My lunch with an antifeminist pundit

But --

You're wondering: Are they defined to some extent by their limited options?

Yes.

I don't see the evidence of that. Because other opinion data will tell you little ones want to be home with their mom, and there's overwhelming sentiment that people think it's best for kids to be with their mothers. At the margins, if there were all sorts of attractive options, maybe more mothers would say, "Maybe I could swing working full-time." But I don't think the data supports that. I think the data supports people thinking that little kids ought to be home.

Fine. But why is that parent necessarily the mother? Why can't we get used to the idea that it would be just as good for kids to be home with dads?

Who wants that? Why would we do that?

I know lots of men and women who --

I think women who really want that ought to find a guy who wants it. I don't see why there's any big movement needed for this. If some woman really feels very strongly that things ought to be divvied up that way I think she ought to do what that woman [Hirshman] suggested in the American Prospect: marry a starving artist or marry a liberal. Marry the guy who feels that way and do your own thing!

But social expectations make that --

Society will never, ever, ever, ever validate it. Ever. Ever. So, next question. [Because] now we're baying at the moon: Damn, life's unfair! Damn! Life's unfair!

Life's unfair and there's no room for progress?

Room for progress is limitless! We're talking about little trade-offs.

You're accepting that society won't ever validate a man who stays home! That's a big trade-off!

But it's not my opinion! Find me one. Find me one in the history of recorded mankind. You know what's funny to me? Whatever men do, as I understand it, is the status job in that society. Like if they gathered [instead of hunted] in some damn society, then gathering would be the status job because men were doing it.

But that's exactly the problem! To say that it's been true historically without exception doesn't make it right!

They care more about [status] than we do. But that's also why they care more about paid work. And obviously I'm talking broadly here. There are women who dance circles around guys, make them look like slugs. But [there are] recent stories about women being handed keys to the executive washroom and going, "Eh, I really don't want it!"

Are there feminists you respect?

I would cite the refreshing candor in the Hirshman piece. Can we knock off the weak-minded self-loathing tool-of-the-patriarchy stuff? I've been told that for 30 years by the way!

I believe you.

I've also been told I wouldn't have a law degree if it weren't for Betty Friedan. I don't get the connection, personally. I don't feel beholden to feminists for anything.

I was just getting to that. You don't feel beholden to them for anything?

No, I don't.

If the feminist movement had not taken place --

I would be a lawyer.

And you would be making the same amount of money you do now?

Uh, yeah! You don't think they can take credit for that! There was a natural revolution underway! My timing was good.

But the timing of that revolution wasn't accidental! You don't think the social movements of the '60s and '70s -- including feminism -- accounted for the advances women were making?

[Pause] I think they may have sped it up. But I would argue that there may have been an expensive trade-off. I often wonder if it would have been worth it to have it take a little longer, without all the negatives, whether a more natural evolution would have been better.

But without feminism would you have as many female colleagues and peers as you do?

We were only 20 percent of my [law school] class in '76. So what do you mean would I have had as many? I would have had what I had. Now we're up to 50 percent for law school.

Exactly. So if feminism hadn't happened, would you be doing an interview about your book with a female journalist and a female publicist from your publishing house?

What the hell would I have written about? Come on! Jeez!

People say, "Oh, feminism is dead." No. What I am telling my audience is they are thriving! Larry Summers. He paid these women an enormous compliment in saying, "Let's talk about these ideas." And the feminist heroine of the episode [Nancy Hopkins] had to run from the room breathless and sick to her stomach. He makes a perfectly legitimate point based on data -- disagree with him, but let's talk about it! -- and suddenly, $50 million over the next five years [to improve Harvard's hiring policies for women]. It was a brutal reeducation camp. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

But feminists didn't win against Summers. He didn't get fired.

You're not serious.

I am serious.

They got plenty.

Not what they demanded. He didn't lose his job.

They didn't lose. They totally won. It was abject mea culpa.

Summers is in charge of an institution that educates women and his comments were about educating women and he is still in charge of the institution that educates women. And that's a loss for feminists.

Oh, huge win! Huge! It's just another example of what damn clout they have! You think it's a loss because he didn't get fired? Why did he have to apologize or give them a nickel? Like, wake up and grow up, girls!

What is your response to Terry Martin Hekker's recent Times piece in which she took back her enthusiasm for staying home?

What was her bottom line? I should have started doing something when the kids didn't need me full-time. That's exactly the pattern women are following.

But you and I come from a privileged place in that we have careers you can "take time off from." There are few jobs that offer that. What about women who want to protect themselves economically but don't have jobs you can take time off from?

So then maybe they won't. But opinion data tells us that they want to.

In your chapter about divorce you write, "when the traditional values of self-sacrifice and duty lose to conflict with the feminist doctrine of self-fulfillment and personal autonomy, children pay a very steep price." Is your take that people in unhappy marriages should stay in those marriages?

Depends on how unhappy. My understanding is, and it comports with research and common sense: open conflict? Bad. Seething sorts of resentment that people can weather? Not so bad.

I'll tell you where the loss has been. There used to be an overwhelming sentiment that you should stay together for the sake of the kids. We don't have a majority believing that anymore. And that's a loss.

Now people probably give up too easily. What kept you making the effort was social disapproval. Now you talk yourself into the idea that the kids will be fine, and more -- they'll be better off! I am in the camp that children of divorce, as we know, suffer. We've lost that sense of self-sacrifice.

Next page: What business is it of yours or mine if guys are controlling their girlfriends' money or asking them where they've been?