Hanne Quotes

For Hitschmann and Bergler, 'frigidity' had a single criterion: 'absence of the vaginal orgasm.' The standard was unqualified and absolute. A woman who did not enjoy intercourse: frigid. Women who derived sexual pleasure from acts other than intecourse were frigid too. Nothing else mattered, only whether a woman had an orgasm because a man's penis was inside her vagina. Sexually agressive women were labeled 'frigid' because of the association between masculinity and aggressiveness. Womanhood that was not passive was not properly womanly. "Frigidity," as Jane Gerhardt points out, "thus became a label and a diagnosis that defined how much sexual desire a woman must have and in what kinds of sexual behavior she must engage to be 'healthy'. ~ Hanne Blank

Hanne is stretched out on her back. Faces hover in a circle above her. A boy with big blue eyes. A woman whose front teeth rest on her lower lip. An old Chinese woman wearing all gray, her
face expressionless, as if she's seen this before, and much worse. Suddenly a man's face zooms toward her. Beads of sweat on his upper lip. Dark sideburns. Dark nose hairs. His eyes are close-set,
unnervingly so. "Don't move," he says, his breath reeking of garlic and cigarette smoke.
An imperative. She tries to sit up, and when she can't, attempts to understand why she's on the floor. This is not
where she should be. She knows that. What is she doing here? "She's bleeding . . . Hurt. A woman." But nothing hurts. Liquid streams from her nose, down her cheek, pools into her ear. The circle of faces still above her. But she can't right herself. The
world is tilting. The man with sideburns is squatting beside her.
What does he want? He's saying something to her. Telling her
something, his horrible breath assaulting her. Get back. She can't
get her mouth to shout, Move back! She hunts for that perfect moment again, the water, her children when they were young, Hiro, but it is gone. ~ Nina Schuyler

Personally, I have learned to welcome the sensation of boredom when I'm working out because boredom can actually provide opportunities that are relaxing and, dare I say it, even useful. ~ Hanne Blank

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it. ~ Hanne Blank

My favorite Viagra ad, a Spanish-language print ad I saw some years ago, simply shows an image of the distinctive blue pill with the text "Un divorcio menos. Gracias, Pfizer." ("One less divorce. Thanks, Pfizer.") ~ Hanne Blank

[Masters and Johnson found] the so-called vaginal orgasm was actually not vaginal. When it happened at all, it was the result of friction between clitoral hood and clitoris that some women experienced when the thrusts of the penis tugged at connected flesh. ~ Hanne Blank

Locker rooms are not, in actual fact, the secret clubhouses of the Effortlessly Thin Women's Fat-Lady Harassment Society. ~ Hanne Blank

Most of all, it teaches you that your body is not just a sort of jar made out of meat that you lug around because it's what you keep your brain in, but an equal and in fact quite opinionated and demonstrative partner in the joint production that is you. ~ Hanne Blank

You have the right to not have to constantly manage how you look for other people's sake. You aren't here to decorate the world for other people. You're here to live in it for yourself, no matter what that looks like. ~ Hanne Blank

Defining virginity means directly affecting the lives of nearly all women, and many men as well. Despite what some people appear to think, defining virginity is not merely a philosophical exercise. It is an exercise in controlling how people behave, feel, and think, and in some cases, whether they live or die. ~ Hanne Blank

Sylvester Graham, he of the eponymous health-food cracker, claimed that a man who could make it to the age of thirty without giving in to the temptations of his sexual urges would be a veritable god. ~ Hanne Blank

(In actuality there are no such things as "male" or "female" hormones. Hormones have no sex of their own, and all types of sex hormones are present in all human beings in varying amounts.) ~ Hanne Blank

They would build a new world together. But first they had to burn the old one down. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The opposite of "slut" is someone who has not been labeled a slut, someone who has never been charged with violating doxa. ~ Hanne Blank

I have layer upon layer of thoughts in my head and the bottom one has nothing to grip on to. ~ Hanne Ørstavik

The sound of the car. When he's waiting he can never quite recall it. I've forgotten, he tells himself. But then it comes back to him, often in pauses between the waiting, after he's stopped thinking about it. And then she comes, and he recognizes the sound in an instant; he hears it with his tummy, it's my tummy that remembers the sound, not me, he thinks to himself. And no sooner has he heard the car than he sees it too, from the corner of the window, her blue car coming round the bend behind the banks of snow, and she turns in at the house and drives up the little slope to the front door. ~ Hanne Ørstavik

Excuse me while I throw this down, I'm old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better.
Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing.

Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever.

Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions.

Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them.

Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides.

Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not.

Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smel ~ Hanne Blank

The models we have, and the standards we are expected to maintain, come to us via heterosexuality as a normative state. Heterosexuality
whatever the current version of that concept happens to be
is unremarkable because it is the standard by which everything else is measured. That is heterosexual privilege. ~ Hanne Blank

Heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups. ~ Hanne Blank

I grabbed my coat. We were off.
Well, I grabbed my coat, waited the best part of an hour for Hanne to choose between one pair of black trousers and another virtually identical pair, had a cup of tea, approved the trousers, and then we were off. ~ Danny Wallace

Real women are fat. And thin. And neither. And both. And otherwise. ~ Hanne Blank

There is no wrong way to have a body. ~ Hanne Blank