One of feminism's irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for patriarchal society, to which nothing good is ever attributed. But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.

p. 37 - Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)