The recent State of the Union-type stirring from the Obama camp has led me to ponder the state of something else: feminism. But what are the recent feminist milestones, the ones that will one day be read over in the history books and chuckled about as artifacts from a time when we actually needed something like feminism to fight a thing called “social inequality”? Answering that question proved harder than I expected.

There are a few statistics that speak to the general state of feminist affairs — more women in college, and expanded contraception options — but overall, feminist activism is pretty low. This is not for a loss of things to fight for. Women still get paid less than men for comparable work, abortion law remains tenacious and gay marriage continues to be shot down (not to equate feminism with any particular sexual preference, but simply with the fight against sex and gender-related oppression). Though there is a higher consciousness of women’s rights, sex and gender-related problems still run deep. Where are the landmarks of feminist action against them?

The first thing that comes to mind, as a kind of un-example, is Hillary Clinton. Oh, Hillary. I cannot help but feel a little sad that you didn’t put an end to the white male tradition in the U.S. presidency. Yes, “white” no longer applies and that is good. But women did end up getting the short end of the stick this past election. There are valid arguments that Clinton’s loss was due to factors other than her gender, and she did get a doozy of a consolation prize. But to the extent that one person can represent a huge category of people — the same extent to which Obama can represent all African-Americans — Clinton is a representative of the group “women,” and seeing her in the Oval Office would have provided relief to the half of the population that firmly believes, “Yes we can, too.”

Yet this is an example of what could have been, rather than what really was. It would seem that the movement has lost momentum or lost focus. My generation often shows either a mild disdain for feminism, seeing it as passé, or a vague affiliation to it that they would rather not discuss. Either response is basically lukewarm, so it’s no wonder there’s little “movement” to speak of.

Perhaps this is because to align yourself too closely with feminism is to be less cool — or, stated another way, to be less lukewarm. As the characters of Sex and the City suggest, us modern gals are totally beyond feminism — we’re so empowered, we don’t even need it anymore! By omitting explicit reference to feminist history or politics in a show about independent women, theorist Angela McRobbie has noted, they read as outside of feminist history. Since they supposedly live in the same world as their audience, they effectively write feminism out of real life. I remember hearing a woman on NPR apologize for alluding to feminism in a discussion on Palin: “I hate to bring up the F word, but I’m going to do it: feminism,” she said. It was as if she were conjuring up an old ghost that might return if we say its name too loud. Such a reference suggests feminism is an open and shut deal, and we’ve moved on. But simply acting as if women are already liberated does not make that true.

The negative side effects of losing feminist momentum are visible even here at Cornell. The way in which freshman women are typically received on campus is one example. It is common knowledge that a goal of many Cornell (frat) parties is to get first-year women drunk so they are easier sexual targets. My older brother’s advice as I set out for college comes to mind: “Don’t drink the punch!” A college grad himself, he knew that spiked punch is pushed on girls at parties. The hope is that youngsters naive to college partying might drink it like juice, and get drunker than they planned. It is a small-scale version of “ladies nights” and other sexist schemes to fill a nightspot with drunk women for men to pursue. And although this particular example represents only a small portion of the Cornell experience, it is troubling that this is the norm despite its sexist, predatory connotations. It shows some feminist issues have fallen through the cracks, and there is no discernable movement to sweep them up.

I intended to write this column on the state of the feminist movement, but after taking a close look, that movement seems dispersed almost to the point of nonexistence. There is hope in that, although the movement itself is illusive, feminism as a way of thinking has been firmly established. You can find instances of feminist progress if you look hard enough, in everyday life as well as in politics, art and entertainment. It would just be nice if all those instances formed a more perfect union.