You are the true Hyenas, that allure us with the fairness of your skins and when folly has brought us within your reach, you leap upon us. You are the traitors of Wisdom, the impediment to Industry… the clogs to Virtue and the goads that drive us to all vices, impiety and ruin.You are the Fool’s Paradise, the wiseman’s Plague and the Grand Error of Nature

Aboriginal women and families have been on the frontline all along trying to expose violence against indigenous women and its deep-seated roots, as well as to bring about chang. It has been more than 519 years that our women are still resisting colonial violence against us, our people, our nation and our land. It is the longest social movement in North America. To end violence for all people, aboriginal women must be at the epicenter of the solution.

Everyone that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty

I told him that it was not honourable for a woman to love anyone else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son. He replied: “Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe.” I began to laugh, seeing that he philosophised in horse and mule fashion.

Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.

He is beautiful, flirtatious, attractive, polite, amiable and has the breast of a nightingale. His hair is like a hyacinth (red gemstone), his dimple a rose, his look like the hangman’s, his colour that of boxwood, his larynx like steel, his behind a crystal bowl, his navel a source of light, his calves like silver pillars, his feet, silver bars, his forehead curls like silk fringes.

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child and here was left by th’ sailors. Thou, my slave, as thou report’st thyself, wast then her servant. And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate to act her earthy and abhorred commands, refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, by help of her more potent ministers and in her most unmitigable rage, into a cloven pine, within which rift imprisoned thou didst painfully remain a dozen years; within which space she died and left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans as fast as mill wheels strike.

Since European contact Aboriginal people, such as myself, have been constructed as “straight”. This cultural default has contributed to the difficulty of proving so-called “real accounts” of sexual and gender diversity of Aboriginal people prior to European contact. (…) It is not inconceivable that homophobia and transphobia are practices introduced by the Christian missionaries. The social order of the missions, in an attempt to “civilise the natives”, limited Aboriginal expression.

Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution. And yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed.

Searching, I discovered something I didn’t expect. Something decades of determined assimilation could not blind me to. In this great gay mecca, I was an invisible man. I had no shadow, no substance, no place, no history, no reflection. I was an alien unseen, and seen unwanted. Here as in Hephzibah, I was a n***, still.

you see / me behind / your pocket camera / memories from east Africa / and what you have read / about it / ready to dump it on me // (…) / the last vacation / you / spent there / and you want / to see / me / dancing / so that the pictures become / tangible again // I look at you / and into the distance / into the past / back and forth / looking / for a reason / to call you / SISTER /

I cannot imagine submitting. I would rather die. But can I ask people to sacrifice themselves? Because these wild animals have already destroyed larger empires.

The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory. The main objective of the revolution is to destroy the system of exploitation and build a new society which releases the potentialities of human beings, reconciling them with labour and with nature.

In the neighbouring village, they invited twenty women from the mothers’ club to donate food and then told them they wanted to vaccinate them. In reality, this was an anaesthetic, after which they were sterilised.

Long before they joined the “official” liberation struggle, African women were part of an ongoing history of resistance to colonialism. (…) opposition movements against colonialism. Not only did they actively participate in protests, but in many cases, they took on leadership roles in organising protests, strikes, demonstrations, work refusal campaigns, civil disobedience and other forms of resistance throughout the history of their countries.

Toys for boys are mostly active, and involve some sort of “doing” – trains, cars – and toys for girls are mostly ‘passive’ and are overwhelmingly dolls. I was struck by how early our culture starts to form the ideas of what a boy should be and what a girl should be.

Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed; then Eve.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted …

before
1500
1501
to 1600
1601
to 1700
1701
to 1800
1801
to 1850
1851
to 1900
1901
to 1925
1926
to 1950
1951
to 1975
1976
to 1990
1991
to 2000
2001
to 2010
after
2011