But this familiar debate misses the point about Sotomayor. The obnoxious form of discrimination practiced by institutions like the Belizean Grove isn’t discrimination against men. It’s discrimination against ordinary women who aren’t successful, or powerful or connected, who haven’t risen through the meritocracy. It’s not that many of them want to join; most have never even heard of the Belizean Grove. (I’d never heard of it until this week.) It’s that the openly expressed purpose of this organization is to create a female elite just like the male elite represented by the Bohemian Grove in all respects except one.

Feminists, like all liberation movements, face the question: Do we want to change society to make it more egalitarian? Or do we just want in on current arrangements? Judge Sotomayor, like others before and since, has apparently decided that her own presence among the elite is revolution enough.