Girls learn to love and have sexual feelings in a position of low status, and the eroticization of powerlessness is a normal part of the construction of femininity.

Women are prevented by the threat and reality of male violence from entering public space on equal terms with male citizens.

Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.

The opposite of heterosexual desire is the eroticising of sameness, a sameness of power, equality and mutuality. It is homosexual desire.

Male supremacy is centered on the act of sexual intercourse, justified by heterosexual practice.

However, as Bordo herself notes, the problem with the adoption of postmodern ideas in general is that they have led some writers to disregard the materiality of power relations.

Where you have been isn't half as important as where you are headed. Keep your sights and focus on the future.

I searched for a deeper existence. What I found was myself. The next moment the journey towards self discovery began all over again.

Even in death, my mother smiled—and she had every reason to do so, for I had become precisely what she hoped I would—her mirror image.

The mind grows by what it feeds on.

Nothing is more diminishing than trying to control success or hold on to things.

You dont have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.

Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't?.... It's the courage of your own tenderness.

There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded Her soul is at war with the life she has led. As I looked on that face so strangely faded I wonder God did not strike me dead.

The secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis . . . Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.

My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me - when my family was working-class, and we were struggling.