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Getting the Name Right

It is an index of the success of this volume that one could read it with profit even if one were not very interested in the issue that provoked it, the gender-feminist critique of Trinitarian language. That is to say, the authors, with very few exceptions, do not rely on denunciation and defensive . . . . Continue Reading »

The Feminist as Paranoid

Look out: here comes Susan Faludi leading the Charge of the Lightweight Brigade! Her thesis is simplicity itself. Just in case the reader might not get it straight off, it is repeated in each and every chapter title—all fourteen of them. There is and has been a terrible backlash in this land . . . . Continue Reading »

Feminism and Feminism

We get these letters saying that we should not refer to “radical feminism” since all feminism is radical. Not quite. We refer such readers to “The Feminist Revelation” (December 1991), where we noted Christina Sommers’ useful distinction between “liberal feminism” and “gender . . . . Continue Reading »

Naming Good and Evil

Eighty-one years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote a book entitled What’s Wrong with the World. His answer to that question was that, while there is general agreement as to what is wrong with the world, the real problem is that we cannot agree on what would be right. This absence of public . . . . Continue Reading »

The Grammar of Baptism

Feminism has become a truly significant force within American culture. Its presence and power is felt in all areas of our common life, and perhaps nowhere more keenly than in our use of language. We have all become sensitized to the need to be “inclusive” in our speech. Certain usages, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Feminist Revelation

That is the title of an important article in Social Philosophy & Policy (Vol. VIII, No. 1) by Christina Sommers, Professor of Philosophy at Clark University. The burgeoning academic industry of feminist/womanist studies is rife with declarations of a grand social revolution. Contemporary feminism, . . . . Continue Reading »

Farewell to the Woman Question

For many years, I was interested—in both senses of the term—in women’s problems. It seemed to me that somewhere in the course of the twentieth century the lives of middle-class American women had been radically altered and we understood neither what had happened nor how to respond . . . . Continue Reading »

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