Mary Harrington's 'Feminism Against Progress' book is out.

[ArabellaScott]

Looking forward to this one. I know she gets mixed responses; I find her work really interesting.

swiftpress.com/book/feminism-against-progress/

"Earlier recent generations of feminists wrote a lot about the isolation of women in nuclear families, stranded in some suburban area with small children, no transportation and no help, and compared that to the older wider kin -based arrangements. Harrington's arguments wouldn't help this problem at all, and neither would they have any effect on the way the arrangements she supports would perpetuate the lifetime earnings differences between men and women."

Harrington addresses this specificically and makes clear she is not talking about a nuclear family but rather a preindustrial agrarian extended family within a village, rather than 1950s housewife. Where both parents are economically active - albeit with different roles. She points out how textile production is compatible with child rearing because you can put it down and pick it up as often as you need to. This thread hasn't mentioned much about children - but that is often at the forefront of her arguments. In modern societies, children are a serious liability, an expensive luxury that fewer and fewer people can afford. The tanking birth rate is going to create some serious demographic issues in a few short decades. In a pre industrial society, children are assets.

I think her arguments are compelling and not liking what they point to are weak counter arguments. "We need to build back better" is her key message, and an urgent one when we look at the various trajectories she's highlighting.

Also re the pill and having more sex - !

High Windows
BY PHILIP LARKIN

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide

What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

In a pre industrial society, children are assets.

The reasons why children were assets in pre-industrial societies included not just the love of children (which people still possess, clearly), but two rather clearly economic characteristics of pre-industrial societies:

First, people got their living from agriculture without machines and even small children provided labour for that kind of work. Today children are not allowed to work under those terms and most jobs require education. So the purely economic motivation to have lots of children is not the same today. Because children now need more education they are also more expensive to bring up than was the case in the past. In other words, today's parents can't easily afford large families, because children do not contribute to the family's earnings.

Second, when there was no old age security via governments, children, especially sons in patrilinear societies, were the parents' plan for their own retirement. Given high childhood mortality rates women had to give birth to many more children than today, just to guarantee that some would grow into adulthood.

I don't think the society can be turned into that direction very easily, and probably not at all, absent some giant catastrophe which would wipe out most technological advances.

I have ordered her book so I have not read it yet, but I have concerns about the problems in bringing something back which has clear inherent problems for women (such as unequal status and hierarchical ranking of sex roles in value), unless the problems which caused those are addressed. Women in the West did reject the earlier reincarnations of that system because it tended to favour male interests over female ones.

There are alternative visions for a better world which we could compare to Harrington's ideas. I would begin by looking at all the different countries, what has worked where and why, and I would not just assume that we can't alter the way labour markets work or the involvement of fathers at home etc. For example, we could strengthen part-time work, job-sharing, give incentives to men to take more time off, figure a better way of valuing unpaid labour, subsidise young families with children more and so on.

Not sure you are that alone. Since gender ideology never have I been made so aware just how different men and women are. And as much as feminists go on about the patriarchy it clear that a lot of men are struggling too, just look at the incel movement, although clearly the internet is doing us no favors at the moment with everyone going done various rabbit holes. I really like MH, and I think a lot of what she says makes sense. I say this as a women, whos always single, bought her own home, but as I have got older I can see that more 'traditional' roles don't have to be a problem. Of course women doing the same job as a man should be paid the same etc. and we should have freedom of choice, but I think there is a lot of truth in what she says. Not read the book, so will do so.

Feminism centres women.

Complaining that it doesn't do enough for men is akin to insisting the cat protection league should include dogs.

And as much as feminists go on about the patriarchy it clear that a lot of men are struggling too, just look at the incel movement,

🎻just for the mens.

But there are two sexes; surely centring one in opposition to the other is always going to be not great for half the population, and by extension bad for human society overall.

What MH is getting at, I think, is the need to work out a way in which men and women can share the world in a collaborative way which works for both sexes, rather than men centring men and women centring women - which leaves the welfare of children (another central MH concern) nowhere in sight. Children are the future, lest we forget.

A PP mentioned population collapse. This is happening. Whether it's a phase of several decades or the literal end of humanity after a few centuries, depends in no small measure on whether societies can find a good solution to the (in many ways socially/internet-constructed) sex war.

Who says it's 'in opposition' to the other sex?

Setting up and running survivor centres for women, for example, in no way damages men.

The idea that we can just share out resources nicely ignores the rather large elephant in the room, which is the greater power - political, fiscal, physical - that males have over females in virtually every country in the world.

Feminism centres women to try to redress the inequality of the sexes.

Addressing inequalities is one thing, but It seems to me that Mary Harrington is more interested in how to manage the differences between the sexes in a way which is acceptable to, and workable for, all.

Equality has been a project in 'levelling up' everyone to the standard 'white, male position' rather than in re-evaluating how we define what is worthwhile or what is considered to be success.

To my mind a lot of younger women of the type that shout the loudest for 'trans rights' are also in denial about these differences. It tends to be the same women who bang on about 'sex positivity' and take their children to DQST - seeing both as 'progressive'. In the U.S the main left leaning feminist position revolves around abortion on demand to the extent that abortion access is seen a matter for celebration, rather than an often conflicted decision made sometimes with regret. As if women's liberation and equality comes only when one is freed from the consequences and realities of being female.

I am off to work now, but I am pretty sure there is good evidence that there was an explosion in number of sexual partners, and also STIs, after the sexual revolution. I will try and remember to look this up later but I know I've read that the combination of antibioltics and the pill was far more of a game changer than most modern people realize - we ten to project our own sexual mores backwards and assume people were just doing similar things less openly.

I was going to post again but you've pretty much taken the words out of my mouth.

We'll never create a suitable balance without focusing on both sexes. I'm pretty wary of some of the mentalities I see on here tbh. It feels like some are drawn more to the doom and gloom/woe is me aspect rather than a genuine desire to improve things for both sexes.

Anyone is absolutely free to work for the betterment of humanity.

It's just not 'feminism', by definition.

Feel free to address whatever issues you wish to - campaign to help male rape victims in Ukraine, address mental health problems in young males. All of these are worthy causes.

Don't conflate this with 'feminism', is all.

Just as you are all free to work on whatever issues you feel are most pressing and urgent, women are free to focus on women, on projects that benefit women, and that address some of the very deeply rooted structural inequalities that women face.

FGM, infanticide, rape, dv, etc are all issues that, globally, disproportionately affect women.

'I'm pretty wary of some of the mentalities I see on here tbh.'

Quite bloody right, love.

No, but fighting against things like IMD does.

I remember the MP Jess Philips laughing scornfully on TV at a male MP's suggestion of having a day to talk about issues like male suicide. She said 'every day is international men's day'. Probs not so much for all the men on the street and those on the verge of suicide (both demographics overwhelmingly male). Of course, she was focusing on all the rich, powerful men because the men at the bottom are mostly invisible to society.

And I forget which uni it was, but they cancelled IMD due to a petition, mostly feminists protesting that it was a mockery due to men's privilege or whatever, and a smug statement was released saying that they were going to instead continue to focus on the issues faced by women, as if it was mutually exclusive.

I remember that one as it caused outrage due to the fact that a male student had committed suicide a few days before and they still didn't see the value in a day to address these issues (despite the petition they still didn't reinstate IMD).

I don't have a problem with all feminists, and some do a lot of good. But it does seem that if somebody is actively fighting against initiatives that help men it's 99% the case that they're a feminist. I remember searching IMD on here and was unsurprised to find threads with members moaning about it. A few disagreed and one comment in particular I remember. They said something like 'we always tell men to sort out their own problems, but then we try and shut them down when they attempt to do exactly that'.

But I've said my bit anyway. I'm not going to be one of those posters that 'invades' the feminist section and tries to stir things up.

Yeah, I agree with this and your subsequent comment that the video was likely released to shame the man in question. It's a weird dynamic that the male rape victim would feel emasculated but the rapists would not feel ashamed for having sex with another man. Especially in ultra macho patriarchal countries. I guess it's a power/control thing.

I've also read about it happening in African countries. Particularly military men doing it. I remember a guy talking about an officer coming out and raping him. It's most odd considering that these same countries tend to forbid homosexuality.

I don't have a problem with all feminists, and some do a lot of good. But it does seem that if somebody is actively fighting against initiatives that help men it's 99% the case that they're a feminist.

Righty-ho.

Well, it defo sounds like it was feminists that petitioned to have IMD cancelled in the example I gave. Who else talks about 'structural inequalities faced by women'.

Also seems that they kind of proved the point of their critics as cancelling IMD and making their 'main focus' the inequalities faced by women could indeed be construed as men's issues being drowned out by the focus on women's rights.

The decision came after 200 academics, alumni and students at York - most of them women - penned an open letter attacking the event.

In it they warned that celebrating the event 'amplifies existing, structurally imposed, inequalities' and 'echoes misogynistic rhetoric that men's issues have been drowned out by the focus on women's rights.

It explained how its main focus of gender equality 'should continue to be on the inequalities faced by women'.

I think it's also quite telling that the counter petition to have IMD reinstated said “It is important that we recognise men’s day just as much as women’s day. True feminists should be fighting for gender equality for both men and women. To cancel men’s day is simply hypocritical. Equality is not just for women and should concern both genders.”

It seems pretty clear that feminists were fighting against it. I just don't see how talking about male suicide etc 'amplifies existing, structurally imposed, inequalities'. It's like people replace reality with soundbites/theory they've read online.

I think encouraging men to open up is better for us too for many reasons. One being that alcohol abuse features prominently in DV and men often drink to deal with mental problems.

'True feminists should be fighting for gender equality for both men and women'

'True cat lovers should be fighting for cats AND dogs'

As I said, RotundBeagle, feel free to go and campaign on men's mental health, or male rape, etc.

I'll work on what I choose to work on. You can do the same. Everyone's happy!

Cats don't need to have babies with dogs.

So what you're saying is feminists must work for men. We should set aside concerns about, say, fistula in developing countries, or female infanticide, or the education of Afghan women, in order to focus on the far more important issues of male feelings. Because if we don't do that, they're going to kill us and we won't be able to have babies with them.

Got it.