I soon began to sense a fundamental perceptual difficulty among male scholars (and some female ones) for which 'sexism' is too facile a term. It is really an intellectual defect, which might be termed 'patrivincialism' or patrochialism': the assumption that women are a subgroup, that men's culture is the 'real' world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the 'great' or 'liberalizing' periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
Adrienne RichEach feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.
Adrienne RichSleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
Adrienne RichThere is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.
Adrienne RichThe suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.
Adrienne RichSaw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence
Adrienne Rich