Quotes from Sarah Schulman

I am not here to entertain straight people.

My thesis is that at many levels of human interaction there is the opportunity to conflate discomfort with threat, to mistake internal anxiety for exterior danger, and in turn to escalate rather than resolve.

If a person cannot solve a conflict with a friend, how can they possibly contribute to larger efforts for peace? If we refuse to speak to a friend because we project our anxieties onto an email they wrote, how are we going to welcome refugees, immigrants, and the homeless into our communities? The values required for social repair are the same values required for personal repair.

Nothing disrupts dehumanization more quickly than inviting someone over, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, and listening.

You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.

people are no longer interested in analysis. They all prefer catharsis now. They all prefer to say that they are helpless and can't change other people, i.e. the world. Marxism has been replaced by postmodernism. Psychoanalysis has been replaced by twelve-step programs. It was the end of the content.

Then they went on to discuss other things because there is always something more to a person than what somebody else does to them.

It takes two to tango" isn't even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud's seduction theory or the more generic practice of blaming victims for being alive. Its origins were unclear, but no one had ever had to take full responsibility for their own actions since.

The title of this book, Conflict Is Not Abuse, recommends mutual accountability in a culture of underreaction to abuse and overreaction to conflict.

It drives me crazy how quickly the great ones get canonized. 'Blah-blah-blah is such a terrible loss.' Does that mean that the death of one mediocre slob is not as terrible? Do fags have to be geniuses to justify living?

When there is no context for justice, freedom-seeking behavior is seen as annoying. Or futile. Or a drag. Or oppressive. And dismissed and dismissed and dismissed and dismissed until that behavior is finally just not seen.

The drag queens who started Stonewall are no better off today, but they made the world safe for gay Republicans. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the people who make change are not the people who benefit from it

Overindulgence" is a deprivation of constructive attention, a refusal to teach social/life skills, a refusal to teach self-regulation in social situations, a refusal to teach how to distinguish between wants and needs. Desires are indulged at the place where needs are starved.

There is often a "cadre" of bad friends around a person encouraging them to do things that are morally wrong, unjustified, and unethical

This placement of the authority to "stop violence" into the hands of the police produces a crisis of meaning. The police are often the source of violence, especially in the lives of women, people of color, trans women, sex workers, and the poor. And the police enforce the laws of the United States of America, which is one of the greatest sources of violence in the world.

Straight people are the most pathetic of all. I've never seen such a miserable group of people in my life. They don't know anything about themselves

We should lower the bar for what must happen in a person's life for their suffering to be acknowledged. "The current paradigm is encouraging all of us to think we are in abusive relationships," Hodes explained. "And if you are not in an abusive relationship, you don't deserve help. Being 'abused' is what makes you 'eligible.' But everyone deserves help when they reach out for it.

Which kind of safety are we endorsing here? Is it the safety from psychological "power over" and actual harm? Or is it the safety from being made uncomfortable by accurate information that challenges one's self-perception?

You're not user-friendly. You're too needy. You have no social currency. You're a freak. Without a normative side, you can't get in. That's it. Sorry.

People don't become what they were brought up to be, people become themselves. (p.146)

Anti-violence politics, along with other revolutionary impulses, changed from a focus on working to transform patriarchy, racism, and poverty to cooperation and integration with the police. This has proven to be a significant turn because the police are, ironically, the embodiment of patriarchy, racism, and the enforcement of the US class system.

Doc didn't have a television but he could predict that sort of thing. He just didn't need one. He could always tell what was on TV when he heard more than two people in a row say the same strange phrase in the same way. He knew that they had just seen it on television. A few weeks later everyone would have those words written on their chests.

Anna liked magazines. They were glossy machines. The only technology that she could fold. She read them on a regular basis because they were absorbing. Each one came out on a specific day of the week and was good for an hour of absorption.

I've noticed throughout my long life that people with vested interest in things staying the way they are regularly insist that both change and accountability are impossible.