I have no problems with your overall perspective on gender inequity, but your views on the Civil War strike me as quite misplaced. Federalism and a cultural clash? I don't buy it at all, but how do you divorce the CULTURAL importance of slavery from the South? One can't talk about the Antebellum South without talking about slavery. The South was a slave-based society. This is the pathetic reasoning propagated by reconstructionist-era Southerners. It may have IN PART been due to Federalism, but the issues that surrounded slavery were THE MAIN forces behind the move to Civil War.

Furthermore, debates over who has it worse only undermine liberal-minded activism.