Whatever I Wrote Was Heretical.

Men Weren't Really The Enemy - They Were Fellow Victims Suffering From An Outmoded Masculine Mystique That Made Them Feel Unnecessarily Inadequate When There Were No Bears To Kill.

I Never Set Out To Write A Book To Change Women's Lives, To Change History. It's Like, 'who, Me?' Yes, Me. I Did It. And I'm Not That Different From Other Women. Maybe My Power And Glory Was That I Could Speak My Truth As A Woman And It Was The Truth Of Every Woman.

The Media And Even, To Some Degree, Leaders Of Women's Organizations Don't Understand That The Women's Movement Is An Absolute Part Of Society Now. It Is In The Consciousness, It Is Taken For Granted. It Is Part Of The Way Women Look At Themselves, And Women Are Looked At.

I Realized That What I Was Saying Was Threatening, Somehow, To The Editors Of Women's Magazines. That It Threatened The Very World They Were Trying To Paint, What I Then Called The "feminine Mystique."

The Only Way For A Woman, As For A Man, To Find Herself, To Know Herself As A Person, Is By Creative Work Of Her Own.