No, New York Post, Feminism Is Not Imploding

By Amanda Marcotte

Naomi Schaefer Riley of the New York Post is excited, because she believes that feminism is finally, finally on its last legs. Her piece arguing this, titled “Scenes From the Feminist Implosion,” starts from a strange premise. Riley references a recent New Yorker article by Michelle Goldberg, in which Goldberg chronicles an academic debate between transgender people and a small cadre of self-described “radical feminists” who oppose transgenderism. Riley uses this academic debate to argue that “modern feminism is in crisis” and about to collapse. But there's no real reason to think that Goldberg's story, which chronicles a fight that is basically unknown to the larger public, has any impact at all on what most people think about when they think “feminism.”

Riley writes that you need “look no further” than Goldberg’s piece to see that this obscure battle between two academic feminist factions suggests an impending feminist implosion. Readers who actually bothered to read Goldberg’s piece, however, would get a very different impression. “The dispute began more than forty years ago, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement,” Goldberg writes. If the fight between transgender activists and radical feminists was going to destroy feminism, surely it would have done so long ago. If anything, this debate has only become more marginalized and academic since the '70s. Even Riley admits “the RadFem women are apparently in the minority” and that the transgender activists are winning.

Riley writes that you need “look no further” than Goldberg’s piece to see that this obscure battle between two academic feminist factions suggests an impending feminist implosion. Readers who actually bothered to read Goldberg’s piece, however, would get a very different impression. “The dispute began more than forty years ago, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement,” Goldberg writes. If the fight between transgender activists and radical feminists was going to destroy feminism, surely it would have done so long ago. If anything, this debate has only become more marginalized and academic since the '70s. Even Riley admits “the RadFem women are apparently in the minority” and that the transgender activists are winning. Advertisement

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