Can We Make the World Better?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
In Herodotus’s “Histories,” a desperate sea battle finds a woman warrior and Persian queen, Artemisia, rousing flagging sailors and sinking the enemy’s ships. According to the Greek historian, when the Persian king, Xerxes, hears of Artemisia’s feats,he observes,”My men have become women, and my women men.” If only poor Xerxes could have known. Now more than ever, Western women, like their patroness Artemisia, are fighting men’s wars – gunning after men in our workplaces, on our playing fields, at our schools, along our corridors of power, in our homes.
This, at least, is Kate O’Beirne’s argument in her new book, “Women Who Make the World Worse” (Penguin, 222 pages, $24.95). Mrs. O’Beirne, a lawyer, a former vice president of the Heritage Foundation, and the current Washington editor of National Review, argues that feminists’ demands that all professions be equally open to women are lowering standards in our military and among our first responders, and exposing soldiers and firemen, male and female, to greater, needless, and unacceptable risk.
At the same time, feminism is failing women themselves. Feminists’ desire to cast men as expendable and to cast off sexual restraint in the name of “liberation,” she argues, leaves women lonely and unfulfilled. The insistence that women wrest America’s workplaces away from the patriarchy – and leave the mothering to day care – is producing generations of maladjusted and malcontent children, not to mention legions of women who sense keenly the loss of their children’s tender years.
Mrs. O’Beirne’s is a valuable compendium, weaving radical feminism’s history, stated ambitions, and actual, frightening results together in a compelling narrative. The strength of “Women Who Make the World Worse”is in exposing the tortured logic required to justify feminist dogma. In one amusing insight,Mrs.O’Beirne observes that, contrary to feminist claims, women cannot be discriminated against in both wages and hiring. After all, if women’s wages were kept artificially low, market principles would require that they be hired more frequently than men, not less, as a source of cheaper labor.
Along the way, Mrs. O’Beirne provides something of a “Who’s Who” in the gender wars.The villains – the Gloria Feldts, the Kate Michelmans, the Nancy Hopkinses – are excoriated throughout.She also presents a comprehensive roster of good guys: the writers and activists who remain always at the ready to debunk feminist lies. Yet this underscores the greatest flaw in Ms. O’Beirne’s work: The book doesn’t say much we don’t already know, particularly to its likely audience.
That feminism has undermined marriage, an indispensable institution for women, has been Maggie Gallagher’s rallying cry for years. That feminism’s cheerleading for maternal neglect harms children is exposed in Brian Robertson’s “Day Care Deception.” That boys are under siege in our classrooms and culture has long been a pet cause of Christina Hoff Sommers, who describes the problem in “The War Against Boys.” Elaine Donnelly has been waging a crusade against the harmful feminization of America’s armed forces from her Center for Military Readiness since 1993.
Feminism’s poison, in other words, is not news.If Mrs.O’Beirne’s argument is that women are hurt when feminists consign them to victimology at the hands of the patriarchy,it’s hardly more empowering when conservatives consign women to being victims of radical feminists. At this point women – particularly young women – would be better served by a serious analysis of where we go from here.
Should we, for example, reform our educational system to encourage a return to traditional gender roles? Should more spaces at elite colleges and professional schools be reserved for the men who would be breadwinners? And what’s to be done with the women? Under the current regime they are urged from day one to pursue challenging careers.They follow that path through college, through graduate school, and into their early professional years, often acquiring significant debt along the way. When they marry and, as Mrs. O’Beirne encourages, decide to become full-time mothers, they are forced abruptly to give up what society has asked of them for their entire lives.
But it is cruel to present women with post-feminist opportunities while asking them to limit themselves to a pre-feminist lifestyle. There has to be a better way. For women who would like to balance a career with motherhood – by taking “time off” during children’s formative years, or by working at home – are there particular fields we should direct them to? Is there a timeline they should follow for earning graduate degrees, gaining workplace experience, and raising children while being mindful of their biological clocks? These questions may be uncomfortable, or politically incorrect, but they need asking and answering.
Mrs. O’Beirne became a lawyer because she found the profession complementary to motherhood, and managed to stagger career and family obligations so as never to neglect either. There are many young women who would benefit tremendously from the insights she gained from her experience as they seek to do the same thing. Today’s articles and books about feminism, like Mrs. O’Beirne’s, would be more useful if they were more forward-looking. We have come a long way, baby – and we don’t like what we see. What we need now is a roadmap for getting back to sanity.