#ender

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancetthat they were seeing more children who were being buggered than battered. About 300 cases were corroborated. The children were young – two-thirds were pre-school children – and anal abuse was more common than vaginal penetration. They also noted that ‘boys and girls seem to be at similar risk’. Almost half of the children who suffered anal abuse also showed a sign written up in the forensic textbooks as ‘anal dilation’, an anus opening when it was supposed to stay shut; opening and expecting entry. What the paediatricians were observing was not an acute sign, the effect of a single intrusion – a spasm or seizure – but a sign that was telling a story about everyday life; the anatomy of adaption. Anal dilation seemed to describe the architecture of abuse: it allowed the body to receive an incoming object, regularly. ↗

— Beatrix Campbell

#abusers #britain #child-abuse #cleveland #coercion

Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#artists #arts #careers #creativity #empowerment

We must surrender ourselves to God, not our assignments. ↗

— E'yen A. Gardner

#inspirational #surrender #surrender-to-god #change

He danced the way he made love, with passion and tenderness and spirit, communicating with hands and eyes the most subtle messages, tenderly making up for Lila's awkwardness. In his lashes and his hair, mist clung in tiny diamond drops. She could not take her eyes from him. ↗

— Ruth Wind

#dancing #lovemaking #tenderness #communication

You may claim that it is courageous to accept your assessment of yourself, but I could suggest that to do so is a way of abdicating the responsibilities of life.Such cynicism gives you a license to give up and make no effort. ↗

— Steph Penney

#courage

All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets, and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant. ↗

— Tove Jansson

#gender #humor #parties #forgiveness

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#claim #defenders #deny #earth #individual

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#empowerment #feminism #freedom #gender #hypocrisy

Freedom comes when you see the built-in contradiction of trying to manipulate something that is going right to begin with.... Stop trying to steer the river. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#river-surrender #freedom

[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique. ↗

— Moderata Fonte

#dignity #empowerment #envy #feminism #gender