I would like to see films that explore and ennoble female characters on a feminine path: not sexual accessories to men, and not honorary men, but fully inhabiting once-neglected and demeaned feminine archetypes.
This process directs anti-patriarchal, feminist sentiment into the narrow channel of the mirror, rather than outwards, towards communal, longer-term feminist goals. The soft smiles and high-pitched giggles are admittedly alluring after the disappointments of earlier feminist movements, but the ecstasy of idiocy reveals a darker sentiment than even... See more
Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist... What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible... See more
Through the eyes of an imbalanced patriarchy, matriarchy is invisible. Matriarchy is not patriarchy with women substituted into men’s patriarchal roles. It is not women exercising the kind of power that men have in patriarchy. Matriarchy enacts another kind of power entirely, one that the modern mind cannot easily recognize.
One of the reasons we haven’t heard much about Pejačević until recently is because of her untimely death at the age of thirty-eight, just a month after giving birth to her only child. Given medical provision in the 1920s, it was always a risk for a woman to be pregnant in her late thirties. Perhaps with this in mind, Pejačević wrote a poignant... See more
The way we think about thought is political. This much was evident at the birth of the modern study of the mind, when Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia wrote to René Descartes in 1643 to question his account of cognition. Her self-deprecation will be familiar to any woman who’s dared to dispute with an eminence, and knows that the best way to begin is... See more