Norton

“If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.”
― Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography

“Women do not normally fuck in the active sense. They are fucked in the passive tense and hence automatically fucked-up, done over, undone.”
― Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography

“The real value of a sexually attractive woman in a world which regards good looks as a commodity depends on the degree to which she puts her looks to work for her.”
― Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography