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Quotes About Oppression

Black was the without eye Black the within tongue Black was the heart Black the liver, black the lungs Unable to suck in light Black the blood in its loud tunnel Black the bowels packed in furnace Black too the muscles Striving to pull out into the light Black the nerves, black the brain With its tombed visions Black also the soul, the huge stammer Of the cry that, swelling, could not Pronounce its sun.
~ Ted Hughes
I know all about the tyranny of women.
~ Tennessee Williams
Many readers say they also feel like outcasts in their hometowns, oppressed by religionists, racists, homophobes, or other pea-brained busybodies. The advice I give them is this: If you feel like a misfit in the place where you were born, move somewhere else. I did. I now reside in the most progressive town in the country—Berkeley, California.
~ Julia Scheeres
Male pride is not really about pride. It's about fear - the fear of being seen as feminine. And that's why "girl stuff" is so dangerous. And as long as most men remain deathly afraid of it, they'll continue to take it out on the rest of us.
~ Julia Serano
Whenever I hear someone who has not had a transsexual experience say that gender is just a construct or merely a performance, it always reminds me of that Stephen Colbert gag where he insists that he doesn't see race. It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it.
~ Julia Serano
The idea that "femininity is artificial" is also blatantly misogynistic. Just as woman is man's "other", so too is femininity masculinity's "other". Under such circumstances, negative connotations like "artificial", "contrived", and "frivolous" become built into our understanding of femininity - indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as "natural", "practical" and "uncomplicated".
~ Julia Serano
Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.
~ Julia Ward Howe
As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge.
~ Julian Bond
That's love? To let someone beat you and be hateful to you? These people are all so... Weak. Powerless to change their lives. I know the feeling. All you can do is take it. No one understands how it beats you down.
~ Julie Anne Peters
Aku tak pernah membela diriku. Tidak sekali pun. Aku tak pernah berkata, "Maaf? Apa yang memberimu hak untuk menghina dan merendahkanku?" Aku membiarkan mereka mencuri martabatku.
~ Julie Anne Peters
luxury means little when there's no real freedom in the world
~ Julie Bertagna
Prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clichés about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.
~ Julie Burchill
According to Rushdoony, the conditions of the Irish transport were as bad or worse than what we know of slave ships, and the condition of Irish immigrants on arrival was "far worse than that of slaves:
~ Julie Ingersoll
l'esclavage.
~ Julie Smith
Forse la più grande consolazione degli oppressi è quella di sentirsi superiori ai loro tiranni.»
~ Julien Green
Ustedes son basura, nada más que basura! ¡Unos pobres gallinazos sin plumas! Ya verán cómo les saco ventaja.
~ Julio Ramón Ribeyro
It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.
~ Julius Caesar
We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.
~ June Jordan
We are the wrong people of the wrong skin in the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about?
~ June Jordan
anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.
~ June Jordan
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. Because, in other words, the powerful don't play; they mean to keep that power, and those who are the powerless (you and me) better shape up --mimic/ape/suck --in the very image of the powerful, or the powerful will destroy you --you and our children.
~ June Jordan
Lately... Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie. In our history, the state has failed to respond to the weak. You could be white, male, Presbyterian and heterosexual besides, but if you get fired or if you get sick tomorrow, you might as well be Black, for all the state will want to hear from you.
~ June Jordan
We had to break those laws or agree to the slaveholder's image of us: three fifths of a human being.
~ June Jordan
They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery / stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors / to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys / whose bodies / swelled purple and black into twice the original size / and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby / and then / they said this was brilliant
~ June Jordan