Love, perhaps even more than childbearing, is the pivot of women’s oppression today. I realize this has frightening implications: Do we want to get rid of love?

The panic felt at any threat to love is a good clue to its political significance. Another sign that love is central to any analysis of women or sex psychology is its omission from culture itself, its relegation to “personal life.” (And whoever heard of logic in the bedroom?) Yes, it is portrayed in novels, even metaphysics, but in them it is described, or better, recreated, not analyzed. Love has never been understood, though it may have been fully experienced, and that experience communicated.

There is reason for this absence of analysis: Women and Love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.