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The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels __nvisible_ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her __isibility_ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is __ttractive_ or __nattractive_, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow_ it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are __nvisible_.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels __nvisible_ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her __isibility_ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is __ttractive_ or __nattractive_, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow_ it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are __nvisible_.

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The revolutionary woman knows the world she seeks to overthrow is precisely one in which love between equal human beings is well nigh impossible. We are still part of the ironical working-out of this, our own cruel contradiction. One of the most compelling facts which can unite women and make us act is the overwhelming indignity or bitter hurt of being regarded as simply __he other_, __n object_, __ommodity_, __hing_. We act directly from a consciousness of the impossibility of loving or being loved without distortion. But we must still demand now the preconditions of what is impossible at the moment. It is a most disturbing dialectic, our praxis of pain.