  The second plausibly feminist commitment in the Republic  involves the abolition of private families. The feminist import of  this may be obscured by the way in which Socrates and his  interlocutors talk of “women and children shared in common.” In fact, Socrates’ companions might well have been forgiven if this way of  talking had called to mind pictures of orgiastic free love in the  guardians’ camp, for that, after all, is how Aristophanes’  Ecclesiazusae plays the proposal of “sharing women and  children” for laughs. But as Socrates clarifies what he means, both  free love and male possessiveness turn out to be beside the point.  (The talk of “sharing women and children” reflects the male  perspective of the men having the conversation but not the content of the proposal.) Then Socrates’ proposal can seem especially striking.  Plato is clearly aware that an account of how the polis should be  arranged must give special attention to how families are arranged.  Relatedly, he is clearly aware that an account of the ideal citizens  must explain how sexual desire, a paradigmatic appetitive attitude,  should fit into the good human life. Only very recently, with  feminist interventions, have sexual desire and its consequences come  to seem crucial to political theory, and we might think that Plato’s  awareness of these as topics of political philosophy shows at least  proto-feminist concern. All the more might this awareness seem  feminist when we relate it back to the first plausibly feminist  commitment, for Plato wants the economy of desire and reproduction to be organized in such a way that women are free for education and  employment alongside men, in the guardian classes, at any rate.