I was encouraged, though, because I saw feminist writers - male and female - calling out the bias. I feel like more and more writers are cognizant of the problems and are willing to try to challenge them.

It's part of the reason I decided to speak out now. This was the tipping point for me. If it's O.K. for [David Petraeus ] to campaign for a job in the administration, then I'm going to campaign to get back out there, too.

It's the fact that you can reduce my whole life to one word, whatever it is, my entire career, my service to my country, my academic rigor, my courage in going to interview terrorists, and refugee camps, and third-world prisons.

When I fell, some people were in such shock that they didn't reach out. They were so mad at me, rather than having compassion for what happened. I lost a lot of friends.

We have to raise our young boys to respect women and our young girls to demand respect and to get their values from something other than their physicality.

I was in such a state of mental shock and quickly spiraled into a depression at the multitude of loss. My husband, I thought, was going to leave me. I was cut off from this mentor and someone I cared for very much, David Petraeus, who also did nothing to stand up for me and in fact, empowered his surrogates to throw me under the bus, and that was devastating.

My local paper, The New York Times, Yahoo News, CBS, and The Washington Post, all agreed to stop using the word 'mistress.' The big one was the Associated Press. They made a style change, and it's the gold standard that sets the guide for news outlets around the world. That's a small step for the American language, a medium step for feminism, and a huge step for me personally.