To be gazed at is one danger; to be manhandled is another. Women as a rule are unfamiliar with violence, they have not been through the tussles of childhood and youth as have men; and now the girl is laid hold of, swept away in a bodily struggle in which the man is the stronger. She is no longer free to dream, to delay, to maneuver: she is in his power, at his disposal.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Simone de Beauvoir (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.