You know the World is really changing when men are promoting books from the mid-1970s, books written by women with feminist sensibilities...

To wit: In today's Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley recalls when he first read Maxine Hong Kinston's memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.

But the trail of recommendation goes much further than that. It began with a comment in a blog-post that was followed-up by another commenter who went to the trouble of looking up the first reference, and posting an additional comment with the above link-- and both commenters are men.

Even years before the past decade or so of more visible news stories about the abuses of women all over the world. the ethnic cleansings, honor killings, mutilations, oppression, withholding of what should be basic human rights... and so on... even before I knew about these things, I already could see that the world was a place where men waged war... and often used the bodies of women for their battlegrounds. I could see that in the 80s and '90s. But men didn't want to hear it. Since then, the horrors have only grown and become magnified. Some men see and hear it now. Others are diggin in their heels, resisting the inevitable.

I used to wonder how long it would be before other men-- those who preferred not to wage war-- would see that they were needed to hold other men accountable for their behavior. It is happening... not everywhere, and not enough, but it is happening.