emotionally fragile, dependent person who follows about, puppy-eyed and pathetic. Happens to the best of us. Despite what Firestone asserts (see above note), the phenomenon of falling in love and perhaps ending up emotionally devastated as a result is not limited to the structured inequality of male-female relationships. Kate Millett recounts her own story of being on the pathetic end of an out-of-balance love relationship in her book Flying [NY: Ballantine 1974]. Fiction author John D. MacDonald often made use of this phenomenon in his mystery books: characters who become vulnerable to exploitative schemes through their personal sexual attachments and the effects these have on their emotional state and their judgment.

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