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“Ignorance does not make you fireproof when the world is burning.”
― Nelou Keramati

“Standing behind predators makes prey of us all.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself, she sounds guilty. So I waited some more.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“Black lives matter is not a black people's movement - metoo is not a women's movement - pride is not a gay people's movement - it's all humanity's movement - a movement for being accepted as humans by the humans.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“A communal outrage inspires what the psychologist Roy Maumeister calls a victim narrative: a moralized allegory in which a harmful act is sanctified, the damage consecrated as irreparable and unforgivable. The goal of the narrative is not accuracy but solidarity. Picking nits about what actually happened is seen as not just irrelevant but sacrilegious or treasonous.”
― Steven Pinker, Rationality

“Every harm done to the society, is harm done to me - every injustice done to the society, is injustice done to me. Such should be the thinking of a responsible and civilized individual of the human society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law

“We make sense of violent events by choosing to deny that they happened—or by blaming the victim. This is true even if the victim is yourself.”
― Sarah Kasbeer, A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man

“We want Harvey Weinstein in prison. We want Brock Turner to have a longer sentence. We want Judge Aquilina to sign Nassar’s death warrant. We rely on a third party to take these ‘bad menâ€� away, usually in the form of an institution or the state. And this White Knight or Angry Dad is patriarchy personified. This is how our outraged activism fails to dismantle the intersecting systems of heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism that produce sexual violence â€� and strengthens them instead.”
― Alison Phipps

“Not that I’ve been raped. Not raped raped. Strane hurt me sometimes,
but never like that. Though I could claim he raped me and I’m sure I’d be
believed. I could participate in this movement of women upon women
upon women lining the walls with every bad thing that’s ever happened to
them, but I’m not going to lie to fit in. I’m not going to call myself a
victim. Women like Taylor find comfort in that label and that’s great for
them, but I’m the one he called when he was on the brink. He said it
himself—with me, it was different. He loved me, he loved me.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Not that I’ve been raped. Not raped raped. Strane hurt me sometimes, but never like that. Though I could claim he raped me and I’m sure I’d be believed. I could participate in this movement of women upon women upon women lining the walls with every bad thing that’s ever happened to them, but I’m not going to lie to fit in. I’m not going to call myself a
victim. Women like Taylor find comfort in that label and that’s great for them, but I’m the one he called when he was on the brink. He said it himself—with me, it was different. He loved me, he loved me.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“The Gender Sonnet

Woman means not weakling, but wonder.
Woman means not obstinate, but original.
Woman means not man-slave, but mother.
Woman means not amorous, but amiable.
Woman means not neurotic, but nimble.
Man mustn't mean medieval, but moral.
Man mustn't mean abusive, but affable.
Man mustn't mean nefarious, but noble.
Trans doesn't mean titillating, but tenacious.
Trans doesn't mean riff-raff, but radiant.
It doesn't mean abhorrent, but affectionate.
It ain't nasty and sick, but nerved and sentient.
Gender has no role in society except in bed.
Person is known by character, not dongs 'n peaches.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Freedom of Dress (The Sonnet)

Freedom of dress is as important,
As freedom of press, that's common sense.
If we're still stuck with squabbles on clothes,
When will we manifest character's radiance!
What does it matter, what we wear,
As long as we walk with our head held high!
Anything that strengthens our backbone,
Is worth the fight of a thousand lifetime.
Clothes perish, so does the body in them,
But a well-built character keeps on shining.
Focus on conduct across all shallow exterior,
Let burning dogs burn, you just keep dazzling.
I repeat, heed not the honks of primeval puritans.
Own your booty and trample all condemnation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“If someone commits an unwelcome touch in front of me, I'll go to jail later, they'll lose their limb first.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Woman Over World: The Novel

“I just want to know if you think I should.â€�

“I think it would cause you severe stress,� Ruby says. “I’d worry the symptoms you described would become even more intense to the point where it would be difficult for you to function.�

“But I’m talking on a moral level. Because isn’t it supposed to be worth all the stress? That’s what people keep saying, that you need to speak out no matter the cost.�

“No,� she says firmly. “That’s wrong. It’s a dangerous amount of pressure to put on someone dealing with trauma.�

“Then why do they keep saying it? Because it’s not just this journalist. It’s every woman who comes forward. But if someone doesn’t want to come forward and tell the world every bad thing that’s happened to her, then she’s what? Weak? Selfish?â€� I throw up my hand, wave it away. “The whole thing is bullshit. I fucking hate it.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“But I’m not ok. For days afterward, I walk around dazed, unable to shake the feeling of having been violated. During a meeting with my advisor, she asks how I’m doing, expecting my usual aloof response. Instead, I launch into a version of what happened. I try to be vague because I don’t want to implicate Strane, so the story comes out patchy and incoherent, makes me sound crazy.

“This is Henry we’re talking about?� my advisor asks, her voice barely above a whisper; the office walls are thin. “Henry Plough?� He hasn’t even been there a year and already he has a reputation for being a man of integrity.

Clasping her hands, my advisor labors over her words as she says, “Vanessa, over the years I’ve gathered from your writing that something happened to you in high school. Do you think that might be what you’re really upset about here?�

She waits, her eyebrows jumping as though prompting me to agree. This, I think, is the cost of telling, even in the guise of fiction—once you do, it’s the only thing about you anyone will ever care about. It defines you whether you want it to or not.

My advisor smiles, reaches forward and pats my knee. “Hang in there.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Political whiteness is the systematic privileging of bourgeois white women’s wounds at the expense of others. Its obsession with threat is both sexualised and racialised, because of the role of colonialism in co-constructing race and sexuality.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“Media markets, like all markets, are profoundly nihilistic. Clicks, likes and shares are a multi-denominational currency. As long as they accumulate, as long as visibility (and revenue) is gained, it does not matter why. In other words, the media using sexual violence as clickbait does not imply support for feminist goals.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“The response to naming and shaming is often what I call ‘institutional airbrushingâ€�: neoliberal institutions and organisations obsessed with how things look rather than how they are merely remove the ‘blemishâ€� that has been exposed.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“This is mainstream sexual violence activism in a capitalist context. We ‘investâ€� our trauma in networked media markets, to generate outrage and the visibility we need to further our cause. Cynical media corporations exploit this outrage, building visibility for their brands through clicks, likes and shares by encouraging audiences to consume our pain. Meanwhile the threat of damage, through widespread outrage, to the brands of exposed institutions and organisations leads to a purging of ‘bad menâ€� from high-profile sectors. These individuals may well move on to start all over again, while dysfunctional systems are left intact. Although this is not our intention, this seems more like NIMBYism to me than radical political action. Although this is not our intention, I’m afraid this is the ‘Me, Not Youâ€� of political whiteness.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“One people's movement is all of humanity's movement.”
― Abhijit Naskar, No Foreigner Only Family

“Gender relations are currently being challenged and rethought, and equality gains staunchly defended as the resurgent right tries to roll them back. Perhaps this has given privileged white women the opportunity â€� and drive â€� to seize some power for ourselves. In a world of kill or be killed, or grab or be grabbed, this is Pussy Grabs Back.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“I want conservatives really to listen to these women, to stop saying boys will be boys, and to take what these women are saying seriously.

As for the feminists, I want to invite them to consider whether the cause of all this unhappiness might be something other than the patriarchy.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Sonnet of Short Dress

There is no short dress, only short sight,
No obscene outfit, only eyes of obscenity.
The world is no man's family heirloom,
That it should be cherished by the men only.
Instead of restricting a girl's right to expression,
Teach boys, short dress isn't a sign of consent.
If women cannot walk around freely as men do,
Better sentence all men to lifetime imprisonment.
Let all girls hear it loud, wear what you like to wear,
Walk around naked if that's what you really want.
And when an animal makes unwanted advances,
Activate your knee 'n crush their beloved balls to pulp.
Girls don't need protecting, they ain't fragile showpiece.
Let's just raise boys as decent humans, not entitled bullies.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“There is no short dress, only short sight.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Maybe community creates courage. What if courage creates community? Maybe empathy creates courage. How can you express empathy towards others if you can’t empathize with your own self? Is the core of healing empathy and courage?”
― Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

“Je voudrais pouvoir porter plainte, mais je suis furieuse de n’avoir d’autre recours que celui que m’impose la justice. […] Je voudrais un monde où il serait possible de reconnaître que la vertu de la victime est une fiction, un confort, une arnaque, qu’on peut être prise pour cible sans être irréprochable, qu’on peut avoir menti, traîné, pesté, et joui sans porter la moindre responsabilité de ce qui nous est arrivé. Je voudrais que l’on écoute les plaintes auxquelles il manque des morceaux. Les amnésiques, les bordéliques, les timides et les névrotiques, celles qui ont peur, celles qui ont mal, ne savent plus ou ne veulent plus savoir, celles qui ne veulent pas de °ùé±è²¹°ù²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô, n’en attendent plus, celles qui parlent pour en finir et celles qui veulent juste être prises dans les bras de quelqu’un. Je voudrais que les juges se rappellent un peu, parfois, qu’on a souvent davantage envie d’un regard que d’une sanction pénale. Il ne s’agit pas de punir. Il s’agirait de me guérir.”
― Capucine Delattre, Un monde plus sale que moi

“Si Victor ne cherchait ni à me nuire, ni à abuser de moi, ni même à occulter ou tromper ma faculté de jugement, alors aux yeux de la loi, il ne peut pas être puni.
Je suis d’accord avec ça. Mais l’irresponsabilité n’exclut pas la °ùé±è²¹°ù²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô. Je mérite des excuses, et de pouvoir choisir de lui pardonner, qu’importe qu’il en soit digne ou non. Mais tant que personne de légitime n’aura reconnu ma vérité et sa ³¦³Ü±ô±è²¹²ú¾±±ô¾±³Ùé, tant que personne n’aura su nous dire que non, Victor ne savait pas ce qu’il faisait, mais que oui, il l’a quand même fait, je n’aurai pas de refuge, pas d’autre soulagement que l’aigreur et la colère.”
― Capucine Delattre, Un monde plus sale que moi

“If you do this to me, I will write about it.”
― Sue William Silverman, Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul

“If someone says they feel like an experience of theirs was assault and that they feel violated, the response should be quite simple: believe them. Telling someone they weren't hurt won't make it so. It will only confuse and invalidate them, usually them in further mental distreess, deeper in the shame they've been told they should have. Another person saying that a painful experience didn't happen will never negate the fact that, for the survivor, it did.”
― Catriona Morton, The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture

“If a man doesn't make you feel safe, it's not a man.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations