for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform.

You can't reduce an actual human being; you're just writing! You're not doing anything to another person.

That's the hardest thing to do-to stay with a sentence until it has said what it should say, and then to know when that has been accomplished.

I may cause someone to feel badly, not because I'm doing something to them, but because the way in which I see might cause pain. But I am not doing the hurting.

Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rational, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be savedthat is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women.

A people who have only just begun to emerge from a state of subjugation are in no position to be even-handed ... and it takes much patience and understanding and good will on the part of the strong ones both in the subjugated group and in the group holding the power to provide an atmosphere of stability in which the frightened bravado on both sides of the fence can dissipate itself without increasing the chaos that is already intrinsic in the situation.

Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that