The Common Erotic Project Of Destroying Women

Writing Is Alchemy. Dross Becomes Gold. Experience Is Transformed. Pain Is Changed. Suffering May Become Song. The Ordinary Or Horrible Is Pushed By The Will Of The Writer Into Grace Or Redemption, A Prophetic Wail, A Screed For Justice, An Elegy Of Sadness Or Sorrow. ... There Is Always A Tension Between Experience And The Thing That Finally Carries It Forward, Bears Its Weight, Holds It In. Without That Tension, One Might As Well Write A Shopping List.

Every Three Minutes A Woman Is Being Raped. Every Eighteen Seconds A Woman Is Being Beaten. There Is Nothing Abstract About It. It Is Happening Right Now As I Am Speaking.

Men Are Rapists, Batterers, Plunderers, Killers; These Same Men Are Religious Prophets, Poets, Heroes, Figures Of Romance, Adventure, Accomplishment, Figures Ennobled By Tragedy And Defeat. Men Have Claimed The Earth, Called It 'her'. Men Ruin Her. Men Have Airplanes, Guns, Bombs, Poisonous Gases, Weapons So Perverse And Deadly That They Defy Any Authentically Human Imagination.

For A Mother The Project Of Raising A Boy Is The Most Fulfilling Project She Can Hope For.

We Are Born Into A World In Which Sexual Possibilities Are Narrowly Circumscribed. . . . We Are Programmed By The Culture As Surely As Rats Are Programmed To Make The Arduous Way Through The Scientist's Maze, And That Programming Operates On Every Level Of Choice And Action.