Feminism, the Noble Lie Robert Sheaffer (A shorter version of this article appeared in

Free Inquiry Magazine, Spring, 1995. New text added June, 1996. Minor revisions April, 1997)

Plato argues in the Republic that in order to build a proper Utopia, it will be necessary to depict the gods as virtuous, regardless of what Homer and other authors may actually have written about them. Hence censorship and deception were seen as requisite for instilling virtue: "The lie in words is in certain cases useful and not hateful."[1] This has come to be known as Plato's "Noble Lie". In the present age, another would-be builder of Utopias has, almost unnoticed, adopted the Noble Lie in pursuit of its goals, utilizing censorship and deception while somehow yet retaining an aura of moral rectitude: the Politically Correct feminist movement, which reigns virtually unchallenged in academe and in government. The world as depicted by contemporary feminist scholarship is a peculiar one. It teaches a history that is at variance with that taught in history departments, a view of science incorporating only selectively that taught in science departments, and a paradoxical, illiberal approach to morality in which the correctness of an action depends to a large extent on who is performing it. The world-view created by contemporary feminism has much in common with that of the illusionist, who can conjure an impressive scenario, but only when viewed from a certain angle, and only when all attempts at critical scrutiny are muted. Indeed, it is difficult to quell the suspicion that the reason feminists have always insisted on a separate department for their "Womens Studies" program is because they require exemption from the peer review and critical scrutiny that their material would otherwise receive were it taught as history, philosophy, or science. Feminists have largely gotten away with these deceptions because the widespread and highly-successful inculcation of male guilt allows feminists to claim that any critical scrutiny of their dubious claims amounts to "blaming the victim." Additionally, chivalrous feelings make most men feel it is somehow unfair to "attack women," even if those same women are spouting bizarre nonsense in the process of vigorously attacking men. (The fallacy in this logic is, of course, the assumption that the agenda promoted by feminists is actually in the best interest of most women. A pro-woman agenda would promote harmonious relations between the sexes, and strengthen the family; the feminist agenda, doing the opposite, harms most women as much as it does men.) The result has been that a great deal of selective truth, half-truth, and even untruth has been unquestioningly accepted by a large portion of the educated public. In Plato's Utopian state, the rulers would have a monopoly on the right to tell lies; through the enforcement of "hostile speech" codes on campus (and in some instances questioning feminist doctrine has been construed as "hostile speech"), modern day academic feminists seek the same privilege. One of the most obvious absurdities taught as women's history concerns the supposed "Idyllic Goddess" era, whose best-known proponents are the late Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler and which has spawned a large number of uncritical, emotionally-charged articles and books. This is a new twist on the "ancient matriarchies" theme that has long been popular among Marxists and feminists. Feminists often speak derisively of the last few thousand years as the period since "the rise of patriarchy," a statement intended to create the entirely spurious impression that things were once otherwise. Gimbutas, who was a professor of Indo-European Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, claims that Neolithic Europe enjoyed a peaceful, egalitarian, gender-equal but woman-centered society before its invasion by brutal, patriarchal Indo-European invaders more than four thousand years ago. She promoted this idea in several large, beautifully- illustrated books depicting the supposed universal goddess of this period. Virtually all of Gimbutas' professional colleagues dismiss her 'idyllic goddess' visions, typically with comments like "Gimbutas has gone too far," or "oh my God, here goes Marija again". [2] The proponents of the Idyllic Goddess theory of history teach a variant of the "lost Garden of Eden" myth. In this new version the human race was ejected from a paradise because of the sins of men, but not those of women ; in the Genesis version, the woman may have sinned first but both committed the offense. Note that in the feminist fable, men alone are responsible for evil, and women represent everything good. This sentiment is encountered again and again in feminist thought, clearly implying the moral superiority of women. Other feminists claim to find gender-reversed or gender-equal societies in other always-inaccessible places. Alleged matriarchies., like alleged occurrences of psychic powers, exhibit a "shyness effect," and can never be observed directly. Some claim the existence of actual contemporary "matriarchies." in a remote place in Africa, Asia, Madagascar, or wherever, but when pressed for substantiation invariably there is none. The most recent sighting of a "nonpatriarchal society" was on remote Vanatinai Island near Papua New Guinea [3]. However, on close inspection it turns out that, even though some women sometimes become very influential there, the great majority of the influential persons are men (exactly as in our society).

Some people simply confuse existing "matrilineal" or "matrilocal" societies (denoting the primacy of the mother's role in inheriting property or in determining residence, respectively) with nonexistent "matriarchal" ones (ruled by women). In a matrilineal or matrilocal society, the woman typically is subjected to the authority of her mother's male relatives, rather than her husband. The late anthropologist Eleanor Leacock, a feminist and Marxist, cited as a supposed gender-equal society the seventeenth-century Montagnais-Naskapi of Quebec, whose gender-equal status was said to have been recorded by early Christian missionaries before those Native Americans were supposedly corrupted into their current patriarchal state by Western colonialism and oppression. [4] However, Leacock's claim is wholly spurious, requiring the selective omission of statements such as "I never heard the women complain because they were not invited to the feasts, because the men ate the good pieces, or because they had to work continually", [5] while quoting another statement from the same paragraph!

Other feminist scholars misrepresent, either through carelessness or deceit, Margaret Mead's somewhat disingenuous description of Tchambuli men as "effete," claiming that this demonstrates a society in which the usual sex roles have been reversed. This conveniently ignores the fact that the Tchambuli men were literally headhunters, who kept as trophies the severed heads of enemies. To call such fierce warriors "effete" is to misuse the word. Mead herself repeatedly denied ever having discovered any sex-role reversed society. Yet sociologist Steven Goldberg found that 36 of 38 new introductory textbooks of sociology cited Mead's supposed discovery of the "role-reversed" Tchambuli as "proof" that sex-roles are environmentally determined. [6] Such are the lies that are being fed to students today in the pious name of feminism. The harsh reality is that the entire history of the human race, from the present time to the earliest written texts, is an unbroken record of so-called "patriarchy", presumably extending back at least as far as our earliest primate ancestors (since chimp society displays extreme male dominance). In every human society, without exception, leadership is associated with the male, and the nurturing of children with the female.

Those who argue that "socialization" must somehow explain sex roles find themselves unable to explain why socialization always proceeds in a uniform direction, when according to their assumptions it ought to proceed randomly, resulting in a patchwork of matriarchies. interspersed with patriarchies. Why does every society, without exception, socialize men for leadership, and women for domestic tasks? Why not the reverse?

Thus the strict environmentalist explanation falls into an infinite regress, and finds itself postulating an uncaused cause: the male dominance we observe in every society is said to be caused by "socialization," yet the socialization that always results in male leadership itself has no cause, and somehow "always was". Steven Goldberg argues persuasively that the popular claim of "socialization" to explain sex roles gets the causality backwards. He writes that feminist theorists "make the mistake of treating the social environment as an independent variable, thereby failing to explain why the social environment always conforms to limits set by, and takes a direction concordant with, the physiological (i.e. never does environment act as sufficient counterpoise to enable a society to avoid male dominance of hierarchies)" [7] In other words, it is not true, as feminists claim, that societies invent arbitrary sex roles, then develop pseudoscientific concepts of biological sex differences to justify society's norms. Rather, societies observe the patterns of behavior that biology seems to render inevitable, then attempt to socialize women and men into roles that it is expected they will be able to fulfill. Hence according to Goldberg "socialization" is the dependent variable, not the independent one, as is commonly supposed.

If sex roles really are arbitrary constructions of society, created to keep women "in their place," why is it necessary to give transsexuals - individuals who already display many characteristics of the opposite sex - hormones of that opposite sex, prior to and separate from any surgery, to enable them to genuinely fit into their new role? Invariably these male or female hormones are reported as having profound mood-altering characteristics. For example, in the documentary film Max by the lesbian director Monika Treut, a pre-surgical female-to-male transsexual comments on the profound effects experienced upon being administered male hormones in the course of treatment. She reported that her energy level suddenly increased dramatically, as did her sex drive. Her moods were greatly affected, and she found herself unable to cry as much and as easily as she did before. This is not an isolated reaction, but rather such effects are the norm. Indeed they are the very rationale for the treatment: in order to produce behavior that will be seen as genuinely male or female, it is necessary to have the proper balance of sex hormones circulating in one's body. Feminists, however, attribute such behavior in men to "socialization".

Now if the feminist 'society-is-responsible' hypothesis were true, sex hormones would have no effect on behavior, and transsexuals could presumably be trained into their new roles just by reading a book. The reason that the feminist theorist attempts to force us to ignore the powerful role of male and female hormones as determinants of behavior is that we would then have to acknowledge that sex roles are not only not arbitrary, but are in fact permanent and ineradicable (short of radical medical intervention). Contemporary Politically Correct feminists, like Marxists, feel obligated to postulate a purely environmental explanation for all sex-related differences in behavior, because as soon as biological differences are admitted as relevant factors, the presumption that women are "victims of discrimination" cannot be supported. Should any male/female differences in behavior and career choices be admitted as innate and real, then the "null hypothesis" - the assumption that in the absence of discrimination, no differences in the two groups would be observed - is no longer tenable. The feminist would then be placed in the position of needing to separate the effects of so-called "discrimination" from those of biology, a clearly impossible task. Hence, male/female differences in biology must be declared ipso facto to have no possible observable consequences. Biologist Garrett Hardin notes that the epithet "biological determinism", carrying "implications of absolute rigidity," is "a straw man set up for the convenience of polemicists; we would do well to ignore it." He adds,

"to suppose that human behavior is uninfluenced by heredity is to say that man is not a part of nature. The Darwinian assumption is that he is; Darwinians insist that the burden of proof falls on those who assert the contrary."

"any refusal to apply evolutionary theory to man. It is irrelevant whether this refusal is sustained by a literal reading of scripture or commitment to a secular ideology."

The fact that men have much greater physical strength than women cannot possibly be admitted as a factor causing men to predominate in strenuous jobs; the dearth of women in such jobs is instead attributed to a "hostile working environment" created by sexist men. If it is admitted that few women actually want to do such work, this must be explained away as a consequence of them having been brainwashed into accepting negative patriarchal stereotypes. That men predominate in higher-paying positions is itself seen as evidence of a vast conspiracy to keep women out of better jobs, in spite of the fact that when we correct for factors such as the number of hours worked, the number of years of education and in the position, etc., the differences all but vanish. [9] That women spend far more money on themselves - money presumably earned for them by the exertions of men - is never even considered. If it were really true that women were being paid 59 cents (or whatever number you choose to believe) for every dollar that men make, for doing the same work at the same level of skill, then no business could possibly be competitive if it employed any men.

That differences in career choices might arise from mutual preferences and independent choices made by two groups having significant innate psychological differences is not a permissible hypothesis, even though it has seemed obvious to every other society except our own. No explanation will be satisfactory to contemporary feminists unless it depicts men as exploiters and women as victims (a depiction that itself belies feminism's claim to believe in "strict equality").

In order to defend the employment conspiracy hypothesis, feminists must argue either that there are no genuine, innate differences in the skills, attitudes, and abilities, of women and men, or else that such differences may exist, but have absolutely no observable effect. As soon as such differences are admitted as a meaningful factor influencing career choices and performance, the case for the supposed omnipresent "discrimination" vanishes. Now, in virtually every sport for which records are kept, men consistently and significantly outperform women. These differences are not trifling; it is routine for talented male athletes in college to challenge the womens world record in their sport.

Most feminists will reluctantly admit that, at least in sports, the difference in performance between women and men is a result of innate factors, and not social conditioning. No amount of political indoctrination will transform a female athlete into a respectable linebacker for the National Football League. This then places the feminist in the curious position of arguing that innate factors account for the profound difference in male/female performance in every sport, but in absolutely nothing else. This violates parsimony. Michael Levin argues that it is absurd to claim that there is no paid job, outside athletics, where the kind of skill, stamina, and speed manifested in athletics conveys advantage. [10] Of course, once feminists admit the reality of sex-differentiated abilities, they must concede that mens' superior average performance in those strenuous jobs is due to innate factors, and not to "discrimination" or "socialization". Truly, it is ideology, not logic, that prompts the hypothesis of absolute male/female interchangeability (or, more accurately: feminists will disavow the claim of interchangeability, yet vigorously defend everything that follows from it!).

Contemporary Politically Correct feminism with its emphasis on group rights and group offenses is fundamentally illiberal, a dramatic break from the long humanistic tradition which emphasizes individual rights, rewards and punishments. It attacks free speech wherever freedom is used in ways it does not approve; feminists have recently joined forces with the Religious Right to attack so-called "pornography". (Another coalition of feminists with the Religious Right, crusading against alleged "Satanic Cults," is rapidly turning into a "witch hunt" in a literal sense! And the zealous use of highly-dubious "repressed memories" to uncover supposed "forgotten incest" is largely a feminist-led campaign, one of its biggest cheerleaders being Gloria Steinem).

This ideology seeks to replace the liberal ideal of "equality under the law" with the sinister "some are more equal than others," awarding women special rights and special protections unavailable to men. One of the most glaring examples of the feminist demand to be More-Equal-than-Others concerns the status of single-sex schools. The small number of remaining all-male colleges, mostly of military orientation, such as Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, are under unrelenting political and legal pressure from feminists to end their single-sex policy, which is held to be "discriminatory." And perhaps it is, you say? Yet when a few years back the directors of all-female Mills College in Oakland, California decided for reasons of their own, completely without coercion, to begin admitting men students, this same relentless feminist juggernaut bore down upon them to preserve single-sex education, forcing the directors to reverse their decision, and keep Mills College exclusively for women. (When speaking to a naive audience, however, the feminist will claim that she "only wants equality"! But in reality, any feminist who claims to "want equality" had better be willing to specify which privileges she is willing to give up.)

The justification offered for keeping Mills College single- sex was that men tend to dominate classroom environments owing to their greater levels of aggressiveness, creating the need for women to have a 'league of their own' where they can learn and discuss at their own more relaxed pace. And I do not doubt that men indeed dominate classroom discussions and activities more often than women do. Feminists who argue this way, however, are in the delicate position of maintaining that while male dominance of classrooms is caused by the male's greater aggressiveness, male dominance of the business world has nothing to do with male aggressiveness, but is entirely the result of an unfair, secret conspiracy against women. In the wonderland of contemporary feminism, sex-segregated education is either very necessary or very evil, depending on which sex is being excluded, and the average male's greater aggressiveness both does and does not allow him to overshadow women within the same organization, depending on the conclusion it is desired to prove. All arguments within feminism are ultimately ad hoc: one uses whatever arguments one can muster to prove what it is desired to prove at the moment (victimization, discrimination, oppression, persecution, whatever). There is no requirement that the argument one uses today be consistent with the ones used yesterday, or will use tomorrow. Men both are and are not more aggressive, better at math, more persuasive, etc., depending on what is required by the exigencies of the moment. The feminist need not worry that anyone will object that today's argument is inconsistent with yesterday's: anyone who might do so would be branded an "enemy of women," and drummed out of the movement. The properly-sensitive, Politically Correct feminist never criticizes a sister feminist, no matter what she may say, but instead simply "listens to the multiplicity of womens' voices."

It is invariably objected that the kinds of positions and doctrines objected to above are those of "the extremists", and that "reasonable" feminists and feminist organizations do not hold them. The critics of feminism are accused of concentrating their attacks on so-called "extremists" such as Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin. , But Mackinnon is the inventor of the legal concept of "sexual harassment"; do "reasonable feminists" reject that concept as 'extremism? Of course not; this line of argument enables them to "savor the fruit" of Mackinnonism while "cursing the vine." If Andrea Dworkin is such an "extremist," why has she been praised so lavishly by Gloria Steinem? (And if Gloria Steinem is not 'representative of feminists', then who is?)

The question I next ask is: just where are all these "reasonable feminists"? The answer invariably is that they are sitting next to me, or in the office down the hall; yet somehow these supposed voices of "moderation" manage to play absolutely no role whatsoever in the formulation of major public policy. Some more-or-less reasonable, yet politically ineffective, feminists defend their roles by pointing to minor success where 'good feminists' like themselves were able to slightly mitigate the harmful policies (coercion, censorship, etc.) of the 'bad feminists'. My response is that if all that the 'good feminists' can accomplish is to oppose, with less than 100% effectiveness, the harm done by the 'bad feminists,' then society would be better off without feminists altogether.

We are asked to believe that the largest feminist organization in America, and the largest-circulation feminist magazine, each of which endlessly promotes the image of women as "victims" while vigorously lobbying for special preferences and quotas (and is (or recently was) each headed up by a lesbian[11]), are somehow "unrepresentative" of what the supposedly typical feminist does and believes. Again, this is just a cheap rhetorical trick: by definition, the largest organizations and publications in any movement are representative of that movement. Were they unrepresentative, some other spokes-women would step forth, and gather a following larger still. One is forced to conclude that, all of the reasonable feminist goals having been met long ago, the effort is now being redoubled to attain as many unreasonable ones as possible before any significant opposition is able to develop.

No reasonable person, it seems to me, could deny that women and men ought to have the same legal rights in matters of a career, of the ownership of property, etc. And in practice, rarely if ever are such rights today denied. Yet likewise no reasonable person could expect that "equality of opportunity" would automatically turn into "equality of result" for two groups as different as women and men. Yet the primary complaint of contemporary feminists is that it has not, and the difference is held up as evidence of a supposed "discrimination" resulting from society's supposed unfairness and bigotry towards women. Yet this "discrimination" claim treats all differences in the real-world situations of women and men as resulting from a single cause: the supposedly selfish and unfair behavior of men who are unwilling to "share" their supposed "privileges" with women. All other factors and varibles are automatically ignored: the differences between women in men in physical strength and stamina; the effects of pregnancy and child-raising that take women out of the workforce; the very real differences between the male and female brain; the mood-altering effects of male and female hormones, etc. None of these very real differences, we are expected to believe, could possibly account for the differences in male and female roles; all such differences must be attributed to male perfidy and greed.

It also seems to me that no reasonable person could deny the moral equality of women and men: that neither sex has any credible claim to greater "goodness" or cooperative behavior than the other. Yet this is precisely what contemporary feminism attempts to deny. Some state outright that women are the morally superior sex [12]. Others would deny such an explicit claim, yet the claim lies implicitly in all feminist writing nonetheless, by way of the incessant depiction of men as cruel exploiters, and women their innocent victims. How can one claim to believe in the 'moral equality' of two groups while simultaneously maintaining that one of the two has supposedly "exploited" and "oppressed" the other in every society that has ever existed? The belief in the 'moral equality' of the sexes implies the belief that the universal human expectation of male dominance and female submission are in some sense 'natural' and proper; to deny one is to deny the other.

The rhetoric of the feminist movement portrays history as a dismal scenario of the unending oppression and subjugation of women, for the selfish benefit of men. (That men might themselves be a "victim" class, given that men have made up 100% of the cannon fodder of every battle in history, is not worthy of consideration.) But the depiction of woman as Perpetual Victim does not survive critical scrutiny, most especially not today. Whatever rights women may not have had at various points in history, such as the right to vote, had typically only been won by men a short time earlier. Throughout most of history, nobody had any rights, outside the ruling elite!

As for contemporary American society: women live an average of seven years longer than men; female-headed households have a net worth that averages 41% higher than those of male-headed ones (and this in spite of the fact that the average woman works far fewer hours per year than the average man). Women make up 55% of current college graduates. They claim to be discriminated against in politics, yet cast 7 million more votes than men in electing presidents. They win almost automatically in child custody disputes. Victims of violent crime are overwhelmingly male, and wives assault husbands more frequently than the reverse. Women can murder a sleeping husband or lover in cold blood, then claim the "battered woman" defense, and very likely receive only the lightest sentence or perhaps even no sentence at all, even in the absence of any proof that they were actually "battered!" (There is no "battered man" defense.)

If convicted of a felony, a man serves out a sentence averaging more than 50% longer than a woman convicted of the same crime, and a man in prison is more than ten times as likely to die there than is a woman. Mens' suicide rate is four times that of women. Twenty-four out of the twenty-five jobs ranked "worst" in terms of pay and working conditions by the Jobs Related Almanac have one thing in common: they are all 95%-100% male. Of those killed in work-related accidents, 94% are men, as were 96% of those killed in the Gulf War. If men have supposedly arranged everything to be so wonderful for themselves, then why are they dying, being mutilated, murdered, or killing themselves at rates vastly higher than those of women, who end up with more money in spite of having worked less? [13] By ignoring inconvenient facts like the above, feminists continue to promote the myth that women are the "victims" of an unjust society created and run by powerful, uncaring males for their own personal gain. In reality, it makes much more sense to call contemporary American women "privileged" than "oppressed!"

The world-view erected by contemporary Politically Correct feminism, the only kind that plays any role in shaping public policy, is a house of cards. It requires its adherent to jump from one unsteady limb to another, never quite sure whether sex differences in behavior are illusory, or very real but ex cathedra insignificant; uncertain whether women behave exactly the same as men, or are emotionally and morally superior, oriented toward life (unlike men, who love death); switching from "absolute egalite " to "special provisions," depending on which confers greater advantage in the circumstance. Women are simultaneously strong and independent, fully prepared to prevail in the hell of combat, yet at the same time so weak as to need special rules under which they receive compensatory advantages to assist them in competition with men; they also need legal protection against unwanted sexual advances and dirty jokes. This is much like a magician's silk that appears to have a different color each time it is revealed. Experience has shown that these objections to feminist absurdities are answered far more with ad hominem insults and expressions of moral outrage than with reasoned argument; such are the defenses employed by illusionists who are infuriated when their deceptions are revealed.

But there can be great harm in falsehood unopposed, especially when it results in suspicion, hostility, and envy between the sexes, where love frequently used to exist as recently as a generation before. In no other countries has Politically Correct feminism gained such power as in the Anglo- American world, especially in the U.S. and Canada (which is itself interesting: why have European women largely declined to fight in the War Against Men?). As a consequence, we have here what is almost certainly the highest divorce rate in the world, a crumbling educational system, and a seemingly unstoppable spiral of rising crime and related social pathology. Recent studies demonstrate a powerful correlation between this social pathology and the children of fatherless families [14]. It remains to be seen whether any society can remain intact largely without viable families in which to raise psychologically healthy children; history provides no such examples. One can try to argue that the U.S. family died of natural causes at precisely the same time feminists began shooting at it, but after examining the depth and ferocity of the feminist attack against womens' roles as wives and mothers, such an argument fails to convince.

Nietzsche warned against systems of morality grounded in what he called ressentiment, which pretend to represent compassion while actually embodying the covert destructiveness of those who impotently desire revenge against those they envy. He cited Christian morality as the primary example of such a system. [15] While feigning an attitude of passivity and love, the early Christian actually worked to bring down any person or institution esteemed for worldly success. We must not fail to note that contemporary Politically Correct feminism, itself a child of Marxism, are both manifestations of ressentiment [16].

In spite of its success in masquerading as a harmless, even noble, movement dedicated to 'simple fairness', the contemporary feminist movement is in fact a Noble Lie. No matter how many people may have been sincerely persuaded to believe its pronouncements, the empress has no clothes. And a "noble lie" is nonetheless a lie.

NOTES:

1.Plato, The Republic, Book II (382c).

2. See "Idyllic Theory of Goddess Creates Storm" by Peter Steinfels, New York Times, Feb. 13, 1990. For a detailed critique of the "goddess" claims of Gimbutas and others, see Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), Chapter 2.

3.New York Times, March 29, 1994.

4.Leacock, Eleanor: Myths of Male Dominance (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981); "Women in Egalitarian Societies", in Becoming Visible, Koonz and Bridenthal, eds. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977).

5.Paul LeJeune in Jesuit Relations, Vol. 6 p. 235, R.G. Thwaites, ed (New York: Pageant Book Co., 1959)

6.Goldberg, Steven: Feminism Against Science, National Review, Nov. 18, 1991.

7.Goldberg, Steven: When Wish Replaces Thought (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991), p. 173.

8.Hardin, Garrett: Naked Emperors. Essays of a Taboo Stalker (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1982), chapter 8. Levin, Michael: Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), chapter 3.

9.See, for example, George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), chapter 12.

10.Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), Chapter 10.

11.Patricia Ireland, the head man at NOW, is technically married, but admits that she does not live with her husband, but instead with a female lover. Robin Morgan, until recently the chief editor of Ms. Magazine, and still on its editorial staff, has been openly lesbian for many years. "Full-time feminism" is dominated by lesbians, and not surprisingly, what is touted as the feminist agenda is really the lesbian agenda (careers are everything, marriage is a trap, husbands are evil, babies are a nuisance, etc.). If feminism today really represented the interests of ordinary heterosexual women, it would be working to make life easier and more harmonious for wives and mothers, rather than doing everything it can to blow the family apart.