Mary Harrington - why progress is bad for women - thoughts?

[Digitalhen]

This was an incredibly interesting discussion and I really enjoyed listening to Mary talk. She is very concise, thoughtful and gets straight to the point. I’d never considered the contraceptive pill as the first step towards trans-humanism but she makes an awful lot of sense. I’ve just finished binge reading many of Thomas Sowell’s books and he makes a very interesting point concerning that data around sex Ed in schools (along with the ‘sexual revolution’: women give away sex to men with no demands ever made on them but this is somehow marketed as ‘liberation’ for women) being the pivot towards an increase in sexual activity, abortion and hormonal contraceptive being sold as ‘women’s rights’ and Mary takes this further by saying if reproductive decisions fall to women all responsibility does too. Hence the decline in marriage, shotgun weddings and the rise of single parenthood (because men can just say - it’s a woman’s decision about keeping a pregnancy and then vanish guilt free) Sowell also documents this State-side too.

What are your thoughts on Mary’s work?

She’s the opposite of “women as victim”. Have you read any of her stuff?

Re the sexual revolution benefiting men- both Mary and Louise Perry have written about this, looking at evidence for why no-strings sex benefits men more than women.

Loise Perry is awful, she also said women should marry young and do their best to stay married.
Now, who does this benefit?
Men, and men only.

Best would be to advocate women to stay single, celibate and childfree.
And end the stigma of these three things.

no-strings sex benefits men more than women

I don't* *disagree with the reasons given for this, but they are not a failing of feminism.

Destigmatising no-strings sex is beneficial to women, because it was never really stigmatised for men. The fact that men then use this as a reason to pressure women into sex is an argument for more feminism, not less.

I read some last night, yes
i appreciate a quick read of articles is not a whole picture

the "casual sex" thing does sound like "woman as victim" to me.

This is a very backwards looking argument. It seems to be predicated on sex as currency and the idea that women have devalued it in some way. The solution is not looking back nostalgically but focusing on improvement and equality. People seem to forget that rape in marriage was legal until quite recently, that women couldn’t have a mortgage in their own name in the 1970s, that women were trapped in abusive marriages that they couldn’t leave. Hard disagree from me.

I do believe that the destigmatisation of extra-marital sex and single parenthood has been a two edged sword. It's been very good for women in many ways but ultimately it has benefitted men in that they no longer need to take responsibility for the children they father if they so wish. This in particular has devestated working class and Black communities and led to a generation of children with socila and personal issues. I speak as a product of that environment myself.

...and I would also add that single motherhood is heartbreakingly difficult

potnia men have never taken responsibility for kids if they didn't want to, that's nothing to do with feminism.

And I'd credit feminism - including the work of some men - for the fact that women and children are no longer men's property in law.

Similar trends in Japan. The pill's never been widely used here.

Similar trends in the USSR (except that the increase happened earlier). Women lacked the pill, AND any other proper and effective means of birth control. My Russian friend can tell you stories from her family history. Having half a dozen abortions was normal. It was traumatic for women, but they had no alternative.

I only partly agree, in the working class community I grew up in there used to be a huge stigma against divorce and leaving your children. Now there is less of a stigma and people aren't getting married. In my community it's more common to see single mums than married couples raising kids.

There is a strong class element to this as well. Studies have shown that the educated middle and upper middle classes continue to marry and stay married whereas marriage is on the decline amongst the working classes. This means that working class children are doubly held back in modern society, firstly for not having access to middle class networks and opportunities, secondly from having no fater. This has affected working class boys especially badly as can be seen in the collapse in their educational achievemnts and mental health. Also in the huge rise in 'deaths of despair' amongst working class males in America over the past 30 years.

I am very sad when I visit the working class community I grew up in in South Wales and see struggling single mums and young men with no hope. Once proud wokring class cultures have collapsed. This is due to very many socio-economic factors but the decline in fathers taking responsibility has increasingly been a problem because men are no longer controlled by the socila stigma of being expected to stand by the women you get pregnant.

I would also like to add that women were not men's property in law until the early modern age, they were treated as separate in the Anglo Saxon era, Green and Roman eras, and in western Europe until I believe the Stuart era. Progress isn't always linear.

Yes, but even there it depends how long a view you take.
If you look at VD for example - it was a huge problem in the 18thCentury. In the 19th century they tried to control it with the contagious diseases act (targeting women and not that successful) and continued to be an issue until it actual started to fall in the 1950s. Then it bobbed back up again in the 60s - largely associated with the rise in free love and the pill.
Also unwanted pregnancies ending in abortion, infanticide, child abandonment were a big thing before the 20th century (and increased as a result of urbanisation. I think she talks about that). They went down post war and then went back up again.

I think the baby boom period is a really interesting and quite abnormal time. There were loads of social/economic factors that were incredibly specific to then. The problem is because it is the time period in which boomers (I don't mean that in the derogatory sense) were children it has shaped our idea of what "normal" is.

I don't 100% agree with MH's analysis but she is right about some things. And its useful that she is taking a much longer view.

The general pattern is that hormonal birth control and abortion tend to trade off each other; if you allow more of the first, you get fewer of the second. Of course, there are a lot of other factors, but generally speaking more HBC means fewer abortions.

If one genuinely believes that hormonal birth control is really bad news, AND has no moral qualms about abortion, it could be a valid argument to say "Yes, I would prefer less HBC to be used, even if it meant a somewhat higher number of abortions," and I'd respect someone who at least had the integrity to say this out loud.

But the "neo-traditionalist" types who rag on birth control and the pill, are rarely genuinely OK with abortions either, and simply refuse to talk about trade offs. If you raise the issue with them and ask them, "OK, so are you actually OK with there being more abortions as a result of less pill usage....?" ....crickets.

I was looking at some early 19th prison records recently. One inmate was sentenced to 6 months in April for deserting his wife and child. In December of the same year he was sentenced to 12 months for deserting his wife and child.

Its an argument that goes way way back as well. Augustine of Hippo is one of the people responsible for the idea that "sex for reasons other than procreation is sinful" that massively influenced Christian thought. In some ways that is good for women - if men as well as women are encouraged to view babies as something that can always result from sex then it leads to more responsible behaviour and less women being left holding the baby. But it never really meant that men, at any point in history, were all mindful of this (I am sure many were NAMALT blah blah). Because Christianity offers forgiveness (definitely not itself a bad thing) there is nothing to stop men shagging about in their youth and then becoming religious later without consequence. Exactly like Augustine of Hippo did. The woman he was living with got sent away and never saw her son again.

But its used as an argument against contraception. Its the hypocrisy I can't stand.

I think the baby boom period is a really interesting and quite abnormal time. There were loads of social/economic factors that were incredibly specific to then. The problem is because it is the time period in which boomers (I don't mean that in the derogatory sense) were children it has shaped our idea of what "normal" is.

This is so true! It was an odd period, shaped as much by modernity as by traditionalism, yet it's become a sort "generic traditionalness" in many people's minds.

The average couple in the post-war period married at 21 and 23-ish, had 2.5 children and were probably done by childbearing by about 26 and 28 respectively. Women were empty nesters by about 40. They spent decades and decades living as grandmothers, because they become grandmothers so young and then lived for decades due to super new healthcare stuff. The % of women who never married was tiny. Very few kids were raised by single parents.

Yet if you go back to, say, 1700, the average bride was about 25 and had her last child at about 38 or so. She was in often her mid 50s by the time her youngest reached adulthood. A huge % of children were raised by single parents/blended families due to high death and remarriage rates. Only about half of people lived to see their grandchildren, a large minority of kids never got to see any grandparents. A large minority of men and women never married, as you needed money to marry so some siblings generally didn't. It's not quite what most people imagine when they hear "traditional family," to be honest.

It varies a lot through history. In England before the workhouses women with children and no husband (through death/abandonment) were either the responsibility of the parish the children were born in (if the father was unknown) or of the fathers parish (if the father was known). Obviously this meant that the authorities in the parish the child was being born in were massively incentivised to get the woman to name the father leading to some quite cruel treatment but that's by the by. With the mass movement of people and the increasing costs of looking after abandoned/out of wedlock children workhouses were brought in and the treatment of illegitimate children and their mothers became much much worse.

All of which is by the by of course because the man you mention was married. So he was effectively breaching a contract and costing the state money by doing so. Just like people were thrown in prison for debts. On the other hand he had the right to beat and rape his wife and she had no right to leave him for it so I still prefer today.

Hear hear.

And, OP, your point about trans issues ‘neutralising’ sexuality is all wrong. The men who perform their idea of ‘femininity’ as transwomen are usually making no interventions to their male sexed bodies but are guying an exaggerated performance of backward-looking gender stereotypes. Their fetish or dysphoria is making women less safe, and making a nonsense of laws aimed at protecting women, and the statistics that allow analysis of crimes against women. It’s another reason why we need more feminism, not less.

@Kokeshi123 Yes! And the percentage of women having children has been remarkably stable throughout time. The number of children women are having has gone down but the number of women having children is basically the same. And men in the 20th and 21st century have never had it so good in terms off the likelihood they will pass on their genes.

Which is a way of saying all the panicking about "anti-natalism" among women/the selfishness of women today is somewhat overblown.

I'm going to watch this at lunchtime.

I still prefer today.

Oh, absolutely!

I was just responding to the idea that men abandoning the children was anything new or down to lack of stigma. Sure, stigma - or the threat of 12 months hard labour - will keep the marginal ones in line. But shit men are going to carry on shitting on women and abandoning their children whatever society does. Always have, always will. Which is why we need feminism so women aren't dependent on them.

I think it's a bad thing but not because women now have options. I think it's bad because now over 200 000 women a year need avoidable medical procedures because men insist on ejaculating inside women for their jollies.

But those women could have told those men to wear a condom, if they refuse, then choose not to have sex.

You think that every time a woman has sex it is a 'choice'?

No.
But most sex that most women have, is not rape.
Certainly not the 200 000 qouted above.
We both know that.