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/

I think the fact that we can barely agree on what she's saying about some pretty fundamental issues is down to her writing. She can express herself very clearly when she chooses but at other times she's incredibly opaque. I don't think it's necessary.

It is, which is why I find it confusing that she seems to hold the luxury belief that the majority of men will remain in a long term relationship with a woman, continuing to provision her and her children, without continued access to sex, especially in places where women do not have as many rights. In much of the world women do not feel like they can refuse sex with their husbands, or insist on condom use.

Frankly I think the point that we're all into BDSM because we're missing the risk of pregnancy is such a crackpot theory that it's made me reassess what I think of the rest of her analysis.

I don't think anyone including Mary Harrington would suggest you not wanting 6 children is what belittles motherhood.

What belittles it is that it is seen as less important than work done within the marketplace.

Work in and for the family is belittled, work in the marketplace is given high esteem.

I think we're at a point where the right thinks women and men are generally better off when they belong to families and the left think they are better off belonging to no one.
When women and men are atomised individuals only seeking to fulfill their own desires without even the constraint of biological reality.

You are then free to just sell yourself as you wish- your time or body - when the left were meant to be against capitalism and the right for individual freedom! This is why right and left don't work anymore.

Hahahahaha. No.

Hi Dasha and Anna! 👋

I think lots of other women are perfectly capable of tolerating a sharing of an alternative viewpoint, and some may even enjoy it. Even if they disagree

I am one of those. Thank you. There is a lot to think about, and I don’t necessarily disagree with everything at all, though I wouldn’t want to throw out all the good with the bad.

As to the pill, it is a necessary evil but also a nasty horrible thing imo. And while I think abortion available on demand is essential, it also sometimes leads to a very unpleasant expectation on the part of a lot of men.

it also sometimes leads to a very unpleasant expectation on the part of a lot of men.

that's part of the problem innit? things that are on the face of it for women end up being used for the convenience of men

if MH's issue is with hormonal contraception only, I have to say I agree with her. the pill is awful, I hated it and knew it was altering my behaviour. I've used a copper coil for 25 years. I really don't understand why it's not a method that's more widely used

I took the reference to cycle tracking to mean she wasn't against all contraception. Must admit I've always thought that an understanding of your body's fertility rhythm would - if it were sophisticated enough - be preferable and more feminist than a hormonal contraceptive. I find it disappointing that these techniques don't seem much more advanced now than they were 20-30 years ago. (Admittedly I'm past the menopause now so I may be out of touch?)
But why Harrington can't say so in plain English (if this is what she means) is infuriating.

I will never trust cyclextracki g sperm can love for up to 14 days, I conceived on D5 of a 24 days cycle.

No I agree, I wouldn't trust it either. But I struggle to believe that it's beyond the reach of 21st century science to come up with something more sophisticated and more reliable. I think the problem is that there's a lack of will to do so.

How would just relying on condoms work?

Men would have to take responsibility, and pregnancy risk would be slightly higher?

Overall I guess they'd be less sex outside committed relationships.

If women expected commitment before sex, and marriage before babies, would this change men's behaviour and would it be better for women? I think so.

If women were not expected to take the pill would they be more likely to be insistent on these expectations? I think so.

I haven't finished catching up with the thread, so apologies if someone's already mentioned this, but DemiColon's comment flagged up in my brain something from the recent AMA by an Orthodox Jewish woman (which got to 1k posts very quickly, and then there was a second one - people were finding her life absolutely fascinating!)

She was talking about the Jewish custom (for married couples) of abstaining from sex during the woman's period plus a set number of days thereafter. She was very honest, said it was sometimes really hard (I think they're actually not allowed to touch AT ALL during this time), but that the 'enforced' separation actually enhanced the couple's sexual relationship, as it creates a natural rhythm of separation, building desire, and then coming together again.

Catholic social teaching suggests a similar thing WRT to Natural Family Planning, whereby the couple avoids intercourse around the fertile part of the woman's menstrual cycle.

I'm sure I'll be drummed out of town for even mentioning anything vaguely religion-adjacent on the FWR board (given some of the reactions just to the OP on this thread!), but I personally find this kind of holistic, biologically attuned, woman-centred approach more attractive than chemically altering female biology in order to reduce the potential real-world consequences of sex.

MH points out that the Pill benefits men at least as much and probably significantly more than women. It also definitely negatively impacts (some) women in (some) significant ways, yet doesn't impact men negatively at all.

I agree with her that the Pill is a good example of "progress" that hasn't actually turned out to be an unmitigated success for women.

...and having now caught up with the rest of the thread, I see you all got there before me!

I wouldn't trust NFP unless I'm actually fine with a pregnancy if it happens. But for me, I don't find avoiding sex at the most fertile days of my cycle attractive and holistic - it's when I'm most interested in sex! So it's not chemically altering my body to avoid consequences (and possibly killing your libido in the process), but it is altering what would make sex most satisfying for me to avoid consequences (and again, my partner has no negatives).

I think one of the hardest things for feminism to manage, reactionary, radfem, liberal, all of them, is that due to our vulnerability to pregnancy and the demands of caretaking, in most situations, the house always wins.

You want more committed providers for trad wives? You get more women financially trapped in abusive relationships, or dumped for a younger model and left penniless in their old age.

You want financial independence and access to well paid work? You get a man who will happily allow you to pay your share of the bills while letting you shoulder all of the housework.

You want the social shame of bastardry to keep families together? You get women forced by pregnancy into bad marriages, or giving birth in secrecy and shame with the child taken away.

You want the very reasonable provision of not being disowned because of a pre-marital relationship? Men will no longer see marriage as a precursor to expecting a sexual relationship.

Every gain for women easily is translates into an equivalent gain for men. I don't know how, or if, we have an easy fix for this.

I think the most interesting thing about that thread was how interested people were.

It's almost like we sense there is some advantage in that way of life but we can't quite compute it.

For me it's the observance of the Sabbath that I actually find myself jealous of. A whole day without tech and focused entirely on family and community.

It's like they have a built in resistance whilst the rest of us sleep walk into being cyborgs.

@MalagaNights

How would just relying on condoms work?

• don't forget the copper coil.

Men would have to take responsibility, and pregnancy risk would be slightly higher?

• I'm not sure they would. Society already clearly 'says' they should take responsibility for their kids and still many don't. Even paying basic child maintenance is avoided by many. It would be a couple of generations if estimate before change in attitudes set in and my then men have had time to undo it anyway

Overall I guess they'd be less sex outside committed relationships.

• by choice I'd agree with you but at least initially I would worry about coercion into sex regardless. Lots of lying saying they will marry her etc. it would take no sex at all before marriage to stop that and after having sexual 'freedom' how many women would stick to that? Personally I'd want to try before I buy in case it's pants. That said there is a beautiful thing about both being virgins I've heard said at church. If you are both virgins you don't know if your sex is good or bad as nothing to compare to. Not self conscious about it either as you know you have nothing to be compared to. You just learn what each other likes and work on it together.

If women expected commitment before sex, and marriage before babies, would this change men's behaviour and would it be better for women? I think so.

Only if we withhold sex for actual marriage. I have toooo many friends waiting/nagging long term partners to marry them and it's always put off. Many have kids. A couple who split when she got pregnant. In my life experience men very much lie. Obviously some of them are lovely and would never do this but they settle down with one woman while bad men plough through the life's of woman after woman.

If women were not expected to take the pill would they be more likely to be insistent on these expectations? I think so.
Many would switch to copper coil. Personally while I understand the reasoning I still think women should have access to birth control of their own if condoms exist. Condoms do fail. Do rapists wear condoms? Etc

I think one of the hardest things for feminism to manage, reactionary, radfem, liberal, all of them, is that due to our vulnerability to pregnancy and the demands of caretaking, in most situations, the house always wins.

@Bolets This is it.

The built in vulnerability means whatever the rules we're going to be gamed by those men with the lowest moral and we'll lose.

So we have to realistically think: which rules increase our odds.

We've been trying the rules of obliterate the inbuilt vulnerability by taking the pill and competing in the marketplace with men for sex and resources.

It has advantaged some. Particularly very high achieving women, but is leading to misery for many, as the vulnerability is still there: you do want children and probably have them but you're unlikely to get a committed man to support you raise them.

Reality hits.

We need reality based feminism.

Which knows it's just increasing the odds but which knows it can't overcome biological reality of being a woman and a mother.

Bloody hell @PurpleBugz we seem to be reinventing no sex before marriage 🤣

Which makes me feel very guilty when I think of my wanton youth. Although I think I had a lot of sex I maybe didn't want and which I wish I hadn't had, but it's easy to say that when you've had the experiences.

How could you convey to young woman: this may not be the best thing for you.
And of course a culture of shame would re-emerge. Inevitably.

I think we should be saying to young women: have high expectations of men and don't accept anything less. See sex and your boundaries as part of this. Even if the boundary isn't quite marriage!
I do think men would start to have to live up to the high expectations of high value women.

@MalagaNights

How could you convey to young woman: this may not be the best thing for you.

I honestly don't know. My instinct is to say teach them history and give them testimonies. Maybe we could win over a generation who can see clearly the state of the world for women. But as soon as there are not living women giving testimony the men will get the agenda back to them I think.

I also would worry at what point we explain this to them. It would not be acceptable to teach it in schools I don't think so relying on families to teach mean many many young women miss out learning. Many mothers won't have the knowledge or information to teach it anyway. But I'd not be happy my child being taught it at school. And at what age?! I consider when I first started kissing boys and absolutely no way would I have understood what was being explained to me. But I lost my virginity very young and believed it was my choice, I would be uncomfortable having such a conversation with a girl that age it's still a child. I will be laying the foundation but my daughter will be an adult before I discuss her potential to be used sexually by men with her. And I hope she never understands what I explain because living being treated that way and having it explained are different and both are needed to truly understand what it does to you

But I don't think no sex before marriage is in many women's best interest, even if it secures more commitment. It certainly wasn't in mine! I do think where we are at now emphasises too much on how you should be able to have sex/relationships however a man does, and damn the consequences. It's true that we should be able to, but we also need space to talk about how the benefits and disadvantages are not fairly distributed.

One example Harrington gives is that women on the pill sometimes go along with sex out of politeness, because they have "no excuse". Surely we would be better served giving women and girls to stand up for themselves and delay/forgo sex because they want more commitment? I know for me the main advice I could have done with was to be much more selective and not let men who treated me poorly waste my time, and not to make excuses for men who were not into me the way I wanted them to be.

Yes, it feels like a target error in her advice

the correct advice is be prepared to say no and don’t have anything to do with a man who can’t deal with that, not risk getting pregnant by having boundaries you’re not comfortable enforcing AND not using birth control

There has been a lot of work done in this by Catholic doctors. I've known a few women that went to fertility clinics that are in some way connected to the Catholic Church to sort out problems with their cycles, because they couldn't get other doctors to take them seriously, they just wanted to put them on the pill to regulate things. Which of course was just covering what was going on. I don't know if these exist in the UK or not. But I wanted to learn to track ovulation some years ago when I was younger, and I found a doctor who taught a system for doing it (Billings) through he Catholic cathedral in my city. She would drive down from another city once a month to teach individual women how to do it, for free. She had to complete some courses in Australia to get certified to do it.

It's not a bad method, similar to condoms in terms of sucess rate. But it does depend on actually doing what you are supposed to, which means you have to abstain, or use condoms, on days when you could get pregnant. Which is where most accidents happen, people just decide to do it anyway on one of the days when you are supposed to be careful. I don't think our culture is very good at teaching people to abstain from anything, it's a credit society all the way.

I don't think any social system will rid the world of users and immoral people, it's really a matter of picking something that minimizes that. And some women will always make bad choices, in some cases because they don't know the man is a dickhead until its too late, in others because they have their own issues that get in the way.

But as things stand now, men really have no over-riding social teaching that tells them that sexual continence is a good thing.They are getting much the same messages girls are getting about this stuff. And it seems right because after all, sex is supposed to be something that can be done consequence free. Even many women's rights activists push that idea as being fundamental, and so why should young men not believe it? And if its supposed to be true for women, why not true for men?

At best they are getting very mixed messages, and the default answer for sorting it seems to be, whatever women will consent to, because it's all about freedom. But we all know that doesn't really cut it in the end.

I quite enjoy reading Mary Harrington, but she's simply wrong about the pill.

OK, you can argue that the sexual revolution benefited men more than it benefited women, which is probably true. But the pill transformed women's lives. Before the pill, women's lives for thousands of years were dominated by the fear of getting pregnant. There are very few women who want to give birth repeatedly throughout their reproductive lives.

Having full control of your fertility is the most wonderful, joyous thing that has both enabled women to enjoy sex without fear of pregnancy and allowed them to enter the workforce knowing that they can have careers unhampered by having to give birth to unwanted children. There is a reason that most women living in Western countries today have one, two or three children, rather than the eight or nine of previous generations. Don't let's become complacent about what the pill has given us.

I think she's right about some issues being issues but I disagree with her on the solutions.

• Focus on marriage - I think you only have to spend 5 minutes on the relationships board before you come across someone who has kids, isn't married, partner is a dickhead with all the assets in his name, they can't leave because they gave up work to look after the kids as their wage wouldn't cover childcare so now they're trapped. If they had been married they'd be much better protected financially. Sometimes I think we need to rebrand marriage as a "financial protection contract" that is essential to have BEFORE kids come along.
• Men deserve single sex spaces as much as women do - can't disagree, the only thing I would say is that those single sex spaces can't be based on degradation of women. So being what MH characterises as "a little more chill about men doing whatever it is they do when no women are present" can't include being chill about sex workers or strip clubs or degrading women verbally. That would do the opposite of what she says single sex male spaces will do in terms of creating better men with mentorship etc.
• The pill - cosign everything @RoyalCorgi says above, the thing about the pill is that it gives women choices (including whether or not to take it). She focuses on what she sees as the social downside of contraception for young unmarried women, but even setting aside workforce and career participation there are very real medical and emotional UPSIDES to contraception - I had two very very hard pregnancies and difficult recoveries in various ways and the weight off my shoulders not worrying about that possibly happening again when I got a Mirena was a fantastic side effect.

I respect her choices to do what she does to be reactionary, and I think there's an interesting debate to be had about whether her choices can be feminist or not, but I'm glad I have the choice not to do those things.