檳榔嶼

- My Search for love led me to feminism. Feminist thinking freed me from the weight of the past.
- Feminism drew to me groups of women who had similar stories to tell, women who, like me, wanted to be fully self-actualization, who wanted to end sexism, who wanted to be sexually free and heart-whole.
- A passionate teacher, Tillie Olsen, in real life, she was urging us, young feminist thinkers, to blossom, to dare, to risk.
- As I moved deeper and deeper into radical feminist thinking, I found there the one place where relationships between women and me were seriously discussed. In our consciousness-raising classes and intimate gathering, we learned ways to understand the impact of patriarchal thinking on our relationships with men.
  - Contrary to mass media's insistence that we were learning how to be man-hating, in fact we were taught to understand the ways male identity and self-actualization were usurped by patriarchal socialization.
  - Men who oppressed women did not do so because they acted simply from the space of free will; they were in their own agents of a system they had not put into place.
- Long before there was a resurgence of New Age writing about love, women active in feminist movement made us open our eyes and examine the extent to which the very ways we thought about love - our founding narratives - were not only handed to us by men but shaped to reinforce and sustain male domination.
- Marilyn Frye : "There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women... I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality. I would like heterosexual women to consider this proposition, seriously.... I would like heterosexual women to be as actively curious about how and why and when they became heterosexual as I have been about how and why and when I became a Lesbian."
- It was a direct response to the reality that when individual women attempted to share feminist thinking and practice with men in their lives, they met strong opposition. Most men did not want to give up the privilege accorded them by patriarchy. If men were not willing to embrace and advocate feminist politics, if they were committed to sexist hierarchy, then they did constitute a threat to the movement; they were positioning themselves as the enemy.
- Ideas about love handed down to us by patriarchal narratives had told us again and again that it was the woman's place to be the nurturer and caregiver. Feminist thinking shook us to our core, because it told us this was just nonsense. That what we were hearing in these narratives was not the rhetoric of love at all but the ideology of domination. Men had taken the idea of love and refashioned it to serve their own ends. Radical feminism not only urged women to examine our notions of love, it encouraged us to forget about love.
- Liberated women did not "fall in love", we chose to love - that was different from falling in love. Choosing meant that we exercised will, power and agency. Falling implied a loss of power, the possibility of victimhood.
- Our goal in everything was personal growth.
- We lived our lives with intensity, inspired by a lust for change that was so powerful and fierce it was awesome.
- Truly, this was a time of cultural revolution. Boundaries of race, gender, and class were being crossed. We all wanted to be changed utterly by all these movements for social justice. And at the heart of all this change was a demand that we rethink the politics of heterosexual love and romance.
- Not only that we would proclaim love and study war no more but that the love we proclaimed would be a love centered in sharing and mutuality. Women would no longer be the sole nurturers and caregivers; men would do their part. Men would no longer be burdened with the role of protector and provider; women would enter the workforce as equals and take self-defense classes and be able to protect themselves. Men could assume the role of unemployed homemaker if that was their choice. Their value would no longer be determined by the weight of their paycheck.
- Marriage as sanctioned by the state was an unnecessary institution; commitment and constancy would emerge as dictates of the heart and not by court orders and demands. Same-sex love would be respected and valued. Whether one was born gay or become gay, it was all "right on".
- Feminism was making revolution. When we attempted to actualize our utopian longings in the concrete space of real life, everything was not fun and games, and justice did not always prevail. I had chosen a male partner seven years older than myself.
  - Our most intense power struggles took place in the bedroom. He still believed that women should "service" male desire. He, of course, objected to the use of the word "service" and preferred "respond to". I demanded that we use the word "service". I wanted him to understand that I was not responsible for his sexual desires. And if his dick was hard and he needed to put it someplace to seek satisfaction, then he had to find the place. He could not assume that my body was territory he could occupy at will.
  - Like all my female buddies, I was into sex and sexual liberation. Radical feminism urged us to see our bodies as ourselves and to let no one make us into territory or property.
  - We were sleeping with the enemy, and our activist sisters wanted to know if we were surrendering in the bedroom or if we were standing strong, claiming our sexual agency. In actuality, those of us who were sleeping with men, choosing them as primary partners, were losing the war in the bedroom. Men celebrated our sexual liberation - our willingness to freely give and enjoy blow jobs and group sex, our willingness to experiment with anal penetration - but ultimately many males revolted when we stated our bodies were territories that they could not occupy at will. Men who were ready for female sexual liberation if it meant free pussy, no strings attached, were rarely ready for feminist female sexual agency. This agency gave us the right to say yes to sex, but it also empowered us to say no.
  - I remember the look of sheer disbelief on my partner's face when I told him that he needed to understand that if I did not want to have sex for months, that was my choice, and that it should be clear that I was not responsible for meeting his sexual needs. Even though he thought I had lost my mind - that I was taking this feminist stuff too far - he agreed in principle that I was right, that real freedom for women, especially those of us in relationships with men, would mean that we would always have the right to refuse to perform sexually without backlash. If he wanted to have sex and I did not, he could either change the nature of his sexual desire, masturbate, or have sex with other people. He chose the latter.
  - We agreed to have an open relationship. Nonmonogamy had been celebrated by feminist women involved with men as a way out of sexual slavery. No man could imagine you were "his" property if it was always clear that you could choose at any moment to be sexual with someone else.
  - Most men simply did not want to fuck with you if you had a primary relationship with another man. Or, as was often the case, they would do so only if they could consult the man and make sure he was in agreement. This practice did not affirm women's rights to control our bodies; it implied we were still the property of men. Now women were more than willing to have sex with men who were in primary partnerships (including marriage) with other women. And we did not go to those women to ask permission. We respected the right of men to choose their sexual partners. Even the men who professed to believe in "free love" held on to patriarchal notions of possessiveness when it came to sexuality.
- Men did care enough to struggle with our demands. And some cared enough to convert to feminist thinking and to change. But only a very, very few loved us - loved us all the way.  
- Feminist debate about love and sexuality ended precisely because straight women did not want to face the reality that it was highly unlikely in patriarchal society that a majority of men would wholeheartedly embrace women's right to say no in the bedroom. Since the vast majority of heterosexual women, even those involved in radical feminist movement, were not willing to say no when they did not want to perform sexually for fear of upsetting or alienating their mates, no significant group of men ever had to rise to the occasion.
- An individual woman in a primary relationship with a man could not say no, because she feared there was always another woman in the background who could take her place, a woman would never say no.
- Women were the group who continually encouraged him to feel that he was being cheated, that he was not with a real woman, because a real woman would be always ready and willing to satisfy his demands. Granted, these women were usually not supportive of feminist thinking.
- If, as radical feminism told us, love was truly possible only between equals, to love women meant that men had to let go of their acceptance of patriarchal thinking and action.
- Women had been given a vision of mutuality - of relationships in which we would no longer be forced to be the sole nurturers and caregivers. Those of us who wanted to be fully self-actualized, to explore our creativity and develop our inner selves, no longer had to see ourselves as freaks.
- We were disturbed and frightened by the recognition that women might find it easier to gain equality with men in the workforce and even in the bedroom but that we might still never find love.
- Whether straight or gay, promiscuous or celibate, we were not sure how to love ourselves as free women or how to create a culture where we could be loved. We had to find a way to redefine our notion of women's liberation so it would include our right to love and be loved.