The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to the display professions: They are held higher and higher above the heads of rising women, for them to emulate.

George W. Bush legalized torture, but Obama is legalizing impunity. He promised to roll stuff back, but he is institutionalizing these things forever. It is terrifying and the left doesn't seem to recognize it.

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.'

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.

I did not imagine that pregnant women were 'naturally' any more sensitive or exalted than people in any other condition; only it seemed as if - perhaps because we are in such a twilight state, a melting down and reconstituting of the self - there was more opportunity to hear strains from what must be the other side, the moral music of the sphere.

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

The woman wins who calls herself beautiful, and challenges the world to change to fit her vision.