To think that Louise Perry is overly pessimistic to write : 'All else being equal, a woman will never have as much social status as a man. '?

[Carla786]

I think she means in a work context- the rest of the article argues that rather than try to raise women's status at work, we should accept presumably that they'll have less respect there so should raise the status of motherhood,since this is something men can't receive more respect than women for.

To which I'd say, can't we raise women's status in both fields? Can't we raise motherhood's status while not accepting that whatever a woman achieves at work, she'll always have less respect than an equivalent man?

(For those not familiar with Louise Perry, she's a so-called 'reactionary feminist' who made a stir a few years back with the book The Case Against The Sexual Revolution. Imo she made a lot of good points in it as well as a lot of overstatements. She's now got a podcast about sexual politics, Maiden Mother Matriarch, which I view similarly to the book (good points but doesn't really push back on her guests much, who include some genuinely reactionary figures), & is writing a new book urging people to have kids. )

Anyway, this article kind of typefies my view of her : plenty of valid points, but quite a lot of ideas taken too far.

Sorry, here's the link to the full article :

https://fairerdisputations.org/women-and-children-first/

She’s correct, unpalatable as her message may be.

Just look around you at how differently people raise their sons v daughters.

How do you mean? Surely a lot of people hope their daughters may achieve highly in their careers if they wish? That's certainly what mother hoped I'd be able to do.

I agree that a lot of people probably do respect a woman less than they would a man who achieved the same things, though.

My issue with Perry is that she's saying that women should accept that and instead raise motherhood's status, whereas I don't think it's a zero-sum game & believe we should do both.

I don't know, I live in a country with a brilliant woman president, whose also a award-winning scientist, and has many very able women members of the cabinet. She also has 70% popularity

What country? Sounds great!

If Lousie Perry genuinely cared about raising the status of motherhood, she would not persistently diminish the issue of domestic abuse. She would also take a genuine interest how to improve the wellbeing of children, which (aside from urging people to pop them out) she barely ever does.

She has a really strange obsession with status, which backfired on her extremely badly in this NYT article - for a good giggle, watch her getting massacred in the comments - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/opinion/elon-musk-cecil-rhodes.html

Has she diminished domestic abuse? That's shocking if so.

I've read her book & few articles & listened to some episodes of her podcast, and she's always been very vocal about sexual violence. I assumed she'd been similarly vocal about DV. What makes you feel that she plays down DV?

I hadn't noticed the status thing either. Will read the article later, thank you. I can see her being a bit odd over Musk.

I have noticed that she seems quite reluctant to push back on her podcast guests. When she had the odious Peachy Keenan on, she didn't push back on her once, not even when Peachy was salivating over the 'glamour' of the even more odious online manosphere type Bronze Age Pervert, or insulting rural US areas (it's hardly 'trad' to sneer at rural people, surely?). When Katy Faust was saying how gay couples shouldn't raise kids, Perry did seem to disagree but very weakly. When she had Julie Bindel on she just sat there while Bindel made sweeping statements such as the only lesbians who liked BDSM not being actual lesbians but bi (I disagree strongly with BDSM but this kind of statement just seems stupid). I appreciate the range of people she has on, but I wish she'd discuss more actively rather than just going with whatever they say.

Children? Tbf her writing generally focuses on women, but yes, as a self-proclaimed 'maternalist feminist', she should write more on this. I'll check her past stuff. Her next book though will be called The Case For Having Children.

Which will, I can guarantee, be entirely focused on the risk of "civilisational collapse" and be very light on the practicalities of raising a family.

When the topic of DV comes up (eg with Chris Williamson), typically she talks about how her gap year (truly) at a rape crisis centre showed her that women have "actually" evolved to find aggressive men attractive. Which is a shallow kind of take. Yes, strong men are attractive to many women, but a man who attacks women and children is the weakest man imaginable. Not a good bet, even in Perry's eco-psych imaginings.

Agree that Peachy Keenan is odious, and I noticed that Perry congratulated her for not being "fat, grey-haired and fortysomething", all the better to sell the large-families lifestyle. Eurgh.

Essentially, Perry's greatest strength - pointing out that women are far more vulnerable than mainstream feminism will allow - is also her greatest weakness, as she too has no real idea of how vulnerable women can be within marriage.

If you dig a bit deeper (likewise, into Mary Harrington's work), you will see that they are both spreading some unappealing ideas about the supremacy of the "English people", whatever that's supposed to mean, and the apparent imminence of civil war. They both have links to the Heritage Foundation. The feminism chat is, essentially, a bait to recruit mothers into something pretty horrible.

I agree btw that there is crying need for motherhood to be given the respect and standing that it deserves, and that most feminists have failed badly on this score. Perry, though, is not the friend that mothers are looking for.

Getting attacked in NYT commentaries should be a badge of honour

Fawning on Elon Musk while defending "family values" earns Perry a Lost-Marbles Badge.

That article has nothing to do with her advocacy for family values.

Correct - it directly contradicts everything she says about family values. If the rules about being a good husband and father don't apply to Musk (who has neglected and abandoned countless mothers of his children), then why do they apply to the rest of us? Because he thinks he's a "Great Man"? A lot of men think they are Great Men. She's selling candyfloss.

perhaps many people think they are great, but how many of them have played an important or key role in the pioneering development of a system for payments over the internet, the revolutionary improvement of electric cars so that they finally became practical, and reducing the cost of sending cargo into orbit by at least an order of magnitude. i can think of only one. and that one admits many of his own flaws and does not apologize for not being the ideal human being to everyone's taste.

Makes no difference to the suffering of his ex-partners and children. "Traditional family values" apply to everyone, or to nobody.

Which, of course, is the gaping hole in the "values" themselves. Men, in the past, were never bound by moral rules: they took mistresses, saw prostitutes, interfered with the young - they did whatever they wanted, provided they knew how to keep it hidden. Women, meanwhile, could neither say yes or no: they were told what to do.

This is the world that Perry models as some kind of remedy for internet porn culture. Worse: she's full of chat about the "superiority" of certain peoples, individuals and cultures. A trad-values world, in which some people assume naturally superior status? Now, what could possibly go wrong with that picture?

We're in a mess to be sure, but jumping back into that sort of squalor is even more of a fantasy than living on Mars.

Mexico. It is great

Meh. She went down the right wing grift route years ago.

I do love the way posters keep introducing these right wing talking points to the women's rights board on a women's talk platform though.

Are you serious?

I think right-wing grifters see mothers as an easy touch. The standard sales-pitch is to sympathise about how overlooked mothers are, how overworked and how unappreciated.

This is comforting to hear, which is why it works on some readers like a local anaesthetic. Then, in go the fangs: Western supremacy, hostility to women's education, eugenics.

Good to see them being greeted on here with the dismissal they deserve.

Yeah, I agree on that. We need people who will do that without all the weird baggage that Perry & Harrington bring.

I hadn't realised that she & Harrington had claimed English people were superior- will investigate.

'To everyone's taste' - surely MOST right thinking people, whatever their views on feminism, disapprove of his treatment of women and children in his personal life? Especially odd to see this defended as simply 'not to everyone's taste" on a feminism board where surrogacy is usually rightly strongly decried.

I understand there's many good points. The overall thing that's always intimidated me from visiting is the ongoing drug conflict/violence : is this not a problem in your area though?

Exactly: key Christian figures like Aquinas and Augustine had some good ideas, but both saw prostitution as a necessary evil to control male lust. Aquinas saw prostitution as a 'sewer' to keep everywhere else clean. Medieval bishops often profited from the sex trade. Perry acts as if that was just the pagan Romans, but that's untrue.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=beyondthestreets.org.uk/the-church-prostitution/&ved=2ahUKEwj9-KmQkfKQAxXcQUEAHenCMmsQFnoECCcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0NNUlrZV_Qf40XgihCj6AS

Thanks for the link, much-appreciated. She also misrepresents Christianity as centred upon the family, which sits quite oddly with the celibate priesthood, monasteries, convents...the whole Christian mediaeval world, really.