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I Didn’t And Don’t Want To Be A ‘feminine’ Version Or A Diluted Version Or A Special Version Or A Subsidiary Version Or An Ancillary Version, Or An Adapted Version Of The Heroes I Admire. I Want To Be The Heroes Themselves.

-Joanna Russ

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I Didn’t And Don’t

Joanna Russ

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I Didn’t And Don’t Want To Be A ‘feminine’ Version Or A Diluted Version Or A Special Version Or A Subsidiary Version Or An Ancillary Version, Or An Adapted Version Of The Heroes I Admire. I Want To Be The Heroes Themselves.

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The Trouble With Men Is That They Have Limited Minds. That's The Trouble With Women, Too.

Anyway Everyboy (sorry) Knows That What Women Have Done That Is Really Important Is Not To Constitute A Great, Cheap Labor Force That You Can Zip In When You're At War And Zip Out Again Afterwards But To Be Mothers, To Form The Coming Generation, To Give Birth To Them, To Nurse Them, To Mop Floors For Them, To Love Them, Cook For Them, Clean For Them, Change Their Diapers, Pick Up After Them, And Mainly Sacrifice Themselves For Them. This Is The Most Important Job In The World. That's Why They Don't Pay You For It.

When The Memory Of One's Predecessors Is Buried, The Assumption Persists That There Were None And Each Generation Of Women Believes Itself To Be Faced With The Burden Of Doing Everything For The First Time. And If No One Ever Did It Beforewhy Do We Think We Can Succeed Now?

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Science Fiction, As I Mentioned Before, Writes About What Is Neither Impossible Nor Possible; The Fact Is That, When The Question Of Possibility Comes Up In Science Fiction, The Author Can Only Reply That Nobody Knows. We Haven't Been There Yet. We Haven't Discovered That Yet. Science Fiction Hasn't Happened.

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Privileged Groups, Like Everyone Else, Want To Think Well Of Themselves And To Believe That They Are Acting Generously And Justly.

Leaning Her Silly, Beautiful, Drunken Head On My Shoulder, She Said, "oh, Esther, I Don't Want To Be A Feminist. I Don't Enjoy It. It's No Fun." "i Know," I Said. "i Don't Either." People Think You Decide To Be A "radical," For God's Sake, Like Deciding To Be A Librarian Or A Ship's Chandler. You "make Up Your Mind," You "commit Yourself" (sounds Like A Mental Hospital, Doesn't It?). I Said Don't Worry, We Could Be Buried Together And Have Engraved On Our Tombstone The Awful Truth, Which Some Day Somebody Will Understand: We Wuz Pushed.

[t]here Is One And Only One Way To Possess That In Which We Are Defective, Therefore That Which We Need, Therefore That Which We Want. Become It.

I Didn’t And Don’t Want To Be A ‘feminine’ Version Or A Diluted Version Or A Special Version Or A Subsidiary Version Or An Ancillary Version, Or An Adapted Version Of The Heroes I Admire. I Want To Be The Heroes Themselves.

As My Mother Once Said: The Boys Throw Stones At The Frog In Jest. But The Frogs Die In Earnest.

... Chastity Is Not Given Once And For All Like A Wedding Ring That Is Put On Never To Be Taken Off, But Is A Garden Which Each Day Must Be Weeded, Watered, And Trimmed Anew, Or Soon There Will Be Only Brambles And Wilderness.

Art Is Collective. Always, It Has A Tradition Behind It.

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Long Before I Became A Feminist In Any Explicit Way, I Had Turned From Writing Love Stories About Women In Which Women Were Losers, And Adventure Stories About Men In Which The Men Were Winners, To Writing Adventure Stories About A Woman In Which The Woman Won. It Was One Of The Hardest Things I Ever Did In My Life.

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The Demon Got Up. The Demon Said Fool. To Think You Can Eat Their Food And Not Talk To Them. To Think You Can Take Their Money And Not Be Afraid Of Them. To Think You Can Depend On Their Company And Not Suffer From Them.

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The Techniques Are All Means Of Dealing With One Simple Idea: She Wrote It. (that Is, The "wrong" Person--in This Case, Female--has Created The "right" Value--i.e., Art.) Denial Of Agency: She Didn't Write It. Pollution Of Agency: She Shouldn't Have Written It. Double Standard Of Content: Yes, But Look What She Wrote About. False Categorizing: She Is Not Really She [an Artist] And It Is Not Really It [serious, Of The Right Genre, Aesthetically Sound, Important, Etc.] So How Could "she" Have Written "it"? Or Simply: Neither "she" Nor "it" Exists (simple Exclusion).

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