In male (I do not, just yet, say ‘patriarchal’) discourse, woman is man’s supplement. The feminist’s perennial dilemma, then, is how to intervene in that discourse which is forever reproducing the very hierarchy that suppresses and excludes her, when – by the power of its appropriation of common sense – that discourse operates not as though it were given her by men, but as though it were simply ‘given’.

Everyone is an intruder when you have all the land. Like other interventionist enterprises, feminism is always already guilty of trespassing on sanctified ground: the sun revolves around the earth, which is flat, and discourses are not gender­inflected. This is particularly problematic for the feminist whose point of interventionist departure is the writing of a woman whose personal dissociation from the women’s movement is a matter of public record.