With the consciousness that they are being hunted by women who would take sexual delight in dismembering them…

To clarify the dilemma women have about sexual enthusiasm for men, it is helpful to contrast it with men’s situation. It is unlikely in the extreme that men will have experienced actual sexual violence from women or its threat. Men do not live in cultures where the degradation and brutalisation of men at the hands of women is the stuff of pornography, entertainment and advertising. Men do not live with the consciousness that they are being hunted by women who would take sexual delight in dismembering them simply on account of their gender. They do not live in a society in which their degradation through sex is the dominant theme of the culture. They do not have to approach women sexually in fear or with distressing images or associations with their own oppression. The images they are likely to carry with them are those of women degraded and brutalised by men. In fact they are likely to have practised sexual arousal with such images, extensively, through pornography and fantasy. It is not surprising, then, that sexologists have identified women’s ‘inhibition’ as the main sexual problem of this century. They have identified as healthy sexual feelings those which the male ruling class experiences and have chosen to avoid recognising the political reasons why women might feel differently.

Sheila Jeffreys – Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution

unveiling…

The unveiling of women is a delicate matter. It will not happen overnight. We are all afraid of what we shall find.

Anais Nin – Under a Glass Bell

a lost novelist

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own

reflecting…

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own

A perversion of both nature and our social norms

The furious female is, we are told to this day, in innumerable ways, both subtle and stark, a perversion of both nature and our social norms. She is ugly, emotional, out of control, sick, unhappy, unpleasant to be around, unpersuasive, irrational, crazy, infantile. Above all, she must not be heard.

Rebecca Traister – Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger

Handing an excuse to rapists

To blame words or images for the actions of people is simplistic. It retards any real examination into what motivates violent crimes, such as rape. Radical feminists are handing a “pornography made me do it” excuse to rapists. Nothing should be allowed to mitigate the personal responsibility of every man who physically abuses a woman.

Wendy McElroy – XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography

Women…

You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while. 
 

Patrick Rothfuss – The Name of the Wind 

Gods

All the gods reside where women are worshipped    –    Mānava-Dharmaśāstra 

Women have faerie blood…

Perhaps all women are part faerie, for what woman can deny her faerie blood when the portals to her own land are open; when the full moon sings its insistent song; when sorrow and passion and rage pulse through her body at moon times. This is why women are the chosen ones of Faerie, part of the vibrant, fluid, emotional soul of the world    –    Brian Froud 

Worshipped

All the gods reside where women are worshipped. 

Manusmṛiti – Verse 3.56