Is Feminism Causing “Cartoonish Conversations”?

Anne Applebaum says it is in the WaPo. First she (astutely) observed:

…anyone who lives a real life in the real world knows that most women make choices about working and not working on a non-ideological basis. Many with children work because they have to — but some stay home because they have to. Many work and wish they didn’t — but some don’t work and wish they did. A lot juggle, or work part time, or do one thing and then another. In my experience, rarely do any of these decisions have much to do with politics. I know Republican women who work, Democrats who don’t and vice versa. Most such choices are determined by more mundane factors, such as money.

But then, after characterizing the “mommy wars” as “cartoon warfare” she says:

Feminism can be blamed in one sense for this cartoonish conversation: In recent years “the personal is political,” a phrase whose origins are lost deep in the history of the women’s movement, has among other things come to mean that just about anyone is allowed to transform her personal experience into a political program. Writing about oneself has a long history: The memoir, the autobiography, the roman à clef, the essay that draws on personal experience to make witty social observations — all are legitimate literary forms. But writing about oneself and then turning these observations about one’s narrow social circle into a party platform or a tax policy — that is a more modern invention, and one of more questionable legitimacy and usefulness.

I wish she had explained where “feminism” went wrong here, exactly. The feminist idea that “the personal is political” is meant to counter the libertarian view that lives are wholly constructed by individuals, and to emphasize that who we are and how we live is not ordered only by personal preferences, but also by broader social and political forces. If Applebaum feels “feminism” is causing the writing of bad books, it would be nice if she would give specific examples of feminists doing this, and articulate which tenets of feminism particularly seem to be causing it. Ironically, all she does in the article is derogate a poorly drawn caricature of feminism.