Credit...Photo illustration by Lisa Sheehan

Ms. Faludi is a journalist and the author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”

Among the many afflictions distorting our current politics, one has gone unrecognized: We’re in the midst of a zero-sum struggle over which gender gets to own the hero’s journey, that ancient story formulation in which the hero leaves home, faces monsters and temptations and returns to reclaim his kingdom and his woman from usurpers. In modern times, the question of whether the hero must be male has been contested and recontested.

The fight is about more than a story. We feud over certain foundational myths because whoever owns the myth owns the culture.

It’s hard to get more foundational than Homer. Sitting in my local wide-screen Cinemark,........

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