"Dad at work, mom home, two kids eating apple pie? This family, which our media and now our government declare to be normal accounts for seven percent of the arrangement women live in in America. Ninety-three percent of women don’t live that way. They don’t do that. Many wouldn’t if you gave it to them with bells on. Those who want that, who believe it’s their one true destiny—what’s their chance of achieving it? They’re on the road to Heartbreak House. But the only alternative offered by the patriarchal mythology is that of Failed Woman—the old maid, the barren woman, the castrating bitch, the frigid wife, the lizzie, the libber, the Unfeminine, so beloved of misogynists both male and female … Some women manage it — they may collude, but thy don’t sell out as women; and we know that when they speak for those who, in the man’s world, are the others: women, children, the poor … But it is dangerous to put on Daddy’s clothes, though not, perhaps, as dangerous as it is to sit on Daddy’s knees. There is no way you can offer your experience as your truth if you deny your experience, if you try to be a mythical creature, the dummy woman who sits there on Big Daddy’s lap. Whose voice will come out of her prettily hinged jaw? Who is it says yes all the time?"
~ Ursula K. LeGuin
https://www.readingistherapy.com/bryn-mawr-commencement-address-ursula-le-guin/
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