Nothing says boomer narcissism like identifying a particular problem in one's own sphere of understanding and deciding it must be entirely new and unique. At least that's the only way I can begin to understand Hirshman's completely absurd assertion that "Only women seem to need to separate and destroy in order to start all over again with each generation."

It would take far too long to detail how western history and literature (from Oedipus to Henry IV to HW Plainview) has faithfully told and re-told the story of men rejecting the worlds and lives of their fathers. Certainly, it is a failure of Western culture to have for so long ignored the parallel stories of mothers and daughters, but to attribute to that story a uniqueness that denies the experiences of fathers and sons is to remake the mistakes of the dead white men that the second-wave feminists worked so hard to debunk.

Let's not forget Elektra...

This puts me more in the mind of Medea.

Kill the father; rape the mother; obtain power as a shaman beyond the dreams of mere mortals.

I think it's ironic that in the article she talks about how men are free to stand on the shoulders of their distant fathers but that they must distance themselves from mother and that she cites George W as an example. I've read many times that W was always closest to his mother who raised him and even though he followed his father's footsteps into the Oval Office you can see big differences in the two Bush's presidencies which, I think, show how W has rebelled from his father's legacy. As you said, it's overly simplistic to say that children can follow in the footsteps of a distant father but that in becoming an individual its mother's embrace that we all need to extricate ourselves from.

Of course, Oedipus followed his father, right? He didn't decide that because his father was a king and married to his mother that he wanted to be a gay commoner. So, although, of course there are historical examples of rebellious sons, Oedipus makes exactly the point I made.

But he didn't "stand on the shoulders" of his father--he murdered him in order to usurp him. His story is emblematic of the male (and female) "need to separate and destroy in order to start all over again with each generation." Sure, the role he inherited/created from his act of generational destruction was a tragic copy of the one he had obliterated by murdering his father, but that is the irony of both the play and of generational conflict. It is as universal as it is ineluctable.

Thus, Oedipus is a perfect example of a man doing what so bothers you in the actions of the young women who reject Hillary Clinton as an embodiment of their mothers. These young Obama-supporting feminists--and the third-wave in general--are not rejecting the second-wave feminism of their mothers in favor of a life of chattel slavery to domineering men (which would be the parallel to Oedipus seeking the life of a gay commoner). Instead, they are rejecting the feminism of their mothers for their own feminism, which is not so different in its character other than for the fact that it is their own.

This is the story of generational creative destruction, and it is as true for Oedipus as it is for Courtney Martin. It is not unique to women, and to say so is intellectually dishonest. Feminists like Courtney Martin are players in the same tragedy that has plagued mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons since Sophocles' day. We should just be thankful that her story involves less murder and incest.

a category in order to denigrate people that group people into categories to explain a group pattern behavior? Wow! Would you 'splain that internal logic structure to me again? I must have blinked.

The entire point is that Oedipus is doing everything he can NOT to kill his father. The entire play is about the irony of how the very things everybody is doing to defy the prophecy are the things that cause it to happen.

While Oedipus does, deliberately, kill his father, he doesn't know that it is his father at the time. Oedipus does not kill his father specifically to kill his father. As soon as he realizes that he has, he is horrorstruck at what he has done.

Oedipus has nothing to do with "generational creative destruction."

For that, you want Medea and Elektra and The Bacchae (the story of Dionysus who followed in the footsteps of his own father, Zeus, who followed in the footsteps of his father, Kronos). You have a point, but the story of Oedipus has nothing to do with it.