Pressures for women to position themselves as “normal” and “nice” are almost always a constraint, no matter who’s listening. “None of us is ever free of the need to keep up some sort of front,” Coates says.

we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization. It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to reappropriate the term “feminism,” to foc

Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Have we been misled by feminists? Yes. Is it feminists’ fault? No. Why not? Men have not spoken up. Simply stated, women cannot hear what men do not say. (Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say became the title of my next book—in 1999.) Now men must take responsibility to say what they want—to turn a “War in Which Only One Side Shows Up” into a “Dialo