Friday, December 4, 2015

Life demands that duality in men and women be freed to function, released from hate or guilt. All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality... We need each other's qualities if we are ever to understand each other in love and life. The beautiful difference of our biological cells will not diminish through this mutual fusion. It should indeed flower, expand the mind as well as the flesh. When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can exult in the strength of women, a new breed could lift a ruinous yoke from both. We could breathe free.

(Marya Mannes, 1904 - 1990)