To many people who read me on DoubleX, the women's section of Slate I helped found, the notion that I am a "radical feminist" would be funny. Most days I struggle just to be accepted into the camp of plain old feminists. This is mainly because I am not by nature ideological and generally suspicious of people who are.  I came to the conclusion that we have reached this new point in history, where the power dynamics between men and women are shifting rapidly, not by preformed ideology but by connecting the data points: college graduation rates, job projections, marriage patterns, pop culture images.  When you open your eyes to the evidence, you can see that so many of our assumptions about the natural order between men and women are no longer relevant.  In a recent article I wrote for the Atlantic, called "The End of Men" (the basis for the talk), I lay out all the statistics. In the United States, for every two men who receive college degrees, three women will do the same. This past year, for the first time, there were more women than men in the workplace.  Women are starting to flood professional fields -- they are doctors, lawyers, accountants, bankers. They hold more than half of all managerial and professional jobs. They dominate all but two of the professions projected to grow the fastest in the next 15 years (janitor and computer programmer). The worldwide economy is becoming a place where, overall, women are finding more success than men.  Lately this economic success is starting to affect the culture -- our dating lives, our marriages, how we raise our children. The phrase "first-born son" is so deeply ingrained in our culture that this statistic alone opened my eyes: In American fertility clinics, 75 percent of couples are requesting girls.
I can't help but notice that while most of the other TED talks shown on the TED website draw comments of "inspiring" or "courageous" or "beautiful," mine is labeled ... "obnoxious." Am I insulted?