Virginie Despentes Quotes

Men love talking about women. At least then they don't have to talk about themselves. How is it that in thirty years no man has produced the slightest innovative work on masculinity? They are so expert, so voluble when it comes to holding forth about women, so why this silence when it comes to themselves? We know that the more they speak, the less they say -- of essentials, of what they really think. Perhaps they want us to talk about them instead? For example, perhaps they want to be told how their gang bangs look from the outside? Well, they look as if men want to see themselves fucking, as i they want to look at each other's dicks, to be together with their hard-ons; as if they want to get fucked themselves. It looks as if what they're scared to admit is what they really want: to fuck each other. Men love other men. They are always explaining how much they love women, but we all know they're fibbing. They love each other women. Many of them start thinking about friends when they're still inside a pussy.

I like myself as I am, more desiring than desirable.

[Prostitution laws] are a way of reminding men that their sexuality is necessarily monstrous, that it creates victims and destroys lives. Because masculine sexuality must remain criminalized, dangerous, antisocial, and threatening. This is not an inherent truth, it's a cultural construction. When whores are prevents from working in decent conditions, women are not the only ones being targeted, men's sexuality is also being controlled. Having a relaxed heterosexual fuck when they feel like it mustn't be too easy or pleasant. Their sexuality must remain a problem.

Prison, illness, abuse, drugs, abandonment, deportation: all traumas have their literature. But this crucial and fundamental trauma -- the very definition of femininity, "the body that can be taken by force and must remain defenseless" -- was not part of literature. Not a single woman who has been through the process of rape has taken to words to craft a novel out of her experience. No guide, no companionship. Rape wasn't allowed into the symbolic realm.

The line between seduction and prostitution is very blurred, and deep down, everyone knows it.

When I was on unemployment I was not ashamed of being a social outcast. Just furious. It's the same thing for being a woman: I am not remotely ashamed of not being a hot sexy number but I am livid that - as a girl who doesn't attract men - I am constantly made to feel as if I shouldn't even be around.

Whatever we do, someone is going to take the time to say it's shit.

Rape doesn't disturb the peace, it's already part and parcel of the city.

After a certain age, we do not move on from the dead, we remain in their time, in their company.

Seduction is within the reach of most young women, as long as they agree to play the game, because it mostly consists of reassuring men about their virility by playing the femininity game.

And that unconscious ease that comes of being so young - still oblivious to the blows that will destroy parts of her. Past the age of forty, everyone is like a bombed-out city.