Mary Harrington on US liberal feminism

[CrossPurposes]

Mary Harrington as thought provoking as ever. I can't say I've heard of the acronym AWFL but I do recognise the concept.

unherd.com/2022/11/a-sex-war-is-coming/

Oh come on. Activism relating to abortion is a thing that exists, it's not even an idea that refers specifically to one particular view, it could be used for anyone involved in any kind of activism related to abortion. You are really reaching here.

I'm not sure what kind of proof or evidence you are looking for, neither my statement nor MH's was something that you could really show proof of in the way that you seem to be thinking of. Any more than you could show proof of the motivations of the revolutionaries she used as an example of the mechanism she is referring to. Nor would it clearly refute the implications of that if we could know they all thought their own motives were pure.

Feminists are more than happy to apply this kind of class analysis when they like what comes out the other end, you should know damn well that individual's reasons for voting as they conceptualize them to themselves or others are not "proof" that class interests have no effect on voting or what politics people support. If you believe they do then you need to throw out every other instance of class analysis that points out a principles' political stance just happens to be materially advantageous for the members of said class.Women aren't somehow uniquely immune to that, or at least you haven't given any reason to believe they are different from humanity as a whole in that regard.

Dunno. Getting married and having one child in your 30s does not seem very out of the ordinary and I don’t know how this undermines MH’s argument. She tends to make mildly provocative points that often ‘trigger’ a certain kind of person.

Class, including education and wealth, is the blind spot of contemporary mainstream feminism, which remains the discursive property of educated women from comfortable backgrounds of all races. Without having sound data on who gets abortions, I hesitate to speculate but if poor women are vastly over-represented, then we do have to explain why, as an issue, it has a mobilising effect on women on higher incomes.

Wow you just have to read the comments to this article, mainly by men but overwhelmingly negative towards women, to see the demographic she's appealing to.

I'm not intelligent enough or informed enough to construct a counter argument but it doesn't speak to me as a feminist view in the simple terms that I see feminism, which starts with the point that misogynistic views are not a part of it. Using the bell curve to denigrate women's place in society and political discourse, as happens in the comments, says it all.

So you’re saying MH is a sell-out, appealing to MRA and incel types? Perhaps but over the last few years, I’ve been finding it increasingly hard to identify self-described feminists who aren’t sell-outs. If I had to choose between MH and Sally Hines, that would be a fairly easy choice.

I think calling MH a sell out is unnecessary, and accusing others of calling her that is a bit of an overreaction.

Much of MH's writing is quite nuanced, and when she's exploring the edges of the impact on increasing technology, automation and commodification on our social fabric and humanity she can be very good indeed. In her analysis of just where "progress" is currently leading, she is a small-c conservative.

However, when it comes to American politics and her encounters with their version of hyper-libertarian, equally pro-tech/automation and commodification that I think her analysis falls flat. She needs to critique American liberalism as a "conservative" writer who goes to US Conservative conferences, but rarely joins the dots that the American right is just as prone to dehumanisation and immorality as the left is - they just wrap theirs in a different set of platitudes. Her conservatism is not the same as theirs, and her analysis of the abortion debate is quite a clear example of that.

I agree she doesn't choose who comments on Unherd, but God they're a horrible bunch.

I read it. It was hyperbolic misogyny and Feminists Know Your Place shite.

I like it that Mary Harrington always poses difficult, thought provoking questions, and always tries to go beyond the surface. It is the case of deep thinking with her. And she is gender critical..

Agreed. This is not one of her more coherent efforts.

She doesn't tend to write on American conservatives as often, I would not expect to see that kind of comment in an article like this.

I think it's important to realize that she isn't talking about all women in this article, or even "feminism". She's talking about the Democrats, and arguably not Democrat voters as a whole but a fairly powerful group there who tend to be the group they shape their policy for.

I think she's making a similar argument to what has happened in the Labour Party, where the policy views now tend to reflect their middle and upper middle class, university educated voters. Not just what advantages them, but what they see as just and good. But that means it may not be so reflective of what working class people see as important for themselves, or just. The Democrats approach to women's issues she sees as being mainly reflective of the needs and also ethical views of that same demographic, which may or may not be what wc women in the US want, or believe is important, but even if they do it is probably not for the same reasons.

And actually if you look at poor and wc women in the US, although they certainly access abortion services more frequently, the reasons are not necessarily the same, they more often reflect an inability to afford the pregnancy or child which might otherwise be wanted, and you also see a much more ambiguous relationship to how and why contraception and abortion services are marketed in poor communities.

The statistics quoted above about half of women having abortions in the US being below the poverty line are interesting and I agree potentially an issue. However they might slightly be skewed by age and other factors e.g. young women (18-24) are most likely to be living in poverty (21.55% which is massive). So that still makes women in poverty more likely than affluent women to need an abortion - but it paints a different picture to if (eg) only 4% of women were in poverty but they still represented 50% of terminations. (stats here www.statista.com/statistics/233154/us-poverty-rate-by-gender/ )

I also would be interested in more information in the proportion of women by socio-economic class who actually support abortion. More affluent women will always be more represented in the "professional activist"/journalist field just as more affluent men are so will be the noisiest in talking about this. So it easy to imply that their views are out of step with other women or ignore other women's needs. And often they are - for example the big focus on the "gender pay gap" especially re high paying careers but much less attention paid to the poverty line gap at the other end of the spectrum. Which actually matters more in my opinion. But I don't know if that's the case with abortion access.

I like Mary Harrington though. Her articles always give me new things to think about even if I don't agree with her.