The Lives of the Feminists

In The End of Woman, philosophy scholar Carrie Gress attempts to show that feminism is bad for women and always has been. B​​etween philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (whose 1792 Vindication of The Rights of Women is typically the first text taught in a collegiate Women’s Studies course) and modern feminists like Lena Dunham (whose HBO hit series, Girls, aired in 2012 to feminist acclaim for its raw portrayal of female sexuality), Gress ​sees​ an unbroken line of feminist thinkers. For going on 250 years, Gress contends, feminists’ monolithic commitment to women’s fundamental individualism and spiritual androgyny revolutionized Western culture ​and​ destroyed women’s happiness. Ultimately, for Gress, feminism is and always has been about “erasing womanhood altogether” by “making us cheap imitations of men” and leaving us “undefined in an increasingly progressive world.”