AS LONG AS women are regarded as an aggrieved minority, lumped in with, as JohnCrosbie so eloquently phrased it, "the coloureds and the cripples,"we are expected to organize into a cohesive political lobby and petition forredress with a unified voice. Yet the role of supplicant is precisely whatwomen are trying to escape, andsince women have as many opinions as men, a false quest for unity leads toexhausting and fruitless squabbles over personalities and ideology. Feminism isviewed much like Anglicanism, as a faith with a divine creed and catechism, andwomen who don`t sing the right hymns are castigated as sinners or heretics.Excommunicated feminists develop their own bands of followers, and practicalattempts to deal with the realities of women`s lives are too often forgotten incelebrity catfights. Arguments with the World and NothingSacred illustrate vividly the extremes to which feminist fundamentalism can betaken. Both books are autobiographical and should be read in sequence: BronwenWallace and Amy Friedman knew each other in Kingston, Ontario, in the 1980S -Wallace died in 1989 - and Wallace appears as a recognizable although namelessand unsympathetic character in Friedman`s book. Friedman, born and educated inthe United States, came to feminism, or more accurately, Steinemism, via NewYork`s Barnard College, Wallace via Queen`s University and Marxist politics.Both wrote for the Kingston Whig-Standard-Arguments with the World is primarilya collection of Wallace`s newspaper columns - and moved in the tight littleworld of the Kingston literati. Wallace was a fine poet as well as a popularsocial activist, and her death from cancer at 44 elevated her to cult status;as Wallace lay dying, fellow poets chronicled the horrifying progress of herdisease in the gruesome, morbid detail reminiscent of the medieval Lives of thesaints. The transmogrification of Bronwen Wallaceinto a female Byron, the Dead Poet of literary romance, may have provoked AmyFriedman`s revulsion against the woman/victim - man/murderer ideology offundamentalist feminism. It is certainly the ideology Wallace expresseduncritically in her columns and interviews. "The power of feminism is thepower of the victim who has recognized a way to use her damage," she toldJanice Williamson in an interview. "When you get in touch with yourdamage, recognize it and care for it, you also discover the source of yourpower." In my experience, women who nurse their damageare manipulative, neurotic, hostile, and depressed. Wallace admits to intenseanger and: "I assume that the anger is shared." Why? Her poetry isfull of light and vitality; her public persona was earthy and gregarious.Williamson did not challenge Wallace`s analysis, and Wallace does not revealthe cause of her "damage." She is evasive about her past and herrelationships with men, although one produced a beloved son, and her devotedpartner Chris Whynot was with her when she died. Wallace had a full life thatothers envied, and her cancer was not gynecological. Friedman sniffs more than a whiff ofpolitical correctness in literary feminism, and Arguments with the World bearsher out. Pro-choice, anti-violence, pro-gay, antisexism, Wallace pushes allthe predictable buttons. She doesn`t argue, she declares; written with the cosycheeriness of Eleanor Roosevelt`s "My Day," Wallace`s columns seek toexhort and inspire, but like all dated journalism, her topics now seem stale,her research thin, and her attitude condescending to the women she writesabout. One of these women I happen to know, andWallace`s manipulation of the Queen`s law professor Sheila McIntyre got meintensely angry. A creative, courageous radical feminist, McIntyre provokednear-riots on campus when she lectured about sexism in the law, views nowendorsed by the former Supreme Court judge Bertha Wilson. Rather than allowingMcIntyre to express her original ideas about how the laws can be changed toassist women, Wallace sets her up as a straw man (person?) to flog on behalf ofher own conventional opinions about pornography. McIntyre fares worse at Friedman`s hands,but exactly why I can`t make out in the murky, torrential prose of Friedman`scri de coeur. "I liked Sheila McIntyre when we met, she begins withominous sweetness. "I admired her and we disagreed about some issues, butI thought the admiration and respect was [sic] mutual." Friedman thenadmits - without quoting that she harshly criticized McIntyre and other feministsat Queen`s in a series of Whig-Standard columns; McIntyre replied in aletter critical of Friedman`s competence Friedman then complains: "Why hadSheila McIntyre perceived me as a threat, as her enemy, her oppressor?" Younger than Bronwen Wallace, Friedman isa feminist of the Me generation, or as Nothing Sacred suggests, the Me! Me! Me!generation. Wallace was egocentric; Friedman is self-reflective: how doesfeminism relate to my life, my values, my needs? She searched for gurus, adoredthem, rejected them- in one case because she thought a brilliant woman was uglyand shabby - and then fought with them. That`s okay. Combat is a skill well knownto women - there are as many nasty power struggles in feminist politics asanywhere else - and Friedman astutely perceives that feminist fundamentalismencourages healthy, happy young women to see themselves as wounded victims,much as their mothers were encouraged to emulate Debbie Reynolds. The problem is that Friedman, now theanti-feminist who rejects victimization, was raped. She writes about the rape with a frozen claritythat indicates the trauma has never been exorcised. "You`ll be scarred forlife," her mother told her. In this diatribe against feminism, she doesn`tseem to understand that so much of the hostility she feels towards "white,middleclass" women like herself could be interpreted as coming from herresentment of their privilege: they have not been raped in a New York subwaystation. How dare they feel victimized? She is the real victim. A scholar seeking a political analysis ofwomen`s marginalization or a lawyer intent on judicial reform would have littlepatience with Friedman`s arguments You`re doing okay, I`m doing okay, sowhere`s the gripe? -and Friedman`s skin is too thin to take criticism. (Did hermother never explain about dishing it out, or the heat and the kitchen?) All this wailing and hair-pullingindicates that feminism seems to be dividing into two streams: women whoseexperience of alienation is personal and emotional, and women who see sexism asinherent in social and political structures. There is nothing antitheticalabout these two approaches, and feminists who divide women into saints andwitches only ensure our continued persecution.