Brilliant Margaret Atwood memoir review

[hholiday]

By Kathleen Stock https://archive.is/v2z51 and https://unherd.com/2025/11/what-margaret-atwood-got-wrong/

Just wonderful, humane writing that goes closer than anything else I have read to exploring the blind spots in Atwood’s views on gender, as well as expressing delight in her fiction writing. I particularly love these killer closing lines:

But honestly, the idea that, in the near future, Western governments will need to use direct force to make women do market-friendly things against their own interests is now surely, definitively preposterous. The case of genderism — and surrogacy, and “sex work”, for that matter — shows that authorities only need to persuade enough women that certain activities are kind, or glamorous, or nobly self-improving; at which point, tender-hearted armies will rise up to ruthlessly punish dissenters themselves.

I agree but it's a matter of the lesser of evils in terms of safety & exploitation. Ultimately the real solution is working towards societal economic security & prevention of other risk factors.

No it's not better for women. It's worse it's so much worse. I've lived somewhere wear it is legal and it still ruins women's lives. I've read so much absolute horseshit from you but this takes the cake.

Oh look Coh thinks anyone who doesn’t agree with him/her must be man!
So much for anti stereotyping…

I'm just quoting the research which says it's comparatively safer for women so don't shoot the messenger.

I'd rather have incorrectly "stereotyped" the repeated misogyny Hows displays as male, than be pro-prostituting women like Hows is.

Still think he's a bloke though😂

Eurgh, everyone knows prostitution isn’t ‘sex work’. Everyone feels sorry for prostitutes because they’re letting dirty lonely scum bags use their body everyday and it’s the absolutely worst job for mental health. I think people don’t want to stigmatise the individual women like they used to, but only a creepy man would think prostitution is a job that should even exist in a civilised society.

Nonsense, the whole idea of 'gender' is at its root and of its essence conformist.

It was invented as a new system for authoritarians to use to exercise control, and taken up enthusiastically by the advertising industry as a way to sell stuff.

Oh stop lying. I never said it's a job that should exist. The reality is it exists regardless so it may as well be regulated for women's safety. Only the deluded think they can wish it away.

Great article. Thanks for sharing. I agree that the last point is powerful.

I used to be 💯 ‘nurture’ with regard to females being socialised from birth to be enablers of other’s comfort at the expense of their own (and included in that the expectation that all women should follow suit - ergo, male comfort reigns).

I have come around to entertain some level of ‘nature’ being at play, due to the common phenomenon of have no more fucks to give following estrogen levels plummeting during menopause. Counter to this, however, is the compelling argument that having played ‘primary carer’ for intimate partners pre children, having cared for actual children, when those children grow up and become independent, women aren’t willing to return to (or sustain) the primary carer role for intimate partners.

I think the reason why women go along with sex work, surrogacy and accepting trans identified males into female only provision is primarily about preservation.

Really? I didn't notice you disputing our fellow commenter up thread who insisted typical gendered behaviours exist…. as they do. Just ask all the GC's on MN claiming violence is a 'man problem' hence the necessity for private spaces. Are you suggesting male violence & other typically sexed behaviours is an "invented as a new system for authoritarians to use to exercise control"?

Women here recognise behaviours typical of sex, and think gender is a pile of shite, but there goes Hows with some fast hands switcheroo of words (don't take up close up magic mate, you'd be crap at it going by this!), gender switched out for sex as and where it suits Hows and not at all accurately reflecting previous posters points.

Should we get the unicorn out?

Observable patterns, trends or tendencies within exist within particular groups.

These do not equate to either necessary or sufficient conditions for membership of that group.

For it to be possible to observe that 'Group A tends to Y' there has to have been an organising priciple constituting Group A before, and independent to, Y.

Does that help you to understand? It's often easier to see the wood for the trees in that sort of algebraic form.

Violence is linked to testosterone levels. Testosterone is a sex hormone.

Sex is real. Gender is illusion.

So hormones do influence gendered behaviour? You’re getting warmer!

"Observable patterns, trends or tendencies within exist within particular groups.
These do not equate to either necessary or sufficient conditions for membership of that group."

They do in terms of social categorisations tho. IE we don't use gametal or chromosomal tests to distinguish sex in social situations, rather typical associations.

'Gendered' behaviour is a form of full-body fancy dress.

Sex differences exist. Gender is fantasy.

Yes, like burglary and domestic violence, let’s just make them all legal.

Gametal and chromosomal tests aren’t necessary to determine sex, because nature has handily provided a big old cock and balls.

We don't distinguish sex, even in social situations, by how suggestible someone is, how 'kind' they feel they have to be, or in fact any personality traits.

The reason a disconnect between sex and expected behaviour (whatever that may be in a given society) is possible to even notice is precisely because those two things are separately observable.

Love it!

The feminist view I grew up with that made most sense to me was that it was extremely difficult to know how much of women’s lives were influenced by their sex as opposed to their nurture, gender and culture, because of the overwhelming forces of the latter. Not that there was no influence of sex at all. And that external or internal judgment that a woman was ‘unsexed’ by being an outlier in terms of characteristics, sexuality or behaviour was misogyny designed to control, not that there wasn’t a more likely average of behaviour that was sex-influenced. And of course that women forcing gendered controls on other women was a feature noted in all oppressed groups, not a big or unique to women as a group. Women who arrange FGM (or in the past, foot binding) for their daughters are doing it a lot of the time because it is the route to marriage in their culture, which in many economies equals a route out of starvation or total dependency on/drudgery for your brothers if you have any, plus the route to some choice and value in the marriage market, not because they are due to their sex controlling bitches - I don’t think Stock allows for that. Read the early chapters of Wild Swans for that, and imagine having to crush your own small daughter’s feet for months on end because the alternative could be destitution, or indeed prostitution and an early death. Mixed in with this is the consequent priority given to ‘honour’ ie women’s visible chastity and ‘virtue’ having economic value, and an incredibly toxic mix of violence and control which women do indeed participate in. Read Pride and Prejuduce and Sense and Sensibility for the sanitised version of all that, if you look between the lines.

Presentation is downstream from personality trait inclinations.

Unless those risk prevention measures inconvenience men.

The difference being whether there is an advantage in terms of harm reduction in doing so? Oversimplification isn't the win you think it is.

Except we don't walk around naked in public in modern times…