Feminists are ruining this country

It's been a weird week. First, I read a thought-provoking interview with Kate O'Beirne on Salon.com.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/01/17/o_beirne/index.html

She wrote a book called "Women Who Make the World Worse," referring to feminists, of course. Apparently, like Phyllis Schalfly, she has been writing and lecturing on this topic for many years (i.e., traveling the country to tell women why they should be content to stay home and tend their kids). Her basic premise appears to be that the sexes are immutably predetermined to behave in certain ways (e.g., women nuture, men protect) and anything else is unnatural and unnecessary. She claims that feminists fight for things that women don't want; her case in point - most women want to leave work to raise their children.

Yes, some women want to leave work, but many do not, and many cannot. She insists that these cases are so rare that we don't need anyone to fight for these people. In fact, there's something shameful about the people who are fighting for these things. This seems like a weird cause to devote your entire life to. If you want to stay home and raise your kids, no one is stopping you. She claims that the feminist movement has been so successful that women are discouraged from doing what they naturally want to do. I think that's completely absurd, and I can't imagine where she gets the idea that the feminist "agenda" is the rule of this land, especially now.

With these surreal thoughts reverberating in my brain, I read the Newsweek cover story about how boys are no longer served by the American educational system and then read several commentaries about how this issues comprises one of the current crusades of the religious right.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965522/site/newsweek/

Katha Pollitt: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/pollitt

Feminists (and liberals) are charged with focusing so much on female achievement that male achievement has been ignored and as a result, both men and women are suffering (conservative commentators like John Tierney suggest women are going to be mighty lonely in this world that we've created).

It's surreal. Apparently, the women's movement has been so successful that we've ruined the whole country. I must confess that this success has happened very much without me noticing. And more to the point, I find the underlying premise of this whole argument to be completely offensive. I am a feminist and I have a son. I'm utterly committed to the equal rights of women and, at the very same time, I'm utterly committed to my son's success and happiness. These things are not mutually exclusive and I don't have to choose one over the other. It's perfectly absurd to suggest otherwise. Some women prefer a traditional role and society fully supports that choice. Some women prefer something different and it's perfectly legitimate for a "movement" (in Kate O'Beirne's words) to promote the acceptance of these alternatives. I feel sort of weary grappling with all this. We've come so far and yet the forces against change are so loud and so emboldened these days. Perhaps it is the last dying gasp of these efforts. We can only hope.