Wow! What a fabulous piece of writing. I now know why I still open the emails from OLO and read the article titles for items of interest. Congratulations to author for so logically and succinctly arguing this case. I agree with the author and think that in this article she very adeptly strips back the spoke and mirrors of the conservative illusion. The conservative illusion allows many women to believe that the feminist cause is redundant whilst at the same time the situation globally for women is becoming much worse and locally the feminisation of poverty is becoming entrenched.

Billy C, you may be interested in reading Laura Flanders' book The Bush Women where she documents the rise of Condoleezza Rice, Elaine Chao, Ann Venemans and others to the Bush Cabinet (see www.lauraflanders.com). Essentially she outlines how they doctored their supposedly humble backgrounds for media spin and have fitted in quite nicely as representatives of the American ruling class.

I guess for me the author of this article has said nothing that's a huge surprise. But anyone interested in US politics and sees the Democrats, including Hiliary Clinton, as somehow left-wing should examine the Democratic Party and its history a bit closer.

Whooo! A fembot cat fight. RRRRRR0AWWW.
I got twenty that says Hilary can take both Condi and Zillah Eisenstein.

Zillah Eisenstein

Well said -

thank you

I've gotta say, I wasn't particularly impressed with the notion that violence and imperialism was equated to being a masculine pursuit.

I'll admit, it's largely been men behind these endeavours - though now evidently some women are.

This kind of grouping creates division where there needed be - if the article was arguing in favour of general pacifism then fair enough, but if anything, the tone of this piece is of the 'masculine' kind of aggression it decries.

what gets up my nose is the wanton misrepresentation of the usa as a 'democracy'. it ain't. not even close. crypto-plutocratic oligarchy would be closest, if you insist on greek language. nader's "corporation state" would be more useful to modern readers.

if you don't even know what democracy is, you're illiterate. that's not a crime, but it does gravely compromise your credibility. better to read a few books, before you start complaining about the state of the nation or the planet.

you can't talk to strangers if you don't have a common language. one of the reasons "1984" was so valuable was the popularization of the concept of newspeak, so that anyone with an interest in politics could be aware that control of people was easiest when you control their language, and so their thought. unfortunately, the message of "1984" was itself 'newspeaked' by teaching it as a homily against totalitarian states, rather than an insight into social control by political elites.