Given the conditions under which you're a young person in this society, many things would be at least as important to you as your sexuality.

When one group rules another, the relationship between the two is political. When such an arrangement is carried out over a long period of time it develops an ideology (feudalism, racism, etc.). All historical civilizations are patriarchies: their ideology is male supremacy.

They weren't crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that.

Prostitution is really the only crime in the penal law where two people are doing a thing mutually agreed upon and yet only one, the female partner, is subject to arrest.

Given the conditions under which you're a young person in this society, many things would be at least as important to you as your sexuality.

The lesbian is the archtypical feminist, because she's not into men - she's the independent woman par excellence.

Perhaps patriarchy's greatest psychological weapon is simply its universality and longevity. ... Patriarchy has a still more tenacious or powerful hold through its successful habit of passing itself off as nature.