Sweet Suffering Quotes

“Bizarre though it is, people seem more inclined to rally around and identify with the victimizer than with the person who has suffered an attack. Eager to distance themselves from the victim position, influenced unconsciously, I suspect, by the pervasive taste for violence that infects our national life, people all too often direct their interest and even their sympathy to the perpetrator of a violent crime rather than to the victim.”
― Natalie Shainess, Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim

“Perhaps the loaded question is: How often is maternal self-sacrifice really only masochistic martyrdom, destructive to the mother and destructive to the child as well?”
― Natalie Shainess, Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim

“The sexual fantasies of masochistic women have another curious and, unfortunately, predictable element. They almost always focus on the woman imagining how she can make herself more desirable, more appealing to the man. She turns herself into a princess; she glorifies her appearance. Virtually never does she envisage what she would find desirable in a male partner. In her fantasies she attempts to idealize herself, but she tends to include the man pretty much as he is.”
― Natalie Shainess, Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim

“No, I will not rush to explain, to rectify, to mollify, to disarm . . . I will keep still.”
― Natalie Shainess, Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim