Status ought not to be measured by a woman's ability to attract and snare a man.

The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.

The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. A choice is only possible if there are genuine alternatives.

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.

There are poems about the internet and about the shipping forecast but very few by women celebrating men.

The first kiss ideally signals rapture, exchange of hearts, and imminent marriage. Otherwise it is a kiss that lies. All very crude and nonsensical, and yet it is the staple myth of hundreds of comics called 'Sweethearts,' 'Romantic Secrets' and so forth. The state induced by the kiss is actually self-induced, of course, for few lips are so gifted with electric and psychedelic possibilities.