How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.

Men, through no fault of theirs, get born into cultures that tell them that if a woman can do it, it's not worth doing, or if they're not superior to women in one way or another, they're not really masculine.

No matter how hard I worked, whatever I accomplished was attributed to my looks. If you're working your ass off, then you don't want to be told that you only got whatever because of the way you look. It takes the heart out of you.

The premise of most media is that only conflict is newsworthy. And that's just not true. I think for a lot of men, too - certainly for most women - there's enough real conflict without manufacturing it. The media formula is always to have a pro and con, to say there are two sides to any issue, when in fact there may be ten sides.

Proust's tea cake has nothing on one hour in a college dorm.

Sadomasochiasm - which we know very well doesn't exist in societies that don't have child abuse - is regarded some sort of natural sexual expression.

Perhaps well-to-do women and unemployed ghetto teenagers have something in common. Neither group has been allowed to develop the self-confidence that comes from knowing you can support yourselves.