Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of supporting and validating women's experiences instead of dismissing them.
Adrienne Rich's quote highlights the historical struggle of women whose realities and instincts have often been dismissed in a male-centric culture. It calls for solidarity among women to uphold each other's truths and perceptions, warning against the harmful practice of 'gaslighting' that undermines their shared reality for convenience or conformity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a women's empowerment seminar to highlight the importance of mutual support.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
I'm typically single. I'm the girl who - I call it girl-next-door-itis - the hot guy is friends with and gets all his relationship advice from but never considers dating.
Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.
Proclaim the beauty and truth of the Christian message to a society which is tangent by confusing presentations of sexuality, marriage and the family.
When life's conditions don't equal your expectations you are unhappy, have no expectations only appreciations (especially in the area of relationships)
The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.
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