檳榔嶼

女人想愛，卻別無選擇地只能加入以宰制為主的現代浪漫愛，無論女人如何獲得更多權力，諷刺的是，權力跟愛是背道而馳的。無論男人如何接受更多的性別平等，最終他們始終無法放棄性的宰制。我們始終活在一個，追求成功、追求權力遠比追求愛更為重要的世界，在現今浪漫愛的關係裡，我們甚至用成功失敗的男性宰制思維，在評估關係。這世界欺騙了女人，讓她們相信總會有男人願意愛她們，而讓她們相信，她們是沒有愛自己的能力的。

沒有正義沒有愛，極端的無愛是宰制的核心。我們的人生目標，我們的理想、夢想，從來不會有追求愛、認識愛，這個選項。今天，當我說我要去尋找愛當成我的終生志業，幾乎所有的人都會恥笑我，覺得我有毛病，或者是斥責我、糾正我。我們的文化，從來沒有認真看待愛這一件事，我們從來都沒有認真地去學習愛、認識愛。

- Feminist women stopped talking about love because we found that love was harder to get than power.
  - Men, and patriarchal females, were more willing to give us jobs, power, or money that they were to give us love.
  - And many of us wanted and needed money.
- Traditional sexist romantic myths had always made the older, more established males seem more desirable. 
  - We had been shown how an older, more established male, even the most benevolent of patriarchs, invariably exercised power over the less established, less powerful female.
- All my life I had problems obeying patriarchal authority. Academia, like all other corporations in our nation, was and remains male-dominated.
- Many men use material privilege as a weapon against women when they want to end relationships. The longer the relationship, the more intense the conflict over shared material resources.
- Women faced with the requirement that they be fully economically independent, some for the first time in midlife, were necessarily more concerned about finances than they were about love.
- Our male comrades' refusal to change their thinking about sexuality, especially sexist conditioning socializing them to believe that women existed to satisfy their desire on demand, made it clear that they were not willing to give up all the privileges accorded them by patriarchy. Their refusal to adequately confront the ways sexist socialization had denied them access to emotional and spiritual growth was yet another arena of betrayal.
  - Our heartache came from facing the reality that if men were not willing to holistically embrace feminist revolution, then they would not be in an emotional place where they could offer us love. There can be no love without justice.
- Emotionally overwhelmed by the reality of straight men's attachment to holding power over women in the sexual arena, feminist women just wanted to turn the channel.
  - We did not want to examine why it was we had not been able to fully convert men to feminist thinking and practice.
  - We did not want to acknowledge out loud that feminist demands had been compromised, that many of us were setting for equality and power in the public arena while continuing to conform to sexist gender roles at home or, most important, in the bedroom.
- Let me reiterate here that many men who were willing to be househusbands, to take care of the kids, to be advocates for equal pay for equal work, to do their share or even all of the housekeeping, were not willing to change in any way their sexual habits.
- Straight men were thrilled to encounter sexually liberated feminist females who also paid their share of the date. Conflicts and problems began when the wanton feminist cared to exercise complete control over her body and say no when she wanted to.
  - Feminists' refusal to make satisfying male desire the primary goal of female sexual liberation disturbed men.
  - When we fully exercised our right to say no, then men who were our allies in struggle in other ways were suddenly afraid of losing their open and easy access to sexual fulfillment.
  - Ex : There is not essay written by a feminist man who likes having his dick sucked that tells us how he copes with having a longtime female partner who refuses to perform fellatio. Maybe she refuses because the adult man who abused her as a child forced her to put his penis in her mouth. Maybe her head down on his dick and would not allow her to catch her breath, so she felt as though she were being strangled.
  - How does her feminist male partner affirm her reality while coping with the fact that she will not satisfy his desire?
- Few feminist women have had the courage to talk about the extent to which achieving power and success may have made them fearful of losing male partners and therefore more willing to engage privately in erotic acts that subordinate females to males.
  - What if the real discovery that feminists could not speak was the fact that men did not care if we were their equals everywhere, including the battlefield, as long they remained our superiors  - the ones in charge, the ones on top - in the bedroom?
  - And nobody, but nobody, ever talks about the men married to more powerful economically self-sufficient women who upset the gains in equal rights by denying her sexual attentions.
  - What if straight women active in the feminist movement had been simply too homophobic to admit that lesbian women who had questioned our continued erotic allegiance to men were right to question whether we asserted equal rights when it came to sexual performance?
- In the nineties we had little insightful feminist discourse on love, while we had all manner of public talk about sexual sadomasochism (SM).
  - Self-proclaimed feminist thinkers have colluded with the patriarchal pornographic imagination's use of mass media to represent the sexual re-subordination of women by men as cute, playful, and harmless.
  - We are bombarded with images suggesting that male sexual domination of women in no way threatens female autonomy or independence.
  - In actuality, male domination of females in the sexual arena (whether they maintain control by wanting too much sex or none at all) is a constant reminder that females are not free, that we have not attained full equal rights or equity.
- The vast majority of men have shown us for some time now that they do not find feminism sexy. While it may give them a thrill to encounter an independent female, that thrill lasts only if they undermine and subordinate her power.
  - Sex gets more attention than love from feminist women and everyone else because when we speak of love we have to speak of loss, of lack, of our failures of will and courage.
  - It is not easy to face that men, even politically progressive men, may want sexual power over women more than they want to love us.
- Germaine Greer, <<Daddy, We Hardly Knew You>> : women have a stake in pretending that patriarchal men really care about female well-being.
  - "Women are always ready to believe that men love them, despite all appearances to the contrary."
- Extreme lovelessness that is the heart of domination.
  - We would have needed to remind everyone repeatedly that genuine love between females and males could emerge only in a context where the sexes would come together to challenge and change patriarchal thought.
  - To continue to speak of love, we would have had to break through the wall of denial that seduces us all to accept subordination and domination as natural facts of everyday life. We would be telling everyone, especially the men in our lives, again and again that domination and love do not go together, that if one is present, the other is not.
  - We would not have allowed our fathers, brothers, male comrades, or lovers to continue to believe they love us when they hurt us again and again.
  - Men do not wound women only when they act violently and abusively. They wound us when they fail to protect our freedom in every aspect of our daily lives.
- Women who are coming to power by acquiring unprecedented wealth and fame know that it is easier for them to acquire material resources than find love.
  - Elizabeth Wurtzel, <<Bitch>> : "None of us are getting better at love; we are getting more scared of it. We were not given good skills to begin with, and the choices we make have tended only to reinforce or sense that it is hopeless and useless."
  - We are indeed living in an age when women and men are more likely to long for power than they are to long for love. To give voice to longing love is to be counted among the weak, the soft.
- No wonder, then, that women who yearn to know love often feel they have no choice but to return to conventional ways of thinking about coupling and romance.
- Feminist silence about love reflects a collective sorrow about our powerlessness to free all men from the hold patriarchy has on their minds and hearts.
- Women and men who are still seduced by domination cannot know love. Yet everywhere we turn, our culture tells us we can still know love even in the midst of relationships charged with coercive pain and domination.
- We have not created a culture of gender equality that encourages women and men to search for love with the same zeal and passion that inspires our quest for success and power. Until that world comes into being, women may gain greater and greater power yet find themselves equal participants in promoting a culture of lovelessness, where everyone loses and love cannot be found.