"Success is somebody else's failure."

[tim]

"I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is."

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, commencement speech at Mills College, 1983.

(Her comment about "separatism" strikes me as dancing at the edge of trans erasure... but then, it's their world. As with many things, good if you ignore that.

And you know, I hope she wasn't talking about the need to dominate and/or be dominated in an overarchingly affectionate context of consent, but one just never knows that either.)

Comments

[dharma_slut]

Oh man, I have such a problem with Ursula Le Guin. She totally glorified women being in a powerless place all through the sixties to the eighties-- not all women want to be powerless.

Until her later book "always Coming Home" which is a masterpiece.

[miang]

Good gravy, thank you for linking that. I don't think I've ever had a single favorite quote before, but I do now! (To wit: "and when they tell you that it's second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they're going to give you equal pay for equal time")