What exactly is going on with feminism nowadays? Abortion is a perennial issue, and in that sense the question of feminism never goes away. But abortion aside, feminist issues had largely ceased to be a focus of public controversy in recent years. The Lawrence Summers affair changed all that–at least for a time. But the question of the cultural status of feminism is still a bit of a puzzler. If the Summers affair is any indication, feminism is strong among the elites, yet flimsy among the public at large.

But that formulation doesn’t quite get at the complexity of the situation. Take the problem of a woman’s biological clock. A few years ago, Time Magazine did a cover story on Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book about the biological clock. Hewlett raked feminists over the coals for suppressing public campaigns designed to alert women to the effects of aging on fertility. Yet with all the publicity, Hewlett’s book didn’t sell well. It was a downer for women, who didn’t want to hear about the pickle they were in. In a way, the feminist elites won that battle. In another sense, it a draw. The truth is that most women are in the muddled middle–unwilling to embrace feminist orthodoxy, yet equally unable to throw it off.

I thought about all this while reading Christine Rosen’s smart review of Steven Rhodes’s book on Sex Differences. I’m not at all sure I buy Rhodes’s biologism. (For my take on male/female differences, see my new City Journal piece.) In any case, what kept coming through to me as I read Rosen’s review was the strange silence and unsatisfactory compromise we seem to be stuck in when it comes to feminism.