(DDEckerslyke) wrote in message
. com...
Complete the following sentence in ten words or less
Being proud of your country is like being proud of ...

'In fact, as a woman, I have no country.'
--Virginia Woolf (1938)

I once heard the idea that a flag should be replaced by a picture
of your mum and dad having sex. This seems to sum it up nicely.

"She will find that she has no good reason to ask her brother to fight
on her behalf to protect 'our' country. '"Our country"', she will say,
'throughout the greater part of its history has treated me as a slave, it
has denied me education or any share in its possessions. "Our" country
still ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner. "Our" country denies me
the means of protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very large sum
annually to protect me, and is so little able, even so, to protect me that
Air Raid precautions are written on the wall. Therefore, if you insist upon
fighting to protect me, or "our" country, let it be understood soberly and
rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which
I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will
not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect myself or my country.
For', the outsider will say, 'in fact, as a woman, I have no country.'"
--Virginia Woolf (Three Guineas, pp. 165-6)

--Nick