Quotes About Oppression

Me considero feminista o, por mejor decir, antisexista, porque la palabra feminista tiene un contenido semántico equívoco: parece oponerse al machismo y sugerir, por tanto, una supremacía de la mujer sobre el hombre, cuando el grueso de las corrientes feministas no sólo no aspiran a eso, sino que reivindican justamente lo contrario: que nadie resulte supeditado a nadie en razón de su sexo, que el hecho de haber nacido hombres o mujeres no nos encierre en un estereotipo

Under patriarchal monotheism, womanhood was a life sentence of second-order existence.

Virginity came in with a vengeance as every budding patriarch suddenly realized his divine right to a vacuum-sealed, factory-fresh vagina with built-in hymenal gift-wrapping and purity guarantee.

The attack on women's bodies that was one of the most marked consequences of the imposition of patriarchal monotheism has no convenient onset or conclusion - but it was a principle determining factor of every woman's history over an extended period of time. It signaled, precipitated even, the decline of women into their long night of feudal oppression and grotesque persecution.

The rights that women had won through the long century and more of struggle were essentially rights of men. Women had had no option but to batter their way into the age-old fortress of male privilege, and storm the citadel where masculine supremacy still held out.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

El hombre ha nacido libre y por doquiera se encuentra sujeto con cadenas.

True Christians are made to be slaves.

Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. Genuine Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and don't much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.

The denial of emotion is a terrible thing; what takes time is learning that the positive path is the education of emotion, not it's uncritical indulgence, which actually locks us far more firmly in our mutual isolation. Likewise, the denial of rights is a terrible thing; and what takes time to learn is that the opposite of oppression is not a wilderness of litigation and reparation but the nurture of concrete, shared respect.

The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal of extinction.

Theodore] Roosevelt referred to [Emilio] Aguinaldo as a renegade Pawnee and observed that Filipinos did not have the right to govern their country just because they happened to occupy it.

Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals.

In language reminiscent of that used to condemn witches, they quickly identified the Indigenous populations as inherently children of Satan and "servants of the devil" who deserved to be killed.7 Later the Salem authorities would justify witch trials by claiming that the English settlers were inhabiting land controlled by the devil.

The ancient Irish social system was systematically attacked, traditional songs and music forbidden, whole clans exterminated, and the remainder brutalized. A "wild Irish" reservation was even attempted. The

The English government paid bounties for the Irish heads. Later only the scalp or ears were required. A century later in North America, Indian heads and scalps were brought in for bounty in the same manner. Although the Irish were as "white" as the English, transforming them into alien others to be exterminated previewed what came to be perceived as racialist when applied to Indigenous peoples of North America and to Africans.

Jamestown military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the settlers as well as provide them with land and labor.

Ranging, looting, and scalp hunting continued.

During the harsh deportation of the Micronesians in the 1970s, the press took some notice. In response to once reporter's question, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of the Micronesians: There are only ninety thousand people out there. Who gives a damn? This is a statement of permissive genocide.

Surviving genocide, by whatever means, is resistance: non-Indians must know this in order to more accurately understand the history of the United States.

The Indians shall see that there is malice enough in our hearts to destroy everything

The affirmation of democracy requires the denial of colonialism, but denying it does not make it go away.

What greater good could there be in a man's life than to lift the oppression that destroys them, what greater honor is there?

ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave, —W.E. Henley.