“We seem to be special women here, we have linked to think of ourselves as special, and we have known that men would tolerate, even romanticize us as special, as long as our words and actions didn’t threaten their privilege of tolerating or rejecting us and our work according to their ideas of what a special woman ought to be. An important insight of radical women’s movement has been how divisive and how ultimately destructive is this myth of the special woman who is also the token woman. . .for we all know women whose gifts are buried or aborted. Our struggles can have meaning and our privileges–however precarious under patriarchy–can be justified only if they can help to change the lives of women whose gifts–and whose very being–continue to be thwarted and silenced” (Rich 170).

Works Cited:

Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose A Norton Critical Edition

Taken from “When we Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” by Adrienne Rich.