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Wednesday, 2 March 2011

Women's History Month: Quote for 2nd March

In actuality, each month the ovum undertakes an extraordinary expedition from the ovary through the Fallopian tubes to the uterus, an unseen equivalent of going down the Mississippi on a raft or over Niagara Falls in a barrel.... One might say that the activity of ova involves a daring and independence absent, in fact, from the activity of spermatozoa, which move in jostling masses, swarming out on signal like a crowd of commuters from the 5:15.

Mary Ellmann, Thinking about Women (1968)
This is a sadly fairly little known work of early 'second-wave' feminist literary criticism, extremely witty and incisive, even if I don't concur with some of Ellmann's literary judgements.

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