desire / hunger / queerness

"“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” "The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolf

Anorexia is not just about not eating. It is about not wanting. To starve oneself is to deny desire in its most primal form, to numb the self against the terror of need.

caroline knapp, appetites

What if where I am is what I need? Before you can share anything, you have to know what you desire, and you can’t know until you ask. Asking is an appetite.

maggie nelson, the argonauts

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire

audre lorde, uses of the erotic

Women have been convinced that marriage and sexual orientation toward men are inevitable, even if unsatisfying or oppressive, components of their lives.

adrienne rich, compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence

At its most basic, anorexia is a disease of desire. You don’t want what you want. You want to not want.

caroline knapp, appetites

The rules governing female appetite — for food, for sexual gratification, for recognition — are culturally constructed to regulate not only how women eat but also what women desire.

susan bordo, unbearable weight

my disordered eating was so focused around control over being viewed as perfectly “normal” and attractive to men. i wanted to shove down anything that wasn’t in line with this which i know realize completely shut off my ability to sense my own desire