'Sophia' [Lady Mary Wortley Montagu] (1739) warned against accepting assertions about women's deficiencies by those who had a vested interest in promoting such deficiency, and her advice is no less pertinent today. There can be no question that men stand to gain if women's struggle for liberation can be represented as lacking seriousness or significance. And this is the case regardless of the reasons used for discrediting the women and the movement.