The problem is that America is still so racist - I guess it's hard to find another word for it ­ - that they still, the press in general and many people, perceive only white women as feminists. They think black women are black.

I think we're all enmeshed in this political system that is devoted to controlling reproduction. You didn't invent it; I didn't invent it. Thirty percent of us are trying to preserve it, and 70 percent are trying to change it. We're not active enough or voting enough or mad enough.

I've only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn't have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That's so rare.

If we were going to address what involves the biggest number of women, reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right - like freedom of speech, the most basic right. Freedom from violence, since women worldwide are still like 70% at least of all victims of violence. Equality in the family, democracy in the family, since the family is the microcosm of everything else, so if you have inequality and violence in the family, it normalizes it in the street, for foreign policy, for every place else.

... patriarchy creates megapatterns that affect us all--even as we forge different individual choices within them--just as do themegapatterns of nationalism or racism.

But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child -- a true self who is waiting.

You're a unique person. You should do what you're suited to do. We all should. It's the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It's external.