I have lesbian impulses, so I understand how a man looks at a woman. … When I was growing up, it wasn't possible for me to do anything about my attra… - Camille Paglia

An erection is a thought and the orgasm an act of the imagination. The male has to will his sexual authority before the woman who is a shadow of his mother and of all women. Failure and humiliation constantly wait in the wings. No woman has to prove herself a woman in the grim way a man has to prove himself a man. He must perform, or the show does not go on. Social convention is irrelevant. A flop is a flop.

Men knew that if they devirginized a woman, they could end up dead within twenty-four hours. These controls have been removed.

Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature.