"It's easy to dismiss some people as anti-feminist. But the truth is most of us could just as easily be described as choice feminists. And we are winning the war."

There's a war? Wait, you're seriously using that word to describe the tensions within feminism?

Maybe that's the problem for us non "choice feminists." To me, at least, this is a disagreement that can be discussed and revolved, but we all "stand together" on a majority of issues. But for you choice feminists, it's a war.

Why?

1) Well, you have to justify yourselves to yourselves and others, right? Because you know that from the outside, you kind of look like hypocrites, or people who fit some sort of old adage "yeah, you're a rabid feminist now, but just wait, once you meat the right guy with enough money and wide jawbones, you'll just want to have his babies and take care of the house, not be a lawyer!" I've heard variations of that, so have most of my female friends, and not just from our grandmothers or men, but from fellow young women, already ready to make The Choice. e.g. "No, i don't care about my grades, because i'm never going to have another job. After 2-3 years of this job, I'm going to quit and have babies." Yes folks, 23-year-old law students say things like this.

2) you're a new movement, and you have to find your philosophical underpinnings, and you're being attacked from all sides. the anti-feminists are using you as evidence that women don't actually like feminism, that women actually want to be homemakers and otherwise dependent on men (and please make no mistake, except if you have your own massive stash of money, if you are a female homemaker, and you live off your husband's money, you are dependent on him). The feminists see you as sellouts, as ambivalent cowards, who simply want to say one thing, but live another, and are too chicken to admit to themselves and the rest of the world what they really believe and feel. To me, being a choice feminist, i.e. calling yourself a feminist while being a homemaker, living off your husband's money, and having gotten married right after college, is like a vegetarian butcher or a pacifist sniper. It's almost absurd, and it reeks of hypocricy.

3) Please note that the overwhelming majority of choice feminists are those who are already not working or those who already have a plan to quit working to have children. Few women walk around saying "I want to be partner at PWC" and "I'm a choice feminist." Lots of people convert to "choice feminism" after they quit working so they don't feel like they are traitors.

4) And we feel a little betrayed by you so-called "choice feminists." You went to college, you took up the resources that others of either gender could have used to actually make a career, and you're using those college degrees to change diapers and bake cookies. You're living evidence of something, some kind of mismatch and malaise, but instead of us trying to figure out how to be feminists together, you've declared a "war," the right wing is using you against feminists to tell feminists to get back into the kitchen like their "choice" sisters," and those of us who don't want to "make the choice," who want to work full time, we suffer. We have to work harder, becuase few people today believe young women when they say "I want to be a CEO" or "I want to be a partner at a lawfirm." Everyone thinks they'll make The Choice.

I have to say, my impression of what Europe is going through right now vis a vis the Mulsim/Arab/Maghrebin/North African/[generally non-western-european-looking non-christian immigrants] is what the US was going through in the 1950's. The letter-writer's attitudes are just emblematic of the majority of white christian europeans.

It's painful to go through this kind of massive societal and cultural transformation, and there is a lot of anger, fear, ignorance and nostalgia for the past on many sides of the debate and the massive cultural change. We in the US came very close to massive violent conflict (yes, there was violent conflict, but not on a massive scale) during our transformation.

It is the the "final throes" of Us (Which Christian Europeans) vs. Them (Everyone else, including Jews, immigrants, Muslims, etc).

The attitudes the general white christian populus has are on par with the Dixiecrats. If they could institute real segregation, i feel like many Europeans, like Jean-Marie LePen, would. In many parts, there is already de facto segregation, with exclusively Muslim neighborhoods, and very few Mulsims living outside of them. North-African-looking people simply do not live in Piazza Navona or Saint-Germain-de-Pres. Just like blacks used to simply not live in many white American neighborhoods.

It was perfectly acceptable where I lived very recently for someone to say to me in a job interview "well, you american foreigners are great. but you know, i would never hire a muslim or arab."

Europeans will have to learn that multiculturalism the way we have learned it here. That over racism is wrong, and stereotyping on race is very very wrong. That xenophobia is wrong. That saying things like "well, mulsims are okay, but i wouldn't want my daughter to marry one" is not okay. In many parts of Europe, it's perfectly okay to be what we americans would consider extremely racist and ignorant and intolerant.

No, it will not be comfortable or easy, just like it wasn't for us, but it will happen.