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

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.

When a leader has deployed a private army, that is one definition of a police state. Another is when the president, or a leader, has his own treasury.

Women's orgasms will quadruple in intensity if she's in a beautiful, dimly lit room versus a brightly lit, uncomfortable room.

People of all kinds are waking up. Even people passionate for Obama realize even that knight on a white horse isn't enough to roll back the oligarchy. I'm seeing a lot of action on the left as well that is never reported. But the Tea Party response is the most visible and the initiative they show is the most recognizable.

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests.