My former sister in law bought the feminist message, which, through her filter was: "If you are unhappy in your marriage, leave." She was not the only one; I have met or known numerous women so persuaded.

She had three children, one in highschool. Her husband was and is a good person, complex, somewhat inaccessible, but attentive to his family, loving and nothing abnormal about him.

She ran off with the contractor who was building her dream home.

Now he is remarried, very happy, and of course, as well off financially as ever, despite his generous settlement to "the mother of my children."

She, however, is impoverished and bewildered.

I told her at the time to go to therapy to find out what was making her so unhappy, because likely it was not her marriage, and in any case, she should know before ending it; I told her at the time that there was a huge economic price to pay for what she was contemplating; I told her that statistically speaking, women in the USA were not married past the age of 40 so that her chances of remarrying were nil.

But she could not hear me.

I do not like the Hillary type feminists; they like to volunteer me, a single working mom, for more and more work; they like to exploit the hell out of me, forcing me to neglect my own child for the sake of them making partner, and then write a stinking referral letter about how talented I am at "balancing family and work" when they downsize and I no longer have a job.

Matter of fact, I dispise these feminists, I am a working class person; if I were not educated and smart, I'd vote Republican just to smack them in the face, virtually, that is.

Now they want to draft my daughter into the military so that some female they know of the elite can make general?

No thanks.

It sounds from the now-tiny amount I know know about your sister-in-law, that she'd have made her big mistake whether inspired by Gloria Steinem or Doctor Phil. Starting in the seventies and continuing to the present day, the pressure on Americans to have meaningful and self-realizing lives has been relentless. And professional feminists were only one strain among many in the quest to make our lives deeper, richer and more spiritually resonant, which somehow, for an awful lot of people, didn't work out.

It's tempting to blame the spiritual poverty pimps of the human potential movement. It's also tempting to blame the drinkers, philanderers and suburban bohemians of the previous, "greatest" generation, who stumbled through the Great Depression and the War, and ended up flabby and confused, rich and secure, but not happy, so's you'd notice. And one of the things they dumped along the way was the politics that got them through the thirties in the first place: the ability to say the words "working class" without smirking.

We all come in for some blame: Mom, Dad, Dick and Jane. We surrendered in the class war so we could win the cold war, and for most of us it was a pretty good deal, but you can see where the rest of this is going, can't you? Capitalism's atomising of any institution that doesn't serve it is like a fact of nature in this country. In the end, we're all consumers, which means we are alone with our appetites and fantasies: our identities.

The identity feminists are no more or less inimical to the general well-being than any of the other social operators prefixed with "identity." Life without them is easier than with. Hillary Clinton is saddled with them, and for the first time, like, ever, I find myself feeling something for her, like sympathy or pity. I still won't vote for her, but at least now i think she's human.

"I told her at the time that there was a huge economic price to pay for what she was contemplating; I told her that statistically speaking, women in the USA were not married past the age of 40 so that her chances of remarrying were nil."

Yeah, god forbid she should learn how to support herself, eh? Living off a man is so much easier.

Maybe you could have helped her more by advising she get an education, at least some training so that she could earn her own living. Then it wouldn't matter so much if her 'chances of remarrying were nil"