Last week, The New York Times published a podcast taping hosted by op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, featuring two “conservative feminist” writers in conversation around, let’s say, a very hot take. We are here to gawk at the headline accompanying this conversation.
Which is the real headline?
Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?
Did Liberal Feminism Ruin Higher Education?
Did Liberal Feminism Ruin Men?
Answer here. And spoilers below, because we can’t resist getting into this one a little further.
A sign of a great headline is when the publisher scrambles to revise it, in this case, no doubt, because it’s already been roasted all over the internet. As with so many remixes, I prefer the original because it’s so clearly the thing beneath the thing. What the original headline spoke to—and what Douthat’s guests are debating, really, throughout the podcast—was not the influence of a certain shade of “feminism” in the workplace versus another, but a balder, bolder application of gender essentialism: Did Women Ruin the Workplace?
To even articulate the question “did women ruin the workplace” (or “liberal feminism,” if you prefer the revised headline’s fig leaf) admits two distinct spheres, women and the workplace—as though the workplace is not people, as though there could be a workplace without women. It’s like asking the question “did [x marginalized group] ruin democracy?” It implies that what you think of as the default form of democracy, or the workplace, didn’t include everyone to begin with, which is to reveal, as soon as you give the question any credence (by, say, hosting a discussion about it), that what you wanted was never democracy, or a workplace in which everyone belongs. Which is, of course, perfectly true of our nation’s many flavors of misogyny: They do not want women in the good jobs, the positions of power, with prestige and high remuneration. They do not want women taking what they think is rightfully theirs.
As our poet laureate of posting, Joyce Carol Oates, once wrote (in response to a claim that transgenderism was on the rise because of “social contagion”): “when women demanded the vote, when minorities demand to be treated equitably, it will seem like ‘social contagion’ to those who imagine themselves doling out permission for others to live as freely & without risk as they do.”
“Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” smacks of social contagion theory. America sure was great back when men were men and they did all the work there was to do—oh, except for all those “pink collar” jobs men still don’t want, despite an unemployment crisis and despite those sectors being relatively recession-proof and on the rise (because they don’t pay a lot), because women do those jobs, and, well, they’re just better-equipped than our delicate-egoed, status-conscious, hero-complex men at sucking it up to educate our children and care for our infirm and elderly for minimal compensation. But seriously: are women ruining the workplace?
This is the same energy that enraged hordes of trolls at some gen-z Australian women doing a TikTok dance at work because their email jobs are fake and feminized and what is this world coming to when we can’t all be coal miners or Gordon Gekko?? Maybe when the machines eliminate all the email jobs, the women can disappear to win Crosses of Honor of the German Trumpian Mother and the men can get back to building something real or going to war or just being so high-agency that they reinvent the concept of “taste” as the thing that distinguishes high-value individuals? But ah, now we’re back to a Joyce Carol Oates tweet, specifically her recent delicious roast of Elon Musk. Good luck running the world if taste is what we should be selecting for in the workplace, buddy.
This headline should have been nixed as soon as it complied with Betteridge’s law. In any case, cool choice to post it on Nov. 6, 2025, one day after the anniversary of the presidential election in which, instead of electing a thoroughly qualified woman who persevered in the face of all kinds of misogynist vitriol, Americans elected a man who is definitely not ruining anything at all.
Ah, Ross. If only you were here to bring your gimlet eye to other eras of unprecedented upheaval.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand: *is shot*
Ross Douthat: Did women ruin this motorcade?
Chernobyl: *meltdown*
Ross Douthat: Did women ruin nuclear safety?
The Black Death: *1/3 of Europe dead*
Ross Douthat: Didst Thou See Yonder Goodwyfe Consorting With the Devil? For Surely It Is Her Sorcerie Plagues Us
I think that last one has some of his literary DNA, actually.
In sum: NYT, do better. Or we’ll sic the women on you.
Here's another question: How did the NYTimes even publish this? Doesn't it fit with them profiling two hacks of Fox News in the last few weeks, Dana Perino, and Greg Gutfeld? I'm think that Rupert Murdoch has secretly bought the Paper of Record. It's so insulting and yet they thought it was ok? Meanwhile the old man in the White House (what's left of it) is bulldozing democracy, and everything else, Hegseth is bombing random boats in the Caribbean, but WOMEN are the problem???
The writer should have noted that this idea (feminism ruining things) was making the rounds before Douthat put his foot in it. It's bigger than a headline or article in the NYT. Is this the next attack on "woke" ideology. Get DEI out of the way, what's next to attack for the right wing? We already know they are ramping up attacks on abortion rights.