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Compulsory Feminism

For a long time, what Alexis de Tocqueville called the American “spirit of freedom” was balanced by settled norms that guided young men and women toward domestic life. These norms added up to a sexual constitution that rested on the foundational assumption that men and women had different and . . . . Continue Reading »

Reactionary Hope

Within mainstream modern liberal feminism—especially as filtered through America’s bitterly polarized culture wars—to be feminist is self-evidently to be left-wing. Admittedly, one need not dig very deep among “anti-feminist” writers to find individuals who seem to dislike women. . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

In The People’s Justice, Judge Amul Thapar adroitly assumes the role of storyteller to defend an influential and controversial jurist’s reputation. He recounts twelve prominent cases that have come before Justice Clarence Thomas during his thirty-two-year term on the Supreme Court. The book . . . . Continue Reading »

Polluted Erotic Ecologies

Sometimes life is stranger than art. Suppose you were a novelist, and your book's protagonist is the genderqueer founder of a web start-up who calls herself Sebastian. Suppose the novel charts this character’s further transformation into a stay-at-home mom now going by her birth name of Mary and . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

My deep thanks to Brad East for his piece on doing theology in a divided church (“Theology in Division,” April 2023). The topic is centrally important and rarely taken seriously, as if its obviousness renders the challenge uninteresting. East’s larger points about aiming at a catholic theology . . . . Continue Reading »

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