Paradoxically, the most constructive thing women can do is to write, for in the act of writing we deny our muteness and begin to eliminate some of the difficulties that have been put upon us.

This monopoly over language is one of the means by which males have ensured their own primacy, and consequently have ensured the invisibility or 'other' nature of females.

When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a woman's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little.

what has been termed 'correct' English is nothing other than the blatant legitimation of the white middle-class code.

When women are supposed to be quiet, a talkative woman is a woman who talks at all.

For centuries women have been saying many of the things we are saying today and which we have often thought of as new.

... for centuries there has been a long and honorable tradition of women who have resisted and protested against men and their power.