By now, you’ve probably seen a certain New York Times (NYT) article on social media, well, one of the variations, at least. On 6th November, the newspaper ran a transcription of an “Interesting Times ” podcast episode as an article in their opinion section, originally titled: “Did Women Ruin the Workplace? And if So, Can Conservative Feminism Fix It?”
Over the last five days, the article has been updated with several different headline variations. At present, they have settled on “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” with a subheading asking “Can conservative feminism fix it?”.
The backlash has been swift. Jameela Jamil posted to her Instagram stories, writing, “Women! And any man who respects women. Unsubscribe from the NY Times, because it will be funny. This isn’t about cancel culture; it’s about voting with your dollar. I love making terrible rich people upset. It’s my favourite sport. Ruin their year! Feel the power of that lil button and go bye bye.”
The discussion is between Ross Douthat (a columnist for the paper), Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant. Andrews and Libresco Sargeant are both described as conservative writers and critics of feminism, but they do not agree on everything. One would think in a debate about feminism that a feminist would be present – but that doesn’t suit the narrative being built now, does it?
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Andrews is currently pushing a thesis on “The Great Feminisation,” where she argues that feminism has failed us because it’s made our institutions too feminised, which, according to her, has driven men and masculine virtues out. Whereas Libresco Sargeant has written a book, The Dignity of Dependence, suggesting that liberal feminism has failed us by forcing women to suppress their nature and fit into workplaces and social systems made for men.
To paint a picture, Ross Douthat, in the opening monologue of the podcast, says to the camera, “Men and women are different. That is a core premise of conservatism in the age of Trump: that liberalism and feminism have come to grief by pretending that the sexes are the same. But what does that difference really mean? Should the Right be trying to roll back the entire feminist era? Or is there a form of conservative feminism that corrects liberalism’s mistakes?”
Andrews, within the conversation, focuses on the #MeToo movement as an example of her theory, which she refers to as “one flavour of wokeness”, saying “The #MeToo movement was a change in the rules of how sex scandals work … It suddenly became mandatory for us to believe all women, no matter how credible or not credible their testimony might be … Pillars of civilisation – neutrality, things like the rule of law – were suddenly subject to politicisation in a way that was really, really harmful.”
Andrews' stance on the #MeToo movement is either disingenuous or ignorant, because she, and the rest of the podcast panel, continually paint a narrative that we're now in a post-feminist world, one where women have come out on top and that everyone must believe us as default. This simply isn’t true: 71,227 rapes were recorded by police in 2024 in the UK, and by the end of 2024, charges had been brought in just 2.7% of these cases. When you remember that 5 in 6 women who are raped don’t report, and the same is true for 7 in 8 men, the reality is that rape is essentially decriminalised in countries like the UK.
“We want to make sure no one else’s life is lost at the hands of this toxic site.”
Writer and founder of S3x Talks, Emma-Louise Boynton, spoke to Glamour about the NYT conversation, telling us, “The reality in which we’re all living, especially in America, is so opposed to the picture she [Helen Andrews] paints.”
She adds, “I was really trying to understand what someone’s interest is in peddling this rhetoric. I think we are seeing this increasingly in people surrounding Trump, white women in particular. There’s a certain group of white women who are peddling this incredibly misogynistic rhetoric that feeds so perfectly into the current hyper-masculine agenda, which has been ramped up over the last few years across politics, tech, and social media.”
The headline and the entire podcast discussion exist in an echo chamber, convincing themselves somehow that what they’re having is a broad conversation, a debate even. But more than that, the entire premise is oxymoronic, biased and inapposite. Because no genuine feminist is fighting for so-called ‘conservative feminism’, and no genuine feminist sees ‘liberal feminism’ as the solution, which are broadly categorised as the same by many feminists (myself included). Both uphold existing power structures and, therefore, are inherently conservative in nature.
The point of feminism is to dismantle patriarchy, not accept its parameters and bend to it. ‘Conservative feminism’ is a co-opted language that the Right have learned to borrow and weaponise. We’ve seen this time and time again, just look towards the anti-trans movement in the UK and how they claim feminism as a get-out card to wave when challenged. ‘Conservative feminism’ is just patriarchal mouthpieces in sheep's clothing.
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As Boynton notes, “I think individuals with something to gain, personally, professionally, become a mouthpiece for patriarchy in a way, and I really count her amongst that. What I really left that podcast feeling and thinking, and the same with her essay is, the question we should be asking is not ‘have women ruined the workplace’ or ‘have liberal women ruined the workplace’, but ‘how can any women today still be participating in upholding the system that harms women broadly” … there’s a privileging that’s happening, where certain women can benefit from curtailing their gender in a way that I find disturbing.”
The most recent headline the NYT chose highlights ‘liberal feminism’ as the problem rather than their initial ‘women’. Perhaps they changed this to avoid backlash and accusations of misogyny, or perhaps they wanted to spark more discourse. Either way, positioning ‘liberal feminism’ and ‘conservative feminism’ as the two sides of the coin on offer is a race to the bottom, and why choice feminism will never work. Their definitions of both liberal and conservative feminism are flimsy, but what they are against is clear: intersectional feminism. Real feminism that fights for all women, not one that wants us to assimilate into workplaces or sees working as something inherently male.
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