have i found you? flightless bird.

“the accomplishment of the women’s movement in this regard was staggering. silence—a heavy tombstone over each woman’s hurt body and torn heart—was broken; one could hear the concrete crack, splintering, breaking open, crevices becoming gorges. women talked: this happened to me. the stories were similar even as the women were different. the rapes were similar even as the rapists were different. the devaluing through insult and overbearing arrogance and vulgar assumptions of an innate superiority was the same, no matter what the social or economic status of the woman appeared to be.”

-catharine mackinnon & andrea dworkin, 'In harm's way: the pornography civil rights hearings'

"if a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes a sincere and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those who seek to change it."
-charlotte perkins-gilman