ONE OF THE FEW intelligent conservative publications out there, The World & I (founded by pals of Unification Church honcho Sun Myung Moon), has a long, intriguing essay about “The Feminization of American Culture.” The writer, Leonard Sax, implies a connection between the rise of feminine values and a rise in “environmental estrogen,” due to chemical leakoffs from all the plastic products lying around our homes and landfills.

I’d already heard about the latter phenomenon in a Hugo House lecture a couple years ago by Olympia postcard designer Stella Marrs. Marrs didn’t think the pervasiveness of estrogen-like chemicals was a good thing, for women or anybody. Recent medical disputes about the long-term effects of (deliberate) estrogen therapy regimens, such as a possible increased breast-cancer risk, might back her up on this.

Which brings me to the good friend of mine who’s studied a lot about the Greek Amazons, warriors of legend who would undergo masectomies to gain better bow-and-arrow skills. Are the women of the industrialized world, Sax’s article asks, gaining more dominance at the expense of their own health?