Men, permitted to put words (and other things) in women's mouths, create scenes in which women desperately want to be bound, battered, tortured, humiliated, and killed.

To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status.

It's particularly hard to take being stabbed in the back close to home. There's always a feeling of betrayal when people of your own group oppose you.

Women are socially disadvantaged in controlling sexual access to their bodies through socialization to customs that define a woman's body as for sexual use by men. Sexual access is regularly forced or pressured or routinized beyond denial.

In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.

In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.

Power is being able to say complete and utter nonsense and have it be believed, powerlessness is where no matter how much cogent evidence and proof one has, to not be believed.