In My Own Life, I Don't Have

In This Society, The Norm Of Masculinity Is Phallic Aggression. Male Sexuality Is, By Definition, Intensely And Rigidly Phallic. A Man's Identity Is Located In His Conception Of Himself As The Possessor Of A Phallus; A Man's Worth Is Located In His Pride In Phallic Identity. The Main Characteristic Of Phallic Identity Is That Worth Is Entirely Contingent On The Possession Of A Phallus. Since Men Have No Other Criteria For Worth, No Other Notion Of Identity, Those Who Do Not Have Phalluses Are Not Recognized As Fully Human.

Men Who Want To Support Women In Our Struggle For Freedom And Justice Should Understand That It Is Not Terrifically Important To Us That They Learn To Cry; It Is Important To Us That They Stop The Crimes Of Violence Against Us.

For A Mother The Project Of Raising A Boy Is The Most Fulfilling Project She Can Hope For. She Can Watch Him, As A Child, Play The Games She Was Not Allowed To Play; She Can Invest In Him Her Ideas, Aspirations, Ambitions, And Values - Or Whatever She Has Left Of Them; She Can Watch Her Son, Who Came From Her Flesh And Whose Life Was Sustained By Her Work And Devotion, Embody Her In The World. So While The Project Of Raising A Boy Is Fraught With Ambivalence And Leads Inevitably To Bitterness, It Is The Only Project That Allows A Woman To Be - To Be Through Her Son, To Live Through Her Son.

Feminist Art Is Not Some Tiny Creek Running Off The Great River Of Real Art. It Is Not Some Crack In An Otherwise Flawless Stone. It Is, Quite Spectacularly I Think, Art Which Is Not Based On The Subjugation Of One Half Of The Species. It Is Art Which Will Take The Great Human Themes -love, Death, Heroism, Suffering, History Itself -and Render Them Fully Human. It May Also, Though Perhaps Our Imaginations Are So Mutilated Now That We Are Incapable Even Of The Ambition, Introduce A New Theme, One As Great And As Rich As Those Others -should We Call It Joy?

Undernourished, Intelligence Becomes Like The Bloated Belly Of A Starving Child: Swollen, Filled With Nothing The Body Can Use.