Maya’s response to Radical Notion’s GC divisions

[HiccupHorrendousHaddock]

I thought this was a very interesting answer to the recent issue of RN.

Shout out to the vipers and their Mumsnet Feminism within!

mforstater.medium.com/on-gender-critical-disputes-db2e456ad9cd

Because maybe people like Lorelei, if there is any like her, is the reason that there seems to be more balance in the quarterly magazines?

Lorelei is great. Probably the only reason I might have glanced at this quarterly in the past.

The power to sort this situation out that women and girls are facing lies primarily with Parliament and the courts. And they really don’t listen to factions. They only want to listen to united voices giving clear messages. We can’t afford time on this self-indulgent territorial pissing. I really hope that this latest flurry ends soon. It’s a massive self indulgence.

This is critical for feminists no matter where they are in the world. You can't show up to the policy makers and expect them to take you seriously while in the middle of a spat.

@Floisme I agree

I find it interesting that @BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn and @JoodyBlue are the only comments to really touch on the premise of the article which concerns why infighting occurs rather than the merits of each side. Perhaps because it doesn’t appeal to the pragmatic sensibilities of mumsnet feminists!! The idea that radical feminism is fundamentally wrong about human nature strikes a chord with me. This is what Maya was referring to when she said 1= 0. There is something utopian about the idea that we can dismantle the patriarchal structure that has existed for centuries. I say this despite largely aligning with radical feminism and having never bought into the liberal feminism that was heavily marketed to me as a millennial. I believe the power struggle between the sexes is eternal because it is based on our biological differences. I admit I am not an evolutionary biologist, or an anthropologist, so I don’t know much about the history of our patriarchal and matriarchal societies. But if radical feminism is utopian it leaves the door open for liberal feminism which further embeds patriarchy by centring men. (Interestingly I feel this mirrors the socialism/capitalism dichotomy.)

Maya’s article touches on elements of biological essentialism which often makes people feel uncomfortable. It speaks to fundamental issues such as whether male violence is innate and eternal, or whether the power of female beauty is legitimate. You can either rail against it or you can accept it and grab whatever is available to you to hoist yourself up in the system you find yourself in.

This also ties to the Bill Maher clip posted recently about how no revolution can dictate human nature. Is there hope in evolution? When cultural attitudes change, does that reflect a true change in human nature or is it a veneer of social civility hiding the ugly reality beneath?

This leads to the question of how to reconcile feminist theory and activism with reality to create a powerful and effective feminist movement. Ultimately radical feminism is not that popular, and it hasn't been effective. Is it too far removed from individuals' realities, too heavy on analysis even if it is entirely correct? KJK has created an enormously effective campaign and I think we can learn from it. But depressingly I feel its success is because gender ideology is not a specifically feminist issue but an attack on truth, which attracts opposition across every class, sex, race, age, political and sexual orientation. Lesbians and heterosexual women were not listened to. Only with the addition of mothers who were worried about their children, and men who value reality and free speech, has this gained traction.

I think I have come to the conclusion that for a movement to be effective for women it must necessarily compromise or at least dilute some of its values, precisely because in our sexist society, women will not be heard. At the very least there is a trade-off between efficacy and purity.

These are just ramblings and I know that this kind of discussion is the antithesis to the practical feminism we applaud but I am genuinely interested in other’s opinions.

@JoodyBlue Also as a childless woman I completely agree with you about motherhood, which I imagine brings the stark reality of nature to the fore. Among women who would call themselves feminists, I think childlessness is mostly represented in 2 groups: young women and separatists (including lesbians). So they can either in youthful naivety pretend the reality of nature in heterosexual relationships doesn’t apply to them or avoid it, respectively. And as @Floisme pointed out this attitude isn’t exclusive to childless women but perhaps over-represented in this group.

This is exactly what I think when I read Sheila Jeffreys or listen to Helen Joyce.

I suspect one of the reasons we're in the mess we're in is because a frightening number of people who've gained their MAs and PhDs by writing about Judith Butler and all the other obscurantists in their field haven't actually read and understood them. And neither have their PhD advisers. It's a disaster for academia.

Do we all remember Helen Pluckrose and colleagues' Grievance Studies Affair, when they wrote 20 deliberately fake and patently ridiculous articles and submitted them to academic journals?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

James Lindsay of the Grievance Studies Hoax (along with Helen & Peter Boghossian) is one of the people rubbished and denounced as a MAGAman in TRN.

Ultimately radical feminism is not that popular, and it hasn't been effective. Is it too far removed from individuals' realities, too heavy on analysis even if it is entirely correct? KJK has created an enormously effective campaign and I think we can learn from it.

Some of the policies that have come from radical feminism are in complete agreement with what KJK and many women on MN believe: Nordic Model Now regarding prostitution, anti-commodification of surrogacy and egg donation, protecting the right to abortion, anti-pornography, anti-sex trafficking, rights for lesbians and bisexual women. When women talks on these topics, many of us agree. These ARE radical feminist positions, but maybe the use of the term "radical" abortion is the problem.

I would like to add that I feel plenty of radical feminists would be more than happy to not be credited for their work if we could somehow get these polices implemented for women and children. I don't call myself a radical feminist, just a feminist, but I'd be happy to get the message across if it falls under another name. Women's rights, women's liberation, femalism, good stuff for gynes...I don't care. Let's focus on what we agree on and mobilize!

KJK is forever giving props to Sheila Jeffreys and Julia long (who both fit in the ‘PhD without the waffle’ category).

I agree that there is no great distinction between radical feminism’s position on the material reality of the female body and Mumsnet feminisms position.

What happens next is where things get harder.
Someones still got to grow the future people and children are happiest and healthiest when raised by two parents.

Now there's a surprise. (For the avoidance of doubt, I am being ironic)

Ok. I need help.

What is a radical feminist and why do so many say they're not?

Then I can understand some more of the context.

I personally thought, from what some patient mners in the past have said, that what Maya says about evolutionary and biological feminism is essentially radical feminism.

Someones still got to grow the future people and children are happiest and healthiest when raised by two parents.

Yes to the first. The second just feels like a way to shit on single mothers. That doesn't feel like helping women at all.

This is partly true, partly not. It's true in the sense that second wave feminism had a strong critique of what is bad for women with the traditional model of child-rearing, based on male dominance in families, women's work being of the legally unpaid nature (all caring work, not just caring for children).

It results in mothers carrying most of the costs of the reproduction of the next generation, as they will end up with smaller pensions, smaller lifetime incomes and, depending on the laws and the era and country we look at, less ability to leave bad marriages or have independent lives.

It also results in a world where the people in powerful positions are much less likely to be women as getting into those powerful positions requires time spent in a career path, higher education for research etc.

So most of second wave concentrated on encouraging women to stay in paid employment, because of these reasons, and the practical policies they supported had to do with removing sex-based discrimination at work and creating paid maternity leaves and paid child-care. The less practical (in the sense that they could not really be enforced) policies advocated for more shared child-care by fathers, which would have stopped the burden from being disproportionately borne by the mothers alone.

At the same time, the old NOW (National Organization for Women) in the US did much to help those women who had cared for children at home. They were able to get laws passed which allowed sahm parent to pay into private retirement plans (not allowed before this), and they also were successful in getting some other changes approved which benefited those who had the major responsibility for child-care.

Today's NOW is all about gender identity.

Is there hope in evolution? When cultural attitudes change, does that reflect a true change in human nature or is it a veneer of social civility hiding the ugly reality beneath?

Human behaviour is really very malleable. The same individual in different situations might commit horrific acts of cruelty, or make great sacrifices to help others.

Culture changes really quickly, much quicker than evolution. Anyone over 25 will already have seen big cultural change in their own lifetime. But physically there is not an awful lot different between us and people in biblical times.

The anthropology is really pretty clear by now. People haven’t always lived in nuclear families and patriarchy hasn’t always existed. The question of whether getting rid of it again is an achievable goal - that is another matter entirely, of course, and I agree that it’s a similar question to that of whether socialism is desirable/attainable or do we have to content ourselves with trying to make capitalism a bit nicer.

But I really don’t see why disagreement about any of this stops us uniting to demand single-sex jails.

Also, though I am not a radical feminist (can't find a single school of feminism I agree with on everything, though I do believe radical feminism is correct that the oppression of women is sex-based), my impression is that they were more likely to address the question of child-care than liberal feminists, and somewhat more likely to propose solutions such as wages for mothers (or those who care for their own children at home).

I have subscribed to the Radical Notion and found it interesting. Not necessarily in "I agree with this all" sense, but as one interpretation of what might be happening. It's fairly academic in style and even within academia tilted towards philosophy, but I did learn something interesting from each issue, even if it was a point I disagreed with enough to think about it more.

I am not an evolutionary biologist, or an anthropologist, so I don’t know much about the history of our patriarchal and matriarchal societies

You rang?

Complete side note the main discussion, but if anyone is interested in the anthropological roots of my (minor) objections to Maya's claim that biology inevitably results in systems based on the nuclear family and men controlling women in order to control the children they father, the exceptions fall broadly into 3 groups.

1. Burn it all down revolutions. These sometimes scrap the nuclear family ideal as part of the destruction of all former systems - and to better control future generations raised to see the state as their parent and their actual parents as subservient to the state.

These generally do not go well, or last long, and are a poor counter example.

1. Polyandrous societies, where the various men in the household don't know which of them is the father of any child. These can be stable systems - some are still going in various parts of the Himalayas. And while certainly not without problems for both men and women, not necessarily more problematic than monogamy (and for women rather less so than polygyny). The ones that work tend to be 1 woman marrying a set of brothers - so the men know that if they are not the father of a child then they are at least an uncle.

1. Genuinely polygamous societies. Unlike 2, I think these have all been missionaried out of existence, but they used to exist successfully (from memory mostly Pacific islands). In these cases inheritance of any goods or status was matrilineal, and men raised their sisters children. Either with brothers and sisters forming the 'household', and lovers just dropping in for the night; or with women and children forming a household and all men living elsewhere. Genetic relationship of men to the children they are responsible for is 1 step removed, but it is absolutely guaranteed - unlike systems where men raise their 'own' children.

So biology doesn't necessarily enforce the specific patriarchal family set up that most of the world currently considers 'normal'. But realistically it would be impossible to create the social change necessary to switch to systems 2 or 3, or to system 1 for anything more than a short and unhappy period.

I’ve been a single mother for the majority of my kid’s lives.

I’m sure the factors are myriad and income and stable housing is a massive part of it but interpreting my assertion as ‘shifting on single mothers’ rather than thinking ‘ok, how do we have to improve women’s lives in order to mitigate that so?’ doesn’t help.

www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787.

children are happiest and healthiest when raised by two parents.

[Citation needed]

More than 1 parent/parent equivalent is preferable (from the parental point of view at least as much as the child's), to spread the load and provide backup if something happens to the first one. But many combinations can work, and a lot of factors are more important than a specific number.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn Are there other societies that used the kibbutz concept?

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn

Link above and yes, I suppose that could mean 2plus, but not something I had considered.

And frankly, having been in a relationship with an identical twin for three years the very thought of a relationship with two brothers at once fills me with horror 🙊😂

How does that work out on a societal level when babies are usually born more or less 50/50 m/f?

For many women, leaving a 2-parent household is making their children's lives healthier, but to your point @ShireWifeofNigelFarage rarely financially better. Feminism, especially 2nd wave, gave women more choices to divorce, which meant they could raise their children in healthier, safer homes.

A nuclear family is often very beneficial for women and children but I disagree it's best.

To the anthropologists: Does nuclear family structure benefit women more because they have access to moveable funds vs pastoralists society where resources are kept in a patriarchal collective?

Broken link fix:

www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787.amp

Let's focus on what we agree on and mobilize!

I agree that there is no great distinction between radical feminism’s position on the material reality of the female body and Mumsnet feminisms position.

Yes to both points! I think that’s an interesting point about having children and families. As women as a sex class gain greater sexual and economic freedom they have fewer children, which is a very good thing for women. And the fact that more divorces are initiated by women could also reflect a relative power and freedom in being able to leave poor relationships or abusive men. There will always be a need for this.

However I agree the functional nuclear family is better for children and parents and I don’t mean that as a slight on single mothers. I think the declining birth rate and increasing divorce rate is compounded today by poor relations between the sexes, with the rise of incels, anti-feminism, Andrew Tate, rife sexual harassment in schools, porn addiction, male entitlement etc. (The affordability of children during fertile years is also a huge point but not going to address that here).

Good relations between the sexes would ensure that people continue to reproduce out of the desire and crucially, ability, to create healthy loving families. I think this is a potential strategy to appeal to conservatives that still benefits women. And this is what I mean about widening the net of appeal for radical feminist positions so that we actually get listened to and these policies enacted.

A nuclear family is often very beneficial for women and children but I disagree it's best.

Obvs It’s always better to raise a child alone than with an abusive partner and step fathers are a statistical risk to the child.