Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. - Colette Dowling

If girls could do nothing else in this world, they were supposed to be able to keep their blood from showing.

We have only one real shot at "liberation," and that is to emancipate ourselves from within. It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency—the deep wish to be taken care of by others—is the chief force holding women down today. I call this "The Cinderella Complex"—a network of largely repressed attitudes and fears that keeps women in a kind of half-light, retreating from the full use of their minds and creativity. Like Cinderella, women today are still waiting for something external to "transform their lives".

[Women] were not trained for freedom at all, but for its categorical opposite—dependency.