With all due respect, I believe that the works and ideas of Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Jordan Peterson are all ultimately "gateway drugs" to Mark Regnerus, Roy Baumeister, Beverly LaHaye, Mary Pride, and Phyllis Schafly, for better or worse (primarily worse).
And from there, it's ultimately a one-way express train to Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare and/or back to the Dark Ages for women (and indirectly for men as well). Or perhaps a weird kind of "archaeofuturism", as the neoreactionaries call it, the worst of the past, present. and future combined.
I don't necessarily agree with these people's preferred vision of the future, and tend to think that they have some blinders on in terms of the joys of independence and a single, child-free life. In general I think mothers tend to project their own lives onto others, and so forget or simply don't know what it's like to live free... I don't say that to say that being married with kids is NOT good, I'm just saying it's very different. Just as it's hard for me to imagine what life with kids would be like, women with kids surely have trouble imagining life without, so I think sometimes project negativity onto that. That said there IS much I agree with in terms of what Mary says and find her analysis interesting and valuable, even if we disagree about the precise path forward...
All I can say is, be very careful what you wish for, because we all know what they say about wishes. I have read some of Mary Harrington's UnHerd articles and her Substack, and she is a self proclaimed "reactionary feminist" who apparently wants to roll back not only the sexual revolution, but also the industrial revolution and perhaps even the Enlightenment as well. This is a classic example of Horseshoe Theory I think.
Your discussion about motherhood - my mom went nuts when she was home with my brother. She thought she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, she quit her union job at the phone company when she got pregnant.
After she had my brother, she was isolated with this baby at a home in the suburbs. She didn't really have any adult conversation or friendships, until my dad got home. But my dad was a master electrician, he was away for weeks sometimes if there was a big job (building a new dorm at the state university).
My mom went back to work, my brother went to a home daycare. Even the lady running the home daycare, by the way, would have more interaction & conversation with grown-ups during her day than most SaHMs in that era. Just from seeing parents when they dropped off & picked up the kids. It was extremely isolating to stay home in the 70s-80s. My parents had one SaHM neighbor who my mom in particular couldn't stand, she was very self-absorbed and had a difficult to understand Newfoundland accent. But there was like, it was isolating in a way I think you don't understand. Being able to go to work and have a routine that doesn't involve a dirty screaming child was a lifeline for some people.
The other thing, Meghan, and you're Canadian I can't believe this didn't come up - for Catholics there was no birth control except counting your cycle and breastfeeding. There's still backlash to breastfeeding in Quebec, today. Women who will literally say "I am not a cow!" In Quebec for generations, husbands pushed wives to breastfeed as long as possible. If she got pregnant while breastfeeding it was 'her fault' and now they were going to have to struggle even more to afford these huge families.
There are reasons women pushed back against marriage and staying at home in the second wave.
I completely understand this. I mean, there are lots of reasons I chose not to have kids and this is one of them. This is not what I want for my life. That said, I do think most mothers want to be with their young babies. It's natural...
"It's natural" is an assumption, it doesn't account for women like my mom, for moms who felt isolated and were put on pills in the 50s-60s, or for the practice of upper class women in Western Europe sending their children to be raised in other households in the medieval and early modern eras. Even British boarding schools until about 50 years ago: if motherhood is so great why were all the people who could afford to shipping their small kids far away from them?
There's nothing to back "it's natural" up, you haven't confronted or thought about this in any depth.
I would also like to add that most people think the sexual revolution was either an unalloyed good or an unmitigated evil. Harrington leans strongly towards the latter, of course. But I believe that it was really a mixed bag in practice. I would argue that there were really only two things wrong with it: 1) it was historically largely male-dominated, and 2) it is still unfinished and actually hasn't gone far enough. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The result: a sort of perpetual limbo or purgatory, a sort of "situationship" writ very, very large.
As for The Pill, while it does indeed have somewhat of a dark side (much like we are learning these days that even Tylenol does too), its existence is still a good on balance overall IMHO. Beware of those who seek to ban it, as their motives are nearly always extremely regressive.
I don't think the sexual revolution was all bad, but it did claim to offer something it did not... It was not *really* for women, in my opinion, and has better served men and male interests. The pill is unequivocally bad for women, though... It's just incredibly bad for women's health, to start....
With all due respect, I will just have to agree to disagree about The Pill I guess. Otherwise, I largely dig what you are saying.
More broadly though, the central point I am trying to make is that there are really no solutions (or at least no ethical ones), to the many thorny problems Harrington discusses that do not involve completely robbing women of their agency. Or rather, the only ethical solution to such problems that does not rob women of agency would be.....full-blown Matriarchy. Which I have actually long advocated. Otherwise, we are really just rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.
Ah. I should have clarified that while I think the pill is terrible for women, I don't think it should be banned, or anything like that... I just think it's appalling that young women are not provided good information about their reproductive cycles and aren't informed about the impacts and side-effects of the pill... I'm not sure if Mary feels the same way... Is that what you mean w/r/t agency?
Correct, that is what I meant by agency, not just in regards to birth control, but also in regards to overall sexuality and bodily autonomy in general. Thanks for clarifying.
And since I've found myself examining everything 'feminist' in a quest to discover just HOW THE HELL WE GOT HERE, I've thought many of the same things.
Remember 'Take Back the Night!".. and "Women have the same sex drive as men!"... so dress like hookers, drink like fish and screw like sailors.. full speed ahead!
Probably not, but I do.
"You can ignore reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Biology matters. Women are not physically or sexually equal to men.
In the quest to be equal we tried to be the same.. and lost our way.
With all due respect, I believe that the works and ideas of Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Jordan Peterson are all ultimately "gateway drugs" to Mark Regnerus, Roy Baumeister, Beverly LaHaye, Mary Pride, and Phyllis Schafly, for better or worse (primarily worse).
And from there, it's ultimately a one-way express train to Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare and/or back to the Dark Ages for women (and indirectly for men as well). Or perhaps a weird kind of "archaeofuturism", as the neoreactionaries call it, the worst of the past, present. and future combined.
I don't necessarily agree with these people's preferred vision of the future, and tend to think that they have some blinders on in terms of the joys of independence and a single, child-free life. In general I think mothers tend to project their own lives onto others, and so forget or simply don't know what it's like to live free... I don't say that to say that being married with kids is NOT good, I'm just saying it's very different. Just as it's hard for me to imagine what life with kids would be like, women with kids surely have trouble imagining life without, so I think sometimes project negativity onto that. That said there IS much I agree with in terms of what Mary says and find her analysis interesting and valuable, even if we disagree about the precise path forward...
All I can say is, be very careful what you wish for, because we all know what they say about wishes. I have read some of Mary Harrington's UnHerd articles and her Substack, and she is a self proclaimed "reactionary feminist" who apparently wants to roll back not only the sexual revolution, but also the industrial revolution and perhaps even the Enlightenment as well. This is a classic example of Horseshoe Theory I think.
Your discussion about motherhood - my mom went nuts when she was home with my brother. She thought she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, she quit her union job at the phone company when she got pregnant.
After she had my brother, she was isolated with this baby at a home in the suburbs. She didn't really have any adult conversation or friendships, until my dad got home. But my dad was a master electrician, he was away for weeks sometimes if there was a big job (building a new dorm at the state university).
My mom went back to work, my brother went to a home daycare. Even the lady running the home daycare, by the way, would have more interaction & conversation with grown-ups during her day than most SaHMs in that era. Just from seeing parents when they dropped off & picked up the kids. It was extremely isolating to stay home in the 70s-80s. My parents had one SaHM neighbor who my mom in particular couldn't stand, she was very self-absorbed and had a difficult to understand Newfoundland accent. But there was like, it was isolating in a way I think you don't understand. Being able to go to work and have a routine that doesn't involve a dirty screaming child was a lifeline for some people.
The other thing, Meghan, and you're Canadian I can't believe this didn't come up - for Catholics there was no birth control except counting your cycle and breastfeeding. There's still backlash to breastfeeding in Quebec, today. Women who will literally say "I am not a cow!" In Quebec for generations, husbands pushed wives to breastfeed as long as possible. If she got pregnant while breastfeeding it was 'her fault' and now they were going to have to struggle even more to afford these huge families.
There are reasons women pushed back against marriage and staying at home in the second wave.
I completely understand this. I mean, there are lots of reasons I chose not to have kids and this is one of them. This is not what I want for my life. That said, I do think most mothers want to be with their young babies. It's natural...
"It's natural" is an assumption, it doesn't account for women like my mom, for moms who felt isolated and were put on pills in the 50s-60s, or for the practice of upper class women in Western Europe sending their children to be raised in other households in the medieval and early modern eras. Even British boarding schools until about 50 years ago: if motherhood is so great why were all the people who could afford to shipping their small kids far away from them?
There's nothing to back "it's natural" up, you haven't confronted or thought about this in any depth.
I would also like to add that most people think the sexual revolution was either an unalloyed good or an unmitigated evil. Harrington leans strongly towards the latter, of course. But I believe that it was really a mixed bag in practice. I would argue that there were really only two things wrong with it: 1) it was historically largely male-dominated, and 2) it is still unfinished and actually hasn't gone far enough. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The result: a sort of perpetual limbo or purgatory, a sort of "situationship" writ very, very large.
As for The Pill, while it does indeed have somewhat of a dark side (much like we are learning these days that even Tylenol does too), its existence is still a good on balance overall IMHO. Beware of those who seek to ban it, as their motives are nearly always extremely regressive.
I don't think the sexual revolution was all bad, but it did claim to offer something it did not... It was not *really* for women, in my opinion, and has better served men and male interests. The pill is unequivocally bad for women, though... It's just incredibly bad for women's health, to start....
With all due respect, I will just have to agree to disagree about The Pill I guess. Otherwise, I largely dig what you are saying.
More broadly though, the central point I am trying to make is that there are really no solutions (or at least no ethical ones), to the many thorny problems Harrington discusses that do not involve completely robbing women of their agency. Or rather, the only ethical solution to such problems that does not rob women of agency would be.....full-blown Matriarchy. Which I have actually long advocated. Otherwise, we are really just rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.
Ah. I should have clarified that while I think the pill is terrible for women, I don't think it should be banned, or anything like that... I just think it's appalling that young women are not provided good information about their reproductive cycles and aren't informed about the impacts and side-effects of the pill... I'm not sure if Mary feels the same way... Is that what you mean w/r/t agency?
Correct, that is what I meant by agency, not just in regards to birth control, but also in regards to overall sexuality and bodily autonomy in general. Thanks for clarifying.
This was fabulous, bold, brave... and terrifying.
And since I've found myself examining everything 'feminist' in a quest to discover just HOW THE HELL WE GOT HERE, I've thought many of the same things.
Remember 'Take Back the Night!".. and "Women have the same sex drive as men!"... so dress like hookers, drink like fish and screw like sailors.. full speed ahead!
Probably not, but I do.
"You can ignore reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Biology matters. Women are not physically or sexually equal to men.
In the quest to be equal we tried to be the same.. and lost our way.
And this trans-misogynistic mess is the result.