Feminism is having a moment in American pop culture. Celebrities are clamoring to identify with a word that was more likely to be used as an insult in mainstream conversation just a decade or so ago, and products as wide-ranging as exercise routines and absorbent underwear are marketed to millennial women under the guise of “empowerment.”

Among many feminists, the growing cachet of feminism is touted as evidence that women’s rights are expanding in America and that more people are getting on board with a feminist program, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign as the first female presidential nominee by the Democratic Party often cited as evidence. On a recent Sunday afternoon walk through Brooklyn, I saw no fewer than three “The Future is Female” t-shirts, the thin, sans-serif letters peeking out from beneath denim jackets.

The implied message is that our future female rulers will be an improvement from the previous ones — more gentle, more benevolent — by virtue of their biology. (It should perhaps be noted that the original t-shirt was designed in tribute to a lesbian separatist slogan rediscovered in photo archives from the 1970s, and that a portion of its proceeds are donated to Planned Parenthood.)