Quotes About Oppression

their bodies seemed to be a battlefield" between the values of the west, the "'capitalist' construction in which female bodies are 'sexualized, objectified, thingified' and the traditional in which women's bodies were 'chattelized,' 'propertized,' and terrorized as trustees of family (sexual) honor." (P. 524) Lama Abu-Odeh

Despite women's experience or knowledge of sexual violence, despite whatever is going on in their marriages and how their husbands behave, women are expected to engage with enthusiasm in sex. [Women] have to make a separation between the sex in which they 'let go' and become enthusiastic and the rape they experienced last night or the pornographic advert they saw on the underground this morning. What is required is either a mind/body split or an eroticising of the oppression itself.

Aunque las lesbianas tratan de imitar con servilismo las costumbres del heteropatriarcado para no parecer peligrosas, no pueden redimir su deslealtad fundamental.

Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you.

Moynihan's unpardonable sin was to threaten liberal power by working from the assumption that blacks could be the agents of their own fates despite all the victimization they had endured.

was almost formulaic: independence, a quick lull in which high hopes prevailed, and then years, if not decades, of civil war, strongmen dictators, atrocities, and coups.

As the formerly oppressed move into greater and greater freedom, they are often more wedded to the idea of themselves as oppressed than to the reality that they are freer than ever.

The victim of oppression is always, and understandably, startled and resentful of the anxieties and burdens that new freedom entails—its call to greater responsibility, discipline, and sacrifice. But there it is.

To be a proud and militant black after the sixties, you screamed black power in order to induce the application of white power. And you lived by an ethic that still sees full responsibility as oppression, if not racism, when applied to blacks. Still today, the best way to make a black leader mad is to say to him that black Americans are capable of being fully responsible for their own advancement.

It is also the formula that keeps black America underdeveloped even as we enjoy new freedom and a proliferation of opportunity. No worse fate could befall a group emerging from oppression than to find itself gripped by a militancy that sees justice in making others responsible for its advancement.

the fact is that we blacks are free.

Since my libertarianism puts me on the side of the victims of the state, I began to understand that the Palestinians were the latest in a long line of groups oppressed by political power. Jews, of course, have been similarly oppressed in many places; now some Jews, the Zionists, were in the role of oppressor. My childhood view of Israel was unraveling.

As the world goes," an Athenian envoy instructs the representative of a city that refused to submit, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

People should riot for their freedom but first they have to understand who they are and how they are ruled.

Why don't you admit I've been robbed of my musical career because society can't handle my innate sexuality?

I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

Millions of people in the world's poorest countries remain enslaved by the chains of poverty. It is time to set them free.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

One thing is for sure-none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.

History tells you if dictators are not stopped in time, they cause more damage.

In fact I didn't think about fear much at the time. I felt angry about everything that was happening around me: the violence of the dictatorship and the violence of society.

In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison.

Early spring is the time for vigorous change, a preparation for the heat-driven oppression that is to come.