9 Quotes by Laura Kipnis

Just how much renunciation of desire does society demand of us versus the degree of gratification it provides?

As if all that weren't enough, factor in the whole tedious millenial saga of female virtue, modesty, shame, repression, male ineptitude...in short, a cruel combo of anatomical inheritance and sexual inhibition for the gal set; a nature-culture one-two punch, right to the female pleasure principle.

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order.

La terapia es una nueva industria que debe su onerosa existencia a la idea festiva de que la ambivalencia puede curarse, la "madurez" es una adaptación a las condiciones del entorno y la indocilidad una forma de neurosis.

Uspješan suživot zahtijeva da se razlike između dvije osobe u najmanju ruku svedu na točku međusobnog toleriranja, premda je taj stupanj često moguće dostići tek nakon što se volja barem jedne od dviju strana smanji toliko da je njome moguće upravljati - otprilike kao kada se tumor izloži golemoj dozi radijacije.

But my quarrel with the concept of maternal instinct isn’t why I never had kids myself. I was never particularly opposed to the idea of having kids – let no one say that I don’t love kids! It always seemed like an interesting future possibility, the same way that joining the Peace Corps someday seemed like an interesting future possibility.

We live in sexually interesting times, meaning a culture which manages to be simultaneously hypersexualized and to retain its Puritan underpinnings, in precisely equal proportions.

Sure, there have always been ideologues on campuses, but the old ideologues were at least expected to argue the validity of their ideas. The new brand are ideologues of feelings, and feelings can’t be argued. Despite being a certified left-wing feminist, I just don’t believe that experience or identity credentialize you intellectually.

Women are still angry about feeling duped and undervalued, but instead of ignoring their kids and downing cocktails all day, as in Friedan’s time, now we have the angry overdrive child-rearing style: motherhood as a competitive sport.