Dorothy Dinnerstein was born in 1923, the daughter of Jewish Socialist pacifists. After graduating from college she became a psychologist, and most of her writings were about her experiments and scientific study. "Mermaid" was her first book, and it was controversial from the start. A writer, a psychologist, and a woman, Dinnerstein would change the way many people looked at male/female relationships, and how they would view child rearing and all other traditional female oriented activities. Dinnerstein herself acknowledged that "Mermaid" took her in two different directions at once. She once wrote, "'This split follows from the fact that some of the problems in which I am interested lend themselves to clean, elegant little laboratory studies while others do not'" (Dinnerstein xiv). Dinnerstein was killed in a car accident in 1992 at the age of 69. She left behind a daughter and two step-daughters.

             Just about everyone acknowledges there are gender and societal differences between men and women, including many writers in the course text. For example, many experts agree that women are taught passivity and non-assertiveness from an early age, while men are taught to be strong, protective, and assertive. Susan Griffin, in her essay, "Rape: The Power of Consciousness" notes, "Passivity itself prevents a woman from ever considering her own potential for self-defense and forces her to look to men for protection" (Griffin 335). Dinnerstein too believes that women learn passivity early on in their upbringing, and this is because women learn most of their behaviors from their mothers, who they are in close contact with from the moment they are born. Griffin continues, "Each girl as she grows into womanhood is taught fear. Fear is the form in which the female internalizes both chivalry and the double standard" (Griffin 335). This double standard between men and women is the crux of the women's issue addressed in "The Mermaid and the Minotaur," even the title suggests this double standard.