During years of working for a living, I have experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country, I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places and turned away from apartment rentals. All for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.

Society certainly encourages women to be victims in every way. I mean if we want approval, we have to sing the blues, even as singers we sing the blues.

No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.

Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world.

There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset.

Battered women is a phrase that uncovered major, long-hidden violence. It helps us to face the fact that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home, not in the streets.

A different world can be created or re-created-but not until we stop enshrining the economic values of invisible labor, infinite and obsessive growth, and a slow environmental suicide.