Quote of the Day

A genuine relationship is possible only if both partners can admit their feelings, experience them and communicate them to each other without fear ... Why should we seek this exchange with our old parents, of all people?  They are no longer partners for us, in the genuine sense of the word.  The story that linked us with them is over once we have children of our own and once we can genuinely communicate with partners we have selected for ourselves.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 151-152

Quote of the Day

In a recent commencement address to the 2016 class of Howard University, President Obama insisted that the United States "is a better place today" than when he graduated from college more than 30 years ago.  This is unarguably true.  But I think some white men, particularly of the ilk supporting Trump, think that their identity group is worse off as a whole -- that it was indeed better to be a straight white man in the 1910s or 1950s.  This is, of course, objectively absurd from an economic perspective but as Matt Bruenig has written, many white men feel that gender and racial hierarchies provide them with a social benefit.  Social caste is all about relative ranking.  And for a number of those white men, any notion of equality for women or minorities is plainly a demotion over the past.

-- Sally Kohn, "Trump maxing out his 'man card'"

Quote of the Day

When we're young we all waste so much time being reserved or embarrassed with our parents, resenting them or wishing they and we were entirely different people.  This changes when we become adults, but we don't often explore new ways of talking and conversing, and we put off discussing complex issues or raising difficult questions.  We think we'll do it one day, in the future, but life gets in the way, and then it's too late.

-- Anderson Cooper, The Rainbow Comes and Goes, p. 6

Quote of the Day

At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's libbers, "bra burners," and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase-carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters responsible for a gender gap that really could decide elections.  The last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age, so we would relax, stop, quit.  Indeed, the common purpose in all these disparate and contradictory descriptions is to slow and stop a challenge to the current hierarchy. 

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 102

Quote of the Day

When you hear the attacks on "political correctness" this is what they mean.  Don't take my word for it -- listen to a Donald Trump supporter who was just selected to be an official Trump delegate in California.  William Johnson, one of the leaders in the white nationalism movement in California and nationwide, praises Trump for "allowing us to talk about things we've not been able to talk about."  Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who has endorsed Trump, said, "when we say 'take America back,' we know exactly what that means ... and I think everybody who says that knows what it means."  This is the first and only time I have ever agreed with David Duke, who analysis is spot on here.  Donald Trump's support is not exclusively but largely fueled by the fact that he is a white man who pledges to "make America great again" for many other white men like himself. 

-- Sally Kohn, "Trump maxing out his 'man card'"

Quote of the Day

Some people find their (reason for being) by asking, What do I love to do?  Others find theirs by asking, What makes me angry?  What wrongs need to be righted?  What injustice needs to be resisted?

-- Rob Bell, How to Be Here, p. 60

Quote of the Day

Enforced love is not love.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 151

Quote of the Day

Public opinion polls have long proved there is majority support for pretty much every issue that the women's movement has brought up, but those of us, women or men, who identify with feminism are still made to feel isolated, wrong, out of step.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 102

Quote of the Day

Make no mistake about it, a substantial portion of the American public is supporting Donald Trump -- some implicitly, others explicitly -- because he is a man.  More precisely, Trump's version of misogynist machismo matches theirs.  Think of this reactionary backlash as a vintage fad in American politics: certain voters longing for the days of crew cuts, flagrant racial oppression and unimpeded sexual harassment.  In their minds, the good old days.  This mindset is quickly going out of fashion but some stubbornly cling to the past.

-- Sally Kohn, "Trump maxing out his 'man card'"

Quote of the Day

Whoever you are and whatever work you do, no one has ever lived your life with your particular challenges and possibilities.  No one has ever raised that child before, even if you've raised two already.  No one has ever worked in that particular office before with it peculiar mix of personalities and challenges.  No one has ever taken care of that patient at this moment with these particular challenges.  "You" hasn't been attempted before.

-- Rob Bell, How to Be Here, p. 50

Quote of the Day

This desire to be different from the way we are so as to make life easier for our parents in old age and perhaps finally receive love from them is understandable.  But it is in direct opposition to the genuine need, supported by the body, to be true to our own selves.  I believe that self-respect will come of its own accord once this need can be gratified.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 133

Quote of the Day

Punished people sometimes pass punishment downward, especially to members of their own devalued group.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 91

Quote of the Day

Creativity is the residue of time wasted.

-- Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day

There will always be someone who's smarter than you.  There will always be someone with more raw talent than you.  There will always be someone more experienced and better qualified and harder working and stronger and more articulate and more creative with more stamina who can sing better than you can.  But who you aren't isn't interesting.  And who they are isn't interesting when it comes to who you are and what your path is.

-- Rob Bell, How to Be Here, p. 47

Quote of the Day

The goal of a successful therapy is liberation from a painful dependency -- not reconciliation, which is only a moralistic and not a physiological demand.  The body does not consist solely of the heart, and our brain is not just some receptacle into which these absurdities and contradictions have been poured during religious instruction classes.  It is an organism that retains the complete memory of everything that has happened to it.  Anyone genuinely alive to this insight would say, "God cannot expect me to believe something that in my eyes is contradictory and does vital harm to me."

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 131

Quote of the Day

Boredom is your window… Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.

-- Joseph Brodsky

Quote of the Day

Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there.  Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closet thing to a town square.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 53

Quote of the Day

Adolescence will always be an angry time.  And as long as the well-documented contradictions inherent in What a Woman (or Man) Must Be still exist, they're going to feed into young women's (and young men's) feelings of conflict and frustration.  Riot Grrrl, by encouraging girls to turn their anger outward, taught a crucial lesson: Always ask, Is there something wrong not with me but with the world at large?  It also forced us to confront a second question: Once we've found our rage, where do we go from there?

-- Sara Marcus, Girls to the Front, p. 329