Online conference on the failures of liberal feminism

[louisemperry]

Hi all, on Thursday 17th December at 11:00 I’m going to be chairing an online conference that might be of interest to mumsnetters.

Our panel –

Kathleen Stock will speaking on the failures of “high church” academic feminism, with its emphases on arcane language, unverifiable beliefs, liturgical chanting, and priestly authority.

Nimko Ali will be speaking about the failure to credit and invest in African women doing feminist work on the frontline.

Mary Harrington will be speaking about the motherhood shaped blind spot in mainstream feminism, and why moving beyond it means re-examining core liberal assumptions.

Nina Power will be speaking on the failure of the contemporary liberal Left to recognise that women are oppressed on the basis of their biology, and arguing that the history of the family is indissociable from a historical and materialist understanding of humanity.

You can watch live between 11:00 and 13:30, which will give you the opportunity to put questions to the panel. You can register using this link –zoom.us/webinar/register/4815931634324/WN_K-DRxGOzRB6DU3Plo9f8xQ

Alternatively, you’ll be able to catch up later on YouTube or the Res Publica website.

Is MH a feminist? She identifies as one, for sure. Is she principally concerned with women’s position in society? Yes. Does she care about women’s interests and well-being? It appears so.

And do you really want to get to the point when a woman intellectual whose arguments are dismissed with “you’re not a feminist!” just shrugs and says “whatevs”?

I know nothing about the ins and outs of “official feminism” but I am pretty bemused to read that someone would consider MH not feminist. I must be missing something? Her comments resonated with me, I had the feeling she cares about the issues that I care about and I am female ... please, what is the issue? I didn’t think she was advocating for returning all women to the domestic sphere. I thought she just suggested that the domestic sphere needs to be paid more attention, something that I wholeheartedly agree with.

@dayoftheclownfish

“Not a big fan of MH as she writes for Conservative Woman who are about as anti-feminist as you can get and want us all to be housewives”

Even if that were true (receipts?), our current economic arrangements would not allow it.

Do you want receipts that she writes for them or receipts that CW is anti-feminist?

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/in-praise-of-the-brave-female-anti-feminists/

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/lets-salute-the-men-who-fight-the-dark-forces-of-feminism/

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/laura-perrins-feminists-trashed-the-husband-and-breadwinner-role-men-are-not-coming-back/

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/laura-perrins-dogs-are-more-desirable-than-feminists/

Just a selection of what they offer. No doubt I will be told that this actually is feminism and that I’ve just misunderstood.

Oh and I think the domestic sphere should be given more attention too. I don’t think domestic work is inherently ‘female’ and I find anything to do with encouraging women to have kids for the wider public good quite scary.

Reality, I wasn’t very clear, I admit, I asked for receipts that CW want us all to be housewives (as implied by my subsequent comment about economic arrangements). I still have problems believing that that is a serious political goal of British conservatism. Even a theocracy like Iran has substantial female employment rates.

Household duties (!) prevent me from doing a full textual analysis of the linked content but I’m guessing these are knee-jerk jeremiads against mainstream feminism, possibly blaming feminists for problems that have complex causes. Does that mean we should never engage with these arguments? Isn’t it worth analysing why some conservative women feel so pissed off with feminism in its current state? What is the definition of a ‘feminist’ argument? These days, I disagree quite strongly with some feminists, does that mean I should shut up and stay in my kitchen? You’re scared by pro-natalism (encouraging women to have many children - a position actually embraced by some suffragists), I’m scared by purity politics.

I just know that if I take what they write at its face value, CW are very into essentialist gender roles, male breadwinners and female homemakers. They say as much and in very explicit terms. Yeah, I guess I could tie myself into knots and try to present their argument as a feminist one but it would be clutching at straws a bit. I wouldn’t call my position purity politics. Conservatives have never embraced feminism so I’m not surprised they are pissed off with it. There’s at least one article about how feminism means that women won’t find a husband because who would fancy a feminist. For me, it’s all a bit 1950s, thanks and I’m happier fighting for liberation from gender roles and a more equal division of labour in the home.

Thanks for the links , I’ll read

I read the first three articles and then got bored. The first two read like classic MRA fodder, including all the dodgy statistics about women being the main perpetrators of domestic violence and fathers being excluded from their children etc.

The third one just seems like a rant against a straw man. I don't know any feminist who would argue against a woman taking the maximum maternity leave or believes that a woman who chooses to be a SAHM is not a fully rounded human being.

Tbh I expected the articles to be better written and more coherent than they were. That's ten minutes of my life I won't get back!

I don't think it's entirely true that conservatives have never embraced feminism. Conservative women have thought and written all plenty about women, and what is good for women, and their place in society, in this and that last century, and there have been new ideas of various kinds, working through various ideas.

They are only not feminist insofar as certain other women disallowed them from calling themselves that, because in some way they straw from the approved answers. Which is to say, claimed to speak for the good of women and promoted to women's voices - except some women are more authentic voices than others, don't you know.

Those other women were just under the thumb of the patriarchy or handmaidens. No need to really engage with what they are saying.

It's not just chance that a lot of those women were talking about things like the mother-shaped hole, or asking about how much the sexed body contributes beyond basic plumbing differences, both areas that what is normally counted as feminism has avoided or tended to produce poorly developed thinking. And maybe also not chance that it was the feminist women's studies departments that morphed into gender studies departments.

If you cut out a good chunk of the people talking about important ideas in any area of thought by ring-fencing your discipline based on whether you like the results it suggests, you will end up with weak arguments and big holes, and those will have consequences down the road. That's even without thinking about the implications, what is really going on and who benefits, when you have a class based activism that only includes members of the class who think the right way.

Writing about what you think is best for women is not the same as promoting or being interested in feminism. I do not deny at all that conservatives have written about and had an interest in women’s perceived role. I just happen to think it’s not particularly feminist because it usually embraces patriarchal norms and gender roles and places women as caregivers and homemakers. It is also essentialist in that it believes that biology pre-ordains you for a certain role. I don’t personally see that as working to liberate women and dismantle patriarchal structures, which is what feminism aims to achieve. Nor does the CW website. They expressly declare themselves to be anti-feminist and pro traditional roles so why are we trying to pretend otherwise? I also see myself as gender-critical which CW is not. CW embraces gendered roles and critiques their perceived decline.

On the links, none of these articles was written by MH, who, IMO, would produce much better, more nuanced, more interesting content. I’d rather conservative women read her stuff than MRA nonsense. So if she writes for a constituency that has been alienated from feminism, I can’t see the harm in that.

The 1950s aren’t coming back any time soon. Essentialist gender roles have, unfortunately, never left us, but they are back in a new, pornified way, with sometimes dire consequences for women (thinking of the normalisation of violence during sex). Right now, women are threatened by an economic disaster unfolding, and we also know that they have taken on a huge amount of extra care work due to covid. So, we might see some real societal shifts, and if we want to make sure that these don’t disadvantage women, we should keep the conversation as wide as possible.

Liberation from gender roles and equal division of housework, that’s all very nice (I love a bit of manly DIY myself and my parallel parking is top notch but who cares?) but it does not change the fact that we cannot be liberated from our sexed bodies. That has been a conservative argument for a long time and just because it’s made by the ‘wrong’ side doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Reality, I’m not going to defend the CW website but I’m not sure they’re pro-self ID. (You mention you are gender critical.) If we didn’t have a Tory government, self-ID would be law now, wouldn’t it?

If anything, that particular debate has convinced me that feminism is in the middle of a big political realignment.

Liberation from gender roles and equal division of housework, that’s all very nice (I love a bit of manly DIY myself and my parallel parking is top notch but who cares?) but it does not change the fact that we cannot be liberated from our sexed bodies. That has been a conservative argument for a long time and just because it’s made by the ‘wrong’ side doesn’t mean it’s not true.

No and I have never argued or believed that liberation from the body is possible (other than in the form of contraception and legal abortion). However, women do a disproportionate share of unpaid work and suffer hugely because of it in many ways. It has little to do with biology and much to do with cultural gendered norms.

Also I was asked to provide receipts about CW, which I did. I never claimed that MH wrote these articles. I merely pointed out that she writes for them and not in a ‘let’s challenge this’ manner either. I was also worried about what she said about immigration and pro-birth policies. That is all. Besides, the idea that we need to engage with and embrace the whole spectrum of views is not one I agree with. And nobody on here suggests that when we are talking about TRAs for instance. It only comes up in the context of right-wing views.

@dayoftheclownfish

Reality, I’m not going to defend the CW website but I’m not sure they’re pro-self ID. (You mention you are gender critical.) If we didn’t have a Tory government, self-ID would be law now, wouldn’t it?

If anything, that particular debate has convinced me that feminism is in the middle of a big political realignment.

They are not pro self-ID but nor are they gender critical so we both oppose it but for different reasons. Anti self-ID is not the same as being gender critical.

You do realise that the move towards self-ID in the first place came from tories right? Because we haven’t had a Labour government for over a decade. Yes they seem to have shelved their plans for now but i don’t hold my breath that they won’t backtrack if they think it will win votes.

I am also aware that conservatives have made things worse for poorer women through their dehumanising policies, increasing poverty massively and leaving many to rely on food banks.

You are of course right on TRAs within the Tory ranks (Miller, Mordaunt, Blunt etc etc), and I am pretty sure that if we still had a Cameron Tory government, self-ID would have come through. (I could raise you the Labour-authored GRA, by the way.) BUT this brings me back to the topic of the thread: Cameron was a social liberal, into ‘live and let live’ and hyper-individualism (all very easy when you are wealthy). So maybe the problem is liberalism?

Liberalism is also at the root of many of the social issues you describe that have got worse under the Conservatives: women in poverty, child poverty, food banks, support for disabled people, the working poor. The assumption being that it is up to the individual to prosper in life.

On engaging with TRAs: there is content that I would not engage with. But some TRA writers have helped me better understand the origins of what is to me a very strange set of ideas, to put it mildly.

Thanks for the YouTube link I will be watching with interest. I do agree that there is a mother-shaped hole in a lot of feminist theory. It is bizarre to me that having children is treated as a personal choice when latest figures show that 81% of women have children by their 45th birthday.

I might not be remembering it correctly, but it looks like MH's statement / position is being misunderstood by some.

She said there is a big focus in mainstream feminism that women in general should be thrilled about having careers as if this is the most important thing in life. However, from her point of view, many women prefer to focus on family and actually would like to have more children if possible. Career is not the most important thing above all else. It's not about women being pressured into having children for the greater good - they actually want to be able to have more children. And it's not about being chained to the domestic sphere either. Most women want some combination of work and family life balance, but with maybe more focus on family rather than work.

However, for various reasons this is not possible. There is societal pressure thanks to a certain type of feminist thought that women should be maximising their educational attainment and then career achievements, which means less time and opportunity for having more children because of the general fertility window (which is a real, biological constraint of our sexed bodies that women cannot escape, unless you move towards surrogacy etc).
The capitalist structure of the modern economy is also geared towards pushing women to focus on career rather than family because this expands the labour market, increases economic productivity etc. So rather than "women being made to have children for the greater good" it's the other way around - women being made to have less children for the greater good i.e. for capitalism and a certain type of feminism. If you don't buy into this concept then you can feel like you're 'letting your side down' which is an indication there's a subtle but pervasive pressure on women to focus on career at the expense of motherhood.

Wherever this combo of capitalism and career focused feminism has taken hold, the size of the family has shrunk and women, on average, end up having fewer children as most of their productive years is spent on career rather than family. Motherhood is viewed as something that gets in the way of women's economically productive lives and an inconvenience to overcome as quickly as possible, rather than an important and meaningful part of many women's lives and something they prefer to prioritise over career achievements.

According to career oriented feminism, this is all a good thing, and maybe it is, but everything has downsides and unintended consequences. That was MH's point as I understood it - what are the downsides and unintended consequences of a feminism that ignores motherhood? Is there a way to honestly talk about that?

With women having fewer children (than they would like) this results in smaller families and a gradual decline in population. A declining (and aging) population then needs to resort to more and more immigration to prop up the economic and social system. Greater immigration leads to rapid changes in demographics which can affect community cohesion. It's human nature to feel worried and anxious about local culture and sense of identity and belonging being eroded when there's rapid changes in the population due to increased immigration. This can lead to increasing hostility and resentment towards people who are 'not like you'.

This disruption can also affect societal view of women with a growing political movement that seeks to curtail women's reproductive rights. If such political movements are successful, and women's reproductive rights are undermined, then women will end up having more children whether they want to or not, which also means their educational attainment will decline in the long-term because women will start having children at much younger ages again which will impact on their ability to pursue further education.

So career oriented feminism might end up causing the very problems it set out to resolve in the first place. I think that was the point MH was trying to make and I thought it was an interesting (if dystopian) line of thought that I haven't come across before.

Thank you, Nonny, great summary. As a professional under-achiever, I’m pretty fed up with the Type-A, head girl feminism that you describe.

Brilliant post NonnyMouse!

Yes. It’s all very well if women are choosing not to have children for the right reasons, and those reasons are genuine. But it doesn’t look that way to me when I think of the women I know.

And what about all the women who don’t want (or are not capable of having) careers ? Why shouldn’t their voices be heard and their economic and physical security be secured ? I see a lot of sneering at such women and a dismissing of their concerns. I’d like to see more political representation of these women. I know it is a touchy subject and has sometimes been difficult to raise, but I do think one of the issues with having successful women without children in key roles (Merkel, Sturgeon, May... even Kamala Harris is a stepmum, so hasn’t had the physical experience of motherhood) is that they perhaps haven’t had that experience. For me, previously a highly successful professional, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and early babyhood was the first and tbh the only time that I „felt“ female - biology truly matters!

I agree with all of those points NonnyMouse but I think where MH and I would differ is in the solution to those issues. The typical conservative response is to say we need "strong families and small state". I.e. women who want to focus on children should find themselves a nice, wealthy husband who will be the provider. Personally I don't see that as the route to female emancipation. We've tried this tactic for hundreds of years and what we find is that women are all too often stripped of their agency as they become financially dependent on a spouse.

I think what we need is for the state to recognise the valuable role played by mothers in society and to support and compensate women for this role. In addition, the state should be providing easy access to affordable (/free) childcare so that women can return to work as and when they want to.

@RealityNotEssentialism

Writing about what you think is best for women is not the same as promoting or being interested in feminism. I do not deny at all that conservatives have written about and had an interest in women’s perceived role. I just happen to think it’s not particularly feminist because it usually embraces patriarchal norms and gender roles and places women as caregivers and homemakers. It is also essentialist in that it believes that biology pre-ordains you for a certain role. I don’t personally see that as working to liberate women and dismantle patriarchal structures, which is what feminism aims to achieve. Nor does the CW website. They expressly declare themselves to be anti-feminist and pro traditional roles so why are we trying to pretend otherwise? I also see myself as gender-critical which CW is not. CW embraces gendered roles and critiques their perceived decline.

But how are you defining feminism here?

What you are describing is just a partisan political grouping, not a women's movement as such. If that's all feminism is it should really avoid making any kind of claim to speak on behalf of women or be representative of them. It would certainly have no moral authority in terms of representing stakeholders any more than other partisan groupings.

Yes, I think what NonnyMouse outlined is the idea. But the fact is that view - that it's possible lots of women might prefer more family centred roles - is equated to essentialism by some, and that's basically been a functioning principle for a lot of feminist thinkers. Any appearance that it might be true is social conditioning and suggesting otherwise puts you right outside of feminist thought.

I'm not convinced Harrington is suggesting anything like a small state and marrying rich as part of the solution.

I think there are obviously various solutions - some of which are traditionally regarded as left wing, some right wing. But doesn’t this show the importance of having all women , especially those without their own careers and money (ie those currently not there), represented in political policy formulation and decision making ? How can we make this happen?

On a personal level I am frustrated by what I see as something akin to „learned helplessness“ in terms of serious discourse amount females at baby and toddler groups, school run and mum Chats etc. Mention politics or anything policy related and it goes down like a lead balloon ... how can we engage on this issue in a meaningful way? I’ve thought of running for office but the campaign trail, the need to spout soundbites and play party politics, before we even get into the abuse that I (and potentially my kids) might face as an elected politician - it’s offputting. This is a major issue in my view.

Sorry

*among women at baby and toddler groups