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This article makes some good points but overall it is dishonest in it's central premis, that men have traditionally had women's best interest at heart. This is not universally true. All one has to do is to examine traditional cultures and societies, not only in history, but ones which exist today, where women have ZERO political, social or economic autonomy.

Exhibit A: Islamic countries. Is the price of relinquishing all decision making to males: honor killings, forced marriages, girls and women bartered and sold into sexual indenturing, bartered and sold to pay debts sold, or sold into prostitution to pay debts? If so, who would fault women for deciding that there must be something better than the costs of this type of "protection" for the less fortunate of their members?

Read this article on the state of girl/women's "protection" in Pakistan, a very patriarchal traditional society where men's duty is to "protect" girls/women.

http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/ASA330062002?OpenDocument

It seems to me the type of chivalrous "protection" offered to many women in return for relinquishing autonomy is akin to the type of "protection" offered by the Mafia to small business owners. If you pay are compliant and don't balk at the price we ask you to pay, perhaps nothing unfortunate will happen to you on your way home.

This is not to say the pendulum hasn't swung too far in another direction. But all this rosy picture painting of the "chivalry" of the past is dishonest. The older ways had/have many liabilities for women and these liabilities do not equal out with the beneifits. The old "protection" system has has been rejected by women in modern societies. Western women (and increasingly all women around the globe), have flat out indicated that they have little or no stake in maintaining the status quo systems of the past which on many levels DO NOT and DID NOT look out for their basic minimum bodily safety let alone their best interests in health, edcuation, and general happiness. This is the lure of "feminism" or indeed of any popular rebellion against the status quo. Sometimes people would rather face an uncertain future than face the known inequities and injustices of the past.

What many anti-feminists fail to do is look at the past with a critical eye. They also fail to acknowledge the tremendous progress and superiority of countries who have embraced women's greater autonomy over countries which haven't. It is plain to see that overall, everyone in society is better off when women are engaged in the political process. Even with the problems inherent in change (and there are always problems) we are all better off (not just women) by moving forward not backward in history.

"Exhibit A: Islamic countries. Is the price of relinquishing all decision making to males: honor killings, forced marriages, girls and women bartered and sold into sexual indenturing, bartered and sold to pay debts sold, or sold into prostitution to pay debts? If so, who would fault women for deciding that there must be something better than the costs of this type of "protection" for the less fortunate of their members? "

Your "Exhibit A" and the examples that follow are all from societies that have eschewed Western Civilization and the Judeo-Christian concept of human dignity. Yet feminist radicals don't seem to congregate outside of mosques and embassies with their signs and soap boxes... they infiltrate the churches, synagogues and social agencies instituted to provide them with the abilities and the rights to form just such protests. In this light, the radical feminist deconstructors are doing more to take America in the direction of the Taliban than vice versa.

It might also interest you to know that, in some of these Middle Eastern hell holes that you mention, the children - including the boys - are socialized by their mothers moreso than their fathers, who may not even meet them until they are almost teenagers. This would make room for the argument that these societies are more matriarchal than feminists would have us believe. Also, parallels could be made between children being raised sans paternal influence in communal "harems" and children being raised sans paternal influence in daycare facilities and public schools. Looking at the results of 50 years of increasing fatherlessness and feminizing of boys, the United States may yet produce an Osama bin Laden of its own.

Whoa, Lorianne, are you equating conditions women endure in certain non-Western societies with those they endure or endured Western societies? I don't recall the horrors and hardships being visited upon women in Western societies over any span of time you wish to consider as ever being as bad as what women are and have faced elsewhere. I recall no "clitorectomy" (parts of Africa, today) nor "kitchen deaths" (rural India, today still) nor the woman being killed when her husband died (Egypt, India). You will not convince folks by blaming one group for something it didn't do.