The Second Sex and the Radicalism of Modern Feminism
19th March 2026
Feminism is sometimes presented by its proponents as something with which only an inveterate misogynist could disagree. “It’s just about fairness for women, allowing them the same freedoms to pursue their heart’s desire that we allow men,” it is claimed. “How can you be against that?!”
Some perhaps genuinely believe this. But it is nothing more than a rhetorical strategy to put critics on the defensive and to deflect attention from the radical core of virtually all contemporary feminist thought, at least of the kind one encounters among the cultural elite. The contemporary feminist worldview can be concisely summarized: men as a class oppose women as a class, and the only way to advance the cause of women in the face of collective patriarchal repression is to reduce or ignore the differences between the sexes altogether.
Where did such ideas come from? Some would have it that the basic ideas of feminism consist of the simple liberal principles articulated in the opening claim about freedom, and more radical divagations are of recent origin. Not true. You can find the extremism in the foundational sources of modern feminist thought. A consideration of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book, The Second Sex, which is widely acknowledged as an essential early inspiration of what would become modern feminism, proves the point.