But I find the old notions somehow appealing. Not that I want to go back
to them -- it is outrageous to have some outer authority tell you what is
proper use and abuse of your own faculties, and it is ludicrous to hold
reason higher than body or feeling. Still there is something true and
profoundly sane about the belief that acts like murder or theft or
assault violate the doer as well as the done to. We might even, if we
thought this way, have less crime. The popular view of crime, as far as
I can deduce it from the movies and television, is that it is a breaking
of a rule by someone who thinks they can get away with that; implicitly,
everyone would like to break the rule, but not everyone is arrogant
enough to imagine they can get away with it. It therefore becomes very
important for the rule upholders to bring such arrogance down.
-- Marilyn French, "The Woman's Room"