Wow. That's quite an overreach. I believe those principles go back to our founding documents, Common Law, or even Ancient Greece. This is another criticism of Feminism Idealism and taking credit for cultural evolution which came to being for other reasons.

Equality applied to women was/is the singular core value of the successful women's movement. That has been accepted.

However, beyond that singular principle of equality pursued from the Suffrage movement, the Feminist Movement's values have been widely rejected.

The more exclusively an idea is associated with Movement Feminism, the more unsuccessful it has been. Take bra burning, various fatawah on bodily hair, victim feminism, seeing men as oppressors, or a whole range of social issues on which Feminists have opined.

Longstanding contentious issues which Feminists have taken up remain unresolved and have only become more contentious in proportion to Feminist activity.

Birth control for example, has been a raging debate for centuries, with men and women on both sides of cultural, religious, and philosophical divides. To this day religious people tend to dislike it, while more secular people tend to believe that religious people shouldn't dictate their morality given this is a secular nation, and otherwise see the practical merits of birth control. That's been the state of things for centuries, with people becoming less religious and more liberal/secular for various reasons wholly external to Feminism.

On just about any issue we'd be better off represented by advocates who are more diverse, gender balanced, and technically skilled, while also being less radical, less ideological, and less toxic. A panel of doctors, scientists, and ethicists for example are much more effective debating the merits of birth control, than a group of writing, sociology, and women's studies majors who also moonlight on issues such as bodily hair, mini skirts, and fashion magazines. The same applies to just about any issue.

BTW: on the issues Goldberg mentioned:

The issue is reducing abject poverty so people in the developing world aren't forced to make such tough choices. They don't make these choices becasue they're cruel, they make tough choices becasue they're poor and living in a cruel world. It's a humanitarian issue, not a Feminist issue.

Regarding preference for boys over girls in the developing world, that is symptom of another tragedy: poverty in hardscrabble agrarian and laboring ghettos. In families on the brink or starvation, lacking medical supplies or education, families forced to make tough existential choices prefer boys specifically they're capable of more difficult physical labor and therefore more economically viable, at least immediately for the family. But keep in mind that even in China, the poster boy for the problem, male population is only a fraction higher than female, about 5%. It's hugely exaggerated by alarmist Feminists who frankly need to see misogyny everywhere.

Arranged marriages exist between younger girls and older men for a simple reason: the girls come from poor families that can't support them and where they might starve. The girls can't do difficult labor to compete with men, and are therefore given to older men with the means to support them. Yes, it's tragic, but it's their best option given such extreme poverty.

Again, it's a humanitarian issue requiring a multidisciplinary approach with experts ranging from economists to agronomists to engineers to doctors; all to reduce poverty. IF poverty is reduced, water and crop utilization increased, schools built, etc THEN Chinese families won't be forced to make these brutal choices.

It's not an issue that will be solved by a Feminist proclamation on misogyny. Feminists tend to alienate potential allies before they even begin to address issues. Especially other cultures. They obscure the real problems, waste effort, and lead down blind alleys. They don't understand practical concerns, and probably can't, lacking the expertise. Frankly, they waste good intentions and resources, fail to develop viable strategies, doing more harm than good.

We're past the era of simple moralizing about equality. We don't need more name calling, more division, or more sermonizing on The Misogynists Everywhere.

We need broad coalitions to create solutions to difficult technical problems in the real world. We need humanitarians from a broad range of backgrounds and technical fields.

That is essentially why we're in a post-Feminist era, and why only 1/5 of American women identify as Feminist, becasue the movement hasn't evolved fast enough to keep pace with the times.

Hey Michelle -- congratulations on the book, and it's great to see you here. Sorry you had to run into kozmik right out of the gate, though. The boy has issues. It all started with the bra-burning, apparently. That's when k. here realized that all forms of misogyny are motivated by poverty, which is why there's no gender oppression among the world's wealthy.

For a Westerner, though, even entering into discussions about the lamentable situation of women worldwide is fraught with taboos.

Indeed it is. Well, from one Westerner to another, thanks for taking them on, and best of luck with the book!

on the verge of codifying the right of Shiite men to rape their wives.

That should also be addressed to illustrate Feminism's incapacity to address real world problems.

The problem in many really poor communities like rural Afghanistan, or for that matter Biblical era Western culture, or during our middle ages, is that extreme poverty rules out marriage, sex, or procreation for love.

Marriage, sex, and procreation become a contractual obligation under very harsh, existential, circumstances. It's tragic, but an unavoidable product of harsh poverty.

For example, a dirt poor farmer seeking a wife will typically pay a dowry. That serves two functions: to prove he's capable of providing and even saving a buffer; and to reimburse the women and/or her family for the cost of raising her during which time she was less economically viable, less able to compete in the labor market, than a male child. The farmer takes a wife specifically to procreate and for her to help laboring.

It's very important to understand this isn't a marriage of love. It's a marriage of harsh necessity, for both partners, with express goals: survival and procreation, in extreme circumstances.

For them, a woman who is married must have sex and bear children, just as a man must pay dowry, and must provide for her while she'd incapacitated by pregnancy.

Feminists can screech moral fatwas all day, 356/year.

Nothing will change until the fundamental equation of poverty and such hash realities change.

Feminists simply do not have the technical skills to change those issues.

At best they can raise issue awareness, but they usually inject so much ideology and misinformation, even that winds up sowing more counterproductive controversy than productive action.

Again, why we're in a post-Feminist era and why we need technically skilled humanitarians to address these issues.

I'm curious about something. Why do people even bother to discuss feminism or feminist books here? It's quite clear kozmik is on a one-man filibuster and that management doesn't care about it.

I've bothered getting both this book and Jessica Valenti's book and reading them, having seen the initial discussion announcements. It'd be nice to actually, you know, discuss the book, not kozmik.

Why would adamsj or anybody else want to participate in a discussion completely dominated by one interlocutor? Especially if these others have read the book and the interlocutor has not?

If feminists thinking is as irrelevant as you describe, your compulsion to hijack the discussion of it is bizarre.