small percentage of men had a primary role in the “male-dominated” governmental and religious structures. Many mothers were, in a sense, the chair of the board of a small company—their family. Even in Japan, women are in charge of the family finances—a fact that was revealed to the average American only after the Japanese stock market crashed in 1992 and thousands of women lost billions of dollars that their husbands never knew they had invested.23 Conversely, most men were on their company’s assembly line—either its physical assembly line or its psychological assembly line.
Warren Farrell (The Myth of Male Power)
Greed, the twin brother of pride, has ever been the driving force of the most destructive and self-destructive human acts. The logic is familiar enough: in their pride, humans seek to dominate their world, to possess it, free to use or abuse, destroy and alienate it as they see fit. … From the latest electronic gadgets to fourth husbands, they are items bought in the illusion that possession can mean fulfillment - and unceremoniously discarded when the illusion bursts. We are hopelessly burded by excess possessions, closets of once-worn clothes, and yet we build more closets to fill, afraid that if our lives lost the purposes of acquisition they would have no purpose at all.
Erazim V. Kohák (The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature)
We have noted thatthe two creation stories contained no pointers toward male “headship” in the sense that men or husbands are supposed to exercise authority or leadership over women or wives. But the audience of Genesis knew that patriarchy was a reality of life. Genesis here tells them how this came to be. Male authority or domination was not God’s design but a consequence of a breakdown in relationship between humanity and God, between humanity and the animal world, and between human beings and one another. From now on, the Bible will assume the reality of patriarchy and of male headship, but it begins by noting that this came about only as a result of those various breakdowns of relationship.
John E. Goldingay (Genesis for Everyone: Part 1 Chapters 1-16 (The Old Testament for Everyone))
Obama occasionally pointed out that the post–Cold War moment was always going to be transitory. The rest of the world will accede to American leadership, but not dominance. I remember a snippet from a column around 9/11: America bestrides the world like a colossus. Did we? It was a story we told ourselves. Shock and awe. Regime change. Freedom on the march. A trillion dollars later, we couldn’t keep the electricity running in Baghdad. The Iraq War disturbed other countries—including U.S. allies—in its illogic and destruction, and accelerated a realignment of power and influence that was further advanced by the global financial crisis. By the time Obama took office, a global correction had already taken place. Russia was resisting American influence. China was throwing its weight around. Europeans were untangling a crisis in the Eurozone. Obama didn’t want to disengage from the world; he wanted to engage more. By limiting our military involvement in the Middle East, we’d be in a better position to husband our own resources and assert ourselves in more places, on more issues. To rebuild our economy at home. To help shape the future of the Asia Pacific and manage China’s rise. To open up places like Cuba and expand American influence in Africa and Latin America. To mobilize the world to deal with truly existential threats such as climate change, which is almost never discussed in debates about American national security.
Ben Rhodes (The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House)
I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen to a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband. If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate we hardly listen to what is being said. In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention, a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.
J. Krishnamurti
Witness modern marriage. All rationality has clearly vanished from modern marriage; yet that is no objection to marriage, but to modernity. The rationality of marriage — that lay in the husband's sole juridical responsibility, which gave marriage a center of gravity, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage — that lay in its indissolubility in principle, which lent it an accent that could be heard above the accident of feeling, passion, and what is merely momentary. It also lay in the family's responsibility for the choice of a spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the very foundation of marriage has been eliminated, that which alone makes an institution of it. Never, absolutely never, can an institution be founded on an idiosyncrasy; one cannot, as I have said, found marriage on "love" — it can be founded on the sex drive, on the property drive (wife and child as property), on the drive to dominate, which continually organizes for itself the smallest structure of domination, the family, and which needs children and heirs to hold fast — physiologically too — to an attained measure of power, influence, and wealth, in order to prepare for long-range tasks, for a solidarity of instinct between the centuries. Marriage as an institution involves the affirmation of the largest and most enduring form of organization: when society cannot affirm itself as a whole, down to the most distant generations, then marriage has altogether no meaning. Modern marriage has lost its meaning — consequently one abolishes it.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
The unfortunate truth is that right now men's voices dominate and we see the results. Popular products from the tech boom - including violent and sexist video games that a generation of children has become addicted to - are designed with little to no input from women. Apple's first version of its highly touted health application could track your blood-alcohol level but not menstruation. Everything from plus-sized smart phones to artificial hearts have been build at a size better suited to male anatomy. As of late 2016, if you told one of the virtual assistants like Siri, S Voice, and Google Now, 'I'm having a heart attack,' you'd immediately get valuable information about what to do next. If you were to say, 'I'm being raped,' or 'I'm being abused by my husband,' the attractive (usually) female voice would say, 'I don't understand what this is.
Emily Chang
I leaned back against the hearth, and the fire's warmth and fluttering light lulled me into gentler thoughts of Francesca. I closed my eyes and saw the beloved face dominated by wide-set antelope eyes. Her eyebrows arched like the wings of a swan, and the whites of her eyes, almost bluish, made a startling contrast to her caramel skin. I later learned that her great-great-grandmother had been kidnapped by slavers in Turkey, brought to Venice, and then sold to a German trader. It was a common story in Venice. Francesca's more recent ancestors had been German and Italian, and the result was a mix of northern ice and Mediterranean warmth. Francesca's upper lip curved in that sensual way that caused jealous Muslim husbands to veil their wives' faces. Her smoldering Levantine beauty contrasted with her silver-blond Teutonic hair, shockingly fair next to her dusky complexion and the sultry hint of Byzantium flashing in her dark eyes. Her nostrils were shaped like perfect teardrops.
Elle Newmark (The Book of Unholy Mischief)
My father was exceptionally tall and exceptionally handsome, and he only had to walk into a room to dominate the assembly of people. He revelled in the latest fashions and the most beautiful rich cloths and color. He was infallibly attractive to women, unable to help himself, greedy for their attention; and God knows they could not restrain their desires. A room full of women was always half in love with my father, and their husbands torn between admiration and envy. Best of all, he had my exceptionally beautiful mother always at his side and a quiverful of exquisite daughters trailing behind him. We were always a stained-glass window in motion, an icon of beauty and grace. My Lady the King’s Mother knows that we were a royal family beyond compare: regal, fruitful, beautiful, rich. She was at our court as a lady-in-waiting and she saw for herself how the country saw us, as fairy-tale monarchs. She is driving herself quite mad trying to make her awkward, paler, quieter son match up. She
Philippa Gregory (The White Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #5))
Eleanor was a member of one of America’s great families, niece to Teddy Roosevelt and a distant cousin of her future husband. But she was not raised to be anyone significant. In fact, it’s surprising she survived her upbringing at all—one cousin called it “the grimmest childhood I had ever known.” Her father was an alcoholic who kept abandoning the family. One of her two brothers died when she was five years old, and her mother, who she remembered as “kindly and indifferent,” died when she was eight. Her father, who Eleanor worshiped despite his endless betrayals, died two years later. The orphan was sent to live with her grandmother, a stern woman with two alcoholic adult sons whose advances caused a teenage Eleanor to put three locks on her door. When she met Franklin, he was a student at Harvard and was known in the family as the not particularly impressive only son of a domineering widow. Eleanor got pregnant right after her wedding and spent the next ten years having six children and wriggling under her mother-in-law’s thumb. (“I was your real mother; Eleanor merely bore you,” Sara Roosevelt told her grandchildren.)
Gail Collins (America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines)
The Right in the United States today is a social and political movement controlled almost totally by men but built largely on the fear and ignorance of women. The quality of this fear and the pervasiveness of this ignorance are consequences of male sexual domination over women. Every accommodation that women make to this domination, however apparently stupid, self-defeating, or dan- gerous, is rooted in the urgent need to survive somehow on male terms. Inevitably this causes women to take the rage and contempt they feel for the men who actually abuse them, those close to them, and project it onto others, those far away, foreign, or different. Some women do this by becoming right-wing patriots, nationalists determined to triumph over populations thousands of miles removed. Some women become ardent racists, anti-Semites, or homophobes. Some women develop a hatred of loose or destitute women, pregnant teenage girls, all persons unemployed or on welfare. Some hate individuals who violate social conventions, no matter how superficial the violations. Some become antagonistic to ethnic groups other than their own or to religious groups other than their own, or they develop a hatred of those political convictions that contradict their own. Women cling to irrational hatreds, focused particularly on the unfamiliar, so that they will not murder their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, the men with whom they are intimate, those who do hurt them and cause them grief. Fear of a greater evil and a need to be protected from it intensify the loyalty of women to men who are, even when dangerous, at least known quantities. Because women so displace their rage, they are easily controlled and manipulated haters. Having good reason to hate, but not the courage to rebel, women require symbols of danger that justify their fear. The Right provides these symbols of danger by designating clearly defined groups of outsiders as sources of danger. The identities of the dangerous outsiders can can change over time to meet changing social circumstances--for example, racism can be encouraged or contained; anti-Semitism can be provoked or kept dormant; homophobia can be aggravated or kept under the surface—but the existence of the dangerous outsider always functions for women simultaneously as deception, diversion, painkiller, and threat.
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, France enjoyed an upsurge of artistic flourishing that became known as La Belle Epoque. It was a time of change that heralded both art nouveau and post impressionism, when painters as diverse as Monet, Cezanne and Toulouse Lautrec worked. It was an age of extremes, when Proust and Anatole France were fashionable along with the notorious Monsieur Willy, Colette's husband. On the decorative arts, Mucha, Gallé and Lalique were enjoying success; and the theatre Lugné-Poe was introducing the grave works of Ibsen at the same time as Parisians were enjoying the spectacle of the can-can of Hortense Schneider. Paris was the crossroads of a new and many-faceted culture, a culture that was predominately feminine in form, for, above all, la belle Epoque was the age of women. Women dominated the cultural scene. On the one hand, there was Comtesse Greffulhe, the patron of Proust and Maeterlinck, who introduced greyhound racing into France; Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, for whom Stravinsky wrote Renard; Misia Sert, the discoverer of Chanel and Diaghilev's closest friend. On the other were the great dancers of the Moulin Rouge, immortalised by Toulouse lautrec — Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, la Goulue; as well as such celebrated dramatic actresses as the great Sarah Bernhardt. It would not be possible to speak of La belle Epoque without the great courtesans who, in many ways, perfectly symbolized the era, chief of which were Liane de Pougy, Émilienne d'Alençon, Cléo de Mérode and La Belle Otero.
Charles Castle (La Belle Otero: The Last Great Courtesan)
She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they awoke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish - something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They all had their little treasures... And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries - perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was "pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life - and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes - her fifty years. There it was before her - life. Life, she thought - but she did not finish her thought.
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)
Lilith, the guardian mistress of Mother Earth, had enchanted all her followers with the story that she was the original wife of Adam, spurned by her abusive, controlling husband because of her independence, forced to flee his oppressive domination to protect her two hellions, Lili and Lilitu. That patriarchal dictator Adam then took a second wife, Eve, who was deluded into accepting her subordinate position as barefoot slave and breeder. Freed from her demons, Mary now knew it was all a malicious lie, and inversion of the truth. She had worshipped a self-serving idol, deluded by her own willing lust for power. She thought she had been pursuing equality with man, to be just like them. But she now realized she had merely been defying her Creator. She broke down into tears and fell to her knees in the dirt.
Brian Godawa (Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #8))
Daisy has a unique spirit,” Westcliff said. “A warm and romantic nature. If she is forced into a loveless marriage, she will be devastated. She deserves a husband who will cherish her for everything she is, and who will protect her from the harsher realities of the world. A husband who will allow her to dream.” It was surprising to hear such sentiment from Westcliff, who was universally known as a pragmatic and level-headed man. “What is your question, my lord?” Matthew asked. “Will you give me your word that you will not marry my sister-in-law?” Matthew held the earl’s cold black gaze. It would not be wise to cross a man like Westcliff, who was not accustomed to being denied. But Matthew had endured years of Thomas Bowman’s thunder and bluster, standing up to him when other men would flee in fear of his wrath. Although Bowman could be a ruthless, sarcastic bully there was nothing he respected more than a man who was willing to go toe-to-toe with him. And so it had quickly become Matthew’s lot in the company to be the bearer of bad tidings and deliver the hard truths that everyone else was afraid to give him. That had been Matthew’s training, which was why Westcliff’s attempt at domination had no effect on him. “I’m afraid not, my lord,” Matthew said politely. Simon Hunt dropped his cigar. “You won’t give me your word?” Westcliff asked in disbelief. “No.” Matthew bent swiftly to retrieve the fallen cigar and returned it to Hunt, who regarded him with a glint of warning in his eyes as if he were silently trying to prevent him from jumping off a cliff. “Why not?” Westcliff demanded. “Because you don’t want to lose your position with Bowman?” “No, he can’t afford to lose me right now.” Matthew smiled slightly in an attempt to rob the words of arrogance. “I know more about production, administration, and marketing than anyone else at Bowman’s…and I’ve earned the old man’s trust. So I won’t be dismissed even if I refuse to marry his daughter.” “Then it will be quite simple for you to put the entire matter to rest,” the earl said. “I want your word, Swift. Now.” A lesser man would have been intimidated by Westcliff’s authoritative demand. “I might consider it,” Matthew countered coolly, “if you offered the right incentive. For example, if you promise to endorse me as the head of the entire division and guarantee the position for at least, say…three years.” Westcliff gave him an incredulous glance. The tense silence was broken as Simon Hunt roared with laughter. “By God, he has brass ballocks,” he exclaimed. “Mark my words, Westcliff, I’m going to hire him for Consolidated.” “I’m not cheap,” Matthew said, which caused Hunt to laugh so hard that he nearly dropped his cigar again. Even Westcliff smiled, albeit reluctantly. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’m not going to endorse you so readily—not with so much at stake. Not until I am convinced you’re the right man for the position.” “Then it seems we’re at an impasse.” Matthew made his expression friendly. “For now.
Lisa Kleypas (Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers, #4))
In her magazine, Sherkat explored these issues and exposed the gross injustices of Iran’s legal system. She wrote about women who were victims of battery, a practice that, according to some interpretations of the Koran, the holy text endorses. Women needed their husbands’ permission to work outside the house or to travel. Without a notarized letter from their husbands, women couldn’t even get a passport. Sherkat began a public conversation about these issues by asking what good female cabinet ministers or members of Parliament were as long as their husbands could subvert the will of the Iranian people by barring their elected officials from leaving the house in the morning. Zanan challenged the government’s stance toward women in other ways, as well. Once, it quoted the conservative Speaker of Parliament, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, as saying that “women’s most important endeavor must be their struggle as homemakers,” right above a quote by an open-minded cleric, Mohammad Khatami: “This must be the year that women will have a dominant presence at universities.” Next to those contrasting comments, the magazine published the news about the appointment of Iran’s first female professor of aircraft engineering. Women were making progress, despite what officials said.
Nazila Fathi (The Lonely War)
Throughout adolescence, Muslim men receive strong messages about male dominance in Marriage. The Koran is highly male-focused, with women being of little importance. Mohammed married as many women as he wanted, even a nine-year-old girl. Polygamy was acceptable and women were given in marriage with little consideration. Rules and punishments for women are far harsher than for men. [...] Women are told that their purpose is to please the man and have children. Men are taught that sex with an in infidel woman, especially in another country, is not a sin against Allah. For a Muslim woman, sex with any man except her husband is a crime.
Darrel Ray (Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality)
homosexuality a curable perversion. She professed to disdain men and insisted women had been “enslaved by the institution of marriage.” Yet she loved many men and married twice: she treated her first husband abominably, and was physically and emotionally abused by her second. She considered sex degrading, but was an enthusiastic advocate, and energetic exponent, of free love. “Out here I’ve had chances to sleep with all colours and shapes,” she wrote to a friend, shortly before meeting Ursula. “One French gunrunner, short and round and bumpy; one fifty-year-old monarchist German who believes in the dominating role of the penis in influencing women; one high Chinese official whose actions I’m ashamed to describe, one round left-wing Kuomintang man who was soft and slobbery.” She was a communist who never joined the party; a violent revolutionary and romantic dreamer; a feminist in thrall to a succession of men; a woman who inspired intense loyalty, yet inflicted enormous damage on many of her friends; she supported communism without considering what communist rule involved in reality. She was passionate, prejudiced, charismatic, narcissistic, reckless, volatile, lovable, hypercritical, emotionally fragile, and uncompromising. “I may not be innocent, but I’m right,” she declared. Ursula was entranced. Agnes Smedley seemed to embody political passion and energy, the very antithesis of the smug complacency she found in the bourgeois boudoirs of Shanghai. “Your very existence is not worth anything at all if you live passively in the midst of injustice,” Smedley insisted. Agnes was everything Ursula admired: feminist, anti-fascist, an enemy of imperialism and defender of the oppressed against the forces of capitalism, and a natural revolutionary. She was also a spy.
Ben Macintyre (Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy)
Public torture, in seventeenth-century Europe, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to convey the message that a system in which husbands could brutalize wives, and parents beat children, was ultimately a form of love. … It seems to us that this connection – or better perhaps confusion – between care and domination is utterly critical to the larger questions of how we lost the ability freely to recreate ourselves by recreating our relationships with one another. It is critical, that is , to understanding how we got stuck, and why these days we can hardly envisage our own past or future as anything other than a transition from smaller to larger cages.
David Graeber, David Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
All were absolutely equal with each other. But in 1 Timothy, a letter attributed to Paul by later Christians though not actually written by him, women are told to be silent in church and pregnant at home (2:8–15). And a later follower of Paul inserted in 1 Corinthians that it is shameful for women to speak in church, but correct to ask their husbands for explanations at home
John Dominic Crossan (In Search of Paul)
The only way a relationship can work is for the husband to take on the role of benevolent dictator. The dominant personality with strongly-enforced boundaries and such high value that the woman he’s with works hard to meet his expectations and standards is the one who keeps the girl, and keeps her happy.
Rian Stone (Praxeology, Volume 1: Frame: On self actualization for the modern man)
The word sahib, which Sikhs use when they speak of the scripture, may become contentious in future. It was used respectfully in addressing, in particular, white men in the days of the Raj. The wife was known as the mem sahib, which indicated that her status derived from her husband. Sahib is used to acknowledge the status of the scripture in the same way, but some women writers may dispense with it, claiming that it reinforces the strong but unwarranted male dominance in the Sikh Panth.
W. Owen Cole (Sikhism - An Introduction: Teach Yourself)
Despite his conflicts a neurotic can be contented at times, can enjoy things to which he feels himself attuned. But his happiness is dependent upon too many conditions for it to be of frequent occurrence. He will not take pleasure in anything unless, for instance, he is alone—or unless he shares it with someone else; unless he is the dominating factor in the situation—or unless he is approved of on all sides. His chances are further narrowed by the fact that the conditions for happiness are so often contradictory. He may be glad to have another person take the lead but he may at the same time resent it. A woman may enjoy her husband's success but she may also envy him for it. She may enjoy giving a party but have to have everything so perfect that she is exhausted before it begins. And when the neurotic does find temporary happiness, it is all too easily disturbed by his manifold vulnerabilities and fears.
Karen Horney (Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis)
The Ephesians 5 text isn’t about a husband dominating, fixing, or saving his wife, nor is it about wives blindly submitting to their husbands or keeping their bellies and sexual appetites satisfied; it’s about an outward-focused, radical sort of mutual love that is like healing waters washing over the trauma and wounds of our past, leading us into more and more health and wholeness.
Kat Harris (Sexless in the City: A Sometimes Sassy, Sometimes Painful, Always Honest Look at Dating, Desire, and Sex)
The gradual change, from her [Victoria] dominance to his [Albert], was taking place not just in ballrooms but more widely in British society. The genders became more clearly and hierarchically distinguished as the 1830s gave way to the 1840s. A successful marriage, thought Sarah Ellis, writing in 1843, was founded on one important truth. "It is," she counselled her female readers, "the superiority of your husband as a man." "You may have more talent, with higher attainments," she advised them, "but this has nothing whatever to do with your position as a woman, which is, and must be, inferior to his as a man.
Lucy Worsley (Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow)
If he used his Dominant position to bully his sick husband, what would he be but a spouse-abuser? Love
Adira August (Forever (Hunt&Cam4Ever, #8))
Turning the social order upside down, she had undermined the carefully orchestrated moral geography of the Puritan meetinghouse. Male dominance was unquestioned, and ranks so clearly spelled out, that no one could miss the power outlined in something so simple as a seating chart. Members and nonmembers sat apart; husbands and wives were divided; men sat on one side of the room, women on the other. Prominent men occupied the first two rows of benches: the first was reserved exclusively for magistrates, the second for the families of the minister and governor, as well as wealthy merchants. The more sons a man had, the better his pew. Age, reputation, marriage, and estate were all properly calculated before a church seat was assigned.
Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
Cheaters only cheat when they are missing something. There is a loss going on and it is up to you to figure out what that is. Their reason might be stupid to you, but to them it was more important than you realize. Cheaters know the risks they are taking. They know cheating is not a casual thing. There is something so intense inside of them to drive them to that point. You might not like what that thing might be, but you must accept it is there and either fill that need or move on. This loss could be anything: attention, someone more attractive, control, dominance, boredom...you name it. You will never heal a relationship unless you accept that there truly is a "why" that the cheater is not willing to share with you.
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible)
Public torture, in seventeenth-century Europe, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to convey the message that a system in which husbands could brutalize wives, and parents beat children, was ultimately a form of love. Wendat torture, in the same period of history, created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering in order to make clear that no form of physical chastisement should even be countenanced inside a community or household. Violence and care, in the Wendat case, were to be entirely separated. Seen in this light, the distinctive features of Wendat prisoner torture come into focus. It seems to us that this connection - or better perhaps, confusion - between care and domination is utterly critical to the larger question of how we lost the ability freely tor create ourselves by recreating our relations with one another. It is critical, that is, to understanding how we got stuck, and why these days we can hardly envisage our own past or future as anything other than a transition from smaller to larger cages.
David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
Southern Christians felt that they were true believers and that Northern abolitionists and proponents of human equality were heretics. As such, the “South’s ideological isolation within an increasingly antislavery world was not a stigma or a source of guilt but a badge of righteousness and a foundation for national identity and pride.”50 Fitzhugh believed that human beings were not equal based on race and gender, “but in relations of strict domination and subordination. Successful societies were those whose members acknowledged their places within that hierarchy.”51 He was caustic when he discussed the implications of his beliefs: “We conclude that about nineteen out of twenty individuals have ‘a natural and inalienable right’ to be taken care of and protected, to have guardians, trustees, husbands or masters; in other words they have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves. The one in twenty are clearly born or educated in some way fitted for command and liberty.”52 Fitzhugh summarized his chilling beliefs as “liberty for the few— slavery in every form, for the mass.
Steven Dundas
Human males, too, form alliances for gaining resources such as large game, political power within the group, ways to defend against the aggression of other coalitions of men, and sexual access to women.7 The survival and reproductive benefits derived from these coalitional activities constituted tremendous selection pressure over human evolutionary history for men to form alliances with other men. Since ancestral women did not hunt large game, declare war on other tribes, or attempt to forcibly capture men from neighboring bands, they did not experience equivalent selection pressure to form coalitions. Although women do form coalitions with other women for the care of the young and for protection from sexually aggressive men, these are weakened whenever a woman leaves her kin group to live with her husband and his clan. The combination of strong coalitions among men and somewhat weaker coalitions among women, according to Barbara Smuts, may have contributed historically to men’s dominance over women.9 My view is that women’s preferences for a successful, ambitious, and resource-capable mate coevolved with men’s competitive mating strategies, which include risk taking, status striving, derogation of competitors, coalition formation, and an array of individual efforts aimed at surpassing other men on the dimensions that women desire. The intertwining of these coevolved mechanisms in men and women created the conditions for men to dominate in the domain of resources. The origins of men’s control over resources is not simply an incidental historical footnote of passing curiosity. Rather, it has a profound bearing on the present, because it reveals some of the primary causes of men’s continuing control of resources. Women today continue to want men who have resources, and they continue to reject men who lack resources. These preferences are expressed repeatedly in dozens of studies conducted on tens of thousands of individuals in scores of countries worldwide. They are expressed countless times in everyday life. In any given year, the men whom women marry earn more than men of the same age whom women do not marry. Even professionally successful women who do not really need resources from a man are reluctant to settle for a mate who is less successful than they are. Women who earn more than their husbands seek divorce more often, although this trend appears to be changing, at least within America. Men continue to compete with other men to acquire the status and resources that make them desirable to women. The forces that originally caused the resource inequality between the genders—women’s mate preferences and men’s competitive strategies—are the same forces that contribute to maintaining resource inequality today. Feminists’ and evolutionists’ conclusions converge in their implication that men’s efforts to control female sexuality lie at the core of their efforts to control women. Our evolved sexual strategies account for why this occurs, and why control of women’s sexuality is a central preoccupation of men. Over the course of human evolutionary history, men who failed to control women’s sexuality—for example, by failing to attract a mate, failing to prevent cuckoldry, or failing to retain a mate—experienced lower reproductive success than men who succeeded in controlling women’s sexuality. We come from a long and unbroken line of ancestral fathers who succeeded in obtaining mates, preventing their infidelity, and providing enough benefits to keep them from leaving. We also come from a long line of ancestral mothers who granted sexual access to men who provided beneficial resources.
David M. Buss (The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating)
We have absolutely no intention of letting ourselves be intimidated by your beastly routine ever again. Although freedom has come to us somewhat late in life, we have no intention of throwing it away again. Many of us have passed our lives with domineering and peevish husbands. When we were finally delivered of these, we were chivvied around by our sons and daughters who not only no longer loved us but considered us a burden and objects of ridicule and shame. Do you imagine in your wildest dreams that now we have tasted freedom we are going to let ourselves be pushed around once more by you and your leering mate?
Leonora Carrington (The Hearing Trumpet)
The caste system had given Charles Stuart cover and endangered the life of Carol DiMaiti Stuart, as it had for white women in the Jim Crow South, where husbands and lovers knew that a black man could be blamed for anything that befell a white woman if the dominant caste chose to accuse him.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
After all, you make so many compromises. You find yourself laughing at things you might never have laughed at previously. Your opinions about so many things change, and not because your husband dominates you so much as because you seek a smoother, less complicated direction to take or accept. Specifically, your thoughts about sex, about what you would do, change. You might eat foods you never really liked, go to places you’d rather avoid, and tolerate friends you wouldn’t spend five minutes with before you were married. You would do this all in the name of love and marriage,
Andrew Neiderman (Lost in His Eyes: Romantic suspense)
She is always ready to bring to life feminine characters who are active, enterprising, and courageous, in contrast to the traditional concept of the Sicilian woman as a passive and withdrawn creature. (This strikes me as a personal, conscious choice.) She passes completely over what I should say was the dominant element in the majority of Sicilian tales: amorous longing, a predilection for the theme of love as exemplified in the lost husband or wife motif, so widespread in Mediterranean folklore and dating back to the oldest written example, the Hellenistic tale of Amor and Psyche told in Apuleius’ Metamorphosis (second century A.D.) and repeated through the ages in hundreds and hundreds of stories about encounters and separations, mysterious bridegrooms from the nether regions, invisible brides, and horse- or serpent-kings who turn into handsome young men at night.
Italo Calvino (Italian Folktales)
The culture was ready to be dominated by a man with his mix of braggadocio, bullheadedness, celebrity, cruelty, prejudice, know-nothingness, and, yes, narcissism and sociopathy and paranoia. My husband glommed onto a ready host, to our society with all its flaws and weaknesses, and the glomming made him great.
Peter D. Kramer (Death of the Great Man)
[On subjugation]: Submission is the second form of the Subjugation lifetrap. You submit to the subjugation process involuntarily. Whether you actually have a choice or not, you feel as though you have no choice. As a child, you subjugated yourself in order to avoid punishment or abandonment, probably by a parent. Your parent threatened to hurt you or to withdraw love or attention. There was coercion in the subjugation process. You are almost always angry, even if you do not recognize your anger. If you have this type of subjugation, you have a false belief: you attribute more power to the people who currently subjugate you than they actually have. Whoever subjugates you now - a husband, a wife, or parent - in truth has little power over you. You have the power to end your subjugation. There may be exceptions, such as your boss, but even there you have more control than you think. You may have to be willing to leave the person, but, one way or another, your subjugation can end. You do not have to stay with someone who is dominating or abusing you.
Jeffrey Young (Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior...and Feel Great Again)
The point of a dehumanization campaign was the forced surrender of the target's own humanity, a karmic theft beyond accounting. Whatever was considered a natural human reaction was disallowed for the subordinate caste. During the era of enslavement, they were forbidden to cry as their children were carried off, forced to sing as a wife or husband was sold away, never again to look into their eyes or hear their voice for as long as the two might live. They were punished for the very responses a human being would be expected to have in the circumstances forced upon them. Whatever humanity shone through them was an affront to what the dominant caste kept telling itself. They were punished for being the humans that they could not help but be.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
Sociopaths enjoy being puppeteers. They manipulate for the rush of feeling in control and weakening others so they can manipulate and dominate them even more in the future.
O.N. Ward (Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned)
That is going to be a matter of debate between you and Dr. Gambit and the rest of us, said Georgina. Because we have absolutely no intention of letting ourselves be intimidated by your beastly routine ever again. Although freedom has come to us somewhat late in life, we have no intention of throwing it away again. Many of us have passed our lives with domineering and peevish husbands. When we were finally delivered of these we were chivvied around by our sons and daughters who not only no longer loved us, but considered us a burden and objects of ridicule and shame. Do you imagine in your wildest dreams that now we have tasted freedom we are going to let ourselves be pushed around once more by you and your leering mate?
Leonora Carrington (The Hearing Trumpet)
What is it you want, exactly?' Hunt asked, surveying a stall full of ancient knives. 'A boyfriend or mate or husband who will just sit there, with no opinions, and agree to everything you say, and never dare to ask you for anything?' 'Of course not.' 'Just because I'm male and have an opinion doesn't make me into some psychotic, domineering prick.
Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
(On Engels' critique of anti-authoritarianism) “Nobody was talking about the use of revolutionary violence being authoritarianism. That's always been an invalid thing to point out. You know, is a slave rising up and overthrowing their master, is that "authoritarian"? Is a woman trying to escape her abusive husband or defending herself against her abusive husband, is that "authoritarian"?
Anark
The authority structure God establishes between husbands and wives in Genesis points to what Paul expects of all men (“don't dominate”) and all women (“don't usurp”) in the church.
Greg Gilbert (Can Women Be Pastors? (Church Questions))
They (women) will not be virtuous until they submit. It's that simple. The appetite to dominate their husband comes from original sin. It's a disorder.
Father Chad Ripperger
Though wildly different in both character and tastes, Jane and Mary shared a common bond aside from the royal blood which flowed in their veins: their religious devotion was unswerving, and the dominant factor in both of their lives. For Mary, the situation was heartbreaking. Jane's mother, Frances, had been a close childhood companion. Frances, like her husband and her daughter, was a Protestant, though perhaps not as fervent in her faith as her husband and eldest daughter. Despite the fact that she and Mary were on opposing sides of the religious fence, to all appearances their differing beliefs had never driven a wedge between the cousins. Frances was a seasoned courtier, and as such she was well skilled in the art of diplomacy. It seems likely, therefore, that when she was in the company of her childhood friend, the two women tactfully avoided conversing on the subject of religion. After all, there were many at court who managed to maintain friendships with people who held differing religious beliefs, and Mary had also been friendly with Jane's step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby. But it was quite different with jane, for though Mary had tried her best with the teenager, and had done her utmost to be affectionate, the relationship was not a harmonious one. The age gap between them meant that to Jane, Mary was probably more like an aunt than a cousin. Mary may have been twenty years Jane's senior, but it was not age that lay at the heart of the matter; the reason for the distance between the two cousins was perfectly simple: religion.
Nicola Tallis (Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey)
Madame Lorraine was a rich French woman who lived in an old mansion, which she inherited from her husband. The family had already had many possessions, however, they were ruined in the Revolution. For defending the monarchy, they lost their titles, lands and servants. Madame Lorraine's husband, the old Earl, died in the Reign of Terror, as did her children. The wife, however, had hidden the jewelry at the beginning of the revolution and had left in secret for Switzerland. After the restoration, she returned to France, but with few resources she had, she bought a house in Paris. She complained of loneliness and adopted a little orphan, named Juliette, who she used as a servant. When the girl complained about being overworked, as she had to take care of the entire house alone, her stepmother told her: “your complaints hurt me, you see, I lost everything and I only have you, your mother didn't want you, but I I adopted you and took care of you and you don’t even appreciate that.” The girl, then, victim of emotional blackmail, got used to serving, without complaining. The problem is that every day more and more was demanded – the girl never reached perfection, said Madame Lorraine: “look at the silverware, look at the floor, look at the walls, you will never be able to get married”. However, Madame Lorraine did not tell the girl that perfection is never achieved: it is just a resource to dominate the poor in spirit, who see in the light of their own craft a hope of transcendence. Another thing that Madame Lorraine had not taught the girl – even if the Revolution had taught humanity: that they were free. The girl then grew older and became an object of exploitation every day, her arms becoming weaker, her mind increasingly taken over by obedience. One day, the girl went to the market in the square, and hardly talked to anyone – Madame Lorraine told her that everyone wanted to abuse her and that she shouldn't trust anyone. That day, however, she was exhausted and stopped at a farmer's stand selling tomatoes and said to her: “young man, what's your name, I always see you running around here and you never talk to anyone”. She decided to talk to him: “I'm the old widow's daughter, she says that everyone wants to exploit me, that I shouldn't trust strangers”. The salesman, already aware of the girl's situation from the stories that were circulating in the village, said to her: “Isn't it just the opposite, girl, maybe you haven't learned a lie all your life and now you're trying harder and harder to keep this lie as if it were the truth – see, God made everyone free.” The girl then quickly returned to the house, but doubt had entered her heart and there she began to take root and grow. Until, one day, the old lady released the drop that would overflow her body and said to her: “Well, Juliette, you don't do anything right, look how my dresses are, you didn't sew them perfectly”. The girl then got up, looked the vixen in the eyes and said: “if it’s not good, do it yourself” and left. It is said that she married the farmer in the sale and, from that day on, she was the best wife in the world. Not because she did everything with great care, with an almost divine perfection, that she was modest or because she had freed herself from the shrew who exploited her, but simply because she recognized the value of freedom itself.
Geverson Ampolini
The popular Christian concept of a “good woman” is someone extremely feminine, sensitive, good-looking, and submissive to a handsome husband who keeps his promises. Lovely – if you live in Disneyland. Or, actually, if you live in this male-dominated, externally obsessed Western world.
Danielle Strickland (The Liberating Truth)
I don’t even know what to say to you.” Dom’s hand flexes around mine. “You could just say thank you, husband. How would you like another amazing blow job, husband?” “Dominic!” I hiss, spotting his mom approaching us.
S.J. Tilly (Dom (Alliance, #3))
According to what I said about the nature of love, the main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears. All forms of psychosis show the inability to be objective, to an extreme degree. For the insane person the only reality that exists is that within him, that of his fears and desires. He sees the world outside as symbols of his inner world, as his creation. All of us do the same when we dream. In the dream we produce events, We stage dramas, which are the expression of our wishes and fears (although some times also of our insights and judgment), and while we are asleep we are convinced that the product of our dreams is as real as the reality which we perceive in our waking state. The insane person or the dreamer fails completely in having an objective view of the world outside; but all of us are more or less insane, or more or less asleep; all of us have an unobjective view of the world, one which is distorted by our narcissistic orientation. Do I need to give examples? Anyone can find them easily by watching himself, his neighbors, and by reading the newspapers. They vary in the degree of the narcissistic distortion of reality. A woman, for instance, calls up the doctor, saying she wants to come to his office that same afternoon. The doctor answers that he is not free this same afternoon, but that he can see her the next day. Her answer is: But, doctor, I live only five minutes from your office. She cannot understand his explanation that it does not save him time that for her the distance is so short. She experiences the situation narcissistically: since she saves time, he saves times; the only reality to her is she herself. Less extreme -or perhaps only less obvious- are the distortions which are commonplace in interpersonal relations. How many parents experience the child's reactions in terms of his being obedient, of giving them pleasure, of being a credit to them, and so forth, instead of perceiving or even being interested in what the child feels for and by himself? How many husbands have a picture of their wives as being domineering, because their own attachment to mother makes them interpret any demand as a restriction of their freedom? How many wives think their husbands are ineffective or stupid, because they do not live up to a phantasy picture of a shining knight which they might have built up as children? The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard -every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve. Indeed, if one examines the relationship between nations, as well as between individuals, one comes to the conclusion that objectivity is the exception, and a greater or lesser degree of narcissistic distortion is the rule. The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child.
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
At one point when I was in the middle of the first season, I asked myself why I would want to watch a conservative Democrat destroy teachers’ unions and have joyless sex with a woman who looks like a very young teenager. I still had not answered the question when Claire pushed things to the next level in a scene so intensely creepy that it might count as the most revolting thing I have ever witnessed on television. A longtime member of the couple’s Secret Service security detail is dying of cancer, and Claire goes to visit him alone. On his deathbed, he reveals that he was always secretly in love with her and thought that Frank wasn’t good enough for her. Her response is almost incomprehensible in its cruelty—she mocks and taunts him for thinking he could ever attain a woman like her, and then puts her hand down his pants and begins to give him a handjob, all the while saying, in true perverse style, “This is what you wanted, right?” Surely Claire doesn’t have to emotionally destroy a man who is dying of cancer—and yet perhaps in a way she does, because she uses it as a way of convincing herself that Frank really is the right man for her. Not only could an average, hardworking, sentimental man never satisfy her, but she would destroy him. By contrast, Frank not only can take her abuse, but actively thrives on it, as she does on his. Few images of marriage as a true partnership of equals are as convincing as this constant power struggle between two perverse creeps. Claire is not the first wife in the “high-quality TV drama” genre to administer a humiliating handjob. In fact, she is not even the first wife to administer a humiliating handjob to a man who is dying of cancer. That distinction belongs to Skyler White of Breaking Bad, who does the honors in the show’s pilot. It is intended as a birthday treat for her husband Walt, who is presumably sexually deprived due to his wife’s advanced pregnancy, and so in contrast to Claire’s, it would count as a generous gesture if not for the fact that Skyler continues to work on her laptop the entire time, barely even acknowledging Walt’s presence in the room. In her own way, Skyler is performing her dominance just as much as Claire was with her cancer patient, but Skyler’s detachment from the act makes it somehow even creepier than Claire’s.
Adam Kotsko (Creepiness)
Honestly, dear, if you can’t tell that man is completely head over heels for you, you need your eyes checked. He’s not running from you. More likely, he’s afraid of what you make him feel. As a general rule, men don’t like to be out of control. That’s especially true for our rugged Highlanders. They are men of action.” Constance sipped her tea. “Hunt it, terrify it, dominate it, kill it. And if it can’t be hunted, terrified, dominated, or killed, than it’s best to leave it alone.” “Wilhelm didn’t leave you alone,” she said, more than a little jealous of the woman for being happily married while her husband was miles away searching for a way to get rid of her. “No, he most certainly didn’t. But he did try to terrify me. And when that didn’t work, he tried his hand at dominating me.” The defiant gleam in her eye spoke to the effectiveness of those attempts. “It wasn’t until the poor man realized he could dominate me through tenderness and that when a woman loves a man, she is innately terrified of losing him, that he finally began to trust what we had.” “You’re saying Darcy’s just trying to make sense of what he feels for me, and he’s doing it by immersing himself in action. But what if he actually finds a way to return me to my time?” “He might find your box maker. He might even learn the secret to returning you to your time. The question is, what will he do with the information?” Constance leaned forward, turning the full power of her shrewd gaze on her. “Perhaps a better question is, if he arrives at a decision you don’t like, will you roll over and accept it, or will you fight for what you really want?
Jessi Gage (Wishing for a Highlander (Highland Wishes Book 1))
Even the most egregious captive state, bound and gagged on her damp bunk, felt eerily familiar to her. With nothing to do but lie there and think of things, she reflected that captivity took many different forms. A woman under the domination of her father or husband was as much a prisoner as a hostage on a boat. She had merely traded one form of servitude for another.
Susan Wiggs (The Hostage (Great Chicago Fire Trilogy #1))
I lied to you,” she said with a belligerent edge. He hid a smile. “I lied to you.” “I’m domineering and used to getting my own way.” “I like a woman who knows her own mind.” “I’m stubborn and opinionated.” “If I’m contemplating a lifetime with a lassie, I want her to show a bit of spirit.” “I have no society polish. A countess should be sophisticated, whereas I’ve never had a season. I’ve never even been to London.” “Aye, you’ll settle into the Highlands well, then. My home is a long journey from the bright lights of Edinburgh—a wee wife who pines for city life would never be happy with me.” She narrowed her eyes. “I kissed you like there’s no tomorrow.” “Are you trying to convince me for or against?” Her lips twisted in self-denigration. “I’m clearly a woman of wayward morals.” He couldn’t contain his laughter. “Is that right?” Her cheeks were fiery now. “You don’t want to marry a flirt.” “If I’m the only laddie my wife flirts with, I have no objection.” Her expression was a mixture of defiance and shame. “How do you know I don’t kiss every gentleman the way I…I kissed you?” He smiled gently. “Have you ever kissed anyone else like that?” “No.” Her long eyelashes, darker honey than her hair, flickered down. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.” She was bewitching. He’d admitted to being besotted. Every moment in her company only deepened his enchantment. “I’ll take my chances.” “Surely you want a wife you can trust.” “Apart from your…waywardness and propensity for impersonating fairytale characters, I believe you’re an admirable creature.” “Hardly.” The compliment didn’t please her. “I let you take liberties.” “As your future husband, I’d like to place it on record that I intend to take liberties at every opportunity.” He paused. “Scotland’s a gey chilly place, especially in the winter. I don’t want a cold marriage bed.” She stiffened. “There remains one insurmountable obstacle.” “What’s that?” Her delicate jaw set in an obstinate line. “I don’t want to marry you.” With
Anna Campbell (Stranded with the Scottish Earl)
President Vladimir Putin has evolved a “hybrid foreign policy, a strategy that mixes normal diplomacy, military force, economic corruption and a high-tech information war.” Indeed, on any given day, the United States has found itself dealing with everything from cyberattacks by Russian intelligence hackers on the computer systems of the U.S. Democratic Party, to disinformation about what Russian troops, dressed in civilian clothes, are doing in Eastern Ukraine, to Russian attempts to take down the Facebook pages of widows of its soldiers killed in Ukraine when they mourn their husbands’ deaths, to hot money flows into Western politics or media from Russian oligarchs connected to the Kremlin. In short, Russia is taking full advantage of the age of accelerating flows to confront the United States along a much wider attack surface. While it lives in the World of Order, the Russian government under Putin doesn’t mind fomenting a little disorder—indeed, when you are a petro-state, a little disorder is welcome because it keeps the world on edge and therefore oil prices high. China is a much more status quo power. It needs a healthy U.S. economy to trade with and a stable global environment to export into. That is why the Chinese are more focused on simply dominating their immediate neighborhood. But while America has to deter these two other superpowers with one hand, it also needs to enlist their support with the other hand to help contain both the spreading World of Disorder and the super-empowered breakers. This is where things start to get tricky: on any given day Russia is a direct adversary in one part of the world, a partner in another, and a mischief-maker in another.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
In segmentary societies, the first circle, where violence is excluded as a means of resolving conflicts and where unlimited solidarity is the rule, corresponds to the domain where dominance rules. It is false to believe that this space is free of all violence: husbands beat their wives, older siblings beat younger siblings, mothers-in-law beat their daughters-in-law, and the head of the household punishes and may even kill his dependents. This authority (dominance) is rarely challenged, and when it is, the challenge can be met by extreme violence, a definitive retaliation, a final punishment that is considered legitimate by everyone. Legitimacy aside, this is not the domain of e-contests. The absence of violence to which anthropologists refer is nevertheless not an illusion: no one can resort to violence to resolve his or her conflicts, and everyone must bow to the authority of those who are higher in the dominance hierarchy. A fundamental difference is that among humans, in this space where dominance reigns, e-contests have no place.
Pierpaolo Antonello (Can We Survive Our Origins?: Readings in René Girard's Theory of Violence and the Sacred (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture))
Epigraphs from Ballroom Dancing: An Erotic Romance of Dominance and Submission "He’s like my father in a way—loves the chase and is bored with the conquest—and once married, needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you." —Jacqueline Bouvier, July, 1952, making an observation about her future husband in a letter to her priest “Father L,” the Reverend Joseph Leonard of Dublin, Ireland. "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, Mr. President..." —Norma Jeane Mortenson, May 19, 1962, Madison Square Garden, New York City.
Anna Andreesen
The systematic designation of slave men as “boys” by the master was a reflection, according to Elkins, of their inability to execute their fatherly responsibilities. Kenneth Stampp pursues this line of reasoning even further than Elkins: … the typical slave family was matriarchal in form, for the mother’s role was far more important than the father’s. In so far as the family did have significance, it involved responsibilities which traditionally belonged to women, such as cleaning house, preparing food, making clothes, and raising children. The husband was at most his wife’s assistant, her companion and her sex partner. He was often thought of as her possession (Mary’s Tom), as was the cabin in which they lived.39 It is true that domestic life took on an exaggerated importance in the social lives of slaves, for it did indeed provide them with the only space where they could truly experience themselves as human beings. Black women, for this reason—and also because they were workers just like their men—were not debased by their domestic functions in the way that white women came to be. Unlike their white counterparts, they could never be treated as mere “housewives.” But to go further and maintain that they consequently dominated their men is to fundamentally distort the reality of slave life.
Angela Y. Davis (Women, Race, & Class)
I’m a Muslim migrant woman, I’m heading to the Senate on Monday, and there’s nothing Senator Fraser Anning can do about that.” Once inside the Senate, Mehreen did not mince her words. She said some of Australia’s politicians were “creating and fanning racial divisions.” Her position in politics has led to accusations that Mehreen is not “Australian enough” to serve the country. Mehreen’s response? “But how can I be Australian enough? Do I need to point to my love of cricket? My career in the public service? My husband’s role as major in the army reserves?” People of color in white-dominant societies are often forced to walk the lines of “enough.” Not quite brown enough, never quite assimilated enough, to the point that we feel, well, like we can never be enough. Mehreen refuses to play that game. “Instead of being accepted because this is our home, we are asked to apologize for every action of someone who looks like us. We are subject to rules that white people never will be . . . for some, we will never be Australian enough.
Seema Yasmin (Muslim Women Do Things)
God creates man and woman to cherish their shared equality while complementing their various differences..Most people view marriage as a means of self-fulfillment accompanied by sexual satisfaction..The husband is the head of his wife? Wives should submit to their husbands? Are you serious?.In our limited understanding, we hear [these] words and we recoil in disgust..As soon as we hear the word submission alongside the previous picture of headship, we immediately think in terms of inferiority and superiority, subordination and domination..God made clear from the start that men and women are equal in dignity, value and worth..[submission] means to yield to another in love..The three persons of the Trinity are equally diving..Yet the Son submits to the Father..this doesn't mean that God the Father is dominating and that God the Son is cruelly forced into compulsory subordination. Rather, the Son gladly submits to the Father in the context of close relationship..submission is not a burden to bear..Onlookers will observe a wife joyfully and continually experiencing her husband's sacrificial love for her..the world will realize that following Christ is not a matter of duty. Instead, it is a means to full, eternal, and absolute delight..the first sin occurred..as a response to a gender-specific test..the man sits silently by-- like a wimp..the man has the audacity to blame his wife..the first spineless abdication of a man's responsibility to love, serve, protect, and care for his wife..Sure, through a job a man provide[s] for the physical needs of his wife, but..that same job often prevents him from providing for her spiritual, emotional, and relational needs..He never asks how she feels, and he doesn't know what's going on in her heart. He may think he's a man because of his achievements at work and accomplishments in life, but in reality he's acting like a wimp who has abdicated his most important responsibility on earth: the spiritual leadership of his wife..The work of Satan in Genesis 3 is a foundational attack not just upon humanity in general but specifically upon men, women, and marriage..For husbands will waffle back and forth between abdicating their responsibility to love and abusing their authority to lead. Wives, in response, will distrust such love and defy such leadership. In the process they'll completely undercut how Christ's gracious sacrifice on the cross compels glad submission in the church..Headship is not an opportunity for us to control our wives; it is a responsibility to die for them..[Husbands], don't love our wives based upon what we get from them..Husbands, love your wives not because of who they are, but because of who Christ is. He loves them deeply, and our responsibility is to reflect his love..the Bible is not saying a wife is not guilty for sin in her own life. Yet the Bible is saying a husband is responsible for the spiritual care of his wife. When she struggles with sin, or when they struggle in marriage, he is ultimately responsible..If we are harsh with our wives, we will show the world that Christ is cruel with his people..God's Word is subtly yet clearly pointing out that God has created women with a unique need to be loved and men with a unique need to be respected..Might such a wife be buying into the unbiblical lie that respect is based purely upon performance? So wives, see yourselves in a complementary, not competitive, relationship with your husband..we cannot pick and choose where to obey God.
David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
As the Supreme Court ruled on the matter, if you were to permit an American woman to keep her own nationality at the moment of marriage to a foreigner, you would essentially be allowing the wife’s citizenship to trump the husband’s citizenship. In so doing, you would be suggesting that the woman was in possession of something that rendered her superior to her husband—in even one small regard—and this was obviously unconscionable, as one American judge explained, since it undermined “the ancient principle” of the marital contract, which existed in order “to merge their identity (man and wife) and give dominance to the husband.” (Strictly
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed)
The Iranian regime strictly follows Twelver Shiism, the dominant branch of Shiite Islam.1 The Twelvers believe in twelve imams who are directly descended from Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and her husband, Ali (the first imam).2 Fatima and Ali’s two sons were the second and the third imams, and so it continued through the family lineage. Shiites believe all but the twelfth imam were martyred by the Sunnis.3 The twelfth imam, Abu Al Qasim Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali, called al-Mahdi (the Guided One), went into occultation4 (ghayba; disappearance or hiding) when he was five years old. Shiites believe that the Mahdi “disappeared down a well in what is now a golden-domed [Shiite] shrine called Al []Askariyyayn, in Samarra, Iraq.”5 The Mahdi will reappear sometime near the end of the world. Shiites further believe that Jesus will also return and assist the Mahdi to convert the world to Shiite Islam.6 “ ‘The Imam Mahdi will lead the forces of righteousness against the forces of evil in one final apocalyptic battle in which the enemies of the Imam will be defeated.’ ”7 Accordingly, Shiites believe they must hasten the Mahdi’s return. Once he returns, the Mahdi will rule from Jerusalem.8
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
If a woman becomes more dominating on her husband, he may not be as playful in bed as he could be otherwise.
Girdhar Joshi (Some Mistakes Have No Pardon)