檳榔嶼

- Looking for love and looking for a man are two very different agendas.
  - Most women without male partners are looking for a man. And guess what? Men are easy to find. Finding a man is not the same as finding love. 
  - To find love with a male partner, women have to be clear that this is our desire. "Misogynist" became commonplace. But the other reality that feminism exposed, which was more uncomfortable for women to talk about, was female hatred of men.
- I searched my soul to see what my honest feelings about men were. I determined that if I looked inside and saw that I really held men in contempt, I would cease considering them as potential partners and lovers.
- Lots of women fear men. And fear can lay the foundation for contempt and hatred.
  - We look to the male authority we know to teach us about masculinity. If the primary male figures in our lives are cruel, unkind, and in some cases violently abusive, this is the way we think men are.
  - If the men in our lives stand idly by while elder women abuse us, then we lose respect from them. We do not forgive them their failure to protect us from harm.
- They were the men I was destined to love, the sensitive, soulful, shy men who were looked down upon by the patriarchy.
- We used the phrase "male-identified" to describe women who did not necessarily like men, though they usually pretended to, but who supported any standpoint men in their lives held, who let their own opinions go to please men.
  - Some of these women were subordinated against their will, but many of them were artful manipulators, pretending to embody the sexist feminine ideal even as they were contemptuous of real men, whom they believed to be stupid and childlike.
  - These females were not simply male-identified, they were patriarchally male-identified. Male-identified women espoused the same negative sexist notions about gender common to any sexist man.
  - They were not interested in the perspectives of progressive male advocates of feminism. To them, these men were not "real" men.
- It was easy to fantasize about finding abusive men, interrogating them to discover whether they had ever abused a female, lining up the abusers, and blowing them away.
  - They were the stuff of wanting to know what the world would be like if it were a safe place - a place where women could roam freely, where we could "take back the night."
- Women's disappointment with men is rarely given a public hearing in our society. (於是，社會塑造一個假象，女人找到的每一個男人都很好)
  - Unlike feminists, they did not want men to stop being patriarchs; they just wanted men to be kinder, gentler patriarchs. To be "benevolent patriarchs", they were men who believed themselves to be superior to women and therefore felt they should rule over us.
  - They just thought they should be kind providers and protectors. Most women will speak against male domination, against male violence, but still support patriarchal culture.
- Women are not to be blamed when men are treating us in violent and/or cruel ways.
- What most women do not choose to face is the reality that if you support patriarchy, you get negative side effects.
  - The negative side effects - tyranny in the household or sexual violence - no woman likes or wants.
  - Many men in patriarchal deploy emotional abuse and physical violence to avoid intimacy. Perpetuating this violence makes the system of patriarchy work. Without male violence blocking the door, men might be emotionally open, they might find their way to love.
- Liberal, benevolent, patriarchal writers, like John Gray, offer women strategies for coping with male and female mutual dislike.... His work perpetuates the conventional sexist belief that it is natural for males to desire dominion over others.
- Patriarchal thinking keeps woman and men separate, locked in the differences that Gary and other thinkers choose to regard as natural. Nothing was more frightening to women who wanted to be with men than a feminist movement exposing the depths of male contempt and disregard of the female sex.
  - Yet despite the feminist call to change patriarchal thinking that denies men access to emotional growth, most men continue to believe it is "natural" for them to behave as though emotions do not matters, as though all emotional work, including loving, is primarily a female task.
- Try having a conversation with almost any man about where it is best to cease sexual intercourse if a woman is uncomfortable.
  - Most men want to continue coitus irrespective of what women feel. And if women talked to men about this openly, they would know that men feel this way before they engage in sexual activity with them.
- Women are afraid to hear patriarchal men speak their thoughts and feelings when what they reveal expresses a reality vastly different from how we imagined them to be.
- Their silence helps maintain patriarchy. When they speak thoughts and feelings that reveal pathological narcissism or negate to concern to love, it becomes clearer to the women they are speaking to that these men will not provide desired companionship or meet their emotional needs. Women do not want to talk to men about love, because we do not want to hear that most men are simply not interested in the subject.
  - An honest patriarchal man will boldly proclaim that he pretends interest in love to get sex.
- Everyone imagines that the womanizing man is out there looking for sexual action when he may in fact just be searching for an honest emotional connection to ease the pain he feels as constantly as the pain felt by the woman he torments.
- If patriarchal men talked to women openly, honestly, more women might want to bring an end to patriarchy. They might see more clearly the ways sexist thinking places women and men at odds with one another, creating and sustaining the conditions of gender warfare.
  - Frequently, when asked to speak about their feelings, men simply respond by saying, "I don't know the answer". This is a passive form of control, for it closes down all discussion.
- It's hard for women to face the fact that patriarchy pits females and males against one another. When any woman first meets a man, she quickly decides, either consciously or subconsciously, whether he constitutes a threat.
- Lots of women feel they need men in their lives, but far too many of them feel uncertain about whether they like men, because they do not really know who men are and what they think.
- When women talk about that they find likable in men, they name traits like kindness, strength of character, and integrity.
  - Harriet Lerner, <<Life Preservers>> - "Mr. Right and Mr. Wrong" : "While individual taste varies, we want a partner who is mature and intelligent, loyal and trustworthy, loving and attentive, sensitive and open, kind and nurturant, competent and responsible. I've yet to meet a woman who says, 'Well, to be honest, I'm hoping to find a irresponsible, distant, ill-tempered sort of guy who sulks a lot and won't pick up after himself'."
  - Harriet Lerner : "Many women put more careful judgment into selecting a new toaster oven than they put into evaluating a prospective partner".
- Most men are still clinging to the rewards and forms of power patriarchy extends to them for not being loving.
  - In order to know love, men must challenge patriarchy. And there are men who are rising to the challenge. These are the men women want to find.
- If we do not know someone well, then how can we know we like them? And on what basis do we choose to love them?
- Patriarchy can be challenged and changed. The men who are comrades in struggle search for love to find the communion that is needed to support their refusal to perpetuate patriarchal thinking. The men who are our comrades in struggle show us that they are willing to be challenged, that they are willing to change.