The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*

Women Who Make the World Worse by Kate O’Beirne

From a review by Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO:

If a critic of feminism takes after well-known feminists, then her criticisms are “stale” and “predictable.” If the critic dissects the views of little-known feminists, her criticisms can be dismissed because her targets are “obscure” and “fringe.” (Kate’s book has been dismissed for both reasons.) Female writers are disqualified from criticizing feminism because they (allegedly) owe it so much. Male writers are disqualified because they’re men. No criticism can run this gauntlet successfully.

Another common tactic for deflecting criticism has also been deployed. Kate is said to have painted feminists with a broad brush, ignoring the diversity of views among feminists. It is true that there are many, many feminisms. There are equity feminists and Third Wave feminists and libertarian feminists and “sex-positive” feminists and Christian feminists and difference feminists and on and on. (One magazine a few years ago even tried to invent a category of “do-me” feminists.)

Huh?

But there are certain views held by most self-described feminists, disagreement with which will cause most of them to resort to the label “anti-feminist.” It’s simply not true that Kate attacks views that only a fringe group of feminists hold. Chapter by chapter, she takes apart myths in which nearly all feminists have invested. How many feminists oppose day care? Or women in combat? How many feminists recognize the “pay gap” as largely the result of choices by women?

How many feminists oppose abortion, as Kate does? Yes, I know about Feminists for Life — as does Kate, who writes about the group. How many feminists consider the group an ally? There is a feminist orthodoxy (just as there is a conservative orthodoxy): The label means something, which is why heterodox feminists are trying to contest that meaning.

Kate’s book takes on feminists where they’re strongest, not where they’re weakest. She has been accused of “smearing” feminists, essentially by quoting them. But I am aware of no attempts to demonstrate that any of the quotes were taken out of context. Kate, on the other hand, has been taken out of context. Several of her critics have seized on this line: “A woman being brutally killed alongside men is a long-awaited feminist dream of equality.” The implication is that Kate has ascribed a desire to see our troops killed to feminists. That would be a smear. But Kate is simply putting a justifiable gloss on the preceding sentence, which the critics don’t mention. In that sentence, Kate quotes an influential proponent of women in combat exulting in the public’s acceptance of the death of female troops in Iraq as a normal part of wartime. (Kate’s chapter on women in combat is, incidentally, a handy refutation of most of the drivel that gets published on the subject.)

* Who? Look here.