Quotes by Kameron Hurley

The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn’t she unmake it again?

If you think there’s a thing—anything—women didn’t do in the past, you’re wrong.

Asking men to cut away their “feminine” traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their “masculine” traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.What makes us human is not one or the other—the fist or the open palm—it’s our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we’re in. Because to deny one half—to burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it—is to deny our humanity and become something less than human.

On reflection, looking at shows like this and considering my own experiences, what fascinated me was that we have so many stories like this that help us empathize with monstrous men. “Yes, these men are flawed, but they are not as evil as this man.” Even more chilling, they tend to be stories that paint women as roadblocks, aggressors, antagonists, complications—but only in the context of them being a bitch, a whore, a Madonna. The women are never people.Stories about monstrous men are not meant to teach us how to empathize with the women and children murdered, but with the men fighting over their bodies.As a woman menaced by monsters, I find this particularly interesting, this erasure of me from a narrative meant to, if not justify, then explain the brokenness of men. There are shows much better at this, of course, which don’t paint women out of the story—Mad Men is the first to come to mind, and Game of Thrones—but True Detective doubled down.The women terrorized by monsters in real life are active agents. They are monster-slayers, monster-pacifiers, monster-nurturers, monster-wranglers—and some of them are monsters, too. In truth, if we are telling a tale of those who fight monsters, it fascinates me that we are not telling more women’s stories, as we’ve spun so many narratives like True Detective that so blatantly illustrate the sexist masculinity trap that turns so many human men into the very things they despise.Where are the women who fight them? Who partner with them? Who overcome them? Who battle their own monsters to fight greater ones?Because I have and continue to be one of those women, navigating a horror show world of monsters and madmen. We are women who write books and win awards and fight battles and carve out extraordinary lives from ruin and ash. We are not background scenery, our voices silenced, our motives and methods constrained to sex.I cannot fault the show’s men for forgetting that; they’ve created the world as they see it. But I can prod the show’s exceptional writers, because in erasing the narrative of those whose very existence is constantly threatened by these monsters, including trusted monsters whose natures vacillate wildly, they sided with the monsters.I’m not a bit player in a monster’s story. But with narratives like this perpetuated across our media, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how my obituary read: a catalogue of the men who sired me, and fucked me, and courted me.Stories that are not my own.Funny, isn’t it? The power of story.It’s why I picked up a pen.I slay monsters, too.

I can think of only two movies with women killers we’re meant to sympathize with, and both because they’d been sexually assaulted—Thelma and Louise and Monster. And to be honest, I don’t imagine anyone would call the women in these films heroes. The popular comic book mercenary Red Sonja is, perhaps, a proper hero, but is, once again, motivated by a sexual assault. Male heroes are heroic because of what’s been done to women in their lives, often—the dead child, the dead wife. Women heroes are also heroic for what’s been done to women … to them.We build our heroes, too often, on terrible things done to women, instead of creating, simply, heroes who do things, who persevere in the face of overwhelming odds because it’s the right thing to do.

I was limited by stories that came before mine.We are so often limited by our own expectations of stories, by the stories that came before, by the heroes who came before.… How is it we can bear to live with ourselves, as readers and storytellers, if we swallow those limitations without questioning them?

Lets be real: if women were naturally anything, societies wouldnt spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives

We can pretend all we like that women are equal, ut as long as men and women are continually encouraged to supress the broad aspects of their humanity that we decry as feminine, were all screwed. Because its those things qe celebrate as other that make us truly human. Its what we label soft or feminune that makes civilization possible, Its our empathy, our ability to care and nurtureand connect. Its our ability to come together. To buld. To remake. Asking men to cut away their feminine traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to supress ther masculine traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.

I spent a great deal of my ilfe trying to be quiet and nice and not piss anyone off. I was misereable. It served no purpose. And they still came for me. It made me even easier to dismiss, to overlook, to assume I was just somebody else everybody could roll over and spout off ridiculously sexist, racist crap without dissent.But nodding and smiling gets old. It makes it easier for people to box you up and ship you off, Im only really alive when Im pissing people off anyway

Young white men in the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old range are often coming to grips with the fact that life isnt as easy as they were promised. Ive been there myself. When you realize that life isnt going to hand you the job you want or the woman you want to fuck, you look around for someone to blame, and feminism becomes an easy target. If only women were subservient objects who stayed at home, there would be more jobs open to young white men and more women with no other option but to have sex with them for sustenance. I realize that white-man utopia sounds really pleasing to these guys, but its basically everyone elses worst nightmare Its not so great for them either, but they wont get that for a long time, if ever.Suffice to say you wont convince them of this in an online comments section, either.

Light doesn’t always keep the dark things away,” Nyx said.

Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings.

It was men, not God, who had done those things...

Just keep in mind, Liaro said, theyre not going to remember the words. Theyll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something.

The monsters dont live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters.

There is nothing I fear more than someone without memory. A person without memory is free to do anything she likes.

I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world.

The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself. And try not to kill them.

War makes monsters of us all. But what happens to those of us who no longer wish to be monsters?

Im not trying to be mean, Casamir says.Intent doesnt always matter.