Well said, Jed. Counteracting op-eds like these is starting to feel like a chore. But it does bear mention that the fashionable characterization of the “feminine” attitude in politics deploys a stereotype that used to be its own worst nightmare. Those female talents of compromise, caring, and nurturing sound terribly like the inscriptions we once etched at a woman’s feet, back when we put her on a pedestal.

The fatal irony is that the female sexual ethos pushed by the anti-partriarchy is as uncompromising and unmotherly as you can get. Those hip values of feminine politics turn out to be garbage where social justice is concerned. Suddenly, femininity is defined by a radical independence and radical sexuality that destroys the ability of any girl to become the sort of nurturer Ruth Marcus desires. Instead, she gets woman-children with broken sex and broken families — for whom restraint and introspection become incomprehensible, and only self-doubt remains.