Toni: Well... straight couples get respect when they marry. Maybe we need to make some kind of symbolic affirmation of our commitment to one another!… - Alison Bechdel

But, Jocelyn, if I really were all those things [good, kind, talented, hard working, open to change, and adorable]... ...I would die.'

I wasn't sure what I meant by this, but it suddenly struck me as the truth.

'Because you'd rather die than feel anger at your mother for not giving you what you needed?

Ginger: [hauling Clarice up stairs in a wheelchair]: This ivory tower needs some ramps!
Clarice: What are you saying, Ginger?! Build ramps and anyone could get up!! The whole school would be overrun by black commie dykes in wheelchairs! Really, now!

Alice Miller writes that the child who suppresses his own feelings in order to accomodate a parent has been, in a sense, abandoned.

'Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. [as quoted by Alice Miller]'

She also says that the mother who requires accommodation from her child is just trying to get what her own mother refused her.