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Wendy Kaminer

Wendy Kaminer is a former senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly. She also serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A lawyer, social critic, and former Guggenheim Fellow, she writes about law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture. Her latest book is Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today. Other books she has written include Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety; True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism; It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture; I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions; and A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight from Equality. Kaminer's articles and reviews have appeared in many other publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and Newsweek, and her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio.

Before embarking on her writing career, Kaminer practiced law as a staff attorney in the New York Legal Aid Society and the New York City Mayor's Office.

Wendy Kaminer retains copyrights to all her articles.

Recent Articles

Sexual Congress

Wendy KaminerDec 19, 2001

Feminists have long regarded rape as a hate crime, like lynching. The view of sexual violence as a particularly vicious form of bigotry and social control may oversimplify the dynamics of any given sex crime (and overlook the historic use of rape allegations to justify lynching), but it resonates with many women. Both self-identified and closeted feminists, who differ wildly about the nature of equality and the means of achieving it, often agree that rape is an act of misogyny.



Virtual Offensiveness

Wendy KaminerDec 19, 2001

More than 15 years have passed since antilibertarian
feminists declared "pornography" a violation of women's civil rights, alleging
that it demeaned and objectified women. In the 1980s, the antiporn movement
enjoyed a lot of publicity and a little local legislative success. But federal
courts quickly struck down antiporn ordinances that classified some sexually
explicit speech as discriminatory and offered women private rights of action
against the producers or distributors of non-obscene pornographic material. In
American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit stressed that government officials cannot prohibit speech because

Will Class Trump Gender?: The New Assault on Feminism

"Goodbye, feminism," say some critics who insist that women can prosper as rugged individualists. Funny thing, the new antifeminists sound a lot like the old laissez-faire conservatives.

Wendy KaminerDec 19, 2001

I've

long held the theory that when a woman wants to change her life, or some

aspect of it that is bothering her, she first does something to her hair,"

writes Danielle Crittenden, in a stab at political commentary. As a young

and conservative writer, Crittenden regularly addresses social issues with

housewifely tartness, extolling Cinderella as a "role model"

for little girls and chastising a woman who resists being addressed by

her husband's name.

Crittenden is a columnist for the Women's Quarterly, the journal

of the oddly named Independent Women's Forum. The IWF, in the name of a

American Gothic

Wendy KaminerDec 19, 2001

It has long been clear to feminists that crusades against witchcraft reflect a primal fear of feminine power and aim to punish women, most brutally, for transgressing gender roles. But if accusations of witchcraft are useful as instruments of social control, they're not necessarily cynical; often, they're entirely sincere. As a casual perusal of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) Web site and assorted right-wing Christian literature shows, some people believe in Satan, witches, and various evil spirits as fervently as they believe in God.

Does Being a New Mom Disqualify a Woman From Being a Good Governor?

Wendy KaminerDec 19, 2001

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