檳榔嶼

- Masses of lesbians were not "into" politics, were conservative, and had no desire to do anything radical.
  - The lesbians and bisexual women who helped form the women's liberation vanguard were led to feminism because they were already engaged in left politics, pushing against fixed boundaries of class, race, and sexuality.
- Women's liberation had already been an issue they had claimed psychologically, rebelling against traditional notions of gender and desire.
- What knowing powerful, caring lesbians taught me as a girl, a lesson that has continued, is that women do not need to depend on men for our well-being and our happiness - not even our sexual bliss.
  - We will never know how many millions of women stay in relationships with dominating sexist males simply because they cannot imagine a life where they can be happy without men, whether they are satisfied sexually and emotionally with the men in their life or not.
- If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.
- Male-identified females were those who dropped feminist principles in a flash if they interfered with romantic heterosexual concerns. They were the females who also supported men more than women, who could always see things from the male perspective.
  - A older black woman lesbian student, who had worked in the sex industry, having much sexual intercourses with men even as she remained clear about her lesbian identity, defended my feminist honor by declaring, "she's a woman-identified-woman who's into sex with men - that's her right, but she's still down with the cause."
- In many cases it was because visionary lesbian thinkers had an experiential understanding of what it means to be exploited and/or oppressed because you do not conform to mainstrean standards. They were far more willing to take on the issue of interrogating white supremace than their straight comrades. And they wre more likely to desire to strenghthen bonds with all men.
- Our freedom as women to choose who we love, who we will share our bodies and lives with, has been deeply enhanced by the struggles of radical lesbian women both on behalf of gay rights and women's rights.
- Mainstream mass media has always chosen a straight woman to represent what the feminist movement stands for - the straighter the better. The more glamorous she is, the more her image can be used to appeal to men.
  - Woman-identified women, whether straight, bisexual, or lesbian rarely make garnering male approval a priority in our lives. This is why we threaten the patriarchy.
  - Lesbian women who have a patriarchal mindset are far less threatening to men than feminist women, gay or straight, who have turned their gaze and their desire away from the patriarchy, away from sexist men.
- Nowadays the vast majority of lesbians, like their straight counterparts, are not into radical politics.
  - The reality that most lesbians living in white supremacist capitalist patriarchal culture constructed partnerships using the same paradigms of domination and submission as did their heterosexual counterparts.
  - Building mutually satisfying bonds where no one risked being subordinated was as difficult to achieve in lesbian relationships as in heterosexual ones.
  - The revelation that domestic violence happened in lesbian partnerships was the first clue that equality among women was not inherent in same sex bonds.
- Without radical lesbian input feminist theory and practice would never have dared to push against the boundaries of heterosexism to create spaces where women, all women, irrespective of their sexual identity and/or preference, could and can be as free as they want to be.