“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 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.
Posted inFeatures
Equal Rights Postponement
Ask state and federal legislators if they believethat legal rights should be extended or withheld on the basis of sex. Most wouldprobably say no, and many of them would be lying. Adoption of the Equal RightsAmendment to the U.S. Constitution remains a feminist fantasy. Its simpledeclaration of fairness–“Equality of rights under the law shall not […]
Posted inFeatures
Politics of Identity
George W. Bush opposes affirmative action, at leastintheory; in practice he has an affirmative-action record that might have made BillClinton proud. According to Time magazine, Bush “has appointed more women to positions of power and influence than any president in history.” He even has a diversity policy that requires 30 percent of administration jobs to […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Sex and Sensibility
Having attended a women’s college and spent half of my professional life affiliated with a female institution, I know better than to believe that women are naturally more sharing, caring, and cooperative than men, although in general, they may be more polite. I’m not denying the existence of distinct masculine and feminine cultural styles or […]
Posted inFeatures
Speech for Free
F ew institutions demand more protection of intellectual property than do corporate media. Eager to exploit the digital age but fearful of the ease with which copyrighted material can be borrowed or stolen, major media companies have successfully pressured Congress into enhancing penalties for copyright violations. The Motion Picture Association of America has gone to […]
Posted inFeatures
The A.G. Is Their Shepherd
When Attorney General John Ashcroft began conducting daily prayer sessions withJustice Department employees, he confirmed the hopes of religious conservativesand the fears of secularists: The new Republican regime would make governmentmore godly. Ashcroft has loudly lamented the separation of church and state and hasadvocated government funding for religious groups, as well as the reintroductionof official […]
Posted inFeatures
Faith-Based Favoritism
I’m not gracious enough to resist saying, “I told you so,” when I see rivalreligious groups fighting over federal funds. Only a few weeks after PresidentGeorge W. Bush announced a federal initiative to fund sectarian religiousorganizations, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was reportedly pressuring theadministration–with some success–not to underwrite the Nation of Islam.According to The New […]
Posted inFeatures
God’s Word
When Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura dismissed religion as a “sham” and a crutch for weak-minded people, the pundits pounced. Ridiculing Ventura, commentators like E.J. Dionne hastened to praise religious belief and the strong-minded leaders it produced, like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The governor’s approval ratings declined; he repented and vowed to behave: […]
Posted inFeatures
The Spiritual is Political
Confronted with low voter participation rates and high levels of ignorance about politics and policy, many of us regularly bemoan the apparently apathetic American electorate. But we’re mostly concerned with the apathy of people whom we imagine as potential political allies. When right-wing Christians made a dramatic entrance onto the political stage some 20 years […]
