In The Death of Feminism, Phyllis Chesler accomplishes a great many things. She provides a harrowing account of the way in which feminism, a movement she has been entrenched in since the 1960s, has become completely subsumed by the political left. This movement which ostensibly began as a means to promote women's interests now views the Democratic Party, with all of its reflexively statist and shallow solutions, as being its master (or mistress as the case may be). Nowhere is the disinterest of feminists in women's issues more evident than in the case of their sisters suffering in countries like Afghanistan (a place where Chesler was once interned), and in the Sudan. Yet, these places in which human rights violations are a daily occurrence are ignored by the left who only wish to indict their own people. They're own despised western governments have allowed their women to lead the most luxurious and pampered existences on this earth. That feminists are spoiled narcissistic creatures will not be news to anyone who knows them, but what is news is that an academic like Chesler would have the courage to defy their rancid groupthink and take a stand for what's right. The author is a democrat and a patriot which are identities she values more than being part of a clique of academic poseurs. I hope she is successful in meeting her goal of bringing about reconciliation between right and left over the need to advocate for all citizens in regions infested with slavery, clitoraldectomies, and murder. It's time for feminists to quit navel gazing and realize how lucky they are to be Americans in this land of the free.

The Death of Feminism is Phyllis Chesler's memoir of discovery and alienation from the movement she helped to create. One of the leaders of second wave feminism in the United States, her book details how her experiences of orthodox Judaism, a unhappy marriage to a man from an elite Afghani family, and a troubled sojourn to Kabul honed her moral and political sensibilities. Chesler tells how she became alienated from much of the feminist movement when many of her erstwhile collegues flirted with and were sometimes seduced by a panoply of left-wing ideologies and anti-Semitism. This cri de coeur is an important contribution to the history of the feminist movement.