To be rapeable, a position that is social, not biological, defines what a woman is.

Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.

There is nothing as dangerous as an unembodied principle: no matter what blood flows, the principle comes first. The First Amendment absolutists operate precisely on unembodied principle.

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.

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

How can anyone love someone who is less than a full person, unless love itself is domination per se?

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.