Writer Rachel Lu recently penned an essay in these pages that engages my book as an example of what she calls “anti-feminist” work. Lu draws some surprising conclusions about my book that, I think, are not representative of my work. She makes four overarching points to which I would like to respond.

One of my goals in The End of Woman is to go beyond an understanding of woman as more than an “adult female human.” This is true of course, but it is not sufficient. I offer the long-held idea of motherhood (including psychological and spiritual) as a defining characteristic of womanhood.

At a large conference I spoke at last spring, another speaker mentioned "radicalized moms," meaning moms fed up with the ideologies that are tearing apart our country. It was a new term for me, but not a new reality. I was "radicalized" before the trappings of COVID called out many others, but the fierceness felt by so many mothers like me is the same. Moms all over America have had it with what is happening to our country. Don’t make us pull over.

It is time for honest women to recognize that feminism has not been the boon for women that it has been presented as. To be sure, there have been many advances under feminism, such as laws against sex and pregnancy discrimination, custody laws for mothers, and many social and economic opportunities. But to focus on these genuine improvements is to overlook the irreparable harm feminism has done to legions of women.

Fairy tales have been told across cultures and continents for millennia. More than simply an entertaining story, fairy tales are a culture's vehicle to share its values and underscore its most prized virtues. We know many of their familiar themes and patterns, having heard them since early childhood.

The ideological roots of feminism are at least 200 years old, but somehow, as a movement, it has been able to rebrand itself anew every few generations to maintain relevance. ‘Barbie’ is the latest effort to do just that.

The reality is that the ideas underpinning our societal wreckage are much older than most of us realize. The blueprint for it was set centuries ago, going back to the earliest stages of the feminist movement. 

The question the first wave feminist asked was how do we help women. A noble effort. The problem is that they saw the life of men as the solution. Rather than helping women as women, they wanted to help women become men. No more fuss and mess of families, husbands, birth, and child-raising.

The problem is that we're no longer dealing with reasonable people. Reason and logic have eroded. The battle we face is being played out in the realm of emotion and visuals—where things can be seen, touched, consumed, and felt. Conservatives operate in the realm of history, philosophy, and logic. We talk about ideas; they talk about stuff.

One day, they stopped selling their cinnamon scones. Then I started noticing an uptick in crystals, tarot cards, and astrology books.

Memories, I realized, aren't just a part of bricks and mortar, but are shaped by weather, the renderings of the earth, the lay of the land, and meals shared. Our houses are part of a much bigger picture, animated by love, sacrifice, ritual, and seasons that make up what it truly means to be home.

What victimhood as a badge confers is more than just pity from on-lookers. Its allure comes from the faux belief that suffering places one above the moral law, justifying just about anything—gossip, calumny, drug abuse, porn addiction, gluttony, theft, abortion, and on and on. Its unspoken promise is the hall pass to do whatever one wants, consequence free.

There has been a lot of chatter since the midterms about how women voted, breaking significantly toward the Democratic Party. Although the issue isn’t new, it has become the elephant in the electoral room. Conservatives can tackle it by understanding the roots that buttress women’s votes instead of hoping it will go away on its own.

Maybe more than anything, the pro-aborts’ absence of real arguments, the twisted virtue signaling, and the gaslighting are wearing off. American women simply don’t want to take any more marching orders from the angry, the ignorant, the narcissistic, and the entitled.

Somewhere along the way, our culture has rewritten this fairytale’s script. No longer is envy the downfall of women, but a badge of honor. And the one we envy isn’t a younger upstart, but men. The fairytale has told us that they have life and liberties that far surpass our own and are the real pinnacle of a life well-lived.