the backlash convinced the public that women's 'liberation' was the true contemporary American scourge - the source of an endless laundry list of personal, social, and economic problems.

My feminist view - that gender is on a continuum and we are all better off dropping a lot of those binary notions - is one that is shared by the more recent generation of trans activists and theorists.

I write to figure out what I am thinking: What does my life mean?

the central argument of the backlash - that women's equality is responsible for women's unhappiness.

All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.

the last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women. This counterassault is largely insidious: in a kind of pop-culture version of the Big Lie, it stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall.

I've never believed that women have some special, essentialist qualities, or were more nurturing, cooperative, and morally superior.