Before A Secret Is Told, One Can

In The System Of Chivalry, Men Protect Women Against Men. This Is Not Unlike The Protection Relationship Which [organized Crime] Established With Small Businesses In The Early Part Of This Century. Indeed, Chivalry Is An Age-old Protection Racket Which Depends For Its Existence On Rape.

In One Sense I Feel That My Book Is A One-woman Argument Against Determinism.

To Make Love Is To Become Like This Infant Again. We Grope With Our Mouths Toward The Body Of Another Being, Whom We Trust, Who Takes Us In Her Arms. We Rock Together With This Loved One. We Move Beyond Speech. Our Bodies Move Past All The Controls We Have Learned. We Cry Out In Ecstasy, In Feeling. We Are Back In A Natural World Before Culture Tried To Erase Our Experience Of Nature. In This World, To Touch Another Is To Express Love; There Is No Idea Apart From Feeling, And No Feeling Which Does Not Ring Through Our Bodies And Our Souls At Once.

Ordinary Women Attempt To Change Our Bodies To Resemble A Pornographic Ideal. Ordinary Women Construct A False Self And Come To Hate This Self.

This Earth Is My Sister; I Love Her Daily Grace, Her Silent Daring, And How Loved I Am. How We Admire This Strength In Each Other, All That We Have Lost, All That We Have Suffered, All That We Know: We Are Stunned By This Beauty, And I Do Not Forget: What She Is To Me, What I Am To Her.