Center for Policy, Planning, and Performance

09/23/2026

Gen Z and other faux feminists
by Barbara Raye
In his recent Medium article, a Gen Z author took care to prove there was misandry in the air, the blogs, and perhaps hearts of self-proclaimed feminists. He explains why he and other Gen Z guys no longer claim to be feminists and shares a post from another Gen Z guy who does not want to date feminists because of the stated hatred of men by some who claim to be feminists. The comment section included explanations of what feminism was, why some women might be angry at men in general, and other insights. One father of daughters (among some others) agreed that feminism had just gone too far. I offer a few points to consider.

1. Feminism has not gone far enough to achieve economic equity or equal opportunity in employment

The Economist online reports:
“FULL-TIME working women in America earned only 82.2% of men's median weekly earnings last year, according to a new report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a think-tank in Washington, DC. Women earned less than men in almost all occupations.”

AI overview – repeats the gap data above and adds the following:
“The wage gap is significantly wider for women of color. Compared to white, non-Hispanic men, Black women earn roughly 64 cents and Hispanic/Latina women earn about 58–60 cents on the dollar, while Asian women approach parity or near-parity depending on the dataset.

“Men and women remain concentrated in different industries. For instance, a substantial share of professional women work in education and healthcare (e.g., teachers and registered nurses), where median weekly earnings still favor men in the same sectors. Conversely, male-dominated fields like engineering, construction, transportation, and finance report higher average compensation and wider pay disparities.

“Major factors keeping the wage gap open include occupational sorting, uneven distribution of family caregiving responsibilities, and ongoing structural or wage discrimination.”

2. Labels are used by people to define something about themselves, not to get dates or define personal attributes of who they might not want to date.

The fact that others might misappropriate the same label you choose to do stupid, ignorant things or make unfair generalizations, speak hateful words, take illegal or evil actions should not result in rejection of the label by those who took it on in good faith and know its meaning.

The author, used to be a feminist but isn’t anymore. That is certainly his right, but I suggest he didn’t take on the label “feminist” because he deeply held the values and goals of feminism. He might have been a “feminist in training” but skipped a few lessons.

I suspect that some Christians struggle with what people calling themselves Christian do in the name of Christianity. Some (I hope many) Republicans are struggling these days with what the current administration is doing in the name of being Republican. Many people in the United States disagree with what some others do in the name of the United States. Then there are states, organizations, communities, groups, movements, and every other label you can think of where some minority of people use the same label we have chosen for ourselves to do or say things we don’t like or disagree with – often vehemently.

Some are hurtful and provoke defensive responses. Few should cause us to reject the label altogether – if we chose the label because of the values or beliefs truly represented by that label.

3. It is okay to be and express anger at what has been done to women and minorities by those holding while male power.
Women who express anger or even rage at how they have been treated by men is okay. Women expressing anger when our current Secretary of Defense removes the names of women and minorities from promotion lists or requires testosterone tests for service is okay. Women expressing anger when the President of the United States calls women reporters “piggy,” “ugly,” or tells them to “smile more” is okay. Women leaders who are angry that they are defined by their fashion choices in public media coverage are okay. Married women (and a few men) should be angry when a piece of national legislation is intended to put up barriers to their exercise of their voting rights because they followed tradition or expectations and took on their partners’ name when they married.

Misogyny is real in this culture. So is racism, homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Arab bias, anti-immigrant hysteria, ablism, agism, and a lot of other isms. Toxic male culture is real. Some misandry is also real.

4. I would like the double standard to stop

I wonder if the father who thinks feminism has gone too far, thinks men have ever gone too far? Yet, he isn’t rejecting the label of male. He still wants or assumes that his daughters will date and marry men. He might urge caution, discourage naïve belief in words alone, but still thinks “true” maleness is a good thing. I think feminism is a good thing. It hasn’t gone nearly far enough. Equality is not here. There is work to do. Some self-identified feminists say or do things that I think are responses to the reality of their experiences and not necessarily a core value of feminism. But they have a right and my support and understanding to do so. It is their life, their truth, their choice – ah, their equality that they exercise when doing so. That doesn’t make me no longer a feminist.

Nor do I think any feminist is trying to become date worthy to guys who don’t want to date them. They have better things to do. (I also suspect the feeling is mutual.) And when should someone’s date criteria rank as a public policy initiative? Private lives and preferences should remain private and personal. There should not be public and social legal prohibition, discrimination, or disparate economic and treatment outcomes because of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, physical or mental abilities, economic status, or sexual identity. That is what feminism is about – not personal attraction or private love life issues.

Jeez – every possible label that includes me has been negatively generalized by someone. Some I cannot reject such as female, mother, German/English heritage, rural, southern, Boomer, and others. Some, I refuse to reject, such as feminist, activist, socialist, progressive, environmentalist, animal rights advocate, and more – because I have chosen them and know what they mean.

This is what living in a free society means. To expect or demand otherwise is the stuff of privilege.

Barbara Raye

A link to the original article is below:

Why the manosphere isn’t the reason: it’s the symptom

09/04/2026

Hello Everyone. We are offering one of my favorite workshops. The Learning Style Inventory has helped everyone understand how they learn and how to effectively share new information to others who learn differently. Many have told me the tool helped explain a lot of issues they had in school, with family members, and on the job. Please join.

We are also using a new (to us) tool for registration. Please let me know how it works.

Join us for the Learning Styles Inventory! Knowing how you and others understand new information or approach new situations matters. Whether you are starting…

08/19/2026

I think about my "mission" in life and hope it is supporting ethical change agents and helping them to become more effective. I try to maintain communication with several former clients and staff members and enjoy their progress and success.

A colleague some years ago told me that angels stop by at just the right time to guide or offer affirmation and encouragement. That was several years ago after a resident of the County who didn't know me stopped by the office to see me and to say he was inspired by the work and process I was using to lead the Ramsey County strategic plan. Over ten thousand residents participated in some way in that process. His visit buoyed my spirit during a time it needed it.

Last year when cleaning out a few boxes stored in the garage, I found a newspaper clipping with a letter to the editor from a community member that said I just hadn't help to bring a shelter for battered women to the community, I was helping people become and be better people.

Today, I received an unsolicited message from another former client. He wrote: "I was thinking of you today. I do a lot of work with systems and leaders. You really helped me be a better leader. Thank you!" We haven't talked in several years. But, today, he reminded me of my "mission" and buoyed my spirit at another time when it is most welcome.

We all need encouragement at times and it seems I have a few visiting angels who stop by - at just the right times. I am grateful beyond measure. I hope you all have a few as well.

07/27/2026

I find this article challenging - but perhaps the right thing. I have often spoken about the contradiction in foundations that give money to causes aimed at stopping systemic poverty or discrimination while at the same time maximizing their corpus by investing in the same systems that are root causes and beneficiaries of those same systems. I have entertained the tax exemption for religious group-owned property being reversed as I weigh justice values. My organization has benefited from small grants and individual donations that are tax deductible. And, I deduct my own modest charitable donations on my tax return. It is an interesting topic.

Of course I never have nor will ever be making donations of the type and scale Reich mentions. But - perhaps his reforms merit consideration. What do you think?

And the gusher of it is just beginning

04/28/2026

Thanks to Joe Nathan for this story. I hope we all lie as well as she did in these times.

A 30-year-old nun wrote four sentences to an archbishop in 1942. His reply was four words. Those four words saved 83 children from the gas chambers.
Her name was Sister Denise Bergon.
December 1942. Capdenac, southwest France. A small Catholic convent school called Notre-Dame de Massip.
Sister Denise was the youngest Mother Superior in the region. Fifteen nuns answered to her. A few hundred Catholic girls boarded at the school.
Beyond the convent walls, France was being emptied of its Jews.
The roundups had started in Paris. Foreign Jews first. Then French citizens. Then children. Families separated on train platforms. Cattle cars heading east. Everyone knew where they went. Almost no one spoke about it.
Her region was supposed to be safe. Vichy's "Free Zone." That illusion died in November when German troops occupied it anyway.
Jewish children began appearing in the woods around Capdenac. Alone. Starving. Some had Resistance contacts. Most had nothing.
Sister Denise had already taken in a few. Gave them Catholic names. Enrolled them as students. Taught them to cross themselves.
But it couldn't stay small.
More children were coming. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. If she kept going, she'd have to lie. Systematically. For years. To Vichy officials. To the Gestapo. To her own nuns.
She didn't know if a Catholic nun was allowed to do that.
So she wrote to the one man who might give her permission.
Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse.
Three months earlier, in August 1942, Saliège had done something almost no other French bishop dared.
He was 72. Paralyzed. Confined to a wheelchair. Could barely speak above a whisper.
But he had his letter read in every church in his diocese.
"The Jews are men. The Jews are women. They are our brothers. A Christian cannot forget this."
A direct condemnation. Of Vichy. Of the deportations. Of the silence.
Out of 100 French bishops, fewer than ten spoke against the persecution. Saliège spoke the loudest.
Vichy tried to suppress his letter. The BBC broadcast it anyway. De Gaulle's Free French reprinted it. Resistance papers circulated it across the country.
Sister Denise's own local bishop supported Pétain. She couldn't ask him.
So she wrote to Saliège.
One question. Is it acceptable for a nun to lie, systematically and deliberately, to save Jewish children?
His reply came quickly.
Four words.
"Mentons, ma fille, mentons."
Let's lie, my daughter, let's lie.
She had her answer.
The children came in larger numbers now.
Annie Beck. Twelve years old. Her aunt put her on a train when Toulouse became too dangerous.
Hélène Bach. Also twelve. Arrived days later. She had a younger sister named Ida. When the Resistance came to take them, Ida wouldn't let go of their mother's hand.
Hélène never saw either of them again. Both murdered at Auschwitz.
"If my sister had not let go," Hélène said seventy years later, "she would have been in the convent with me."
Ten children. Twenty. Fifty. Eventually 83.
Sister Denise couldn't hide them from everyone. She told the school director. The chaplain. One trusted nun.
Four people knew the full truth.
The other eleven nuns were told a partial story. The children were Catholic refugees from Alsace-Lorraine. Displaced by war. Traumatized. The nuns believed it. Fed them. Taught them. Never questioned their names.
But Jewish children didn't know Catholic prayers. Didn't cross themselves correctly. Didn't know the Mass.
Sister Denise invented a cover.
The children would pose as communists.
"Our parents were communists," they'd say if anyone asked. "They rejected religion. We were never taught."
It worked perfectly. Communist families existed everywhere in wartime France. Their children often knew nothing about religious practice.
If the children looked nervous during Mass, it was discomfort. Not deception.
The cover held.
Underneath the convent, Sister Denise prepared hiding places. Cellars. A hole beneath the chapel floor.
Jewish families had sent what they could. Jewelry. Cash. Photographs. Identity papers.
If any of it was found during a search, everything would collapse.
So late at night, while the convent slept, she dug holes in the garden. Buried the valuables. Marked nothing. Kept the locations only in memory.
She also kept records. Real names. Origins. Family contacts. She wanted to reunite them after the war.
If she was caught with those records, she'd be shot.
The Gestapo came more than once. So did the Milice, Vichy's brutal militia.
She received them calmly. Showed them the Catholic students. The chapel. The classrooms.
They never found the children in the cellars. Never found the jewelry in the garden. Never found the records.
She ran the operation for twenty months. December 1942 to July 1944.
Every single one of the 83 children survived.
Not 82. Not "most of them." All 83.
After liberation, families came to reclaim their children. Sister Denise gave them back. Returned every piece of jewelry. Every franc. Untouched.
Children whose families had been murdered stayed longer. She helped them find relatives abroad. Some went to Israel. Some to America. Some stayed in France with distant cousins.
Then she stayed at the convent. Ran the school. Trained novices. Said almost nothing about the war for decades.
In 1980, Yad Vashem named her Righteous Among the Nations.
She kept running the convent.
In 1992, they planted a cedar tree in the garden. Near the spot where she'd buried the jewelry fifty years earlier.
The street outside was renamed Rue Sœur Denise Bergon.
She died in 2006. Age 94. In the same convent she had protected for 64 years.
In her final years, the survivors returned. They were in their seventies. She was in her nineties. They brought their children. Their grandchildren. Three generations sitting together in the garden where she'd buried their parents' wedding rings.
"She was like a mother," Annie Beck said. "She saved our lives."
Here's why this story matters.
Sister Denise Bergon never wrote a memoir. Never gave interviews. Never appeared in documentaries. Never left Capdenac.
She wrote one letter to an archbishop asking if she was allowed to lie to save lives.
He said yes.
So she lied. For twenty months. To the state. To the Gestapo. To the Milice. To most of her own nuns.
She kept 83 children alive.
Then she gave them back. With every piece of jewelry their parents had sent. Untouched.
Her crime was writing a letter. And listening to the answer.
Her legacy is 83 human beings who got to grow up. Who had children. Who had grandchildren. Who are alive today because a young nun in a small French town asked one question and received four words that defined the rest of her life.
Mentons, ma fille, mentons.
Let's lie, my daughter, let's lie.
{image created by AI}

04/24/2026

When I was a young adult, women musicians were not allowed to play in orchestras.

Today at Minnesota Orchestra Hall the Brahms program was wonderful and included a piece by a woman composer. The whole concert was lead by a woman conductor.

In addition, the orchestra was comprised of at least one-third women musicians. They were not only violinists and first chair, but were playing bass. cello, woodwind, and brass instruments as well. It was a joy to be there and to see the new places women hold.

Change happens. Progress is made. In time, with our efforts, justice can emerge. We must keep up those efforts and not allow today’s discrimination to control the future any more than we allowed past discrimination to do so.

04/12/2026

This is a good analysis of how we all became enemies of the public good and how the intentional political strategy of defining masculinity has exploited men and is killing all of us around the world.

The right cannot stop talking about masculinity.Politicians talking about “strong men” and “weak leaders.”Commentators warning that men are being “feminised....