Quinn > Recent Status Updates

“...where people see her capability and potential and she doesn’t have to defend herself for her ambitions. Where she has acres to a fairly paid job of her choice and where her body and her labor are not being exploited. Where she and her fellow women take up more leadership positions in all sectors than we do today. Where she and her husband share the housework and raise their children together....”

“I dream of a future where a child is no longer pulled out of school because it is too far away, because her parents are too poor, or because she’s a girl. Where she and her classmates do volunteer work to build a better society. Where she’s able to express her problems and her ideas and she is not ignored because she’s a woman.....”

“It’s normal to worry about people’s reactions, we all do. I used to worry about it as well. But I learned that if you listen to what people think about you, you give your power away to them. You let your happiness depend on the opinions of others. We shouldn’t do this. We should depend on our own values, on what we believe is right....Don’t worry about them, just worry about doing what you believe in.”

.....If we don’t change that, if we continue to believe divide is always bad & divorced women are bad we contribute to the stigma and to the domestic violence in our country.”

“I’ve met women who are beaten by their husbands, every day. But they stay & not just bc they don’t have the money to pay for a divorce. They are afraid that if they don’t have a husband, people will criticize them & they won’t be able to handle it. So they continue to live in pain bc of this stigma.”

....but when a girl gets beat up at night we shouldn’t ask what she was doing out anyways or say that she shouldn’t wear a short skirt, we should focus on the bastard that did it! Women should be able to go out at night safely and dress the way they want to.”

“We’ve got all these rules for girls that are supposedly meant to protect them. You’re not supposed to have sex before you’re married, you’re not supposed to go out at night, you’re not supported to travel on your own.... The thing is, ppl do and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when they do and something bad happens, we say that it’s their own fault, bc of those ridiculous standards.”

“Men are like gold, and women are like white cloth,’ right? If the gold gets dirty, you can wash it off, but the white cloth will be stained forever. Did you ever ask yourself if that’s fair?”

I am getting so angry reading this book and coming across Cambodian sayings and quotes from the Chhbab Srey. It is shocking but it is the reality and it is important to learn and understand what Cambodian women face.

“I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system.”

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction is wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”

“Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous.”

“When a child first catches adults out- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation.”

“The idea was that the white races would rule and administer the affairs of the non-white races; that the non-white races would become the source of labor and the white races would become the source of capital, i.e., civilization, wealth, culture. It is still in existence.”

“For Americans to be shocked and disgusted at senseless murders and at crimes of extreme violence against the innocent is exactly identical to an old, worn-out prostitute expressing moral indignation at the thought of premarital sexual relations. Tell America that.”