I always wonder whether privilege is the menacing shadow cast on most of feminism's arguments, clashes, and heresies, whether working-class women worry about feminist ideology to the extent that the often-cited Ivy Leaguers, upper class, and upper middle class (UMC) women do.

Perhaps feminism is what it is because the women with the leisure and privilege to form theories about it stem from a particular social class. If you walked up to a working-class woman and asked her what kind of feminist she was, what would she say?

Would she see the high-powered UMC women as her sisters in the larger struggle for equality, or as people who simply don't share her own set of life problems? Until feminism can properly cross that class divide (if it can), it's always going to fall short of its aims and goals.

I buy that the female obsession with household hygeine is an attempt to deal with the spectre of contamination left to the vagina and menstruation.

In high school, I worked in a pharmacy. Every item had to be taken off every shelf, every day, and dusted. I spent many friday nights crouched, feather duster tucked into my smock, pulling 'feminine hygeine' products off shelves. Wipes, douches, sprays, washes, scented vaginal suppositories (among the most terrifying products I've ever encountered- little wax cones that, tucked into the vagina, melt and release floral aromas).

The steps of female vaginal sanitation evident in the feminine hygeine aisle mirrored that of kitchen sanitation in the household goods aisle. First, the area must be washed. Then all surfaces must be wiped down, to remove any traces of use. Then it must be scented. And all of this must occur before anyone is invited into the area. Or else, who knows what will happen? Social ostracism.

In high school, the two worst things my friends and I could think of calling someone were "rotten box" and "green-gas cooch". We were creative, I suppose, but did the names reflect any more than a horror of the sheer unpredictable organic nature of the vagina? I wonder if the rise in oral sex in my generation can be thought of as a solution to vaginal anxiety- the mouth is generally considered socially acceptable, presentable, clean- whereas the vagina is dangerous territory to present for the evaluation of casual acquaintances.

If feminism and femininity are truly incompatible, then the correct response would be to wonder if one of the two is faulty. Not to just shrug our shoulders and snuggle up to the contradiction. My money is on the political ideology needing some tinkering, and human nature being the rock that won't budge.

And incidentally doesn't it make sense for men to have an easier time getting their rocks off? After all, if women got to the finish line first and rolled over it's not likely any of us would even be here.

I confess that I don't have much respect for the categories of Humanties in the Academic field (and post-modernism and post-post-modernism... nicely reveal meandering self-indulgent prose for what it is). There is no science or engineering against which to test the myriad models that are proposed in such a prosaic fashion, dissected by a dizzying array of attention seekers, and analyzed ad-nauseum.

The key conflict is biology and socialization. So study evolutionary biology, sociology, or anthropology. Primates are a sexual species. The individuals are trying to best optimize their genetic propogation. Females of a species have different optimal mating strategies then the males of the species. Humans males have a biological drive to mate with as many females as possible if there is no resource cost to the mating (child support & STD's often ensures that there is these days). Females are trying to select the best Breeding male and possibly the best Provider. The mating dance is always balanced between symbiotic and parasitic.

It's not really a mystery. We as primates have biological drives that we sometimes seek to supress. The shape of an attractive female can have an obviously hypnotic effect on hetero males (one that makes us want to give them stuff or do things for them to get them to like us and possibly mate with us) and interaction with a socially dominant male can have a similar hypnotic effect on females (one that makes them flirt with them and possibly let them mate with them). Females get pregnant. One male can impregnate many females. Females are thus the limited reproductive resource. When they "give it up" they are being vulnerable. They are potentially getting pregnant (no small resource cost!). But biology is such that there are arousal triggers that convince them to risk that...

I found myself nodding in agreement with Kipnis' characterization of "ambivalence" as the defining condition of modern womanhood. Finally, I thought, a feminist who isn't a polemicist that is too busy blaming other women for not doing things the "right" way; someone who can add value to the discussion by defining the problem itself.

But then of course I read the part about how "those young, Ivy-League women who are now abandoning the career track to be stay-home moms" were finally put in their place by Kipnis who stated: "Somehow, as highly educated as these girls are, they don't seem to have heard about the 50 percent divorce rate! Somehow, they imagine that their husbands' incomes -- and loyalties -- come with lifetime guarantees, thus no contingency plans for self-sufficiency will prove necessary ... "

I bristled at this. First, because I am a 27 year-old Ivy League graduate and practicing attorney who recently married, took my husband's name (gasp!), and contemplates having children at some point during the next 5 years. (As an aside, I am quite defensive about my name change because I find myself constantly under attack from other feminists, who liken me to a gun-toting pacifist, like I violated some strict "code" of feminism.) I regularly find myself caught up in lengthy discussions with other "highly educated" females about the dilemma of choosing to leave the career track to stay at home with children for any length of time. Apparently we all must be delusional since any rational highly educated woman would recognize that staying at home equated blind faith in our husbands and death to our careers forevermore.

It seems to me that Kipnis is missing her own point. Doesn't her whole thesis revolve around modern woman's "ambivalence" between our recently-adopted feminist strides and our "inner woman" who perhaps longs for nesting with her infant? How then does Kipnis conflate the 50% divorce rate/supposed fantasy as to our husbands' incomes and loyalties with this inner ambivalence to working vs. motherhood?

Additionally, even if I or other "highly-educated" females were to choose to stay home with the kids, how is it that we would be left without a "contingency plan?" I find that my ivy league diploma and law degree provide me with a high degree of self-sufficiency, along with the luxury of choosing to perhaps stay home for a few years since my credentials are so marketable. Whereas if I were not so highly educated, perhaps I would have reservations about "abandoning" the workplace.