A Woman Is No Man

by Etaf Rum

you beat me? She could have asked those questions aloud, but she knew people only told you what you wanted to hear. That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn’t say, had to watch them closely.

She knew that the suffering of women started in the suffering of men, that the bondages of one became the bondages of the other.

“A real choice doesn’t have conditions. A real choice is free.”

“Too often being happy means being passive or playing it safe. There’s no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. Its discontent that drives creation the most—passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don’t come from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it’s sadness, or discontent at least, that’s at the root of everything beautiful.”