Feminism needs a serious reality check. In a Foucauldian framework that views reality as constructed by power, one must oppose reality in order to resist oppression. If the feminist movement hopes to endure and effectively advocate the dignity of women and girls worldwide, it must depart from the anti-realist path that led to this bloody battleground. To survive the pending Armageddon, feminism must lose its paranoid rejection of essential differences between the sexes. This does not mean a reversion to cartoonish, reductive caricatures. Men and women are different, but they are not polarized opposites; our difference is asymmetrical, consonant with a shared humanity and individual inimitability.<\/p>\n
Only from a realist ground can we successfully discern which differences are a consequence of sexism, and which are not. Only from a realist ground can one make the confident argument that a man cannot merely opt into womanhood, because there is a pre-social givenness<\/em> to womanness, a nature that is shaped by nurture, but not wholly conjured by it.<\/p>\n Institutional power and language profoundly influence how we perceive reality; that\u2019s something the postmodernists get right. But to assert that power creates<\/em> reality is to concede that woman is a construct\u2014a concession that, for the feminist movement, will ultimately prove to be fatal.<\/p>\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Feminism\u2019s Last Battle, this month's long-read by @FavaleAbs<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/0wJ7K3AByA<\/a><\/p>\n — Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) July 18, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n