Kollontai on abortion
“As long as women or men live under the pressure of unemployment, as long as the level of wages is not sufficient for a family, as long as housing conditions are unfavourable, and as long as the state does not make motherhood easier for every woman in various ways and does not provide social services for mother and child, it is clear that the women must stand up for free abortions.”
A thoughtful quote from George Packer's acceptance speech
The full speech can be read here: The Enemies of Writing: A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.
“[I]f writers are afraid of the sound of their own voice, then honest, clear, original work is not going to flourish, and without it, the politicians and tech moguls and TV demagogues have less to worry about. It doesn’t matter if you hold impeccable views, or which side of the political divide you’re on: Fear breeds self-censorship, and self-censorship is more insidious than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a surer way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfettered mind. A writer can still write while hiding from the thought police. But a writer who carries the thought police around in his head, who always feels compelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my terminology correct? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my enemies? Could it get me ratioed on Twitter?—that writer’s words will soon become lifeless. A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.”
Quote from the book Love, Marriage and Friendship in the Soviet Union (1984)
“One of the major factors that has contributed to the sexualization of the Soviet mentality today, according to Igor Kon, is ‘the drastic increase in female sexual activity.’ Kon derogates Victorian morality and medical theories that contend that ‘a decent woman in general does not enjoy sex.’ He asserts, referring for lack of Soviet data to Czechoslovakian sources, that the proportion of women from the younger generation who experience orgasm reached 79 percent, against 31 percent among women of the older generation. He further suggests that this sexual awakening of women is a source of conflict between men and women, presumably because now men cannot satisfy the increasing sexual appetites of Soviet women (Kon 1982, p. 118).” Page 55-56
Abraham Flexner from 1939 →
“Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women – old and young – detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering? The world has always been a sorry and confused sort of place – yet poets and artists and scientists have ignored the factors that would, if attended to, paralyze them.”