Patrick Califia-Rice Quotes

Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

I'm very fond of the concept of choice as the basis for sexual preference. This point of view is unpopular in an era in which every claim for gay rights is bases on pseudoscientific sulking about how we can't help being queer; we're just born that way. Thanks, but I don't want to receive my civil rights as a charity fuck bequeathed on me by my genetic superiors.

There seems to be a psychological law of inertia that bogs down every hopeful activist and subverts every revolution. When compassion and empathy fail, backsliding begins. Or totalitarianism.

It should not be a crime to discuss any idea, however outrageous

S/M flies in the face of every attempt the state makes to appropriate our bodies, our labor, our time, and our imaginations. ... the state is deeply offended by any group of people who say, 'My body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me, so fuck off' ...

I am not so much fun
Anymore;
Couldn't carry the role of ingenue
In a bucket, you say, laughing.

And I want to punch you.
I was never innocent, but
Thanks to you I know things
I wish I did not remember.

You don't like it
When I talk to the man myself,
Specifying quantities and
Give him the money
Instead of giving it to you
And letting you take care of it.

You keep asking me,
Where's the dope?
Until I finally say,
I hid it.
The look you give me is
Pure bile.

Well, fuck you.
This isn't like Buying somebody a drink.
You don't leave your stash out
Where I might find it.

Finally I think I've made you wait
Long enough,
So I get out the little paper envelope
And hand it to you.
You are still in charge of
This part, so you relax.
Performing your junky ritual with
Your favorite razor blade, until
I ask you how to calculate my dose
So I won't O.D. when I do this
And you're not around.

Then you really flip.
You tell me it's a bad idea
For me to do this with other people.

**

Was it such a good idea
For me to do it with you?
Do you wait for me to turn up
Once every three months
So you can get high?
Is this our version of that famous
Lesbian fight about
Nonmonogamy?

Let me

My body has become
another country
and I feel like an unemployed
illegal alien
how will I survive
where I do not belong
I belong with you

Prostitution, perversion, and pornography are intertwined with independence and radical politics in the history of outstanding women. Radclyffe Hall, Colette, Anaïs Nin, Kate Millett, Erica Jong--all of these women used the money they made from writing about sexuality to make it possible for them to live as rebels, dykes, feminists, artists, or whatever deviant and defiant identities they assumed.

If you live in a society that wishes you didn't exist, anything you do to make yourself happy disrupts its attempts to wipe you out, or at the very least, make you invisible.

If a young person is surviving by trading sex for the thing they need, what useful purpose is served by criminalizing that activity? Doesn't everybody have the right to try and survive? it might cost more to create shelters or group homes, drug treatment programs, schools for emancipated minors, counseling services, medical care and job training. But such programs can salvage human lives that are otherwise going to be cut short or wasted.
If we can afford massive kiddy porn stings, why can't we afford to do this? Is it because, as a society,we obtain more pleasure out of trying to control young people, and punishing the minors who escape our control, than we would out of taking good care of kids who are in trouble?