Amy Schumer Image by Getty Images

We have, on the one hand, an Ohio legislator, active in getting an anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill approved, offering the following response, in 2012, to a reporter who’d asked him why he imagines women opt to get abortions: “It’s a question I’ve never even thought about.”

(More context tells you that he gestured first at “economics,” which suggests maybe he had thought about it for a moment or two… but also that he chuckled and referred to himself as not being a woman, implication being, why should he be expected to know about such lady-matters? So there’s that.)

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Ah, but on the other hand, there’s a brand-new Guardian op-ed making new and urgent point that Sheryl Sandberg, Lena Dunham, and Amy Schumer are not representative of the average woman’s concerns and, from this, concluding that “liberal feminism” (aka a certain former presidential candidate who I hear bravely goes without makeup these days) is effectively the same as conservative not-feminism.

Why am I juxtaposing these two items? Because I think it’s really, really important to address the limitations of glass-ceiling feminism in ways that don’t involve dismissing the need for women in positions of authority. Can this be our goal? Please? Just a suggestion.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

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