25 Quotes About Erasure

Underneathevery pattern is a logicit's your privilege to ignore& yours is dreamsense yours is erasure

When I was on unemployment I was not ashamed of being a social outcast. Just furious. It’s the same thing for being a woman: I am not remotely ashamed of not being a hot sexy number but I am livid that—as a girl who doesn’t attract men—I am constantly made to feel as if I shouldn’t even be around.

Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America—"from California . . . to the Gulf Stream waters"—are interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. They cry out for their stories to be heard through their descendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. [opening lines of the Introduction; ellipsis sic].

Writing is not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.

To sincerely adopt the psychology of tokenism, you have to sell your community out. That’s the dark underbelly of the thing. Instead of blaming the institutions, rules, and social attitudes of those around you for the absence of other people like you, you blame your own community

At the time, presenting in this masculine of a fashion didn’t feel like selling out. But that, in and of itself, is part of the problem. Throughout my senior year, when I was faced with obstacles or competitive processes or selection committees, I reverted to masculinity out of fear every time. I feared discrimination at every turn, feared that if I were to truly wear my identity on my sleeve, I would lose everything.

Isn’t it interesting that you don’t even have to say “Duke Men’s Basketball”? You just say “Duke Basketball,” and everyone assumes you’re talking about the men’s team? As if the women’s team doesn’t exist? Isn’t it interesting that you just say “the NBA” and everyone knows you’re talking about the (Men’s) National Basketball Association? But if you want to talk about women’s professional basketball, you have to say “the WNBA”? Anyway.