With all due respect, I believe that the works and ideas of Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Jordan Peterson are all ultimately "gateway drugs" to Mark Regnerus, Roy Baumeister, Beverly LaHaye, Mary Pride, and Phyllis Schafly, for better or worse (primarily worse).
And from there, it's ultimately a one-way express train to Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare and/or back to the Dark Ages for women (and indirectly for men as well). Or perhaps a weird kind of "archaeofuturism", as the neoreactionaries call it, the worst of the past, present. and future combined.
All I can say is, be very careful what you wish for, because we all know what they say about wishes. I have read some of Mary Harrington's UnHerd articles and her Substack, and she is a self proclaimed "reactionary feminist" who apparently wants to roll back not only the sexual revolution, but also the industrial revolution and perhaps even the Enlightenment as well. This is a classic example of Horseshoe Theory I think.
Your discussion about motherhood - my mom went nuts when she was home with my brother. She thought she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, she quit her union job at the phone company when she got pregnant.
After she had my brother, she was isolated with this baby at a home in the suburbs. She didn't really have any adult conversation or friendships, until my dad got home. But my dad was a master electrician, he was away for weeks sometimes if there was a big job (building a new dorm at the state university).
My mom went back to work, my brother went to a home daycare. Even the lady running the home daycare, by the way, would have more interaction & conversation with grown-ups during her day than most SaHMs in that era. Just from seeing parents when they dropped off & picked up the kids. It was extremely isolating to stay home in the 70s-80s. My parents had one SaHM neighbor who my mom in particular couldn't stand, she was very self-absorbed and had a difficult to understand Newfoundland accent. But there was like, it was isolating in a way I think you don't understand. Being able to go to work and have a routine that doesn't involve a dirty screaming child was a lifeline for some people.
The other thing, Meghan, and you're Canadian I can't believe this didn't come up - for Catholics there was no birth control except counting your cycle and breastfeeding. There's still backlash to breastfeeding in Quebec, today. Women who will literally say "I am not a cow!" In Quebec for generations, husbands pushed wives to breastfeed as long as possible. If she got pregnant while breastfeeding it was 'her fault' and now they were going to have to struggle even more to afford these huge families.
There are reasons women pushed back against marriage and staying at home in the second wave.
I would also like to add that most people think the sexual revolution was either an unalloyed good or an unmitigated evil. Harrington leans strongly towards the latter, of course. But I believe that it was really a mixed bag in practice. I would argue that there were really only two things wrong with it: 1) it was historically largely male-dominated, and 2) it is still unfinished and actually hasn't gone far enough. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The result: a sort of perpetual limbo or purgatory, a sort of "situationship" writ very, very large.
As for The Pill, while it does indeed have somewhat of a dark side (much like we are learning these days that even Tylenol does too), its existence is still a good on balance overall IMHO. Beware of those who seek to ban it, as their motives are nearly always extremely regressive.
And since I've found myself examining everything 'feminist' in a quest to discover just HOW THE HELL WE GOT HERE, I've thought many of the same things.
Remember 'Take Back the Night!".. and "Women have the same sex drive as men!"... so dress like hookers, drink like fish and screw like sailors.. full speed ahead!
Probably not, but I do.
"You can ignore reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Biology matters. Women are not physically or sexually equal to men.
In the quest to be equal we tried to be the same.. and lost our way.
With all due respect, I believe that the works and ideas of Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Jordan Peterson are all ultimately "gateway drugs" to Mark Regnerus, Roy Baumeister, Beverly LaHaye, Mary Pride, and Phyllis Schafly, for better or worse (primarily worse).
And from there, it's ultimately a one-way express train to Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare and/or back to the Dark Ages for women (and indirectly for men as well). Or perhaps a weird kind of "archaeofuturism", as the neoreactionaries call it, the worst of the past, present. and future combined.
All I can say is, be very careful what you wish for, because we all know what they say about wishes. I have read some of Mary Harrington's UnHerd articles and her Substack, and she is a self proclaimed "reactionary feminist" who apparently wants to roll back not only the sexual revolution, but also the industrial revolution and perhaps even the Enlightenment as well. This is a classic example of Horseshoe Theory I think.
Your discussion about motherhood - my mom went nuts when she was home with my brother. She thought she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, she quit her union job at the phone company when she got pregnant.
After she had my brother, she was isolated with this baby at a home in the suburbs. She didn't really have any adult conversation or friendships, until my dad got home. But my dad was a master electrician, he was away for weeks sometimes if there was a big job (building a new dorm at the state university).
My mom went back to work, my brother went to a home daycare. Even the lady running the home daycare, by the way, would have more interaction & conversation with grown-ups during her day than most SaHMs in that era. Just from seeing parents when they dropped off & picked up the kids. It was extremely isolating to stay home in the 70s-80s. My parents had one SaHM neighbor who my mom in particular couldn't stand, she was very self-absorbed and had a difficult to understand Newfoundland accent. But there was like, it was isolating in a way I think you don't understand. Being able to go to work and have a routine that doesn't involve a dirty screaming child was a lifeline for some people.
The other thing, Meghan, and you're Canadian I can't believe this didn't come up - for Catholics there was no birth control except counting your cycle and breastfeeding. There's still backlash to breastfeeding in Quebec, today. Women who will literally say "I am not a cow!" In Quebec for generations, husbands pushed wives to breastfeed as long as possible. If she got pregnant while breastfeeding it was 'her fault' and now they were going to have to struggle even more to afford these huge families.
There are reasons women pushed back against marriage and staying at home in the second wave.
I would also like to add that most people think the sexual revolution was either an unalloyed good or an unmitigated evil. Harrington leans strongly towards the latter, of course. But I believe that it was really a mixed bag in practice. I would argue that there were really only two things wrong with it: 1) it was historically largely male-dominated, and 2) it is still unfinished and actually hasn't gone far enough. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The result: a sort of perpetual limbo or purgatory, a sort of "situationship" writ very, very large.
As for The Pill, while it does indeed have somewhat of a dark side (much like we are learning these days that even Tylenol does too), its existence is still a good on balance overall IMHO. Beware of those who seek to ban it, as their motives are nearly always extremely regressive.
This was fabulous, bold, brave... and terrifying.
And since I've found myself examining everything 'feminist' in a quest to discover just HOW THE HELL WE GOT HERE, I've thought many of the same things.
Remember 'Take Back the Night!".. and "Women have the same sex drive as men!"... so dress like hookers, drink like fish and screw like sailors.. full speed ahead!
Probably not, but I do.
"You can ignore reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Biology matters. Women are not physically or sexually equal to men.
In the quest to be equal we tried to be the same.. and lost our way.
And this trans-misogynistic mess is the result.