Henry, William. In Defense of Elitism . New York: Anchor, 1994: 108-9

Even in institutions ostensibly devoted to the life of the mind, freedom of speech is being dislodged by the perverse notion of freedom from speech. So-called "hate speech" codes are one egregious example; so are laws that unconstitutionally treat violence or harassment as worse when coupled with bigotry. But one need not defend racial epithets or sexual vulgarities as expressions of opinion to run afoul of this compulsory moralizing-one need only display a photograph of one's own spouse to someone who does not consider you, or her, liberated enough to eschew cheesecake snapshots. Sexual dicta might seem remote from the concerns of this volume, but they are in fact among the most significant points of leverage in the attempted restructuring of how elite America works because of the symbolic equation many feminists draw between such male-linked societal values as competition and conquest and the ultimate male villainy of rape. This rhetorical overkill is meant above all, of course, to win arguments-or rather, in most cases, to head them off at the pass. Once the verbal stakes escalate to that bullying extent, reason flies out the window. But at a deeper level the aim of many feminists is to debunk the most basic fact of history-that the civilized and cultured world was built almost entirely by men, pursuing such male-defined aims as conquest and fulfilling such male urges as competition and aggression. Many feminist scholars squander their careers on attempts to assert that the world owes its shape to those who cooked and cleaned, or alternatively to unsung geniuses whose memories men conspired to erase (a not entirely incidental parallel to the more exaggerated claims of Afrocentrists). Even among women prepared to accept the reality of the past, one finds a widespread yearning to rewrite the rules of the present so that women may enjoy a more glorious future.

The overt goal of these feminists is to change ground rules of working life so that wives and mothers can, as the boast runs, "have it all." They argue that society benefits by giving special privileges to mothers in the marketplace. Is that so? Let me admit here that I think children are better off when their mothers (or fathers) stay home full-time, at least until the children enter school. I believe that much of the perceived educational decline of children has very little to do with the favorite whipping boy, television, and a great deal to do with a phenomenon that more closely fits the time frame of the decline the two-income household, which in practice generally means employment for the mothers of young children. If this causal relationship holds true (and I readily concede that it is opinion rather than fact-if shared, albeit reluctantly, by virtually every working mother I know), then any benefit to society from the mother's working has to be weighed against the developmental loss to the next generation.

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Carl Gutierrez-Jones,

Department of English

University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106

E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu