SOURCE: “Bad News, Good News,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. IX, No. 1, October, 1991, pp. 1, 3-4.

In the following excerpted review essay, Rapping finds shortcomings in Backlash's dogmatic feminist agenda and superficial analysis of complex, and often contradictory, social trends. According to Rapping, Faludi's book is “ill-thought-out, badly argued and way too often simply erroneous or uninformed.”

Is it the best of times or the worst of times? Have we come a long way, baby, or are we systematically being beaten back to ground zero by the right-wing goon squads? On any given day, depending on the headlines or my phone messages, I’m likely to believe either one. The times are certainly a-changing, but who’s on first? The horrors of the Reagan-Bush era—increased feminization of poverty, terrifying threats to reproductive rights, reported increases in sexual violence—certainly chill the blood. And yet, there’s...