Three principles of reactionary feminism

[MalagaNights]

An article by Mary Harrington.

She thinks women need to:

Focus on the importance of marriage.
Let men have their own spaces.
Stop taking the pill.

She's taken some thoughts I've been having for a few years to logical conclusions, it's given me a lot to think about. I need to get my head around the idea of there being no progress.

It's certainly feels to me a very different approach to gender critical feminism presented on MN as being what feminism is.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/04/88473/

@MalagaNights

"There feels like there's some truth in this for me based on the numbers of threads I see with women with babies who's partner won't marry them. Or women who's husbands maintain a my money/ your money attitude even when they are caring for a small child.

It does feel like the financial independence mantra and marriage as incidental/ meaningless option are feminist ideas not working out well for lots of women as it allows selfish men to use these concepts to their advantage."

I think this shows a contradiction. You can see marriage as a potential solution but here clearly list common problems women experience within marriage.

Personally I don't think feminism is to blame for how poor some women's experiences of relationships are today. I think some men have used these new freedoms for their own ends.

I also think many women are missold equality and then have kids and the reality of childcare and housework sets in and they see actually no this isn't equality. The lucky few who have good equal marriages from my experience are not common in my lower economic status social group.

As a DV survivor I'm terrified for future victims of marriage has such a push. But I absolutely absolutely agree with you on the effects the pill has had on society.

I think we need to find a different solution

Thanks for posting this, OP. No idea why you've received some hostile responses. Some people don't like their views challenged, I guess.

Like PP I agree with MH's diagnosis of the problems but am uncertain about her proposed solutions- in particular, I think the idea that stopping taking the pill will lead to men in general taking sex more seriously, rather than speeding up the current trend we see for men choosing porn over sex, is naive at best.

I do agree with her about marriage (or equivalent relationship) being a basis from which one can attempt to resist the atomisation of society and the reductionist view of human life which is the inevitable end point of pure capitalism. She gets people cross because she recognises that human thriving (and women's thriving in particular) involves benign interdependence, whereas certain strands of feminism (and modern liberalism generally) think only in terms of independence.

In the UK, feminists are not trying to remove men only spaces. IDK what men only spaces are under threat from feminists in the US, do you have any info on that?

Such interesting posts on this thread

new stuff is never unequivocally good

and for women in particular, new stuff that looks good initially often has a twist in the tail that gets us. One minute it’s all sex positivity and every woman should be having orgasms, next thing you know sex positivity has morphed into violent porn being everywhere and women getting killed by men with the excuse that they like being strangled (ffs)

so it’s right and sensible to examine things, and to understand that we’re inside the box. We’ll inevitably be taking a bunch of stuff for granted that isn’t right at all. MH brings such an interesting perspective on those things

Well I'm a lesbian so I do great on the last 2. Don't think that Harrington is including me though! 😂

Weeeeeell, they did though. There was a lot of campaigning to disallow men only clubs, golf clubs, etc.

It's an unequal relationship between men/women and power, and men-only groups had worked to effectively bar women from many spaces where, the theory goes, decisions were made, alliances forged, and power cemented.

The knock-on effect has been situations like the one in my local town, where the 'men's shed' has had to open its doors to women.

Yeah the context here is that until 1982 it was legal not to serve a woman at the bar

in that kind of climate nuance around single sex spaces sometimes being a good thing can be lost

https://amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2012/nov/15/el-vino-women-ban-fleet-street-1982

I would be interested to know if Mary Harrington's premise extends as far as non-hormonal contraception, like the copper coil. I share misgivings about the "default" being to prescribe teenage girls a permanent prescription for a psychoactive substance. But women in history have used many methods at their disposal to control their fertility, from herbs to barriers to diverting their husbands attention to lower-class, disposable women.

Another thing to consider when we're talking about how the pill/contraception changes our "natural" biology, as that we are already living in unnatural circumstances.

In many hunter-gatherer societies girls reach puberty and become fertile later due to fewer nutritional resources. Many women don't have their first child until around 18, and there appears to be a period of "adolescent sub-fertility" that we see also in some apes, where females can engage in sexual activity but are unlikely to get pregnant. Then, labour-intensive lifestyles, extremely long periods of breastfeeding, and pregnancy meant that it even with sexual activity women were unlikely to get pregnant most of the time they had sex. Now, we are extremely well fed, and girls become fertile while they are still mentally very much children.

And of course, many many more of our children wouldn't make it to their 5th birthday, let alone adulthood. When population growth was too fast, infanticide was common, especially for female babies. The amount of pregnancies and babies we have "naturally" when half of them die looks quite different to how many are sustainable when nearly all survive.

You only have to read through a thread on single sex spaces to see there is a good number of people who take the position that there should be no single sex men's spaces. Some think no single sex spaces for anyone, others think it is ok for women, but not men.

To be honest I've never see you around on this board in the many years I've been posting. I don't recognise your username at all. Perhaps you normally post on other boards?

We've had many interesting discussions on ths board over the course of the last year, sparked particularly, by the various writings of Mary Harrington. It has been very refreshing and ieven exciting to feel like there is a possibility to move forward in a different way with regards to women's issues and womens' rights.

The advent of transgender ideology has left many of us re-questioning everything we thought we knew about sex and gender, and about narrow political tribalism and allegiances. Everything is up for critique and for re-newal.

Personally feel that the sort of 'feminism' that some now espouse is no diffeent to any other group identity politics of oppressors and oppressed that are so prevalent now.

it's like a new generation of women are still having the same old discussions and issues they've always had - and not that much has, essentially, changed.

No she wants the possibility to look at issues of sex and gender in different ways to the formulaic dogmas of old.

I find Mary Harrington quite a hard read, and I'm never sure whether that's because she's a deeper thinker than I am or whether her writing is largely smoke and mirrors. But I do think that feminism has never managed to get to grips with motherhood and, if you believe, as I do, that feminism is about centring women and women's needs, then that's a pretty glaring omission. Thanks for starting this thread, op.

It's almost like sisters are doing it to themselves.

It is largely other women screaming at those that want to discuss women sex based issues; women have been the biggest cheerleaders for the erasure of women, and also for the de-valuing of female roles in childrearing and home making.

One of the questions MH poses is 'Do we really want to eliminate, or at least to attempt to eliminate, all difference between the sexes. And to what end?

There's something Suzanne Moore wrote which was along the lines of agree very much with Mary Harrington's identification of the problem, disagree enormously with the suggested plan of action. I suppose that sums up my feelings

This

There are quite a few structural problems in modern society, one of which is how to bring out the best in men, which is important and one that she is obviously trying to address .

However this woman calls herself a feminist but is blaming feminism for everything from capitalism to transgenderism, including irresponsible fathers.

However this woman calls herself a feminist but is blaming feminism for everything from capitalism to transgenderism, including irresponsible fathers.

I've not read enough of Harrington's work to assess that. But 'feminism', as I understand it, pretty much has to keep evolving as society changes, and that will come with critique. So it kind of has to keep being interrogated, assessed, and adjusted (as theory and practise) if the main aim is to improve the lot of women. Is blaming feminism the same as prodding it to see which bits work and which need more thought?

I don't think she's blaming feminism so much at looking of the arc of history and how various movements and developments have impacted upon women ,and the family, in particular; and rejecting,or at least questioning, ideas of 'progress' which technological transformations tends to throw up.

I find MH very interesting and thought-provoting, but go round in circles with how much i agree with her. I do think women should stop taking the pill if possible. At the very least, doctors need to stop prescribing it to young girls. It's well known to cause depression and other issues.

@MalagaNights thanks for sharing the article.

@ToriaB I've seen and interacted with MalagaNights loads, but I've never heard of you. Don't appreciate your aggressive and hostile approach to a space where women are trying to talk, if I'm honest.

This ^ 😁

I was having a really nice day till I read that PIFFLE OP

I don't think she's blaming feminism so much at looking of the arc of history and how various movements and developments have impacted upon women ,and the family, in particular; and rejecting,or at least questioning, ideas of 'progress' which technological transformations tends to throw up.

Yes, this is the impression I get from her writing. I’m the same generation as Mary and can recognise a lot of my own journey in hers. My teenage years were just about on the cusp of still being able to ‘wait’ for some time before sexual activity when dating. It was veering on a bit ‘old-fashioned’ but acceptable. I think it is much harder nowadays for young girls/women to delay sexual activity with boyfriends for any length of time. The pressure to be ‘sex positive’ is strong.

I went on the pill and it really messed with my mental health and triggered migraines. It does bother me that it became a default solution.
Becoming a mother changed my viewpoint on many things and I do think that the feminist movement as a whole has struggled with women’s embodied reality. As a society we still do not value mothering and interdependent, caring relationships. Working life still does not lend itself to a balance with family life without significant economic costs.
I can see how Mary comes to the conclusion that a stable family unit is a form of resistance to a society where we are hyper individualistic units of consumption.

However, my thoughts run to a worst-case scenario. What if the woman is married to an abusive shit of a husband? I think that we haven’t done enough as a society to raise men who are good husbands and fathers. The risk for women of interdependence is still too high while stats for VAWG are as they are.

However, my thoughts run to a worst-case scenario. What if the woman is married to an abusive shit of a husband?

She says very explicitly that she's not advocating that people remain in abusive marriages.

I don't even think she is making firm prescriptions; as is her usual style she throws out exaggerated 'ideal forms' in order to explore them.

Surely the concept of being "reactionary" is automatically incompatible with being a feminist?

I think most of the problems she is referring to are a consequence of the capitalist system rather than feminism. I mean, for example, women did not like being confined to the home and dependent on the kindness of their husbands, so they fought for more freedom to work and the capitalist system said fine, you can all take a pay cut.