We as women know that there are no disembodied processes; that all history originates in human flesh; that all oppression is inflicted by the body of one against the body of another; that all social change is built on the bone and muscle, and out of the flesh and blood, of human creators.

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice... Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

All personal, psychological, social, and institutionalized domination on this earth can be traced back to its source: the phallic identities of men.

Men use the night to erase us.

The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.

Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.