SOURCE: Rollins, Karina. “Power Play.” Public Interest, no. 116 (summer 1994): 124–27.

In the following review of Fire with Fire, Rollins finds shortcomings in Wolf's preoccupation with an outmoded notion of patriarchal oppression and a tendency to resort to unsubstantiated generalizations and truisms.

Women's fight for equality did not end when women won the vote seventy-three years ago. Equal in theory but often not in practice, many women turned to feminism to help them fight the remainders of inequality. While these remainders were real, the feminist movement of the 1960s and beyond frequently degenerated into extremism and radical excess.

In Fire with Fire, Naomi Wolf attempts to extract the good from the bad. While she applauds the feminist movement in general, she notes a development she believes harmful to women: the notion of women as helpless victims, unable to stand up to the “patriarchy.” Women are anything but, she argues, and...