Quoted: Susan Sontag on women "writing out of their femininity"

If women have been conditioned to think that they out to be writing out of their femininity, writing out of their feelings, that intellect is masculine, that thinking is this brutal and aggressive thing, then of course they're going to write different kinds of poems, prose, or whatever. But I don't see any reason why a woman can't write anything a man writes, and vice versa. -- Susan Sontag from Jonathan Cott's The Complete Rolling Stone Interview 

Minus its full context as part of a longer interview that runs wild on topics such as feminism, illness, intellect, and everything in between, it sounds a little simplistic and antediluvian to proclaim that yes, of course, woman can "write it all," but it still rings true today: women are expected to "write out their feelings."

Of course, there are more women today writing work that is "hard" or "masculine" (I'm very carefully using these words to describe the writing, not the writer) than there were nearly forty years ago, when she gave the interview, but I don't think much has changed, In fact, it's almost become even more difficult for a woman to write without being pigeonholed as a "woman writer."