Men Explain Things to Me

by Rebecca Solnit

Thanks to demographics, that conservative push is not going to work—the United States is not going to be a mostly white country again—and because genies don’t go back into bottles and queer people are not going back into the closet and women aren’t going to surrender. It’s a war, but I don’t believe we’re losing it, even if we won’t win it anytime soon either; rather, some battles are won, some are engaged, and some women are doing really well while others suffer. And things continue to change in interesting and sometimes even auspicious ways.

Feminism, as writer Marie Sheer remarked in 1986, “is the radical notion that women are people,” a notion not universally accepted but spreading nonetheless.

Like racism, misogyny can never be adequately addressed by its victims alone.