AS A POLITICAL MOVEMENT, feminism is barely breathing. Many forces converge to obstruct movement toward genuine equality of the sexes: the entrenched, symbiotic structures of work and family life; the refusal to assign economic value to housework and child rearing; the devolution of the public sector; increasing class and racial inequality; the religious right's influence on abortion policy, sex education, and other aspects of sex and gender politics. At the same time, the taboo on radical thought that pervades our political conversation chokes off any serious discussion of how to transform these social conditions. Yet culturally, and in the mainstream media, a certain brand of feminism is (just as the right has always charged!) conventional wisdom, official morality. That men and w...

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