``Possession of a being by another has come into more and more disrepute, so
that the common understanding of one person possessing another is
slavery.  But the important detail about the kind of possessive that I have
in mind is reciprocity: If I have a friend, she has a friend.  If I have
a daughter, she has a mother.  The possessive does not bind one of us while
freeing the other; it cannot do that.  Moreover, should the mother reject
the daughter, the word that is applies is ``disown.''  The form of
disowning that most often appears in the news is domestic violence.
Parents abuse children; husbands batter wives.

``Some cases of reciprocal possessives have built-in limitations, such as
``my patient / my doctor'' or ``my student / my teacher'' or ``my agent /
my client.''  Other possessive relations are extremely limited but still
remarkably binding: ``my neighbor'' and ``my country'' and ``my president.''

``The responsibilities and the ties signaled by reciprocal possession
typically are hard to dissolve.  It can be as difficult to give up an
enemy as to give up a friend, and often one becomes the other, as though
the logic of the possessive pronoun outlasts the forms it chanced to take
at a given moment, as though we were stuck with one another.  In these bindings,
nearly inextricable, are found the origin of our rights.''

 Vicki Hearne, ``What's Wrong with Animal Rights'' Harpers Magazine, September 1991