Quotes by Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen

… fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.

Fighting

Gay

Lying

A law is always that much more scary and that much more effective for a totalitarian state if it’s selectively enforced.

Scary

As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my children

Children

Gay

Russia

Conceit of the anti-gay law in Russia is to protect children, then the people who have the most to fear are LGBT parents. And sure enough, in conjunction with the homosexual propaganda law, they instituted a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples, or single people from countries where same-sex marriage is legal. That has very scary potential for any LGBT person with adopted kids, because Russian courts practice this particular legal concept called “annulment of adoption.” So an adopted child is never exactly the same as a biological child, even if he or she was adopted ten years ago.

Children

Country

Couple

Donald Trump clearly doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to have a concept of what he’s doing. I think he has a very strong instinct for using lying to assert power, and that’s what he does. Every time he lies, he’s saying “I can say whatever I want, whenever I want to, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I think he understands that instinctively. He has a finely honed sense for power and manipulation. Bullying is another way to put it. He’s a highly skilled bully, but bullying is not a very sophisticated strategy.

Bullying

Strong

Thinking

Donald Trump creates word salads. And that is awful to language, because we try to parse out what he’s saying and try to find meaning in it. Journalists don’t have a choice about reporting what the president says. I find the idea – “Let’s not write about his tweets” – to be absolutely ridiculous. I mean, he’s the president! Of course, we have to write about his tweets and look at what they mean. The problem is, they’re hollow. But we don’t have the option of ignoring what he’s saying because he’s president. That’s damaging to language, and to journalism.

Choices

Mean

Writing

Every day, there’d be somebody interviewing me as a “lesbian living in Russia.” It got to the point where I would joke that I now have two jobs. I work as a writer and a journalist, and I also work as a lesbian. There’s a big difference between being out and having that be your sole identity, the only reason that someone is talking to you. My twelve-year-old daughter said, “I have a new job as well. I work as the daughter of a lesbian,” because she was also giving all these interviews.

Daughter

Giving

New Job

Fact-checking is a terrible way to report on Donald Trump’s lying . It’s like we enter into a dialogue with him. It’s as though, he says “A,” and we check “A,” and it gives it no context. Saying that he’s “misstating” is an even worse way of covering it. That’s NPR’s ridiculous policy of not calling his lies “lies.” It’s really destructive.

Giving

Lying

Ridiculous

For example, if you are a blogger who wrote something about a local official and you’re going to prison for that, you’re a political prisoner. If you’re a businessman who has refused to cede his business to the local official and you’re going to prison for that, you’re not a political prisoner. In that second category there are hundreds of thousands of people in Russia.

People

Political

Prison

For Russians in the ’90s, there was that sense of not knowing what the future held at all. And coming off a long period of when people actually were robbed of the ability to plan their future – that’s very much a part of totalitarian control – that exacerbated it. In this country, we are not coming off a long period like that. But I think that for a lot of Americans, as a result of globalization, as a result of the housing crisis, the future is just too uncertain. And their place in the world is too uncertain.

Country

Long

Thinking

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Agents

Apocalypse

Art

Book

Bullying

Catastrophe

Children

Choices

Church

Citizenship

College

Community

Company You Keep

Country

Couple

Culture

Daughter

Democracy

Domestic Violence

Doubt

Effort

Election

Enemy

Feel Better

Fighting

First Time

Firsts

Gay

Girl

Giving

Home

Identity

Important

Individuality

Journey

Kind

Leader

Lgbt

Liberty

Long

Lying

Mean

Mind

Morning

Natural

Negative

New Job

New Year

Nice

Office

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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Quotes by Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen

A law is always that much more scary and that much more effective for a totalitarian state if it’s selectively enforced.

As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my children

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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