The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

Jong links feminist self-determination to erotic and emotional vitality, arguing that the same energies that fuel artistic creation also animate love and desire. By invoking Wollstonecraft, Shelley, Nin, Millay, and Sappho—writers whose lives and reputations were often judged through their sexuality—she challenges the cultural split between the “serious” woman (moral, restrained) and the “sensual” woman (suspect, disreputable). The line about “juicy women” critiques a persistent double standard: women’s pleasure and appetite are treated as ethical failings. Jong’s concluding provocation reframes that stigma as a site of resistance—if vitality is labeled “bad,” then embracing it becomes a feminist refusal of shame.