Can feminist films be conservative?

'Cabrini' and 'Young Woman and the Sea' show what women are truly capable of.

It’s too bad you’re not a man,” the mayor of New York City tells the Italian-American Catholic missionary Frances Xavier Cabrini in the recent movie Cabrini. “You would’ve been an excellent man.”

She replies, “No, Mayor. Men can never do what we do.”

Two recent movies about women’s impressive achievements—Cabrini and Young Woman and the Sea, about Gertrude Ederle, who swam the English Channel in 1926—challenge viewers to reconsider what equality between the sexes should really mean. These movies are an encouraging departure from the progressive feminist views of too many Hollywood films: Cabrini’s and Ederle’s achievements happened because they were women, not because they were trying to be like or become men.

Read Jack’s entire column at Modern Age