SOURCE: Marshall, Megan. “Our Bodies, Our Burdens.” New Republic 190, no. 6 (13 February 1984): 33–35.

In the following negative review, Marshall criticizes Brownmiller's feminist stance in Femininity, calling it simple minded and out-of-sync with the concerns of women in the 1980s.

Just as American feminism has reached its lowest ebb, Susan Brownmiller has published a book that should have been a rallying point for a feminist revival. Not only has the E.R.A. failed repeatedly in recent years, but many women of the new generation repudiate the movement, and even its most shining examples, the middle-aged female stars of business and politics, begin interviews with “I'm not a feminist but …” What could be more needed now than a re-examination of female nature by one of the movement's intellectual founders?

Brownmiller's Against Our Will (1975), a history of rape in Western culture, was often a starting point for discussions in consciousness-raising groups, and...