(This is a draft of a talk and not to be cited without my permission. It was ‘written to be spoken’ so apologies for the colloquialisms)       This talk is a product of bewilderment – my own confusion – when confronted by a group of feminists (a couple of whom I had counted as friends) who were making alliances with right-wing, conservative, evangelical groups (for example, Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, The Heritage Foundation, Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), the Allianc

(This is the spoken version of the Alan Graham Memorial Lecture, that I gave at the conference ‘We The People’, Irish Association for American Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 25 April 2025. It is not the ‘final’ version, since I will continue to work on it, but gives a taste of my ideas.)     ‘We the People’. The preamble to the Constitution of the United States (1789) declares that ‘We the People of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution’. In the Frenc