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
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
girl genius
I'm not a girl. I'm a genius.
men mind firsts
Sit a man on his ass with nothing to do but eat and the first thing that goes is his mind. It never fails.
real artist seems
Real artists, it seems to me, are those who don't repeat themselves.
toil withered
How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.
america united-states congress
There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress.
mother jobs sorry
Anyway everyboy (sorry) knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when you're at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That's why they don't pay you for it.
girl nice thinking
....thinking you are attacking society when you condemn or ravage the hypothetical Nice Girl Next Door is the exact equivalent of thinking that stealing from the local supermarket makes you a Communist.
hate men thinking
I think we ought to decide that man-hating is not only respectable but honorable. To be a misandrist a woman needs considerable ingenuity, originality, and resilience. A misogynist requires no such resources.