Tara McMullin

This sort of collapsed, derelict condition can appear around any disintegrating dimension of being.

I tell my students to liberate a certain part of their mind that, because they are good, humble people they may have likely suppressed, and that's the part that wants to be known, that wants to be famous or rich or whatever. I say that part is not entirely separate from the part of you that wants to be a great writer. Which is not separate from the... See more

Ultimately, Agreements are a collective wish we make about how we might be in the same space together. That space could be a classroom, a sports team, a club, a conference, committees or boards, an organizing group. They reflect what we need to participate while feeling joyful, trusted, and brave.

But they also can be flimsy as hell.

Knowing your site will survive for decades to come gives you the mental wherewithal to tackle long-term tasks like gathering information for years, and such persistence can be useful⁠⁠19⁠—if one holds onto every glimmer of genius for years, then even the dullest person may look a bit like a genius himself⁠⁠20⁠.

What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field, or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver? We might be forced to conclude that the real business of human life is not contributing toward something called “the... See more

The need for romantic love is thus imagined as so deeply entrenched in the structures of feminine subjectivity that women desire nothing so much as to be safely ensconced in the institutions, marriage and family, that will secure it. As de Beauvoir describes the woman in search of love and marriage, “she chooses to want her enslavement so ardently... See more