Quote of the Day

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

-- Margaret Fuller

Quote of the Day

Finding a group, a place to fit in, is a compelling dream for outsiders and can be a heady experience when lived.  Cocooned among like-minded misfits, often for the first time, it is a relief to feel that, as a group, one has helped to make a safe alternative haven beyond the regular world's judgment.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 108

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Punk features more unlove songs than love songs.  How could it be otherwise, when it's made by outsiders wrestling with the octopus arms of the patriarchy?  It's the loud sound designed to send the old walls tumbling down (and that has also come to refer to not just 1950s dating conventions, but gender).

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 95-96

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The audacity and courage of female artists who defy the odds is to be celebrated; like the women in this chapter, who find a way to dig life and create what they want with or without money by combining whatever resources they have.  And when Babylon and/or the universe does decide to lavish its fruits on you, don't swallow it all up for yourself.  Keep more than solvent to do what you need to do -- but don't forget to also spread it around.  Just like Patti Smith did.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 86

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You can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.

-- George Kent

Quote of the Day

The insanely extended struggle for women's equal pay may be invisible simply because of its age -- ironically, the fate that many women fear.  The gender pay gap is a wound that will make society unequal until it is fixed.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 85

Quote of the Day

Sometimes it seems as if equal pay for women is such a long-standing cause that it lacks the glamor of "newer" issues.  Some artists in this book were loath to define themselves as "feminist."  However, ask if they believe in equal pay for women, and they always do -- which means they are feminists, after all.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 85

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Small discoveries and appreciations are treats in one's day that can make a person happier, and thus more likely to attract positive interactions.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 68

Quote of the Day

(Patti Smith) had not specifically focused on making work calculated to attract money.  No doubt she made artistic choices that she trusted would not alienate an audience, but she basically made the sound and told the stories she wanted to hear.  As she chronicles in her memoirs, like any aspiring artist without family money, Smith knew how to enjoy life without necessarily having much financially.  Playing it her way was of more significance, and appropriate material reward would hopefully follow.
 
-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 60

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There is a clear continuum from the feminization of poverty to the masculinization of wealth.  It's no accident.

-- Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words, 2012

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We must make a place in a market manipulated to pander to the cliched male gaze; find a voice for our feelings when we've never heard anyone sound the way we hear in our head; break generations of our family's female mode of being; construct new forms of family and effective motherhood; position ourselves within the newly possible flexing of gender experimentation and fight for the right to do so.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 53

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Discovering one's own sound, like a writer finding her voice, is an accumulation of such individual, intuitive steps over the edge, trusting in one's own velocity to find a flight path.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 35

Quote of the Day

We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.  Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.  This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics.

-- Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

Quote of the Day

So this book is an attempt at a healing...and yes, even a noncorrosive revenge, as the title suggests.  "I don't do revenge," drawled Chrissie Hynde on hearing the title.  Yes, but we're not talking that mean-spirited sort of gotcha! revenge.  In the case of punky females, revenge means getting the same access as your male peers, to make your own music, look and sound how you want, and be able to draw enough people to ensure the continuation of the process.  Sounds simple enough, talent permitting, but as this book shows, it's different for girls.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 7

Quote of the Day

When women perform a professional, hard-rocking set, with no concession to female stereotypes, they're an automatic threat.  They're a threat to men because they challenge male supremacy in a citadel that has never been attacked before; they threaten women who perhaps never dared acknowledge that THEY want to be onstage doing the energizing instead of watching their boyfriends do it, in passive admiration.

-- Vivien Goldman, Sounds, December 11, 1976