Three principles of reactionary feminism

That's quite a jump, and I'm quite sure if you had in mind any of the steps involved in that leap you'd have shared them, so really that's just a needlessly complex way of saying "I don't like that you said that".

Still interesting and relevant-I’m going to comment after I’ve had some coffee!☕️

Going by this logic, you’ll next be horseshoeing your way round to finding value in protecting women by veiling them from the male gaze. Lots of oppressive practices have been framed as “protecting” women in the past.

Oh good grief- didn't realise how old this thread was!

I think Harrington has said the real political divide is now between the bio realists and the bio libertarians. I think there is real utility in this way of looking/categorising belief clusters. Her argument about the pill being the first transhumanist technology is very compelling. And is the rubicon "healthcare" (and our expectations of it) crossed when the focus expanded to technology which disrupts normative healthy processes in the body to allow us full sovereignty over our bodies - it's very clear why trandsgenderism was inevitable when we look at it this way.

A guarantee you'll be left alone when you're bleeding and sore? Seems beneficial to women even if it is borne out of a male ick

What's wrong with reading Foucault?! You don't have to agree but he is very worth reading/understanding

I'm sorry to resurrect a zombie but I've been reading up on Judaism recently & wanted to explore this further.

I get your point re woman-centred fertility control. However re the Jewish practice...the AMA, which I read, was indeed fascinating. But the custom of no sex during the menstrual period isn't to regulate fertility like NFP, or restore the relationship, it's a menstrual taboo. A menstruating woman is ritually impure until she's immersed in the mikveh bath.
I don't think menstrual taboo-based practices, whether Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Native American or any other that still persists, can ever be considered 'woman-centric' .

I apologise for resurrecting this thread but I want to explore this point quickly as I think it's important.

Yes, women's menstrual cycles are important to rituals in Orthodox Judaism, and that is in some ways positive. Buy equally, the principle of niddah and going to the mikveh is that women are ritually impure during their period. Menstrual taboo.

I don't think this should be praised so uncritically. I don't think menstrual taboo-based practices, whether Muslim, Hindu, Native American, Orthodox Jewish or any of the others that still prevail, can ever be really woman-centric.

Quoting @MalagaNights: "Another thing that was interesting about the orthodox Jewish AMA was that there was a built in mentorship between women where the codes which they believe work for women are passed down.

I'm not sure we have the cultural structures in place for this to happen outside religious communities? Family is obviously the key unit for this, but can this be strong enough to give messages which go against the cultural message?"

What you're talking about in the first paragraph here is I think what Mary Harrington was advocating for men: that older men tend to be the ones to teach younger men how to be 'good men', and that this kind of naturally occurring mentoring tends to occur in single-sex contexts (even if not legislated to be single-sex) - down the pub, for instance! Or whilst doing/working at something together (building a barn, Amish-style 😅).

In the absence of formal religious observance (which is getting gradually rarer and rarer), I do think the extended family unit can be a good bulwark against the more toxic socio/cultural messaging we're seeing so much more of in the 21st century.

But that family unit is itself under attack. Almost 50% of marriages end in divorce. A similarly high proportion of children grow up without both their parents living in their home. Hence MH's plug for post-Big Romance more practical companionship-based marriage, with its benefits for women, men and children.

There's strength in numbers, but society is growing more atomised and individualised all the time. It takes a concerted effort to resist for oneself, and to help one's children to resist, the lie that "hell is other people" and you're better off alone with your smartphone, porn, and virtual companions that you can switch off and unplug whenever you get bored.

Yes, this is what they were - I couldn't remember the name! They seem to do really amazing stuff with women's reproductive health.

Ok.

Care to share what of the above makes you want to vomit..? So we can, y'know, discuss it?

Hahahahaha. No.

Agree.

I wasn't referring to you (I'd have quoted you if so) but to the OP (as have a few other one-liners throughout the thread).

Don't know, @YetAnotherSpartacus, but have this instead 

I also totally agree with "I don't think our culture is very good at teaching people to abstain from anything, it's a credit society all the way."

and

"... the default answer for sorting it seems to be, whatever women will consent to, because it's all about freedom. But we all know that doesn't really cut it in the end."

We all know there's no such thing as 'free credit', but most of society - and many feminists - seem to have their heads in the sand regarding the hidden costs of many of the 'benefits' that women now enjoy, compared to their counterparts 150 years ago.

The cult of the Individual actively discourages any attempt at compromise, or building a balanced social contract that isn't 100% favourable to Me and My Interests... why is also why feminism has such a blind spot when it comes to motherhood, as (I would argue) there are clear clashes between the interests of a mother and those of her child.

MH is in favour of compromises between the sexes, in the pursuit of a social reality that benefits both women AND men. I guess that's why so many would like to boot her out of the Feminist camp.

Where is the vomit emoji?

@DemiColon the fertility clinics you mention probably work with NaPro - Natural Procreative Technology. They have a lot of success helping couples with all kinds of infertility, particularly where 'normal' medicine has failed. The one in Liverpool apparently has 40% Catholic clients and 60% not.

From the US mother-site:

"Unlike common suppressive or destructive approaches, NaProTECHNOLOGY works cooperatively with the procreative and gynecologic systems. When these systems function abnormally, NaProTECHNOLOGY identifies the problems and cooperates with the menstrual and fertility cycles that correct the condition, maintain the human ecology, and sustain the procreative potential.
Women now have an opportunity to know and understand the causes of the symptoms from which they suffer."
I do think a whole lot more of this kind of thing should be taught to both girls and boys before they leave secondary school.

I think we should be saying to young women: have high expectations of men and don't accept anything less. See sex and your boundaries as part of this. Even if the boundary isn't quite marriage!
I do think men would start to have to live up to the high expectations of high value women.

Holding hands probably felt more like an electric current of passion than a lot of the activity called “ having sex” does in many cases of the instant total intimate, physical engagement expected now.

As well as what you spoke of, OP, I think something that matters is allowing men to feel strong and proud that they are taking on care and responsibility for someone who needs them; or even feel proud that they are physically stronger and will carry that suitcase or offer you a seat. This is a natural motivator for men, though the ways they show it may vary. There is a difficult balance to be found though as women need to be strong in their own right too, and may even have the greater skill with the power drill.

-about the pill!

Having full control of your fertility is the most wonderful, joyous thing

But condoms do the same thing. And protect against STDs.

I'm sorry, but my own experience of the Pill led to near suicide. It's the very last thing on earth I would call in any way wonderful or joyous.

In my view, Harrington is quite correct.

I think she's right about some issues being issues but I disagree with her on the solutions.

• Focus on marriage - I think you only have to spend 5 minutes on the relationships board before you come across someone who has kids, isn't married, partner is a dickhead with all the assets in his name, they can't leave because they gave up work to look after the kids as their wage wouldn't cover childcare so now they're trapped. If they had been married they'd be much better protected financially. Sometimes I think we need to rebrand marriage as a "financial protection contract" that is essential to have BEFORE kids come along.
• Men deserve single sex spaces as much as women do - can't disagree, the only thing I would say is that those single sex spaces can't be based on degradation of women. So being what MH characterises as "a little more chill about men doing whatever it is they do when no women are present" can't include being chill about sex workers or strip clubs or degrading women verbally. That would do the opposite of what she says single sex male spaces will do in terms of creating better men with mentorship etc.
• The pill - cosign everything @RoyalCorgi says above, the thing about the pill is that it gives women choices (including whether or not to take it). She focuses on what she sees as the social downside of contraception for young unmarried women, but even setting aside workforce and career participation there are very real medical and emotional UPSIDES to contraception - I had two very very hard pregnancies and difficult recoveries in various ways and the weight off my shoulders not worrying about that possibly happening again when I got a Mirena was a fantastic side effect.

I respect her choices to do what she does to be reactionary, and I think there's an interesting debate to be had about whether her choices can be feminist or not, but I'm glad I have the choice not to do those things.

I quite enjoy reading Mary Harrington, but she's simply wrong about the pill.

OK, you can argue that the sexual revolution benefited men more than it benefited women, which is probably true. But the pill transformed women's lives. Before the pill, women's lives for thousands of years were dominated by the fear of getting pregnant. There are very few women who want to give birth repeatedly throughout their reproductive lives.

Having full control of your fertility is the most wonderful, joyous thing that has both enabled women to enjoy sex without fear of pregnancy and allowed them to enter the workforce knowing that they can have careers unhampered by having to give birth to unwanted children. There is a reason that most women living in Western countries today have one, two or three children, rather than the eight or nine of previous generations. Don't let's become complacent about what the pill has given us.

I don't think any social system will rid the world of users and immoral people, it's really a matter of picking something that minimizes that. And some women will always make bad choices, in some cases because they don't know the man is a dickhead until its too late, in others because they have their own issues that get in the way.

But as things stand now, men really have no over-riding social teaching that tells them that sexual continence is a good thing.They are getting much the same messages girls are getting about this stuff. And it seems right because after all, sex is supposed to be something that can be done consequence free. Even many women's rights activists push that idea as being fundamental, and so why should young men not believe it? And if its supposed to be true for women, why not true for men?

At best they are getting very mixed messages, and the default answer for sorting it seems to be, whatever women will consent to, because it's all about freedom. But we all know that doesn't really cut it in the end.

There has been a lot of work done in this by Catholic doctors. I've known a few women that went to fertility clinics that are in some way connected to the Catholic Church to sort out problems with their cycles, because they couldn't get other doctors to take them seriously, they just wanted to put them on the pill to regulate things. Which of course was just covering what was going on. I don't know if these exist in the UK or not. But I wanted to learn to track ovulation some years ago when I was younger, and I found a doctor who taught a system for doing it (Billings) through he Catholic cathedral in my city. She would drive down from another city once a month to teach individual women how to do it, for free. She had to complete some courses in Australia to get certified to do it.

It's not a bad method, similar to condoms in terms of sucess rate. But it does depend on actually doing what you are supposed to, which means you have to abstain, or use condoms, on days when you could get pregnant. Which is where most accidents happen, people just decide to do it anyway on one of the days when you are supposed to be careful. I don't think our culture is very good at teaching people to abstain from anything, it's a credit society all the way.