'Feminists against progress': article from Prospect magazine

[HoarFrosted]

Just dropping the link in case it's of interest to others. Lots to pick apart and I don't have time nor, frankly, the inclination - but perhaps someone else will have more enthusiasm. (I'm politically homeless and have largely given up following domestic politics, but every so often I relapse and sample media across the political spectrum until overcome by alienation; between this article and a dose of Gove I'm ready to retreat from current affairs for another few months, hence plopping this link.)

Striking amount of ad hominem (should that be ad feminem?), which reinforces my growing impression that political debate and allegiance increasingly take some sort of tribal identity as their starting point - or as a compass to steer by. We're supposed to subscribe to opinions as if they were lots in an auction and it's become harder and harder to get a hearing for dissenting opinions.

Thanks for the link, I gave up half way through though, it was a right word salad. I don't think Perry is all wrong she's right on somethings, the 'sexual revolution' was not good for women or girls.

I think feminist blew it when they decided equality meant being the same as men, prostitution and pornography are not good things and should never have been promoted as empowering for women.

It's a poor article. As you say, it is mostly ad hominem and there is very little engagement with what Harrington and Perry actually believe. When he does mention their opinions, it doesn't really seem that he's understood them or is disagreeing in good faith. There's a lot of trying to position them as just any other boring conservative, which I don't think they are at all.

Whether you agree or disagree with Perry's views, I recommend listening to her podcast just because she's clearly highly intelligent. Her book was also really well-argued I thought. She doesn't claim to have all the answers to the problems she's noticed, but I do think the idea that ultimate sexual freedom is not good for women (as a class) is an idea worth exploring.

I'm completely over all this tribalism. I wish the writer of the article would properly examine some of their ideas and properly tell us why he disagrees.

He basically argues they are just conservatives, and worse lying about it, to trick silly people into listening. And takes it for granted listening to conservatives is unnecessary.

No actual engagement with what they have said.

They're also both very good at taking an idea for a walk and seeing where it leads them. This is an underrated skill. There used to be a sports journalist in America, I've forgotten his name, who would say "I think I think" when he wanted to float an idea without committing himself to a position. It's not a bad approach once you concede that you don't have a definitive answer to everything.

This is all lost on tribalists who do believe they have the definitive answer to everything, and if you can stick a label on someone else then you don't have to engage with their ideas.

It's a poor article and badly argued. There is no engagement with the ideas of Perry and Harrington, just a general condemnation because they are conservative. I agree with Harrington that the Sexual Revolution has not done women many favours, certainly not increased either happiness or freedom (and this was obvious in the 70s if one cared to look - sadly, I did not). Worth reading both writers. Harrington is particularly pointed on transgenderism and what she calls 'meat lego' i.e. thinking one can change ones's body with surgery and hormones. She's not that keen on the ideas of e.g. Elon Musk, if I remember correctly, calling it transhumanism.

Infuriating dense pseudo academic word salad.

My not very articulate take is it's another man upset that some women think differently to him! Why aren't all women more grateful for what left-wing men allow them to do and supporting progressive parties without exception!

And for a supposedly politically neutral magazine, this article does seem to think Conservatives are utterly beyond the Pale and fascist adjacent. Do people like this never realise how offensive that comes across and is off-putting to voters?

The worse part of this is that a bit like twitter the article inflates the importance of women who publish themselves and then others who publish themselves then answer, then some ignorant male assumes this is about current feminsim, or read and devoured by current feminists.

Nobody cares.

If all the time and attention put into these puff pieces were instead put into genuine engagement with other women or campaigning or whatever, many more would change.

This is just armchair nonsense that allows people dont really care about feminism just find a reason not to be interested!

But for those who have the time to while away this is the archive link to the article https://archive.is/sbSBS

(Dont let this man or Prospect think anyone is interested. it only encourages them!)

It's been a long time since I bothered with Mr Bloodworth's shoddily-research effusions. Had a bash at this latest dreck & aside from the fact that it ought to be about a third of the length it is, it gave me no grounds on which to alter my view that he's one more opinion piece hack too concerned to keep getting bylines to trouble himself with facts.

Edited for dodgy grammar

Whatever its limits, I don't really see why an article about Harrington and Perry isn't about current feminism?

I think what drives me mad in public/media discussions about ‘feminism’ is that critics rarely specify which school of feminist theory they’re referring to when they want to point out something they dislike or they think is crazy. So basically this big amorphous blob of ‘feminism’ now exists in our collective consciousness and attracts hatred and criticism for everything that some people hate about current female (and male) behaviour.

This lack of specific criticism ends up with women and ‘feminism’ always being in the wrong because the goalposts of this criticism of ‘feminism’ are always moving.

There are lots of feminist theories that have benefitted society (suffragettes, second wavers etc) but these always get characterised as basic equal rights, rather than feminism, in an effort to deny ‘feminism’ any positive aspects or achievements.

Does my head in 😣

I don’t think it’s word salad. I’m not always following it that easily but then it’s 5 in the morning… it’s a perfectly reasonable critique of a sexually conservative strand of what I will call feminism. It’s true as far as I’m concerned that feminism as a form of analysis cuts across left/right framings. The article certainly engages with quite a lot of detail in Harrington and Perry’s work, a lot more than in this thread.

I’ve seen feminists define abortion as a ‘male solution’ and I have observed female conservatives and second-wave feminists point out some of the political and practical issues with specific issues around contraception (the pill being tested on poor women with minimal information/consent for example). Sexual change has had consequences, including some unequivocally bad ones. However, to define contraception in itself as negative for women is sexually conservative in a way I disagree with and I have no problem with critics pointing that out. I also think that it’s right to point out that the grooming gangs scandal has a lot more going on in it than race and io me, those who insist that race is the only way to define it are as obtuse as those who refused to engage with the racial element of it.

Agree.

That’s a useful piece actually, for me anyway. I think it is quite fair to them, and insofar as it reads like an attack it’s because the author (rightly) sees the threat to his own political project, namely Progress.

Consider these quotes:

“they push for a new kind of feminism which, to many readers, won’t sound like feminism at all”

“the class struggle is always sublimated beneath admonitions to accept the world as it is”

“Becoming the ‘thoughtful’ left-winger who is unafraid to confront unvarnished truths about one’s own side can open up a new stratum of influence … I peered over the edge of the precipice myself during the Jeremy Corbyn era”

I’d long realised that certain movements—trades unionism, Scottish nationalism—have been entry’ed and neutered whole by progressivism. But somehow I’d never realised the same might be true of feminism. Maybe we had a movement for ‘women’s interests’ all along, and weren’t supposed to notice as slowly they morphed it into something quite different.

So he makes a great effort to attack the realist parts of their philosophies as unworldly, or at least not in step with what all Good People know to be true, but then closes with this:

“If nature is truly immovable, one wonders why it requires such vigilant policing”

And all I can think is: well, quite.

Unfortunately, ideological group think is the zeitgeist of our time and I suspect it has quite some time still left to run.

He seems unable to step back from his own ideological position for long enough to actually engage with any of the ideas presented. To actively engage with a different set of ideas is seen and felt to be the same as actively endorsing them. Any alternative interpretation becomes very threatening and an automatic adversarialism swings into action.

Isn't the opposite true...... if nature is truly immovable then that is exactly why it requires such vigilant policing. Because nature and the reality of human beings and societies will never conform to the ideological demands imposed upon them.

This is why, in spite of equality measures feminisits are still grappling with the same old issues which seem very resisitant to change. He calls this " resignation", whereas maybe it is simply pragmatism, for the reason that life is limited.

Progressivism seeks to forever push against boundaries in search of the utopian idea of absolute individual freedom.

The irony I took from it is that he’s the one doing vigilant policing, because progressivism isn’t real. Ultimately reality polices itself.

To put it another way: the discourse does need policing, but progressivism is all discourse.

Yes, I see your point now. I agree.

I get the impression that for a lot of these people all change is "progress", unless it's a change back to a previous state, in which case it's evil.

This kind of mindset very easily leads to the acceptance of the likes of transgenderism: it's something which has never been accepted in our society before, therefore campaigning for it must be progressive, regardless of any other considerations.

That makes me think back to the start of my civil service career a couple of decades ago, where the mantra everywhere was change, managing change, there must be change, etc.

Blair sounded like he had something of a new plan to implement, so it kind of made sense. But your post makes me wonder whether the plan died (or even never existed) but the mantra remained, and in actual fact we’ve been led by the mantra all along.

It is about two current feminists. I'm a current feminist, so are you, so are many women, including all other the ones who post on this board and who tease issues out, change our minds on things, think and analyse. No-one is running feminism as a rules-based cult.

If they think they are, they don't understand how humans work.

I always find myself wondering when reading people like this - and this article was no exception - what their actual plan is to change human nature.

If it is "resignation" to say, you know, the sex drive is an extremely powerful motivator for men, and also in somewhat differernt ways for women, and this will cause certain kinds of issues to come up between the two groups, what is supposedly the "solution" to this?

If it is the case that women carry babies and have a strong instinct to care for their infants like most mammals, and it is not that hard for men to abandon mothers and babies because of the fact that they only need to make a short term contribution well before the baby appears, how is the author here planning to change that reality?

It often seems to come down to "just tell people not to do that." Like - is that seriously the solution?

Do people like this have no experience of being human and trying to modify their own behaviour? It's often bloody hard. Do they really think society can somehow just eliminate everyone who struggles for some reason?

Yes, the idea that history runs in a straight line towards a certain destination and all we as human beings have to do is determine that destination. Yet this ignores that time and history does not operate in this way at all; patterns often repeat; the same ingedients are always there even if you arrange or add them in a slightly different order or amount. There is nothing entirely new in human nature.

In a Marxist kind of way - all that really changes is the means of production or the technology available. The only way to ensure, or fix certain 'enlightened' conditions is for an authority to impose them and punish those that infringe them.

And of course all that change really does is bring about a whole new set of conditions to deal with; replace the old set of conditions with a new set of conditions. And then when "nothing really changes" we seek even more change.
Seeking novelty and newness.

I can't read it but I knew it would be Harrington. I really think she is very overrated as thinker and writer. She was just lucky to ride the zeitgeist of something and get a book and something of a career out of it but much of what she says doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I think she is popular here due to her anti-trans stance which as someone gender critical I agree with but she was largely just rehashing what Jennifer Bilek had already said years ago and also borrowing from other reactionary thinkers such as Paul Kingsnorth who I do think is interesting.

I do think Perry is a more credible writer but and I think her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution makes some fair point but after its publication I believe she did fall prey to a degree of audience capture which has since led her down a certain path, perhaps similar could be said for Harrington. In one sense you might consider them as a in a sort of "intellectual only fans" space in that they cater very directly to their audience's proclivities.

What I personally like about Mary Harrington is that she is not afraid to explore ideas to their maximum. I don't she is making prescriptions for others to live by. But she's also lived the left wing utopia for herself, including having identified as a boy called 'Sebastian' and I give her credit for that.

She also has her own unique vocabulary and style and has coined some new terms which personally I find useful. I don't think she was part of 'a zeitgeist'; rather she caught an approaching wave, which is why her words have resonance for many. And she's honest that she's reacting and responding to what has gone before. Reflecting upon it.