Glad to see the privileged white women from the chattering classes are still practicing their limousine liberalism.

Regarding false statistics - they are the primary focus of most of feminism, so Pollit criticizes them at her peril.

Looking forward to an era without paleofeminists, e.g., no more pedophile Germaine Greer, no more loopy academic bell hooks. Thankfully, the sexist pig Andrea Dworkin and the abusive, foul-mouthed Betty Friedan are no longer among us.

Ms. Pollitt claims to be mystified and frustrated as to why womyn are reluctant to identify themselves as "feminist". However, she dances around the fact that most heterosexual women (not womyn)feel the word "feminist" (a misnomer if ever there was one)is code for the "L" word.

Indeed, even Ms. (or is it Miss or Mrs.?) Pollitt is reluctant to to say the "L" word. Witness the following:

"So you have a longer time of living on your own and sexual experimentation. There's this general sense of sexual freedom and sexual expressiveness that permeates so much of the media and the society, and yet you still find that women are quite stymied in other areas."

Pollitt is frustrated that the current fad of male heterosexual facsination with faux lipstick lesbianism does not translate into male parity in the social and workplace fabric.

Go figure.

Of course the backlash brigade has to step up to the plate and be the first to lob dirtballs. Congratulations, boys. You're doin' your daddies proud.

It's not just a sad day, it's a pathetic days when a strong, charismatic social justice movement gets treated as if it were irrelevant and antiquated. "Paleofeminists"? I wonder, Parson Jim, are the women in your life (provided there are any) all housebound breeding helpmeets, lacking education, good jobs and a brain besides? No? You mean you actually know some women who have careers, homes of their own, college degrees? If that's true, I wonder if they feel the contempt dripping from your voice whenever you talk about those "paleofeminists", and what it says about your opinion of women having lives that aren't bound about by apron strings. Because to dismiss women like Betty Friedan is to completely ignore the fact that our society, in which women can do all the things they can (admittedly that list isn't getting any longer) exists as it does because of those "paleofeminists". All those women from the 19th century onwards who put their asses on the line against the Way Things Were, all their efforts led to those girls in the colleges, those women in the boardrooms, those female cops, lawyers, doctors.

Of course, you may well be the kind of guy who'd prefer that all women inhabit either Mommytown or Jigglefest, with no inconvenient minds or souls to get in the way of the leering. If that's so, then good luck to you. Luckily, that is not a vision of America that's going to come true any time soon. Or should I say, going to come back.

Feminism means one thing and one thing only, and it is this: Women are worth just as much as men. Everything else proceeds from there. Very simple, really. Why is that thought so threatening? 'Tis a conundrum I will never be able to solve.

I don't identify myself as a feminist, because many of the women who do seem to have very little respect for other women's struggles and choices. Take, for example, Pollit's dismissal of Hewlett's finding that many women put their career first and then struggle to have children. She seems to think it's a myth - that women are /not/ crying at the gym because they can't have a second child. But yet that's indeed the case. As a relatively new mom I hang out with many other new mothers, many of whom are in their late 30's and early 40's and are struggling to get pregnant again. I don't necessarily buy that these women are in this situation because they put their career first - in many cases I think the problem was the lack of a mate - but the problem in itself is real.

Similarly, Pollit does not seem to understand that magazines tackle issues like "how to save your marriage" because that's what their audience wants to read. With divorce rates around 50%, no wonder women want to figure out how to make their marriage work!

If Pollit wants feminism to receive more respect, she needs to understand that she doesn't only have to talk to younger women, but she has to listen to what they have to say. And that, I think, is very hard for feminists in general.

For me the world Femminism is associated with "a war against patriarcal society" and don't think that many liberal men and women are at this point excited about *war* and that destruction of an abstract idea about our society.

I grew up in Eugene Oregon in the 80's and it was still liberal in the hippy onclave. I first heard of femminism as "social & economic equality of the sexes" when I was in elementry school. (early '80s) This is an idea that I have adheared to my entire life, but do not identify anymore as Femminism.

That meaning dissapeared dramatically as I got older. In middle school and high school I would go to lectures at the UofO or hang out with friends of my parent's who would expound on what is now in the history books as "radical feminism."

I remember a woman speaking about Feminism was the "War for Power against Patriarcial Society" that children "Were the playthings of men" and that "Women could take back their power from men by refusing sex." These were the ideas that became associated with the world "Femmisim"

I think that Femmisim has succefully let itself be painted with a radical brush by both the political right and left in society, squeezing the word in to marginality. The issue of economic equality "equal work for equal pay" has become orthodoxy among most people liberal/conservitive in the western world and in global-mega-coporations. So that issues no longer part of the "Femminist agenda".

The "Social equality" is much harder to define. I still see the biggest factor is social repression (which I see as bigger problem than opression at this point) comes from Mothers. Mothers have the largest impact on the early expectation of children and setting their life goals.

If Femminism is a "war against men" then the term neither describes the biggest problem with gender social equality nor does it describe a set of circumatances that is actionable for today's young adult women who are in gender-mixed workplaces and are predominantly heterosexual.