"It's not that sexual liberation or feminist messages are dead"
About this Quote
Suspended mid-thought, Susie Bright's line works like a door left ajar on purpose. "It's not that..". is a preemptive dodge: she anticipates the tired obituary for feminism and sexual liberation, then refuses to give it the satisfaction of a clean death certificate. The sentence frames a cultural argument about reception rather than existence. The messages aren't gone; what's eroding is the public's willingness to hear them without rolling its eyes, the media's ability to carry them without sanding off the teeth, and the audience's patience for anything that can't be packaged as empowerment merch.
Bright, writing from inside the sex-positive feminist tradition that surged against both conservative backlash and anti-porn feminist critique, is attuned to a particular 90s-to-now pattern: every generation rebrands the same freedoms as newly discovered, while institutions reintroduce old constraints with better PR. The subtext is that "liberation" gets tolerated only when it's frictionless - aspirational, individualized, and safe for advertisers. When it becomes messy (desire that's not marketable, power that's not flattering, pleasure that doesn't read as self-care), the culture pretends it's passé.
The clause also hints at fatigue. Not ideological collapse, but saturation: feminist language everywhere, feminist politics struggling somewhere. Bright's intent isn't nostalgia; it's diagnosis. By refusing the "dead" narrative, she points to the more unsettling possibility: the rhetoric survives, but its edge is being domesticated, rerouted into branding, or drowned out by the noise of perpetual discourse.
Bright, writing from inside the sex-positive feminist tradition that surged against both conservative backlash and anti-porn feminist critique, is attuned to a particular 90s-to-now pattern: every generation rebrands the same freedoms as newly discovered, while institutions reintroduce old constraints with better PR. The subtext is that "liberation" gets tolerated only when it's frictionless - aspirational, individualized, and safe for advertisers. When it becomes messy (desire that's not marketable, power that's not flattering, pleasure that doesn't read as self-care), the culture pretends it's passé.
The clause also hints at fatigue. Not ideological collapse, but saturation: feminist language everywhere, feminist politics struggling somewhere. Bright's intent isn't nostalgia; it's diagnosis. By refusing the "dead" narrative, she points to the more unsettling possibility: the rhetoric survives, but its edge is being domesticated, rerouted into branding, or drowned out by the noise of perpetual discourse.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|
More Quotes by Susie
Add to List
