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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Thought experiment: Feminism is a patriarchal movement

12 replies

AnotherDayAnotherView · 26/09/2022 22:33

Background: A friend in his seventies, ex-Militant i.e. Hatton et al, we engage in a variety of political/sociological/economy discourse coming from differing perspectives.
Topic for today: Feminism is a patriarchal movement
Thought experiment: Who benefits from feminism?
Premises: Men tend to think from somewhere below the waistline so how can men achieve their objectives of unprotected sexual encounters with a number of different sexual partners without any responsibilities or obligations?
Solution: Develop contraceptives and abortion
Impact upon women: the introduction of pharmacological interventions (the pill) that may negatively impact women; the introduction of surgical procedures that may endanger a woman's life (D&C).
Impact upon men: Zero - unprotected sex with multiple partners with no adverse effects
Thoughts?

OP posts:
Potatomashed · 26/09/2022 22:36

There’s a book on this: the case against the sexual revolution. Interesting stuff

Discovereads · 26/09/2022 22:43
  • Feminism and movement towards equality predates birth control by over a century, so you’re talking about one medical advancement not feminism.
  • Unprotected sex with no consequences has been available to men since time began. Trafficking women/girls into sex slavery. Still is available to them for the bargain price of a nice hot dinner.
  • Abortion also has always existed and does have risk to womens health and occasionally can cause death BUT at a far lower risk than childbirth. In addition, legalising it and perfecting the procedure has made it even safer for women than before, so it wasn’t to mens benefit, but to womens benefit.
MangyInseam · 26/09/2022 22:47

Well your friend would not be at all the first person to make this argument. I would tend to query who really benefits rather than lay it on the patriarchy, which is a concept that often has no clear material reference.

There will always be some difficulty in deciding what counts as "feminism" for a discussion like that, as there are different viewpoints within feminist thought on the questions you mention.

But I would argue that an artificial division of woman from reproductive role which occurred within feminism, in an effort to avoid what was felt to be the limits of that biological fact, social expectations around it, ultimately has had significant downsides for women. Not least because it is simply not in line with reality. It's not freedom to have to suppress your biological nature in order to have what passes for equality.

And it gives a easy out for society to avoid supporting the female reproductive role, and also for pushing more women into the role of capitalist worker, which is good for the elite, but not so great for the rest.

The acceptance of an ideal of a free male sexual life as what women want has overall been shitty for a lot of women.

And of course this has all been enabled by the emergence of (fairly) reliable birth control and abortion, which have very mixed results for women.

I've wondered what form a feminist movement that did not have those tools would take. I tend to think it would have more to offer for a lot of women, given that most women will choose to have children in any case.

PermanentTemporary · 27/09/2022 04:37

I remember watching the People's Century documentaries interviewing 90 year old about their lives in the early part of the century. I think it is quite hard to go back into a mindset before contraception was socially acceptable - it was very hard to get hold of it, unreliable and also something so shameful that no nice or religious girl or man would use it in their marriage. It was a sin as well.

Seeing woman after woman describing their fear of repeated pregnancies and birth. How it dominated their home lives, they had far more children than they wanted, reduced pleasure from sex. It's true there would be pressure on men not to 'make excessive demands' on women after a certain point, but not really very effective pressure.

You've used the sentence 'most women will choose to have children'. I do think that that sentence represents the social and mental liberation that access to contraception and abortion are. Yes, there have been consequences that are negative for women and beneficial only for men, I've heard abortion described as 'a male solution' which I'm guessing is the same viewpoint. But I can't forget those women and their daily facing of the likelihood of another pregnancy when they were already struggling. That mental landscape.

Goosygandy · 27/09/2022 04:54

I can't imagine that it was liberating to have no choice about your reproduction.

The many women that died or were physically harmed from botched abortions would not see safe abortion or effective contraception as a bad thing.

I would see the fact that many women are still socialised to put up with awful men as a greater contributor to why women can be disadvantaged by increased sexual freedom. If we removed contraception tomorrow, it would not be men that suffered most from this.

This is why we don't need men or female handmaidens for men running family planning policy or making these decisions.

SunThroughTheCloudsAt6am · 27/09/2022 06:16

That's a very male-centred view of what those things do. Feminism is women-centred. That is a patriarchal view of feminism which of course misses the practical impacts on women.

the introduction of surgical procedures that may endanger a woman's life (D&C).

I don't mean to - but ROFL - what do you think repeated, uncontrolled pregnancies do? Which do you think is more risky for a woman overall!

I am lucky enough to live in a part of the world where I can be reasonably sure of not getting pregnant if I don't want to, and able to end and accidental pregnancy if I want to. That is liberating, I don't care what it means for men at that point.

ThatCheeseIsMine · 27/09/2022 07:21

I do think the sexual revolution, especially the pill, came with a type of feminism that may have made many women feel they should be having loads of sex, and somehow “being like men” (as a sweeping generalisation) about sex i.e. wanting loads of no-strings, casual sex, and convincing themselves they liked it. Of course some women did/do want that but I can see the argument that the whole movement advantaged men - and though pills and abortion did mean greater freedom, there will still have been lots of babies born reducing women’s freedom and earning power far more than men’s. So women got “freedom” at the having sex end of the process but they didn’t and still don’t have equality in childcare and domestic labour. very handy for men.

MangyInseam · 27/09/2022 16:37

The thing is, if you are arguing that it is just, right, true, sense for women to have equality of personhood, equality of dignity, with men, that isn't a statement that can depend on the existence of a technological way to (seemingly) achieve that.

By inserting that possibility into your thinking about the nature of that equality at the level of principle, you end up saying, women are only in truth equal to men if they become less like women, biologically, and more like men.

When that is the beginning of your political program it will always veer away from actually valuing women in their reproductive role. And that's what we see, not just in the hook up sex market, but also in the way we deal with work and motherhood and education and social care.

It's also incredibly fragile, as any place or time where there is not these tech innovations on the table you are reduced to saying that there is no possible way to be women who are valued equally as themselves compared to men.

Part of the problem I think is a tendency in the west to see things soley through the lens of freedom. And in this case it's being seen in terms of, freedom from our bodies. So freedom from the different problems that women face compared to men becomes analogous with being free from our female body and its functions.

That's been a powerful idea that has gone much farther than just politics around women, it's seen in all forms of transhumanism, in the kind of environmentalism that thinks that we can use tech to find ways to consume without the consequences of bad effects, among other things.

People always seem to jump to this idea that questioning the prominence of reproductive tech in feminism just means rejecting it altogether. What I'd suggest is that it may or may not mean that but that it certainly isn't an adaquate basis to build any kind of women's movement and stifles any such project.

AnotherDayAnotherView · 27/09/2022 16:55

Potatomashed · 26/09/2022 22:36

There’s a book on this: the case against the sexual revolution. Interesting stuff

Thank you to all who have engaged in this thread, my friend and I really enjoy taking complex issues and looking at things from differing perspectives (whether we agree with them or not) - it keeps our aging brains busy and sharp.

Potatomashed: do you know the title and author of the book you mentioned? It might be interesting to get some quotes for future discussions - thanks

OP posts:
pattihews · 27/09/2022 18:26

Feminism is about analysing the structure of society from a female point of view and identifying and if possible changing the structure to redress sex-based unfairness. Contraception and abortion allow the possibility of giving women more control over their fertility and limiting family size. Having control of one's fertility is political. Look at the panic in Germany 30 years ago and Italy now over the falling birthrate. Germany was offering significant financial support to encourage more women to have more children. Perhaps a society that acknowledged and centred the value of women's reproductive function would look very difficult from what we have now...

Louise Perry wrote The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and you can hear her talking about it with Helen Lewis here:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001b4fb

Zuyi · 27/09/2022 18:38

Contraception and abortion are medical technologies. They are not the same thing as feminism at all. Yes, they were developed in a patriarchy, like everything, and aspects of their use benefit men. So what though? It's not a zero sum game.

moominda · 27/09/2022 20:59

I do feel that there's growing rejection of the pill due to some research bits here and there - I heard a Louise Newson podcast where she slightly insinuated that altering hormones wasn't always really a good thing for young bodies and I know Lara Briden is very much about ovulation being the "main" event from a health perspective. I avoided it after terrible side effects and it worsening or triggering hypothyroidism in early 20s and have just been extremely careful all my life.

But - I never had the crippling side effects of periods many friends had. Only in peri menopause- I'm seriously considering mini pill with the hrt. (For Mood. But don't want it to worsen!)

Really it's about good rock solid research about womens health, options, education and opportunity. Informed choices.

It's not patriarchal at all to be able to offer women decent health choices for their bodies.

The pill enabled women to work. So many women died in child birth too.

I do understand the reasoning behind Louise Perry's book though.

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