S and M is only the expression in the bedroom of an oppressive-submissive relation which can happen also in the kitchen or at the factory, can happen between people of any gender. There is obviously something titillating about these relationships, but it isn't the sexual components that makes them ugly, they're uglier elsewhere. Nothing sexual is depraved. Only cruelty is depraved, and that's another matter.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how power dynamics in relationships, such as BDSM, can manifest outside the bedroom and highlights that cruelty, not sexuality, is what is truly depraved.
Marilyn French's quote explores the complexities of relationships characterized by power imbalances, such as those found in BDSM. While there can be excitement in these expressions of dominance and submission, the real ugliness lies not in the sexual aspects but in the cruelty that may arise from unequal power dynamics. Sexuality itself is not depraved; rather, it is the acts of cruelty and oppression that should be scrutinized, emphasizing the importance of consent and mutual respect in all interactions.
In practice
In a lecture about healthy relationships, this quote can illustrate the importance of consent and respect.
Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
In a great gasp, puts her head in her hands again and cries as if her throat were a cave, as if the howling winds came from her belly, she cries like a storm that will never end.
Women are afraid in a world in which almost half the population bears the guise of the predator, in which no factor - age, dress, or color - distinguishes a man who will harm a woman from one who will not.
When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?
'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.
Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
I think that the same kind of openness and fluidity and willingness to interrogate power that we, as feminists, expect from men in alliance on questions of class should also be the expectation that women of colour can rely upon with our white feminist allies.
When we are unable to receive, we deny someone else the pleasure of giving.
Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.
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