I can't even remember the first time I saw a porno. I presume I must have been shocked, frightened even, but after watching another and another and another they sort of blend into nothingness.Louise ONeill
We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk. I brought him back to my house. I fell asleep at that party. . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop. ’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.Louise ONeill
She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And don’t even start thinking about what a bitch I am, ” she says. Her eyes are steady, the heat receding from her skin. “This is not my fault. I’m just doing what we have been trained to do. This is who we are, freida. This is who we were designed to be.Louise ONeill
Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To yourLouise ONeill
I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.Louise ONeill
I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.Louise ONeill
I dream of things I know nothing about.Louise ONeill
When did we all become fluent in this language that none of us wanted to learn?Louise ONeill
They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.Louise ONeill