Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.

The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.

The '60s and '70s - I grew up in the Haight-Ashbury - people around me were going to school by day and all night long having these incredibly exciting meetings, mobilizing, marching, drafting statements. It was very intoxicating. It was very energizing. We've really forgotten a lot of those skills. Or they haven't been transmitted. It's useful to the people controlling us to have those skills not be available.

With the Internet there is even more fractioning since we are in echo chambers. With so much propaganda it is hard to calm down enough to listen.

I'm asking people to think critically and not to be lazy in their thinking.

The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.