To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance. - Roxane Gay

quote by feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi in bright red. “I speak the truth and the truth is savage and dangerous,

If you survive, you have to prove it was that bad; or else, they think you are.
Surviving is some kind of sin, like floating up off the dunking stool like a witch. You have to be permanently écorchée, heart-on-sleeve, offering up organs and body parts like a medieval female saint.

My unarticulated logic went like this: if I give my body away, over and over, I can prove to myself that sex is my choice — even though, and this seems significant now, I always let the men choose me. Until I was nineteen years old, it never occurred to me that I could do the choosing. Not you, not you, not you. Yes, okay. You.