No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness.
When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lose touch with parts of ourselves
defined as unacceptable by that consciousness;
with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers,
the fierce market women of the Ibo's Women's War, the marriage-resisting women
silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives,
and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe. - Adrienne Rich
