It’s been over a year since I read the author’s response to a review of his work in which he dismissed the review author — a respected Enlightenment scholar — as seemingly “one of a small circle of academic feminists who lean to sectarianism” but I have very much not forgotten.

Enlightenment studies — esp certain corners of Enlightenment studies — has a huge gender problem that gets obscured because there’s great work on gender and Enlightenment. But far too many (not all) men who work on the Enlightenment see that work as additive and unnecessary.

Not unrelated: far, far too many men who work on the Enlightenment don’t react well when a woman criticizes their work. That review response was an egregious example.