Joanna Russ, "A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution" in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, pages 71-72

It is nonsense to insist that the real danger in a tyrannical, self-hating, hypocritical, piously horrible society is pretty, scheming, little girls. The Nice Girl looks like the most sacred and the most privileged citizen of this ghastly community, but in reality her rights (as opposed to the rights of her owners) are nonexistent. In D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, for example, to lay a finger on Lillian Gish looks like a desecration, but she is far from being society or even a citizen of it; she has been invented, constructed, meant, put there in the film either to be raped or saved-from-rape--what other purpose can there possibly be for her unhuman helplessness and childishness? The Victorian gentlemen who so assiduously protected their daughters' maiden purity were not hypocrites when they visited whorehouses stocked with twelve-year-old girls; they were simply acting on the identical assumption about the high value of maiden purity. In such a setup, pretty girls are about as much privileged citizens as a diamond ring is a privileged citizen. Like money or jewels, women are counters for use in business or warfare between men. Punk loners (who are much more part of "society"...) can go on terrifying or killing waitresses or cheerleaders forever under the impression that they're heroically attacking society...

Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.

The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.

The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.