"They could have been nice to me instead of treating me like an idiot"
About this Quote
"They could have been nice to me instead of treating me like an idiot" lands like a bruise you only notice after the fact: plain language, delayed outrage, the kind that comes from realizing you were being managed, not heard. Norma McCorvey, better known as the symbolic "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, isn’t making an abstract complaint about manners. She’s indicting an entire ecosystem of cause-making that turns messy human lives into clean narratives.
The intent is deceptively modest: she’s asking for basic dignity. But the subtext is sharper. "They" is intentionally vague, a pronoun that widens the target from a few bad actors to a whole machine: lawyers, advocates, media, institutions that decide whose pain counts and whose intelligence is negotiable. The line exposes the classed and gendered power dynamic that often underwrites activism-as-management. When someone says you were treated "like an idiot", they’re not just describing rudeness; they’re describing extraction. Your story is useful, your agency is not.
Context matters because McCorvey’s public life became a tug-of-war between movements that wanted her as proof. Her later shifts in affiliation and her complicated relationship to the people around her made her an easy punchline or a convenient betrayal, depending on the audience. This quote refuses both scripts. It pulls the camera off ideology and onto the interpersonal costs of being turned into a landmark case: not the courtroom drama, but the everyday condescension that makes a person feel like a prop.
The intent is deceptively modest: she’s asking for basic dignity. But the subtext is sharper. "They" is intentionally vague, a pronoun that widens the target from a few bad actors to a whole machine: lawyers, advocates, media, institutions that decide whose pain counts and whose intelligence is negotiable. The line exposes the classed and gendered power dynamic that often underwrites activism-as-management. When someone says you were treated "like an idiot", they’re not just describing rudeness; they’re describing extraction. Your story is useful, your agency is not.
Context matters because McCorvey’s public life became a tug-of-war between movements that wanted her as proof. Her later shifts in affiliation and her complicated relationship to the people around her made her an easy punchline or a convenient betrayal, depending on the audience. This quote refuses both scripts. It pulls the camera off ideology and onto the interpersonal costs of being turned into a landmark case: not the courtroom drama, but the everyday condescension that makes a person feel like a prop.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
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