Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me - Simone de Beauvoir

It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

Everything that men have written about women should be viewed with suspicion, because they are both judge and party,’ wrote Poulain de la Barre,11 a little-known seventeenth-century feminist.

It is a mistake to seek in fantasies the key to concrete behaviour; for fantasies are created and cherished as fantasies. The little girl who dreams of violation with mingled horror and acquiescence does not really wish to be violated and if such a thing should happen it would be a hateful calamity.