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The Crowning Insult [of Abortion] Is That This Ordeal Is Represented To Her As Some Kind Of A Privilege.her Sad And Onerous Duty Is Garbed In The Rhetoric Of A Civil Right.

-Germaine Greer

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The Crowning Insult [of

Germaine Greer

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The Crowning Insult [of Abortion] Is That This Ordeal Is Represented To Her As Some Kind Of A Privilege.her Sad And Onerous Duty Is Garbed In The Rhetoric Of A Civil Right.

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The Surest Guide To The Correctness Of The Path That Women Take Is Joy In The Struggle. Revolution Is The Festival Of The Oppressed.

Evolution Is What It Is. The Upper Classes Have Always Died Out; It's One Of The Most Charming Things About Them.

We Still Make Love To Organs And Not People; That So Far From Realising That People Are Never More Idiosyncratic, Never More Totally There When They Make Love, We Re Never More Incommunicative, Never More Alone.

As Angelo Discovered In Measure For Measure, Nothing Corrupts Like Virtue.

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If Women Understand By Emancipation The Adoption Of The Masculine Role Then We Are Lost Indeed. If Women Can Supply No Counterbalance To The Blindness Of Male Drive The Aggressive Society Will Run To Its Lunatic Extremes At Ever-escalating Speed. Who Will Safeguard The Despised Animal Faculties Of Compassion, Empathy, Innocence And Sensuality?

I Find That Those Men Who Are Personally Most Polite To Women, Who Call Them Angels And All That, Cherish In Secret The Greatest Contempt For Them.

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War Is The Admission Of Defeat In The Face Of Conflicting Interests: By War The Issue Is Left To Chance, And The Tacit Assumption That The Best Man Will Win Is Not At All Justified. It Might Equally Be Argued That The Worst, The Most Unscrupulous Man Will Win, Although History Will Continue The Absurd Game By Finding Him After All The Best Man.

Every Wife Who Slaves To Keep Herself Pretty, To Cook Her Husband's Favourite Meals, To Build Up His Pride And Confidence In Himself At The Expense Of His Sense Of Reality, To Be His Closest And Effectively His Only Friend, To Encourage Him To Rejectthe Consensus Of Opinionand Find Reassurance Only In Her Arms Is Binding Her Mate To Her With Hoops Of Steel That Will Strangle Them Both.

Security Is When Everything Is Settled, When Nothing Can Happen To You; Security Is The Denial Of Life.

Perhaps Women Have Always Been In Closer Contact With Reality Than Men: It Would Seem To Be The Just Recompense For Being Deprived Of Idealism.

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The Older Woman's Love Is Not Love Of Herself, Nor Of Herself Mirrored In A Lover's Eyes, Nor Is It Corrupted By Need. It Is A Feeling Of Tenderness So Still And Deep And Warm That It Gilds Every Grass Blade And Blesses Every Fly. It Includes The Ones Who Have A Claim On It, And A Great Deal Else Besides. I Wouldn't Have Missed It For The World.

Women's Liberation, If It Abolishes The Patriarchal Family, Will Abolish A Necessary Substructure Of The Authoritarian State, And Once That Withers Away Marx Will Have Come True Willy-nilly, So Let's Get On With It.

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Most People Die In Improvised Circumstances Of Harassment And Confusion, Whether In Hospital Or Out Of It.

The Wedding Is The Chief Ceremony Of The Middle-class Mythology, And It Functions As The Official Entrée Of The Spouses To Their Middle-class Status. This Is The Real Meaning Of Saving Up To Get Married. The Young Couple Struggles To Set Up An Image Of Comfortable Life Which They Will Be Forced To Live Up To In The Years That Follow.

Sex For Many Has Become A Sorry Business, A Mechanical Release Involving Neither Discovery Nor Triumph, Stressing Human Isolation More Dishearte-ingly Than Ever Before.

English Culture Is Basically Homosexual In The Sense That The Men Only Really Care About Other Men.

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Every Human Body Has Its Optimum Weight And Contour, Which Only Health And Efficiency Can Establish. Whenever We Treat Women's Bodies As Aesthetic Objects Without Function We Deform Them.

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Only One Thing Is Certain: If Pot Is Legalized, It Won't Be For Our Benefit But For The Authorities. To Have It Legalized Will Also Be To Lose Control Of It.

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Is It Too Much To Ask That Women Be Spared The Daily Struggle For Superhuman Beauty In Order To Offer It To The Caresses Of A Subhumanly Ugly Mate?

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Revolution Is The Festival Of The Oppressed.

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Pigs May Like Honey, But That Doesn't Stop It Being Sweet.

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The Drug Which Makes Sexuality Palatable In Popular Mythology.

There Is No Such Thing As Security. There Never Has Been.

After Centuries Of Conditioning Of The Female Into The Condition Of Perpetual Girlishness Called Femininity, We Cannot Remember What Femaleness Is.

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The Compelled Mother Loves Her Child As The Caged Bird Sings. The Song Does Not Justify The Cage Nor The Love The Enforcement.

Common Morality Now Treats Childbearing As An Aberration. There Are Practically No Good Reasons Left For Exercising One's Fertility.

Psychoanalysis Is The Confession Without Absolution.

Women Live Lives Of Continual Apology. They Are Born And Raised To Take The Blame For Other People's Behavior. If They Are Treated Without Respect, They Tell Themselves That They Have Failed To Earn Respect. If Their Husbands Do Not Fancy Them, It Is Because They Are Unattractive.

Status Ought Not To Be Measured By A Woman's Ability To Attract And Snare A Man.

If Women Understand By Emancipation The Adoption Of The Masculine Role Then We Are Lost Indeed.

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Gender Reassignment Is An Exorcism Of The Mother

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Until Women Themselves Reject Stigma And Refuse To Feel Shame For The Way Others Treat Them, They Have No Hope Of Achieving Full Human Stature.

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The Sight Of Women Talking Together Has Always Made Men Uneasy; Nowadays It Means Rank Subversion.

A Woman Is Never So Happy As When She Is Being Wooed. Then She Is Mistress Of All She Surveys, The Cynosure Of All Eyes, Until That Day Of Days When She Sails Down The Aisle, A Vision In White, Lovely As The Stefanotis She Carries, Borne Translucent On Her Father's Manly Arm To Be Handed Over To Her New Father-surrogate. If She Is Clever, And If Her Husband Has The Time And The Resources, She Will Insist On Being Wooed All Her Life; More Likely She Will Discover That Marriage Is Not Romantic, That Husbands Forget Birthdays And Aniversaries And Seldom Pay Compliments, Are Often Perfunctory.

Man Made One Grave Mistake: In Answer To Vaguely Reformist And Humanitarian Agitation He Admitted Women To Politics And The Professions. The Conservatives Who Saw This As The Undermining Of Our Civilisation And The End Of The State And Marriage Were Right After All; It Is Time For The Demolition To Begin.

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Military Mythology Has To Pretend That Real Men Are In The Majority; Cowards Can Never Be Allowed To Feel That They Might Be The Normal Ones And The Heroes Are Insane.

Energy Is The Power That Drives Every Human Being. It Is Not Lost By Exertion But Maintained By It, For It Is A Faculty Of The Psyche.

Yet If A Woman Never Lets Herself Go, How Will She Ever Know How Far She Might Have Got? If She Never Takes Off Her High-heeled Shoes, How Will She Ever Know How Far She Could Walk Or How Fast She Could Run?

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I Didn't Fight To Get Women Out From Behind Vacuum Cleaners To Get Them Onto The Board Of Hoover.

I Think That Testosterone Is A Rare Poison.

The Fear Of Freedom Is Strong In Us. We Call It Chaos Or Anarchy, And The Words Are Threatening. We Live In A True Chaos Of Contradicting Authorities, An Age Of Conformism Without Community, Of Proximity Without Communication. We Could Only Fear Chaos If We Imagined That It Was Unknown To Us, But In Fact We Know It Very Well.

The Few Men Who Do A Hand's Turn Around The House Expect Gratitude And Recognition, So Sure Are They That, Though It Is Their Dirt, It Is Not Their Job.

Because Love Has Been So Perverted, It Has In Many Cases Come To Involve A Measure Of Hatred.

The Occupational Hazard Of Being A Playboy Bunny Is The Aching Facial Muscles Brought On By Obligatory Smiles.

Women Over Fifty Already Form One Of The Largest Groups In The Population Structure Of The Western World. As Long As They Like Themselves, They Will Not Be An Oppressed Minority. In Order To Like Themselves They Must Reject Trivialization By Others Of Who And What They Are. A Grown Woman Should Not Have To Masquerade As A Girl In Order To Remain In The Land Of The Living.

You're Only Young Once, But You Can Be Immature Forever.

In Modern Consumer Society, The Attack On Mother-child Eroticism Took Its Total Form; Breastfeeding Was Proscribed And The Breasts Reserved For The Husband's Fetishistic Delectation. At The Same Time, Babies Were Segregated, Put Into Cold Beds Alone And Not Picked Up If They Cried.

Awareness Of Time As Flying Has Some Advantages; It Precludes Boredom, For One Thing. It Matters Little That Younger People Find Older People Boring Or Slow. Older People Have A Right To Resist Being Rushed, To Stand And Stare At The Fragile World That Has Become So Unspeakably Dear To Them. For The Lucky Ones, Who Will Not Have To Leave While They Are Still In Love With Life, There Will Come A Later Time When That Passion Too Will Fade, But While One Is Still Possessed By That Great Tenderness, It Must Be Yielded To.

If Female Liberation Is To Happen, If The Reservoir Of Real Female Love Is To Be Tapped, This Sterile Self-deception Must Be Counteracted. The Only Literary Form Which Could Outsell Romantic Trash On The Female Market Is Hard-core Pornography.

Bringing Up Children Is Not A Real Occupation, Because Children Come Up Just The Same, Brought Or Not.

The Castration Of Women Has Been Carried Out In Terms Of A Masculine-feminine Polarity, In Which Men Have Commandeered All The Energy And Streamlined It Into An Aggressive Conquistadorial Power, Reducing All Heterosexual Contact To A Sadomasochistic Pattern.

Women Have Very Little Idea Of How Much Men Hate Them.

I Grew Up Thinking There Was One Unpardonable Sin – To Be Boring.

No Sex Is Better Than Bad Sex.

Rather Than Seek To Be Squired And Dated By Their Rivals Why Should It Not Be Possible For Women To Find Relaxation And Pleasure In The Company Of Their 'inferiors'? They Would Need To Shed Their Desperate Need To Admire A Man, And Accept The Gentler Role Of Loving Him. A Learned Woman Cannot Castrate A Truck-driver Like She Can Her Intellectual Rival, Because He Has No Exaggerated Respect For Her Bookish Capacities. The Alternative To Conventional Education Is Not Stupidity, And Many A Clever Girl Needs The Corrective Of A Humbler Soul's Genuine Wisdom.

Lifelong Monogamy Is A Maniacal Idea.

Human Beings Have An Unalienable Right To Invent Themselves; When That Right Is Pre-empted It Is Called Brain-washing.

Love, Love, Love – All The Wretched Cant Of It, Masking Egotism, Lust, Masochism, Fantasy Under A Mythology Of Sentimental Postures, A Welter Of Self-induced Miseries And Joys, Blinding And Masking The Essential Personalities In The Frozen Gestures Of Courtship, In The Kissing And The Dating And The Desire, The Compliments And The Quarrels Which Vivify Its Barrenness.

The Only Perfect Love To Be Found On Earth Is Not Sexual Love, Which Is Riddled With Hostility And Insecurity, But The Wordless Commitment Of Families, Which Takes As Its Model Mother-love. This Is Not To Say That Fathers Have No Place, For Father-love, With Its Driving For Self-improvement And Discipline, Is Also Essential To Survival, But That Uncorrected Father-love, Father-love As It Were Practiced By Both Parents, Is A Way To Annihilation.

The Real Theater Of The Sex War Is The Domestic Hearth.

We Live In A True Chaos Of Contradicting Authorities, An Age Of Conformism Without Community, Of Proximity Without Communication.

It Is In Our Interests To Let The Police And Their Employers Go On Believing That The Underground Is A Conspiracy, Because It Increases Their Paranoia And Their Inability To Deal With What Is Really Happening. As Long As They Look For Ringleaders And Documents They Will Miss Their Mark, Which Is That Proportion Of Every Personality Which Belongs In The Underground.

Consensus Politics Means That You Cannot Afford To Give The Many-headed Beast, The Public, Anything To Vote Against, For Voting Against Is What Gargantuan Pseudodemocracy Has To Come Down To.

When I Was A Young Hippy, I Thought Marching Naked Would Be A Strong Protest, But I Don't Think It Would Be As Effective Now.

In Any Library In The World, I Am At Home, Unselfconscious, Still And Absorbed.

Freedom Is Fragile And Must Be Protected. To Sacrifice It, Even As A Temporary Measure, Is To Betray It.

Love, Love, Love - All The Wretched Cant Of It, Masking Egotism, Lust, Masochism, Fantasy Under A Mythology Of Sentimental Postures.

Security Is The Denial Of Life

It Is Agreed That Little Girls Should Have A Different Physical Education Than Little Boys, But It Is Not Admitted How Much Of The Difference Is Counseled By The Conviction That Little Girls Should Not Look Like Little Boys.

Nature Herself Is Not Always Unambiguous. Sometimes A Girl Child May Have So Well-developed A Clitoris That It Is Assumed She Is A Boy. Likewise, Many Male Children May Be Underdeveloped, Or Their Genitals Deformed Or Hidden And It Is Assumed That They Are Girls.

We Can Put Women On Prozac And They Will Think They Are Happy, Even Though They Are Not. Disturbed Animals In The Zoo Are Given Prozac Too, Which Rather Suggests That Misery Is A Response To Unbearable Circumstances Rather Than Constitutional.

The First Kiss Ideally Signals Rapture, Exchange Of Hearts, And Imminent Marriage. Otherwise It Is A Kiss That Lies. All Very Crude And Nonsensical, And Yet It Is The Staple Myth Of Hundreds Of Comics Called 'sweethearts,' 'romantic Secrets' And So Forth. The State Induced By The Kiss Is Actually Self-induced, Of Course, For Few Lips Are So Gifted With Electric And Psychedelic Possibilities.

Next Time Round Hitler Will Be A Machine.

Human Beings Have An Inalienable Right To Invent Themselves.

Inalienable Rights

At The Same Time As Woman Was Becoming The Showcase For Wealth And Caste, While Men Were Slipping Into Relative Anonymity And "handsome Is As Handsome Does," She Was Emerging As The Central Emblem Of Western Art.

Sex Is More Fun Than Cars But Cars Refuel Quicker Than Men.

Guilt Is One Side Of A Nasty Triangle; The Other Two Are Shame And Stigma. This Grim Coalition Combines To Inculpate Women Themselves Of The Crimes Committed Against Them.

One May Not Reach The Dawn Save By The Path Of The Night.

The Blind Conviction That We Have To Do Something About Other People's Reproductive Behavior, And That We May Have To Do It Whether They Like It Or Not, Derives From The Assumption That The World Belongs To Us, Who Have So Expertly Depleted Its Resources, Rather Than To Them, Who Have Not.

There Have Been Women In The Past Far More Daring Than We Would Need To Be Now, Who Ventured All And Gained A Little, But Survived After All.

The Essence Of Pleasure Is Spontaneity.

Supergroupies Don't Have To Hang Around Hotel Corridors. When You Are One, As I Have Been, You Get Invited Backstage.

Women Have Been Charged With Deviousness And Duplicity Since The Dawn Of Civilization So They Have Never Been Able To Pretend That Their Masks Were Anything But Masks. It Is A Slender Case But Perhaps It Does Mean That Women Have Always Been In Closer Contact With Reality Than Men: It Would Seem To Be The Just Recompense For Being Deprived Of Idealism.

Man Is Jealous Because Of His Amour Propre; Woman Is Jealous Because Of Her Lack Of It.

All That Remains To The Mother In Modern Consumer Society Is The Role Of Scapegoat; Psychoanalysis Uses Huge Amounts Of Money And Time To Persuade Analysis And To Foist Their Problems On To The Absent Mother, Who Has No Opportunity To Utter A Word In Her Own Defence. Hostility To The Mother In Our Societies Is An Index Of Mental Health.

The Most Powerful Entities On Earth Are Not Governments But The Multi-national Corporations That See Women As Their Territory, Indoctrinating Them With Their Versions Of Beauty, Health And Hygiene, Medicating Them And Cultivating Their Dependency In Order To Medicate Them Some More.

It Takes A Great Deal Of Courage And Independence To Decide To Design Your Own Image Instead Of The One That Society Rewards, But It Gets Easier As You Go Along.

Most Women Still Need A Room Of Their Own And The Only Way To Find It May Be Outside Their Own Home.

The Hippie Is The Scion Of Surplus Value. The Dropout Can Only Claim Sanctity In A Society Which Offers Something To Be Dropped Out Of--career, Ambition, Conspicuous Consumption. The Effects Of Hippie Sanctimony Can Only Be Felt In The Context Of Others Who Plunder His Lifestyle For What They Find Good Or Profitable, A Process Known As Rip-off By The Hippie, Who Will Not See How Savagely He Has Pillaged Intricate And Demanding Civilizations For His Own Parodic Lifestyle.

Men Ought To Become More Conscious Of Their Bodies As Objects Of Delight.

A Library Is A Place Where You Can Lose Your Innocence Without Losing Your Virginity.

Thought Provoking

The Crowning Insult [of Abortion] Is That This Ordeal Is Represented To Her As Some Kind Of A Privilege.her Sad And Onerous Duty Is Garbed In The Rhetoric Of A Civil Right.

Act Quickly, Think Slowly.

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Diane Von Furstenberg

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