The second class status of marriage became one of the principal issues in the Reformation. Martin Luther, the Augustinian friar, had barely posted hi… - Germaine Greer

The most cursory examination of even the most progressive organs of information reveals a curious inability to recognize women as newsmakers, unless they are young or married to a head of state or naked or pregnant by some triumph of technology or perpetrators or victims of some hideous crime or any combiniation of the above. Women's issues are often disguised as people issues, unless they are relegated to the women's pages which amazingly still suvive. Senior figures are all male; even the few women who are deemed worthy of obituaries are shown in images from their youth, as if the last fourty years of their lives have been without achievement of any kind. If you analyse the by-lines in your morning paper, you will see that the senior editorial staff are all older men, supported by a rabble of junior females, the infinitely replacesable 'hackettes'.

If a man punches you in the eye, you are not expected to have pleaded with him not to for the crime to be accepted as assault. If you are sitting at your cash register and someone demands the cash in it, you will not be accused of consent if you simply hand it over. Only in the prosecution of rape is evidence of resistance an issue.

Human beings love, despite their compulsions to limit it and exploit it chaotically. Their love persuades them to make vows, build houses and turn their passion ultimately to duty.