Joanna Russ
Joanna Russ
Joanna Russwas an American writer, academic and radical feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth22 February 1937
CountryUnited States of America
class use may
And middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).
class racist way
To act in a way both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.
contrary faith turns usual
Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler's bet.
taken garden each-day
... chastity is not given once and for all like a wedding ring that is put on never to be taken off, but is a garden which each day must be weeded, watered, and trimmed anew, or soon there will be only brambles and wilderness.
want way needs
[T]here is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it.
art writing mean
The techniques are all means of dealing with one simple idea: She wrote it. (That is, the "wrong" person--in this case, female--has created the "right" value--i.e., art.) Denial of Agency: She didn't write it. Pollution of Agency: She shouldn't have written it. Double Standard of Content: Yes, but look what she wrote about. False Categorizing: She is not really she [an artist] and it is not really it [serious, of the right genre, aesthetically sound, important, etc.] so how could "she" have written "it"? Or simply: Neither "she" nor "it" exists (simple exclusion).
memories believe thinking
When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the assumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time. And if no one ever did it beforewhy do we think we can succeed now?
You can't imbibe someone's success by f*cking them.
gun outcomes culture
When one culture has the big guns and the other has none, there is a certain predictablity about the outcome.
believe thinking acting
Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.
beautiful fun tombstone
Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?). I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand: WE WUZ PUSHED.
thinking suffering fool
The demon got up. The demon said Fool. To think you can eat their food and not talk to them. To think you can take their money and not be afraid of them. To think you can depend on their company and not suffer from them.
girl genius
I'm not a girl. I'm a genius.
art tradition behinds
Art is collective. Always, it has a tradition behind it.