Men Who Yell At Women Quotes

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Once upon a time there was a woman who was just like all women. And she married a man who was just like all men. And they had some children who were just like all children. And it rained all day. The woman had to skewer the hole in the kitchen sink, when it was blocked up. The man went to the pub every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The other nights he mended his broken bicycle, did the pool coupons, and longed for money and power. The woman read love stories and longed for things to be different. The children fought and yelled and played and had scabs on their knees. In the end they all died.
Elizabeth Smart (The Assumption of the Rogues & Rascals)
First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done. I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye. But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face. “Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide. “Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.” “She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?” “Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.” “And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?” “Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.” “And who are all these young men and women on each side?” “They are her sons and daughters.” “She must have had a very large family, Sir.” “Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.” “Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?” “No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.” “And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.” “They are her beasts.” “Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.” “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.” I looked at my Teacher in amazement. “Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
What do you think it does to future men when you teach boys that being weak is being a pussy? Pussy meaning female, obviously. Or yelling at men who are doing poorly that they’re being girls? Or ladies? Had enough, ladies?” I squinted one eye at him. It was all my brain could muster for a glare. “Men are teaching boys that they are equivalent to ladies, to girls, when they’re at their worst. At their absolute weakest. And you wonder why we’re from different planets? You wonder why men so often disrespect women?
K.F. Breene (Magical Midlife Madness (Leveling Up, #1))
The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati turn their trusting faces to the sun say to me care for us nurture us in my dreams I shudder and I run. I am six in a playground of white children Darkie, sing us an Indian song! Eight in a roomful of elders all mock my broken Gujarati English girl! Twelve, I tunnel into books forge an armor of English words. Eighteen, shaved head combat boots - shamed by masis in white saris neon judgments singe my western head. Mother tongue. Matrubhasha tongue of the mother I murder in myself. Through the years I watch Gujarati swell the swaggering egos of men mirror them over and over at twice their natural size. Through the years I watch Gujarati dissolve bones and teeth of women, break them on anvils of duty and service, burn them to skeletal ash. Words that don't exist in Gujarati : Self-expression. Individual. Lesbian. English rises in my throat rapier flashed at yuppie boys who claim their people “civilized” mine. Thunderbolt hurled at cab drivers yelling Dirty black bastard! Force-field against teenage hoods hissing F****ing Paki bitch! Their tongue - or mine? Have I become the enemy? Listen: my father speaks Urdu language of dancing peacocks rosewater fountains even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi suave and melodic earthy Punjabi salty rich as saag paneer coastal Kiswahili laced with Arabic, he speaks Gujarati solid ancestral pride. Five languages five different worlds yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat cold spiky words make the only reality. Words that don't exist in English: Najjar Garba Arati. If we cannot name it does it exist? When we lose language does culture die? What happens to a tongue of milk-heavy cows, earthen pots jingling anklets, temple bells, when its children grow up in Silicon Valley to become programmers? Then there's American: Kin'uh get some service? Dontcha have ice? Not: May I have please? Ben, mane madhath karso? Tafadhali nipe rafiki Donnez-moi, s'il vous plait Puedo tener….. Hello, I said can I get some service?! Like, where's the line for Ay-mericans in this goddamn airport? Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis: Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf? Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a' July! Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot! The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati bright as butter succulent cherries sounds I can paint on the air with my breath dance through like a Sufi mystic words I can weep and howl and devour words I can kiss and taste and dream this tongue I take back.
Shailja Patel (Migritude)
I prefer men who don't fall down and weep, who absorb a blow, who do not scamper and yell when chased, but stand firm, crouch, square off, meet an attack with something like resistance, even if it kills them.
Ben Marcus (Notable American Women)
Besides, Jason is a man of this sort: most men either envy or despise him, but most women fall in love with him at first sight. Since women everywhere, both among barbarians and among civilised races, hold the secret reins of power, and win their own way in the end, the gift bestowed on Jason is no poor one. He is a better leader even than you, Hercules, whom all men admire and none envy, and at first sight of whom every woman in her senses picks up her skirts and runs off yelling.’ Cheiron’s wisdom is justly famed, though he was exaggerating the fear women have of me; and therefore, while I refuse to lead the expedition myself, I am ready to fight all men, either singly or in a body, who wish to dispute Cheiron’s choice. But whether I despise or envy Jason, let no man impudently inquire.
Robert Graves
The misogynist has an extensive repertoire of scare tactics, insults, denigrating comments, and other intimidating behavior designed to make his partner feel inadequate and helpless. His most obvious attacks involve yelling, threatening, temper tantrums, name calling, and constant criticism. Attacks like these are direct, out in the open. They have an aggressive, assaultive quality to them.
Susan Forward (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why)
There was just enough room for the tonga to get through among the bullock-carts, rickshaws, cycles and pedestrians who thronged both the road and the pavement--which they shared with barbers plying their trade out of doors, fortune-tellers, flimsy tea-stalls, vegetable-stands, monkey-trainers, ear-cleaners, pickpockets, stray cattle, the odd sleepy policeman sauntering along in faded khaki, sweat-soaked men carrying impossible loads of copper, steel rods, glass or scrap paper on their backs as they yelled 'Look out! Look out!' in voices that somehow pierced though the din, shops of brassware and cloth (the owners attempting with shouts and gestures to entice uncertain shoppers in), the small carved stone entrance of the Tinny Tots (English Medium) School which opened out onto the courtyard of the reconverted haveli of a bankrupt aristocrat, and beggars--young and old, aggressive and meek, leprous, maimed or blinded--who would quietly invade Nabiganj as evening fell, attempting to avoid the police as they worked the queues in front of the cinema-halls. Crows cawed, small boys in rags rushed around on errands (one balancing six small dirty glasses of tea on a cheap tin tray as he weaved through the crowd) monkeys chattered in and bounded about a great shivering-leafed pipal tree and tried to raid unwary customers as they left the well-guarded fruit-stand, women shuffled along in anonymous burqas or bright saris, with or without their menfolk, a few students from the university lounging around a chaat-stand shouted at each other from a foot away either out of habit or in order to be heard, mangy dogs snapped and were kicked, skeletal cats mewed and were stoned, and flies settled everywhere: on heaps of foetid, rotting rubbish, on the uncovered sweets at the sweetseller's in whose huge curved pans of ghee sizzled delicioius jalebis, on the faces of the sari-clad but not the burqa-clad women, and on the horse's nostrils as he shook his blinkered head and tried to forge his way through Old Brahmpur in the direction of the Barsaat Mahal.
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1))
Boys are encouraged to siphon off a great deal of aggression and anger through contact sports, fighting, and overt competitiveness, but girls are given far fewer outlets. Girls are expected to be polite and sweet-tempered; it is not considered "ladylike" for them to express anger by yelling, fighting, or engaging in aggressive sports. Although some girls become tomboys, most girls learn to ventilate their anger through verbal aggression. Gossiping, name-calling, and sarcasm are the standard forms; other, less direct forms include sulking, pouting, and crying.
Susan Forward (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why)
if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t
Eboni Hogan
Adelia began to get cross. Why was it women who were to blame for everything—everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges? “We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly. “Where are we, then?” “It’s a maze.” “Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.” “No, it isn’t. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. Labyrinths twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.” Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Rather beautiful, really.” “I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. What’s a maze when it’s at home?” “It’s a trick. A trick to confuse. To amaze.” “And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?” “I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat. “Then in the name of Christ, do it.” “Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. “You’re bellowing.” She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile; he always had good teeth. Still did. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. How will you do it?” “My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “I’ll have to take the lead.” She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left. As she went, she chuntered to herself. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. How disregarded all women are. ... Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had; the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men—even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade. Adelia trudged on. Hag’s hole. Grendel’s mother’s entrails. Why was this dreadful place feminine to the men lost in it? Because it was tunneled? Womb-like? Is this woman’s magic? The great womb? Is that why the Church hates me, hates all women? Because we are the source of all true power? Of life? She supposed that by leading them out of it, she was only confirming that a woman knew its secrets and they did not. Great God, she thought, it isn't a question of hatred. It’s fear. They are frightened of us. And Adelia laughed quietly, sending a suggestion of sound reverberating backward along the tunnel, as if a small pebble was skipping on water, making each man start when it passed him. “What in hell was that?” Walt called back stolidly, “Reckon someone’s laughing at us, master.” “Dear God.
Ariana Franklin (The Serpent's Tale (Mistress of the Art of Death, #2))
Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more. Roaming around all that time with a bunch of men, fishing; and sermons-on-the-mount. Abandoning women. I thought of all the women who had it, and didn't even know when the big moment was, and others saying their rosary with the beads held over the side of the bed, and others saying, "Stop, stop, you dirty old dog," and others yelling desperately to be jacked right up to their middles, and it often leading to nothing, and them getting up out of bed and riding a poor door knob and kissing the wooden face of a door and urging with foul language, then crying, wiping the knob, and it all adding up to nothing either.
Edna O'Brien (Girls in Their Married Bliss (The Country Girls Trilogy, #3))
What we don’t say is: of course not all men hate women. But culture hates women, and men who grow up in a sexist culture have a tendency to do and say sexist things, often without meaning to. We aren’t judging you for who you are, but that doesn’t mean we’re not asking you to change your behaviour. What you feel about women in your heart is of less immediate importance than how you treat them on a daily basis. You can be the gentlest, sweetest man in the world and still benefit from sexism, still hesitate to speak up when you see women hurt and discriminated against. That’s how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because changing it seems like too much bother. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turn away or yell, as a child might, that it’s not your fault. Of course it isn’t your fault. I’m sure you’re lovely. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to do something about it.
Laurie Penny (Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution)
Wessex Heights There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend – Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend: Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky. In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways – Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things – Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis. I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the moon, Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night, There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white, There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.
Thomas Hardy
women who are violent, he says, are most often violent in response to men’s violence. Indeed, this is the single most effective argument I know for why it doesn’t make sense to arm women with guns to protect them against men with guns: because arming a woman with a gun is asking her to behave like a man, to embody the somatic and psychological and cultural experience of a man while simultaneously quelling all that women have been taught. It says to women, if you want to protect yourself from violent men, you need to become violent yourself. To Sinclair, this is exactly the wrong way to the solution. It’s not women who need to learn violence; it’s men who need to learn nonviolence. If men are taught not to cry, women are taught crying is acceptable. If men are taught anger is their sole allowable emotion, women are taught never to be angry. Men who yell are being men; women who yell are shrill or they’re drama queens or they’re hysterical. (Many before me have pointed out that there is no greater “drama” than a mass shooting, but the term “drama kings
Rachel Louise Snyder (No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us)
What do woman say to little boys? " Stop fighting. Stop being so rough. Stop rough housing." They're boys you know, that's kinda what they're sapossed to do. So, men are sapossed to overcome all these biological drives and I'm just really interested in helping women overcome theirs caus' I think the spotlight of " Outgrow your bestial nature." has been pointed just a little bit too long at men and I think it's time to swivel that motherfucker around and point it at woman and say stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men's dicks. Stop lying about who you are and what you're about. Stop being flirty, manipulative, and trying to be sexy. Just stop doing it. It's time for women to outgrow biology just as men have been instructed to for about the last 20,000 years to outgrow their biology. "Stop slamming doors. Stop yelling. Stop climbing trees. Stop being rude. Stop farting. Stop enjoying fart jokes. Just stop being men." Ok, Well; women stop being women. Be people. Be people who have sex, absolutely but, don't be caricatures. Don't aim to be like a woman who looks like the outline of some playboy mudflap on a trucker's rig. Just be people. Be sexual. Enjoy your sexuality and bodies but, stop trying to bury us in tits so that we pass out and you can rifle through our bank accounts. Just stop doing that shit. I won't enable it anymore. Why does your face have to look like some half rained on Picasso water color? I don't need rainbows on the face of a woman. I don't need these weird butterfly wing goth eyebrows and shit like that. Male sexuality is demonized and female sexuality is elevated. That's bullshit. Then women wonder why men prefer porn to them. It's caus' porn doesn't nag you for wanting stuff that's defined as "kinky" or "weird". Male sexuality is demonized and held in low esteem. Woman's sexuality is always beautiful. Woman's sexuality is unremitting shallow. I'm not saying men's isn't but, we know that about men, right? What turns women on? Women say confidence. Do you know what that means? Money. Do women say " He is really confident about his sidewalk art. He is really confident about his subway busking. That's such a turn on!" Why do men like looking at naked women and women get turned on looking at clothed men? Because if a man's clothes aren't on you don't know how expensive his wardrobe is. This is what Mohammad Ali said. I'm going to throw on some old jeans and a old t-shirt and I'm just gonna walk down into some little town and find some woman who doesn't know who the hell I am and then when she's fallen in love with me and we get married, I'm going to take her to my million dollar mansion and my yacht. This is the reality. Once you start having money, once you start having power, then the true nature of massive swaths of female sexuality becomes clear.
Stefan Molyneux
Our streets have days, and even hours. Where I was born, and where my baby will be born, you look down the street and you can almost see what's happening in the house: like, say, Saturday, at three in the afternoon, is a very bad hour. The kids are home from school. The men are home from work. You'd think that this might be a very happy get together, but it isn't. The kids see the men. The men see the kids. And this drives the women, who are cooking and cleaning and straightening hair and who see what men won't see, almost crazy. You can see it in the streets, you can hear it in the way the women yell for their children. You can see it in the way they come down out of the house - in a rush, like a storm - and slap the children and drag them upstairs, you can hear it in the child, you can see it in the way the men, ignoring all this, stand together in front of a railing, sit together in the barbershop, pass a bottle between them, walk to the corner to the bar, tease the girl behind the bar, fight with each other, and get very busy, later, with their vines. Saturday afternoon is like a cloud hanging over, it's like waiting for a storm to break. But, on Sunday mornings the clouds have lifted, the storm has done its damage and gone. No matter what the damage was, everybody's clean now. The women have somehow managed to get it all together, to hold everything together. So, here everybody is, cleaned, scrubbed, brushed, and greased. Later, they're going to eat ham hocks or chitterlings or fried or roasted chicken, with yams and rice and greens or combread or biscuits. They're going to come home and fall out and be friendly: and some men wash their cars, on Sundays, more carefully than they wash their fo­reskins.
James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk)
I got back into my car and followed the trucks; at the end of the road, the Polizei unloaded the women and children, who rejoined the men arriving on foot. A number of Jews, as they walked, were singing religious songs; few tried to run away; the ones who did were soon stopped by the cordon or shot down. From the top, you could hear the gun bursts clearly, and the women especially were starting to panic. But there was nothing they could do. The condemned were divided into little groups and a noncom sitting at a table counted them; then our Askaris took them and led them over the brink of the ravine. After each volley, another group left, it went very quickly. I walked around the ravine by the west to join the other officers, who had taken up positions above the north slope. From there, the ravine stretched out in front of me: it must have been some fifty meters wide and maybe thirty meters deep, and went on for several kilometers; the little stream at the bottom ran into the Syrets, which gave its name to the neighborhood. Boards had been placed over this stream so the Jews and their shooters could cross easily; beyond, scattered pretty much everywhere on the bare sides of the ravine, the little white clusters were multiplying. The Ukrainian “packers” dragged their charges to these piles and forced them to lie down over them or next to them; the men from the firing squad then advanced and passed along the rows of people lying down almost naked, shooting each one with a submachine bullet in the neck; there were three firing squads in all. Between the executions some officers inspected the bodies and finished them off with a pistol. To one side, on a hill overlooking the scene, stood groups of officers from the SS and the Wehrmacht. Jeckeln was there with his entourage, flanked by Dr. Rasch; I also recognized some high-ranking officers of the Sixth Army. I saw Thomas, who noticed me but didn’t return my greeting. On the other side, the little groups tumbled down the flank of the ravine and joined the clusters of bodies that stretched farther and farther out. The cold was becoming biting, but some rum was being passed around, and I drank a little. Blobel emerged suddenly from a car on our side of the ravine, he must have driven around it; he was drinking from a little flask and shouting, complaining that things weren’t going fast enough. But the pace of the operations had been stepped up as much as possible. The shooters were relieved every hour, and those who weren’t shooting supplied them with rum and reloaded the clips. The officers weren’t talking much; some were trying to hide their distress. The Ortskommandantur had set up a field kitchen, and a military pastor was preparing some tea to warm up the Orpos and the members of the Sonderkommando. At lunchtime, the superior officers returned to the city, but the subalterns stayed to eat with the men. Since the executions had to continue without pause, the canteen had been set up farther down, in a hollow from which you couldn’t see the ravine. The Group was responsible for the food supplies; when the cases were broken open, the men, seeing rations of blood pudding, started raging and shouting violently. Häfner, who had just spent an hour administering deathshots, was yelling and throwing the open cans onto the ground: “What the hell is this shit?” Behind me, a Waffen-SS was noisily vomiting. I myself was livid, the sight of the pudding made my stomach turn. I went up to Hartl, the Group’s Verwaltungsführer, and asked him how he could have done that. But Hartl, standing there in his ridiculously wide riding breeches, remained indifferent. Then I shouted at him that it was a disgrace: “In this situation, we can do without such food!
Jonathan Littell (The Kindly Ones)
As those people are extreamly apt to get drunk, and, when so, are very quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbad the selling any liquor to them; and when they complain'd of this restriction, we told them that if they would continue sober during the treaty, we would give them plenty of rum when business was over. They promis'd this, and they kept their promise, because they could get no liquor, and the treaty was conducted very orderly, and concluded to mutual satisfaction. They then claim'd and receiv'd the rum; this was in the afternoon; they were near one hundred men, women, and children, and were lodg'd in temporary cabins, built in the form of a square, just without the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the commissioners walk'd out to see what was the matter. We found they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; they were all drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colour'd bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, form'd a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell that could well be imagin'd; there was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodging. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no notice. The next day, sensible they had misbehav'd in giving us that disturbance, they sent three of their old counselors to make their apology. The orator acknowledg'd the fault, but laid it upon the rum; and then endeavored to excuse the rum by saying, "The Great Spirit, who made all things, made every thing for some use, and whatever use he design'd any thing for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he made rum, he said 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with,' and it must be so." And, indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the sea-coast.
Benjamin Franklin (The Complete Harvard Classics - ALL 71 Volumes: The Five Foot Shelf & The Shelf of Fiction: The Famous Anthology of the Greatest Works of World Literature)
Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and
Steve Ebling (Holy Bible - Best God Damned Version - The Books of Moses: For atheists, agnostics, and fans of religious stupidity)
His manner became threatening as he stretched out his fat neck and pushed his bullhead at me. Smelling his hot breath and feeling his spit on my face, I heard him yell, “Who did you talk to?” “Why do you want to know?” I bravely asked, expecting the worst. “Answer me!” he repeated. “Give me the name of the person you sheltered!” I faltered, knowing that bad things were about to follow. Here I was just helping a German soldier and this Nazi bureaucrat took it upon himself to punish me. His three huge gold rings cut my face deeply as he repeatedly slapped my face, shouting obscenities. Shaken, I stood there trembling, trying to wipe my bleeding nose and expecting additional blows. Very timidly one of the other women asked just what it was he wanted to know. I stood with my head bowed, as he continued with his demands. I knew that he wanted me to reveal the corporal’s identity. He also wanted the names of the other soldiers who were with him in the village. I told him that they were just German soldiers that needed help! Not even knowing the circumstances, he accused them of being cowards or scared rabbits, Etappenhasen, as he called them. This was a derogatory name given to soldiers suffering from “shellshock” or Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Frightened of what could happen to them, these soldiers in Bischoffsheim stayed close to the mess hall, or goulash kanone as it was called. The local authorities had authorized our helping them and I just couldn’t betray these men! Who was this bully to get involved? I think he was just one of those “Little Hitlers” trying to make a name for himself!
Hank Bracker
And this all brings to mind another incident that took place as the deportations from Berlin were being orchestrated, little known but highly illuminating and important. Between February 27 and March 6, 1943, a large group non-Jewish German women publicly protested in the cold for the release of nearly 2,000 Jews—their husbands and the male children of these ‘mixed marriages’. These couples had held special ‘exemptions’ from the ongoing racial laws, tabled even at the Wannsee Conference, but with the defeat at Stalingrad, these male Jews were ordered to be rounded up. Outside of the site of their incarceration at Rosenstrasse 2–4 in Berlin, despite being threatened with lethal force, the women and children gathered here chanted and yelled in the belief that their loved ones were to be deported to suffer the same fate as those other Jews shipped to the East. News of the protest spread, and the regime did not carry out its threat and the men were eventually released (though most were picked up again to work in labor camps).[21] It was the only German public protest against deportation of Jews, and not one of the protesters was shot. No government likes bad ‘PR’, even the Nazis at home, especially as the tables begin to turn on the war front. I
Matthew A. Rozell (A Train Near Magdeburg―The Holocaust, the survivors, and the American soldiers who saved them)
Pressing a hand to her chest, Loretta glanced down in bewilderment. She had been so sure…Laughter bubbled up her throat. Aunt Rachel had missed? She never missed when she could draw a steady bead on a still target. Loretta’s throat tightened. The Comanche. She looked up, confusion clouding her blue eyes. He had shielded her with his own body? Waving his friends away, Hunter hunkered down and scooped a handful of dirt, pressing it to the shallow cut on his shoulder. Loretta stared at the blood trailing down his arm. If not for his quick thinking, it could have been her own. Survival instinct and common sense warred within her. She knew death might be preferable to what was in store for her, but she couldn’t help being glad she was alive. As if he felt her staring at him, the Comanche lifted his head. When his eyes met hers, the fury and loathing in them chilled her. He stood and jerked the feathers from his braid, wrapping them in his shirt. Never taking his gaze off her, he stuffed the bundle into a parfleche hanging from his surcingle. “Keemah,” he growled. Uncertain what he wanted and afraid of doing the wrong thing, Loretta stayed where she was. He caught her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “Keemah, come!” He gave her a shake for emphasis, his eyes glittering. “Listen good, and learn quick. I have little patience with stupid women.” Grasping her waist, he tossed her on the horse and scooted her to the back of the blanket saddle. The hem of her nightgown rode high. She could feel all the men staring at her. Had he no decency? With trembling hands, she tugged at the gown and tried to cover her thighs. There wasn’t enough material to stretch. And it was so thin from years of wear, it was nearly transparent. The morning breeze raised gooseflesh on her naked arms and back. With a grim set to his mouth, her captor opened a second parfleche, withdrawing a length of braided wool and a leather thong. Before she realized what he was about to do, he knotted the wool around one of her ankles, looped it under his horse’s belly, and swiftly bound her other foot. “We must ride like the wind!” he yelled to the others. “Meadro! Let’s go!” The other men ran for their horses. Grasping the stallion’s mane, Hunter vaulted to its back and settled himself in front of her. When he reached for her arms and pulled them around him, she couldn’t stifle a gasp. Her breasts were flattened against his back. “Your woman does not like you, cousin,” someone called in English. Loretta turned to see who spoke and immediately recognized the brave who had encouraged Hunter to kill her that first day. His scarred face was unforgettable. He flashed her a twisted smile that seemed more a leer, his black eyes sliding insolently down her body to rest on her naked thighs. Then he laughed and wheeled his chestnut horse. “She won’t be worth the trouble she will make for you.” Hunter glanced over his shoulder at her. The fiery heat of his anger glowed like banked embers in his eyes. “She will learn.” With an expertise born of long practice, he lashed her wrists together with the leather. “She will learn quick.
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
In the bedrooms some of the men were fighting two women. One threw a knife and aimed it at Isabel's face. He missed, and the knife embedded itself in the wall behind her. Isabel grabbed her weapon, but Roman had already entered the room. He pushed Isabel aside, threw the knife at the assailant, then pointed the weapon at the other man. "Where is my mother?" he demanded. in a loud and scary voice. "How should I know, for all..." Roman interrupted him with a shot. He passed the gun to Isabel, took the machine gun from her, and proceeded to the next room. There, Sissy and Ostap were holding two men at gunpoint. "Move aside, my wife," Roman commanded, as he took hold of the DP machine gun. "Where is my mother?" I don't know where she is," Roman no longer listened. He repeated "no, no, no," his expression echoing the denial. The other man raised his hands defensively. "I'll only ask once," Roman declared. "I don't know where your mother is!" the man yelled. Roman shot him. In the living room, Nikura pinned four men against the wall. As they tried to avert the inevitable, one of the Soviets offered a different tactic. "I know where your mother is," he claimed. "Jock told me." "Where is she?" "I want my life in exchange for..." Roman didn't let him finish the sentence; he shot him. "Where is my mother?" the remaining three men demanded again. "In Castropol," an enterprising Soviet offered, "I'll make one phone call..." But it was Isabelle who shoved Roman aside and unleashed the machine gun's fury. She aimed and fired again. The lead bullet from the second burst silenced the two who had yet to speak. "I had a good feeling about the last one," Roman said. "I think he knew something.
Paulina Simons
Gone the glitter and glamour; gone the pompous wealth beside naked starvation; gone the strange excitement of a polyglot and many-sided city; gone the island of Western civilization flourishing in the vast slum that was Shanghai. Good-by to all that: the well-dressed Chinese in their chauffeured cars behind bullet-proof glass; the gangsters, the shakedowns, the kid­napers; the exclusive foreign clubs, the men in white dinner jackets, their women beautifully gowned; the white-coated Chinese “boys” ob­sequiously waiting to be tipped; Jimmy’s Kitchen with its good Amer­ican coffee, hamburgers, chili and sirloin steaks. Good-by to all the night life: the gilded singing girl in her enameled hair-do, her stage make-up, her tight-fitting gown with its slit skirt breaking at the silk­ clad hip, and her polished ebony and silver-trimmed rickshaw with its crown of lights; the hundred dance halls and the thousands of taxi dolls; the opium dens and gambling halls; the flashing lights of the great restaurants, the clatter of mah-jongg pieces, the yells of Chinese feasting and playing the finger game for bottoms-up drinking; the sailors in their smelly bars and friendly brothels on Szechuan Road; the myriad short-time whores and pimps busily darting in and out of the alleyways; the display signs of foreign business, the innumerable shops spilling with silks, jades, embroideries, porcelains and all the wares of the East; the generations of foreign families who called Shanghai home and lived quiet conservative lives in their tiny vacuum untouched by China; the beggars on every downtown block and the scabby infants urinating or defecating on the curb while mendicant mothers absently scratched for lice; the “honey carts” hauling the night soil through the streets; the blocks-long funerals, the white-clad professional mourners weeping false tears, the tiers of paper palaces and paper money burned on the rich man’s tomb; the jungle free-for- all struggle for gold or survival and the day’s toll of unwanted infants and suicides floating in the canals; the knotted rickshaws with their owners fighting each other for customers and arguing fares; the peddlers and their plaintive cries; the armored white ships on the Whangpoo, “protecting foreign lives and property”; the Japanese conquerors and their American and Kuomintang successors; gone the wickedest and most colorful city of the old Orient: good-by to all that.
Edgar Snow (Red China Today: The Other Side of the River)
She is so good, your wife.” “Yes,” said Alexander. “So fresh and young. So lovely to look at.” “Yes,” said Alexander, closing his eyes. “And she doesn’t yell at you.” “No. Though I reckon she sometimes wants to.” “Oh, to have such restraint in my Bessie. She used to be a fine woman. And the girl was such a loving girl.” More drink, more smoke. “But have you noticed since coming back,” said Nick, “that there are things that women just don’t know? Won’t know. They don’t understand what it was like. They see me like this, they think this is the worst. They don’t know. That’s the chasm. You go through something that changes you. You see things you can’t unsee. Then you are sleepwalking through your actual life, shell-shocked. Do you know, when I think of myself, I have legs? In my dreams I’m always marching. And when I wake up, I’m on the floor, I’ve fallen out of bed. I now sleep on the floor because I kept rolling over and falling while dreaming. When I dream of myself, I’m carrying my weapons, and I’m in the back of a battalion. I’m in a tank, I’m yelling, I’m always screaming in my dreams. This way! That way! Fire! Cease! Forward! March! Fire, fire, fire!” Alexander lowered his head, his arms drooping on the table. “I wake up and I don’t know where I am. And Bessie is saying, what’s the matter? You’re not paying attention to me. You haven’t said anything about my new dress. You end up living with someone who cooks your food for you and who used to open her legs for you, but you don’t know them at all. You don’t understand them, nor they you. You’re two strangers thrown together. In my dreams, with legs, after marching, I’m always leaving, wandering off, long gone. I don’t know where I am but I’m never here, never with them. Is it like that with you, too?” Alexander quietly smoked, downing another glass of whiskey, and another. “No,” he finally said. “My wife and I have the opposite problem. She carried weapons and shot at men who came to kill her. She was in hospitals, on battlefields, on frontlines. She was in DP camps and concentration camps. She starved through a frozen, blockaded city. She lost everyone she ever loved.” Alexander took half a glass of sour mash into his throat and still couldn’t keep himself from groaning. “She knows, sees, and understands everything. Perhaps less now, but that’s my fault. I haven’t been much of a—” he broke off. “Much of anything. Our problem isn’t that we don’t understand each other. Our problem is that we do. We can’t look at each other, can’t speak one innocent word, can’t touch each other without touching the cross on our backs. There is simply never any peace.” Another stiff drink went into Alexander’s throat.
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
It’s all right, Alera. I don’t need a family.” “Maybe you don’t need one,” I said with a shrug, playing with the fabric of the quilt that lay between us. “But you deserve one.” I thought for a moment I had hit a nerve, but instead he made a joke out of it. “Just think--if I’d had Koranis as my father, I might have turned into him by now. I’d be brutish and pretentious, but at least my boastful garb would distract you from those flaws. Oh, and this hair you love? It would be gone.” I laughed at the ounce of truth in his statement, then fell silent, for some reason feeling sadder about his situation than he was. He reclined upon the pillows, considering me. “You know, in Cokyri, fathers don’t raise their children. I think maybe it’s better that way.” “How can you think that?” I asked, troubled by the decided tenor of his voice, and he sat up again, not having expected this reaction from me. “Your father controlled you and forced you to marry Steldor. How can you disagree with me after living through that?” “Because…” I faltered. “Because I love my father for all the good things he’s done. Because he made me laugh when I was a child. That’s what I think about when I see him. Not his mistakes.” “I couldn’t forgive him like you do.” “Could you forgive me? I mean, if I did something awful.” Narian did not immediately respond, unsettling me, but it was in his nature to weigh all things. “I don’t know,” he slowly answered. “But I would still love you.” He looked at me, an epiphany in his eyes, finally understanding my connection to my family. Then his expression changed, and I knew he was going to raise a difficult issue. “Explain this then. If that is how families are supposed to function, and you would forgive your father anything, and clearly my mother would forgive me anything, then Koranis fails because he won’t accept me. The women, you and my mother, are loving, but the man fails.” “Yes, but not all men fail.” “Prove it. Your father sold you into marriage, and the only father figures I’ve known have respectively made my life hell and rejected me.” He lay back once more, watching me, and though he had caught me off guard, I was determined to make my point. “Cannan is a just and fair man.” “Whose son is Steldor.” “Who has faults, yes--” “As all men do.” Frustrated, I threw my hands in the air. “Are you going to keep interrupting me?” “No, he said apologetically. “Go on.” “What about you? Am I, the woman who is in love with you, supposed to believe you’re a terrible person when I know better?” “I would be a terrible father,” he said, shifting onto his side. “What?” “Come, Alera, you have to admit it.” “I don’t have to admit anything, especially when I think you’re wrong.” “On what grounds?” I was so exasperated I wanted to tear my hair out. And his bemused visage only made it worse. “Because I saw you with that little girl this afternoon! You were perfect with her. And if you can be perfect with a stranger’s child, how could you be any different with our own?” “It’s different raising a child than talking with one,” he contended. “I never had a father, Alera. No one taught me how to be one.” “And did anyone teach you how to love me?” This stopped him short. “No.” “Well, you’re pretty good at it. So be quiet, and accept that our children are going to love you.” Narian’s eyebrows rose, and I started laughing. Taking my hand, he pulled me toward him and I lay down beside him, mirroring his position. “I’m sorry for yelling at you,” I murmured, giving him a light kiss. “You never know where a conversation is going to take you,” he said, gazing into my dark eyes. “I’m rather glad you did.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
Liberated from fear, the Americans live with confidence, and therefore with enhanced vitality. A generous extravagance, undreamed of in other parts of the world, is the American rule. Men and women earn largely and spend what they have on the national pleasures, which are all social and stimulative of vitality. Modernity also tends to heighten vitality – or to be more exact, it affects the expression of vitality, externalising it in the form of vehement action. The joyful acceptance of change, which so profoundly influences American industry, business methods and domestic architecture, reacts on the affairs of daily, personal life. Pleasure is associated with a change of place and environment, finally with mere movement for its own sake. People leave their homes if they want entertainment. They externalise their vitality in visiting places of public amusement, in dancing and motoring – in doing anything that is not quietly sitting by their own fireside (or rather by their own radiator). What is known as 'night life' flourishes in America as nowhere else in the world. And nowhere, perhaps, is there so little conversation. In America vitality is given its most obviously vital expression. Hence there appears to be even more vitality in the Americans than perhaps there really is. A man may have plenty of vitality and yet keep still; his motionless calm may be mistaken for listlessness. There can be no mistake about people who dance and rush about. American vitality is always obviously manifested. It expresses itself vigorously to the music of the drum and saxophone, to the ringing of telephone bells and the roar of street cars. It expresses itself in terms of hastening automobiles, of huge and yelling crowds, of speeches, banquets, 'drives,' slogans, sky signs. It is all movement and noise, like the water gurgling out of a bath down the waste. Yes, down the waste.
Aldous Huxley (Jesting Pilate)
The place smelled of piss and mildew and stale beer. There was something else, too: the acrid sweat of the strung out—a smell that reminded me of the little cantinas in Bolivia where people in the coca trade use booze to come down from the powder cloud that gets them through the long shifts. If broken souls had an odor, they’d smell like the Cellar. A single bar on the right ran the entire length of the building: twelve bar stools, five occupied by men. And to the left of the bar was a group of tables, one of which propped up three people—two women and a guy—who looked like they were passed out. The bartender, a good-looking young woman with a ponytail, was yelling at a man whose elbows were propped on the bar. He stomped outside after the reaming, and I headed toward his abandoned seat. The
Erik Storey (Nothing Short of Dying (Clyde Barr, #1))
It is here you'll find economists are not only a very myopic group, but a very timid group as well.  And the radical idea that sex is the primary driver of economic growth is just too...well...sexy for them.  However, just because an idea is radical doesn't mean it isn't correct or true.  Matter of fact, while economists, politicians, academics, and feminists are clutching their pearls over the concept that sex powers our economy, there's a street-smart, common-sense American blue collar Joe who is yelling, "You needed a study for that???" But this presents a problem, not only for economists, but all of society, and especially women.  Because if sex (which also includes love, family, children/progeny) is the primary motivator for men to maximize their economic production, no amount of government spending, monetary policy, stimulus checks, or any other economic measures are going to prompt men to produce.  The responsibility of motivating men to be economically productive falls solely into the hands of women.  And when you consider what would be required of women to fire up men's economic engines once again, you can see where such a "sex-based economic policy" might run into some issues.
Aaron Clarey (A World Without Men: An Analysis of an All-Female Economy)
The inside of the tavern was well lit and filled with men and women in plain but sturdy clothes, most covered with some kind of fur, as though everyone worked with animals. They didn’t have the look of farmers. An odd stink rode under the scents of roasted meat and bread, but the food made his stomach grumble loudly. It was all he could do to keep from launching himself onto the nearest plate. Conversation died as everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him. “Ah, hello.” He gathered his courage. This was just like reading poetry, but subtract poems and add people casually placing hunting knives and daggers on their tables. One of the women was filing her fingernails into sharp points, like claws. Just like reading poetry. G regathered his courage and strode to the far end of the room, toward the bar. He had to squeeze in between two burly men with tear-shaped scars on their faces. They all smelled vaguely like wet dog. A young man at the end of the bar leaned forward and smirked at him in a decidedly unpleasant manner. The bartender eyed him. “What do you want?” “I—” G had never needed to admit to not having money before. “I don’t suppose you have any work that needs doing around here?” “Work?” This fellow clearly had not so much brain as ear wax. “I could clean the tables or scrub the floor.” The bartender pointed to a haggard-looking serving wench, who scowled at him. “Nell here does that.” “Or I could peel potatoes. Or carrots. Or onions. Or any root vegetable, really.” G had never peeled anything before, but how hard could it be? “We have someone who does that, too,” the man said. “Why don’t you push off. This isn’t the place for you.” G would have suggested yet more menial tasks he’d never attempted, but at that moment, he put together the hints: the wet-dog smell; the fur on everyone’s clothes; the defensive/protective behavior when he, a stranger, entered. That, and they were eating beef. Cow. Possibly that village’s only cow. All at once, he knew. This was the Pack. “Er, yes, perhaps I should be pushing off, as you suggest—” he started to say. “Rat!” Someone near the door lurched from his chair, making it topple over behind him. “There’s a rat!” It couldn’t be Jane, he thought. He’d told her to stay put. “It’s not a rat, you daft idiot,” cried another. “It’s a squirrel!” “It’s some kind of weasel!” Bollocks. It was his wife. “It’s dinner, that’s what it is.” That was the man directly to G’s right. “And he’s a spy. Asking all those questions about vegetables.” “She’s clearly a ferret!” G yelled as he lunged toward the dear little creature dashing about on the floor. 
Cynthia Hand (My Lady Jane (The Lady Janies, #1))
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was the biggest one-day political protest in this country’s history, and it was staged by angry women.29 At one of the only other comparable protests of a presidential inauguration, held at the height of the New Left, to protest the swearing-in of Richard Nixon in 1969, women in the movement had fought for space for two speakers, Marilyn Salzman Webb and Shulamith Firestone. As soon as Webb had begun to speak about abortion, childcare, and how men on the left treated women, the booing from the male crowd had drowned her out; Webb has recalled that “people were yelling ‘Take her off the stage and fuck her!’ and ‘Fuck her down a dark alley!’” She left the stage crying, and decades later she told the historian Annelise Orleck that that was when she knew that women “couldn’t build a coalition with the left; women’s liberation was going to be its own movement.”30 Firestone, who’d also been unable to give her speech in the face of booing from her ideological brethren, wrote more bluntly after the event: “Fuck off Left! We’re starting our own movement.”31
Rebecca Traister (Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger)
When Robinson and Davis take over at orientation, they bark at the new recruits to stand up, then issue their first command: “Smile.” Students will learn a lot of things in Strive, but the first lesson is how to smile. The first few days are devoted to it. The new class members are always confused, and then they start to smile—except for about 20 percent of the room, who stand stone-faced. Robinson calls out those who don’t smile, pulls them up to the front of the room, and says, “This is my smile crew.” He tells the rest of the room to cheer until they can get these men and women, mostly men, to finally crack a smile. The claps and hoots and whistles rise in a crescendo heard throughout the building. Meanwhile, Davis and Robinson walk up and down the line, yelling, “Smile,” and pantomiming it, using their fingers to pull the corners of their own mouths back. The reluctant recruits roll their eyes. Some get tense, their faces get stuck in passive displays of aggression, as Robinson goes up and down the line and mocks: “Is it painful? Is there a medical condition? Smile!” He and Davis continue their full-on assault of well-wishing and joking and silliness until one by one, the students fold. A smile is the Strive game face, they explain. “I’m not asking you to smile on North Monroe Street at two in the morning,” Davis says. “I’m asking you to smile in here.” It’s usually the youngest men who bow out at this stage—the 19- and 20-year-olds who are too cool to tolerate the corniness, the guys who’ve been strongly encouraged to try Strive by some parole officer or social worker attempting to keep them from spending their twenties in prison. It’s the older guys who are eager to cooperate. They’re hungry.
Anonymous