Response to comment in response to previous response to comment

That's not what Gail Collins is doing at all: her book is a historical look back. She's fascinated that women have come a long since 1960--remarkably so considering the snail's pace of progress in the prior two centuries of U.S. history. I recently started watching "Mad Men," and I don't envy what women in the early 1960s had to deal with--even less so those that weren't in the workplace. Incidentally, I was recently at a Smith Club of Washington event, and there were a couple of recent graduates there. Overhearing them catch up about what their former classmates were doing, I heard more than one person express absolute horror and confusion that someone opted to be a housewife. I feel like a month ago, I would have thought, 'whatever, to each her own,' but having watched "Mad Men," I thought, 'yup, that would be my definition of hell.'

Collins' book--and her interviews to plug the book--have no element of lecture or sanctimony whatsoever. I don't think there's a cabal of "older people" out there lecturing us on how they had to proverbially walk twenty miles in pre-feminist snow, carrying heavy misogynist backpacks. But I do know that there are women out there, young and old, that take for granted the lifestyles that feminist movements have brought on. Which, again, is a good thing: I agree that we shouldn't be thankful that we can get credit cards, etc. But I think it's unfortunate when men eschew feminism--are contemptuous of the term--when they owe their lifestyle to it. It's kind of like my expectations of people for "common knowledge": there are things we all don't know, and you can't judge any given person for not knowing there's a European Union, or that Nicaragua is not in Africa, or who Che Guevara was, but once those people take it upon themselves to broadcast their ill-informed opinions about the world, my standards for what they should know jump into a different category. Similarly, I'm not saying (and neither is Gail Collins) that we should all bow down and go about in constant reverence to the generation that came before; but we shouldn't go around saying that feminism is a crock of $hit and feminists are just unattractive, angry women with a chip on their shoulder--which is actually a fairly pervasive perception in our society, and one that is only enabled by women that take for granted the rights and freedoms that women in this country haven't always had.

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Speaking of Gail Collins, this is the most worthwhile commentary I've seen yet about this week's elections.