Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E112: Why This Feminist Became Anti-Progressive w/ Mary Harrington

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E112: Why This Feminist Became Anti-Progressive w/ Mary Harrington · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
How do you call yourself a feminist?
0:01
What is it about feminism that you are in support?
0:04
Of I think it's become a very empty signifier in the West.
0:07
Feminism. The liberals want it just to be
0:09
the doctrine of total gratification, of individual
0:12
desire. What actually happened was that
0:14
men and women together needed to respond to the way life was
0:18
changed by the Industrial Revolution.
0:19
And I think, you know, why shouldn't we take it back?
0:21
You know, it does mean something.
0:22
Women still exist, You know, we're still distinct from men in
0:25
some politically important ways. Why shouldn't we have it back?
0:27
It could just as easily be ours as theirs.
0:34
Welcome back to the Wyler Rose Podcast.
0:36
Today we're going to have a lively and fun discussion with
0:39
Mary Harrington. He's a British author and the
0:42
writer of the Sub Stack Reactionary feminist.
0:46
What is a reaction to feminist? Mary will break it down.
0:49
We're going to talk about the rights of women in the Middle
0:52
Ages versus women in the industrial and post industrial
0:55
revolutionary time period. We're going to talk about this
0:58
idea of transhumanist healthcare.
1:01
Mary has some great insight into that, as well as this idea of
1:05
the industrialization of women's bodies, what that means today.
1:10
And then Mary has some, I think, rather sage advice for how we
1:13
can work our way out of some of the chaos of today.
1:17
And some of her recommendations include getting married and
1:20
letting men have some of their own spaces back.
1:22
So a lot of interesting discussion for someone that
1:25
still calls herself a feminist, and I think there's a lot of
1:27
food for thought here. As always, don't forget to
1:30
subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your
1:32
shows and watch us on YouTube. We have a YouTube channel and
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and drawing closer to God. Mary Harrington, thanks so much
3:34
for joining the show. Thank you for having me.
3:39
I've heard amazing things about you.
3:40
We had Erica Bakiaki on several months ago, who I have the
3:45
greatest respect for, and she's been telling me for a long time.
3:47
You need to have Mary Harrington on the show, so here we are.
3:52
OK. Well, it's it's great to meet
3:53
you. So tell me a little bit about
3:57
you. You have a substack called
3:58
Reactionary Feminist and you're not your typical feminist.
4:03
Though your your your new age. I would say a modern modern wave
4:06
feminist. I'd love to just start your
4:09
You've got a you've got fascinating writing a lot of
4:11
your articles, I've loved reading them.
4:12
So I'd just like to first start to understand your background,
4:16
your journey to what you are now at as, yes, the title
4:20
Reactionary Feminist. OK, so I I only became a writer
4:25
kind of by mistake. Although no, that's not true.
4:27
I wasn't. I wasn't by mistake, but it was
4:29
late. I always wanted to be a writer,
4:32
but I was kind of nuts In my 20s.
4:34
I was very leftist. I lived in very.
4:36
I lived in a very experimental way.
4:38
We'll just leave it there. And by the end of my 20s, I had
4:43
a my life kind of fell apart and the like to cut a long story, a
4:46
very long story. Pretty short it.
4:50
By the time I came out of that I'd questioned a lot of the
4:53
things that I believed previously.
4:55
I also got married. I no longer lived in London and
4:58
I I think the thing which the thing which really changed my
5:01
outlook on life was that I became a mum.
5:04
By then I'd pretty much also given up on being impliable in
5:06
any way at all. You know I'd always wanted.
5:09
I'd always wanted to be a writer.
5:10
That was yeah I'd I'd tried 100 a billion different jobs and I'd
5:13
been terrible at all of them. And I'd I'd had, I was, I was
5:16
pretty cool at that point with the idea that I was going to be
5:18
a stay at home mum. And furthermore there was
5:20
nothing just about being a there was nothing just a mum.
5:23
About being a mum, you know that this was, this was great and I
5:26
was really enjoying it and there's lots there to think
5:28
about and these were all things which I think in I'd
5:31
internalized a lot of beliefs about about, you know, that
5:35
being a stay at home mum means to be just a mum.
5:37
That there's something, there's something diminished or low
5:40
status or inferior or letting the side down about doing that.
5:45
And when it came to it, when I had, I realised I had the
5:47
choice. I was fortunate to have the
5:49
choice because of how we were, how things were for us
5:51
financially about whether or not I wanted to go back to work.
5:54
And I realised I've done all of these jobs and I sucked at all
5:56
of them and there is literally nothing that anyone could offer
6:00
to pay me to do that I could realistically do.
6:03
That's that I want to do more than being with my baby.
6:05
And I realised that the fact that I was in that position made
6:09
me not. That didn't make me oppressed.
6:11
That made me lucky. Relative to a lot of the women
6:13
who I'd who'd been my peers in in antenatal groups, you know,
6:17
many of whom maybe maybe they thought their jobs were OK,
6:19
maybe they didn't love them so much.
6:21
But there was there was no not going back to work after
6:23
maternity leave. It just simply wasn't a choice.
6:27
So that made me rethink a lot of things.
6:30
And at the go, go ahead. Yeah, no, I I, I have to ask
6:35
Mary, sorry to interrupt you, but you went from, you know, you
6:39
said, you know, fairly leftist and living this life as a young
6:44
person in university or whatever, And then all of a
6:46
sudden you're a stay at home, you get married and you're a
6:48
stay at home. Mom, what was the what was the
6:51
maybe the events or the thought process that made you go from
6:55
this leftist, as you called yourself, to now saying I want
6:59
to be a stay at home mom. This isn't quite such a kind of
7:01
record scratch thing as as it might sound when I tell the
7:05
story short because they were talking about a period of like
7:07
10 years and a lot can happen in 10 years.
7:11
So in my in my late 20s I was leading a pretty bohemian life.
7:14
My my life kind of fell apart around the same around the time
7:17
I met my husband around the the time of the global financial
7:19
crash and it just that that led me to re examine a lot of the
7:23
things I believed before in the course of re examining all of
7:26
those things. I retrained as a psychotherapist
7:28
which again is there's a whole lot of soul searching involved
7:31
in that kind of training you do of personal work you think a lot
7:34
about. I mean you know you might some
7:36
people might say it involves too much navel gazing I don't know
7:39
but it was it was very beneficial for me.
7:40
It left. It led me to to rethink very
7:42
deeply a lot of a lot of the ways I approached the world and
7:46
and as as part of that. And somehow I came out the other
7:50
end of that process having, having having sort of resolved a
7:54
lot of the things I'd previously been conflicted about and having
7:57
got married and decided that I did want to be a mum.
8:00
And by the time I finally got there I was 38.
8:04
So you know an older mum, I think.
8:06
I think we were. It was it was a few years from
8:09
my getting married to to having a baby.
8:12
By the time I got there I was 38.
8:14
I think I was 40 before before I started writing.
8:18
And over the course of that time, it, I mean having becoming
8:20
a mum really concretized a lot of things for me about where
8:24
where I'd had some blind spots about what being what being a
8:27
feminist meant or what being what what what it meant to think
8:30
about being a woman. Really.
8:33
You know, I realized that, you know, from from the perspective
8:36
of a young woman who's maybe ambitious, who has big dreams
8:38
about life, you know, who maybe doesn't feel safe walking down
8:41
the street at night. A whole host of different, you
8:43
know, who feels uncomfortable in her body, as I, as I really did
8:46
in my teens and early 20s, is very ambivalent about sex roles
8:50
and gender roles and all of all of this stuff which is very
8:53
common now. I guess I was.
8:55
I was I was kind of an early adopter of most of that stuff.
9:00
But it it made it. When I became a mum, I realised
9:04
that a lot of that stuff is very ungrounded if you're not, if
9:08
it's not understood in the context of why women are
9:11
different to men. You know, it sounds so sounds so
9:14
obvious when you say it like that, but there are, but the the
9:18
differences between men and women are very embodied and very
9:21
basic, and in some ways they don't matter a whole lot.
9:23
In other ways they they they they matter immeasurably and
9:27
completely change how you experience life.
9:29
I mean having a child was you know obviously a very different
9:31
experience for me and for my husband.
9:34
But it also completely changed the way I thought, you know, and
9:37
and felt, you know, to the to the like, I'm I'm a I'm a good
9:40
driver. I've driven.
9:41
I've driven for many years and literally the only time I've
9:44
ever crashed a car in nearly God, I, I don't know like most
9:48
several decades of driving. Literally the only time I've
9:50
ever damaged a car was when I had a hungry baby screaming in
9:53
the back and I just could not think.
9:57
And this sounds right, Right. But.
10:00
I thankfully didn't put the crash.
10:02
Hopefully it won't do it in the future, but I totally.
10:04
But there's a there's a kind of thought terminating feeling of
10:08
desperation that comes out where where really it's safer just to
10:11
pull the car over and breathe into a paper bag for a minute.
10:13
Because it's that, it's that visceral, the reaction you have.
10:16
And I remember completely freaking out because my dentist
10:18
appointment was was 10 minutes late and I thought my baby might
10:21
wake up before I got home totally freaking out.
10:24
And you know when I got she was fine.
10:26
She was with my mum. She was chill, but I was
10:28
completely freaked out, absolute state.
10:32
And all of this stuff was very was completely new to me And it
10:34
led me to yeah, it led me to re examine some of the basic
10:38
beliefs which which I'd always taken for granted as kind of
10:41
foundational feminism that men and women are basically the same
10:44
apart from some kind of just slightly different topography
10:47
and slightly different genitals. So we're basically the same, the
10:49
same kind of creature that that we should be aiming.
10:53
We should be aiming for the same things that our political
10:56
priorities can and should be broadly the same.
10:59
And that may maybe not be being a woman is basically like being
11:02
a man, but on hard mode. Yeah, that was I that was, I
11:05
suppose the the, the kind of, the, the kind of unexamined
11:08
premise. And then that got overlaid with
11:10
a whole load of critical theory and Judith Butler at university,
11:12
which which led me to imagine that maybe I could kind of,
11:15
maybe I could lark my way out of it.
11:18
Which, as it turned out, I mean, I tried.
11:20
I sincerely tried in a kind of playful way.
11:23
I tried lapping my way out of gender roles and expectations.
11:29
I don't think I was ever that committed to the bit.
11:31
But not like, not, not like, not like the kids are now.
11:34
But, but I tried just to see what would happen, and it turned
11:37
out that that doesn't really work either, and there really is
11:39
something irreducible underneath it anyway, You know, here I am,
11:42
age there. I was age 3839, you know, having
11:46
having really run the gamut of modern 3rd wave feminism I
11:50
guess, and come to a point where not only was IA stay at home
11:53
Mum, which was the one thing I was vowed I was never going to
11:55
do, but. But actually I was having quite
11:56
a nice time doing it and some somewhere along the way as well
12:01
I guess. I think the other, the other
12:03
important bit of the story is that I lost my faith in
12:05
progress. I stopped believing that
12:07
progress is a thing. I just, I just came.
12:10
I came to realise that not a like we were, we were.
12:14
We tell this story to ourselves. It's just in the air about how
12:17
it's always better to go forward than to go backwards.
12:19
That somehow the world is progressing towards away from
12:22
something bad and towards something good.
12:24
That history, that things which happened in the past and people
12:27
in the past were always less less ignorant than we are.
12:30
Yeah, I mean you, you know, the whole, you know, the framework
12:32
I'm talking about, it's it's just everywhere.
12:35
It's the sort of ambient belief system.
12:37
I came to realise just just that, that I didn't believe in
12:42
it anymore. And then, yeah, I try.
12:44
I put those bits together, you know, I, as I think you have to
12:48
imagine me pushing my buggy around small town England with a
12:50
little baby in it. You do that a lot.
12:55
And so, so there I am with my buggy and you know, and all of
12:58
this stuff kind of goes around my heads because it's because
13:00
it's not like your brain stops working just because you're a
13:03
mum. It's not like it's not like you
13:05
stop being a a a thinking human being just because you're a stay
13:08
at home mum. And so here I am, I'm thinking,
13:10
yeah, I'm thinking about progress and I'm thinking about
13:12
feminism and I'm thinking about what life is like, especially
13:16
after all of my all of my antenatal group peers started
13:19
going back to work. I started thinking about the
13:21
question of work and the question of privilege and you
13:25
know, the the luxury of being able to be a stay at home mum
13:29
and it and it just and it maybe it it.
13:31
I came to, I came to a lot of the things that I believe just
13:34
seemed to be kind of backwards. A lot of a lot of the things
13:38
I've just taken assumed were true.
13:40
I was like, hang on, I've got all of this backwards, you know,
13:43
be it, this is, this isn't oppressive.
13:44
Maybe for some people it's oppressive, but I I don't feel
13:47
like I'm oppressed. You know who is actually being
13:49
oppressed here? And you know according to who
13:51
and and furthermore you know if I'm still if I still think of
13:54
myself as a feminist but I don't believe in progress, is that
13:56
even possible Because I mean if you, because I'd have these
14:01
conversations with people and I'd be like well, I'm not sure
14:03
progress is the thing. They're like aha, but do you
14:06
want to go back to when women couldn't vote.
14:07
That's progress isn't it. And I'm like, yeah, I suppose so
14:12
you know, if if if the, the the idea of, you know, the women's
14:16
movement is so bound up in the idea of progress that the one
14:18
gets used to prove the other and vice versa, is it still possible
14:22
to be a feminist if you don't believe in progress.
14:24
So anyway long story, very long story very short.
14:27
The, I mean the answer, the answer to that question I guess
14:30
ended up being a whole book which is called Feminism Against
14:32
Progress. So you can, you can see where I
14:34
came down. Yeah.
14:35
I think you I think you can be you can be a feminist if you're
14:38
not, if you don't believe in progress.
14:39
And furthermore if you want to be a feminist you shouldn't
14:41
believe in progress. What's the conclusion I came to
14:44
in the end? Now there's.
14:48
There's so much to unpack there. I have so many questions for you
14:52
about your journey and about what it means to be a feminist
14:55
against progress, as you say, you know, you have your book
14:59
Feminism Against Prog Progress. The you had, you had an article,
15:03
I think it was in First Things, called Normophobia and you kind
15:06
of referenced it just a moment ago talking about how, yeah,
15:10
there's this in the air we breathe today.
15:12
There's this rejection of anything in the past.
15:14
We always have to remake things in the name of progress in order
15:18
to prove that we are, we are progressing and we're better
15:21
than our, you know, our forebears or whatever it may be.
15:25
OK. So let's unpack that more today.
15:29
Things are crazy. I think a lot of people
15:31
acknowledge that whether it's male, female relations or the
15:34
state of a lot of disaffected men today struggles women are
15:38
experiencing, birth rates are declining, there's a lot of
15:41
indicators that social fabric is wearing down and you know, we're
15:45
just having less family in general, social bonds are
15:48
wearing down, divorce rates, marriage is on decline, things
15:51
like this, what do you what does it mean?
15:55
Then I guess let's start with this.
15:56
How does one how do you say you're call yourself a feminist
16:00
and yet say that you are? What is it about feminism that
16:04
you are in support of? Let's start with that, the
16:08
feminism of the last. Let's say 100 to 200 years.
16:16
Let's think about how we can unpack that because there's
16:18
there's there's probably several there's probably several answers
16:21
I need to give to that. The I mean the the first thing
16:23
I'd say is the feminism of the last 100 to 200 years.
16:26
There are you need to tell that story in several stages.
16:30
But the the overall frame really the overall argument of feminism
16:33
against progress is that the women's movement is not evidence
16:36
of progress as such. This isn't just something we we
16:38
didn't just wake up one day and decide to become better people
16:41
collectively. You know in some abstract way.
16:43
That's not what happened. What actually happened was that
16:45
men and women together, but particularly women for for
16:49
reasons I'll get to needed to respond to the the way life was
16:53
changed by the industrial Revolution.
16:55
And that's fundamentally what drove the women's movement, you
16:58
know in in earlier, earlier civilizations in pre modern
17:02
England and really into into into the 19th century in the
17:05
United States. The majority of of men and women
17:10
lived in basically agrarian settings.
17:12
And you know there was some downsides to that and it was a
17:14
hard life for a lot of people. But the the really key thing is
17:17
that men and women both worked and they might they did very
17:20
distinct jobs. You know, men and women had
17:22
different roles, but everybody worked in within a productive
17:26
household. And that completely changed when
17:28
the industrial revolution happened.
17:30
First it took men out of the home.
17:32
So men were the first. Men were the first people to be
17:34
to be drained from the productive household into
17:37
productive work elsewhere in in factories or in offices or
17:40
wherever. But that left.
17:43
But, but, but what also happened at that point was that was that
17:46
women's productive work began to drain from the home where it had
17:49
always previously happened. So whereas women might have
17:52
worked previously on, you know, producing, you know, growing
17:55
vegetables or animal husbandry or producing textiles or you
17:59
know a bit 1000. Processing raw materials to make
18:01
food to prepare food for the you know, 1001 of the of the jobs
18:04
that you need to do when you can't go to the shops and buy
18:06
what you need. And these this you know so much
18:09
of this was women's work and you do it all with your kids under
18:11
foot. But when but the industrial
18:14
revolution comes along and suddenly you know life, life is
18:17
very different. And instead of weaving fabric
18:18
for the family, you can buy fabric instead of a whole load
18:23
of those you know, instead of churning butter, you can buy it
18:25
from the shop. And increasingly, women, women
18:28
are known about doing their, the productive work that they've
18:30
done before, but they still need to look after the kids.
18:33
So in fact, what happened to to in a very significant sense,
18:36
with the Industrial Revolution wasn't that women, women first
18:39
began to to move. You know, that the progress
18:42
story will tell you that women in the Middle Ages were were
18:44
sort of helpless, abused, kind of, you know, beaten up by
18:47
Cavemen, you know, chattel slaves effectively.
18:50
This is, this is not true. I mean, I don't know, maybe it
18:52
is in some places, but in in Anglophone, Anglophone heritage
18:55
cultures is simply not true. It's much the story.
18:57
The picture is complex, but it's much, much, there's much more to
19:00
it than that. And women in very in very
19:02
different ways to the modern world had a lot of agency.
19:05
And what happened actually in the in the early industrial
19:07
revolution was that women lost agency and then they needed to
19:10
respond to that because they'd inherited a legal system which
19:14
saw the basic unit of of of of civil the the the basic unit of
19:20
the state was was not individuals but households and
19:23
then and and that meant that the head of a household I mean this
19:26
is not how we organise things now the basic economic unit is
19:28
an individual now but the basic economic unit in the legacy
19:32
system that that was that was in place in Britain and America
19:35
when the industrial revolution happened.
19:37
So the basic unit, the basic economic unit was a household
19:39
and that meant the head of the household and that meant the
19:41
wife was subsumed into the husband and that meant that
19:44
women basically had no legal or economic personage personhood
19:47
separate from their husbands. So when when women's work drains
19:51
of women's agency and women's work drains out of the home and
19:54
they're but they still need to be at home to look after the
19:56
kids, they're suddenly in this in this actually relative to to
20:00
the Middle Ages very disempowered situation where
20:03
they can't leave. They can't they can't divorce
20:05
their husband. If like it's great.
20:07
It's fine. If your husband likes you and he
20:10
he's a good man and he be and he and he supports you and does and
20:13
steps up and does all. But there's very little there's
20:15
very little. You have very little redress.
20:17
If he, if he's, if it's not fine, And if he's not a good
20:19
husband. And if he beats you.
20:21
Or if he divorces you or abandons you.
20:23
You have you have no recourse. You have no legal personage you
20:26
can't divorce him and and if you and if you do leave he he can
20:30
keep the kids and you have no right.
20:32
And there are some really horrendous stories and so and so
20:35
there's a lot a lot of a lot of the early women's movement was
20:38
about responding to this and saying well what do we do now
20:41
And so you know we need to be able to work if things go wrong.
20:44
We need to be able to we need we need to be people in our own
20:47
right in this in this changing world.
20:49
And then there were also there was also a whole other culture
20:52
of maternalism which wanted to which really wanted to big up
20:55
this this domestic life that women now found themselves in,
20:58
which was which was good if your if your marriage was good, you
21:02
know there were women. Not not the the 19th century,
21:05
19th century maternalists were they.
21:07
They they were huge on motherhood, on domesticity, on
21:10
the importance of of women's work in in raising uplifting the
21:14
moral fabric of society and an uplifting and in shaping,
21:17
shaping the the moral outlook of their children and the huge
21:20
importance of that to the nation and to the common good.
21:23
So there's so there's also this whole story and I mean to be
21:26
fair, 19th century women who who were into this would not have
21:29
described themselves as feminists.
21:31
But to me it reads straightforwardly as feminism in
21:34
the sense that it's about making the case for women's, women's
21:37
huge contribution to the common good.
21:39
So in the sense of defending women's.
21:41
So this is so this is the early, the early women's movement.
21:44
And so it's a very, very different place to this.
21:46
I mean people in as much as in as much as pop feminism will
21:49
tell you about the 19th century, there's like, Oh yeah, some
21:51
racists. And then there was the vote and
21:53
then good. And now we're into the bit which
21:55
matters, which is the sexual revolution.
21:56
That's basically like the pop history of feminism you get now.
21:59
And there's so much more to it than that.
22:01
And there's this really interesting back and forth
22:03
between between the maternalists who were very who, who who
22:07
wanted to elevate and purify marriage.
22:09
They wanted to save women from prostitution.
22:11
They wanted to they wanted to make the case for women's
22:14
distinct but equal contribution to public life.
22:18
They were they were hugely into social reform movements.
22:23
So they they they would campaign for you know relief for the poor
22:26
and you know do good works in in in their local area and there's
22:29
this there's this hugely huge yeah.
22:31
I mean they they basically were the social fabric.
22:33
They were civil society and this is it's a it's a hugely
22:37
important and powerful aspect of of women's history which is is
22:41
very often kind of sidelined in this story about, you know,
22:44
liberation and liberalism and the, you know, the kind of
22:47
progressive narrative of what was going on with the woman's
22:49
movement. I mean I I could, I could bang
22:51
on about this for hours. So, so it's up but but I won't.
22:55
My point is that this is phase one and phase one kind of came
22:59
to an end with the contraceptive revolution.
23:01
Because at that point there's this back and forth between the
23:05
feminism of care, which is you know, the the maternalists, if
23:08
you like, and the feminists of freedom who said we need to be
23:10
able to get divorced for for all.
23:13
Both both of these sides had a point, but but really the the
23:16
the women who wanted to enter the market on the same terms as
23:19
men, which is to say the women who wanted to be liberated, as
23:22
it were their their side pretty much comprehensively won at the
23:26
point where the sexual revolution happened because at
23:29
that point a new technology arrived.
23:32
So if you like, this is this is industrialisation round two,
23:35
which I think of as the industrialisation of women's
23:37
bodies through birth control and also through the legalisation of
23:40
abortion. Because at that point you have a
23:41
technology which which seems to to get rid of the main
23:45
physiological difference between men and women and and to to
23:49
bring about a much more complete equality than had really been
23:51
possible before. And so there's a whole, there
23:54
are whole new, whole new types of feminism which emerge from
23:57
that. You know, the the demand for
23:58
equal, equal access to to work opportunities, a demand to
24:02
breakdown, sex segregation in social life, You know,
24:07
immensely, you know, hugely new, hugely elaborate new movements
24:12
for equality and abolishing sexism.
24:14
And really all although the whole second wave, the whole the
24:18
whole second wave women's movement is downstream with the
24:20
sexual revolution and this this you know especially especially
24:24
conservatives that's tend that tends to be what they're
24:26
referring to when they talk about feminism is the second
24:29
wave. And R you know the the the the
24:31
the stuff the 19th century stuff kind of everyone's like yeah, I
24:35
don't really get that. I don't really understand any of
24:36
that. Well, I think, yeah, just.
24:39
Whatever you're making the economic, the the economic or
24:43
the technological changes, these dramatic changes, the industrial
24:46
revolution and later on I I mean that term used the
24:48
industrialization of women's bodies.
24:50
I think that's so compelling about the rise of birth control
24:53
and abortion on demand and these dramatic changes.
24:56
It sounds like what you're saying is that, yes, ideologies,
24:58
you know, feminist ideas, you could call them, were emerging
25:02
or there was, you don't talk of things, but they really were in
25:05
many ways. The consequence, you know, these
25:07
changes in how women should interact in society, or these
25:11
changes in ideas or how women should interact in society were
25:14
really the consequence of these very dramatic technological
25:18
changes. It's really it's always hard to
25:21
say whether it's the ideas that come first or the the material
25:25
changes. But I mean what what is what
25:27
does seem to be clear is that the these things come together
25:30
like you know an idea somebody can have a great idea but unless
25:32
it falls on fertile ground it's just it's just going to be an
25:35
idea and and think and you only really see large scale social
25:38
change when when the the the the material conditions make sense
25:43
for it as well. So they I mean I see I I don't
25:46
really see it as one or the other or I'd be I'd be loath to
25:48
say it's this with this it's caused most more by ideology or
25:52
more by material conditions but I've I've just I've opted to
25:55
focus on or or to learn more into thinking about material
25:58
conditions 'cause I just think it gets it gets left out and and
26:02
and it's so particularly once we get to once we get to the
26:05
contraceptive revolution. I think we've we've hugely
26:09
underpriced how transformative that was to our ideologies and
26:14
what and I think of it really as the as the first transhumanist
26:17
moment. You know I've I've argued on the
26:20
I've argued that that really we're 50 years into the
26:23
transhumanist era because the the the first transhumanist
26:26
technology was the contraceptive pill.
26:30
Explain that the reason the reason.
26:32
Yeah the reason I see it that way is because it in it in fact
26:36
turns the medical it it turns it turns the whole history of
26:40
medicine inside out. I mean if you think about what
26:43
what the what medicine is meant to do you know up to up to the
26:47
sexual revolution. Up to the contraceptive
26:48
revolution. The point of medicine like the
26:51
doctors all understood what a healthy human they they what
26:54
what human normal looks like though.
26:56
You know you've got a basic yeah.
26:57
I mean you and I both have an idea of what a normal what a
26:59
normal healthy person looks like and what normal healthy what
27:02
normal healthy human bodies ought to be able to do And what
27:06
is you know and and up until up until the contraceptive
27:10
revolution the job of doctors was to try and get somebody
27:13
who's sick which is to say abnormal physically in some way
27:16
or back-to-back to you know as close as possible to normal
27:20
again. You know your arm is broken.
27:21
You want your arm not to be broken.
27:23
You know my your head hurts. You want your head not to hurt.
27:25
You know something wrong with your kidneys.
27:27
So you're not you're not processing things properly.
27:30
You, you you want to fix the the the point of medicine is to get
27:32
you back to normal. And what?
27:34
What happens? And the contraceptive pill turns
27:36
that completely inside out, because what it does it it takes
27:39
in. Instead of fixing something
27:41
which is wrong with normal, it fixes it fixes normal in the
27:44
name of personal freedom. So instead of fixing something
27:47
which is broken to try and restore us to normal, it takes
27:50
something which is working fine, which is normal female
27:53
fertility, and breaks it in the name of personal freedom.
27:56
And that's that's a total inversion of what what every
28:00
every doctor has done up until that point.
28:02
And what it and what it does is it opens the door for a whole a
28:05
whole new way of thinking about what medicine can and should do.
28:08
So instead of fixing things which are wrong with us in now,
28:12
there's this whole a whole new range of possibilities for for
28:15
ways we can cut effectively, ways we can upgrade ourselves in
28:18
line with what we want rather than what what what is just
28:21
normal. So I mean if I, if I can break
28:24
my fertility in the name of in the name of having sex whenever
28:27
I want with whoever I want. Why shouldn't I why why
28:31
shouldn't I interfere with my normal Physiology in any number
28:34
of other ways in the just just because just because I want to
28:38
and so and so and and what that also does is it opens a whole
28:41
new range of business opportunities for and for
28:45
enterprising and enterprising businesses or doctors or
28:48
practitioners or pharmaceutical companies or whatever to cater
28:52
to this whole new market which is and and really what they're
28:55
what what happens with the the first transhumanist moment of
28:59
where of the birth control pill is the opening up of human
29:03
bodies as a marketplace and and that's and that's that's what I
29:07
see is that the the the definitive transhumanist move is
29:10
to is treating is that the point where we stopped we stopped
29:13
treating the world's as something to to strip mine to
29:17
buy and sell and started treating ourselves as a resource
29:19
as a marketplace and so and so and so downstream of that moment
29:23
we we start to see the commodification of human of
29:26
women for example in the surrogacy industry in buying and
29:29
selling of gametes for all. I mean you know it's no it's no
29:35
coincidence as well that the sex industry mushroomed in the IT
29:38
downstream of the country. I mean the you know the
29:40
causality there is pretty straightforward.
29:41
If you can have consequence free sex why shouldn't you and if you
29:44
can if and if why shouldn't you why shouldn't you make movies.
29:46
Of it. So there's a whole load of
29:49
dominoes that fall one after another, all of which make
29:52
somebody a whole load more money and and and and it all sits on
29:58
the foundation of of make of this claim that we have.
30:01
We have a right to interrupt normal in the name of personal
30:05
freedom. And that and that all that all
30:07
begins with the first transhumanist moment which is
30:09
the contraceptive pill. So we're 50 years into this now,
30:14
and the whole lot more. Abortions, abortions, that you
30:17
know the most extreme example of what you're saying.
30:20
Inversion of medicine and how we see medicine and and how we see
30:23
healthcare. Instead of to heal the patient,
30:25
bring life to the patient, extend the life of the patient.
30:29
Medicine is now to kill someone who used to be a patient.
30:33
Right. And and yeah, I mean this was
30:35
this was a point that Erica really convinced me of then I
30:40
Yeah, when she, she pointed out that this is also the moment
30:43
where where the maternalists just lost.
30:46
You know, if previously in the women's movement there had been,
30:49
there had been those women who wanted to make the case for for
30:52
mothers and for women as as birthing mothers and as
30:57
caregiving people. And and to say that, you know,
31:00
there are things, there are affordances of being being a
31:03
mother, which we need to make space for.
31:05
And there are ways in which women are different and
31:06
particularly when we're mothers that we need to make space for.
31:08
And this is, this is a political question that that that move,
31:13
that that form of feminism was just lost when abortion was made
31:17
legal. Because it's it's very
31:19
difficult. I mean wherever, wherever, you
31:20
know, wherever you stand on abortion.
31:22
It's very hard to argue that. I mean it's you can't really
31:26
make a a much stronger statement in favour of freedom over care
31:30
than to say I have the right to choose even at the expense of a
31:34
potential human life. That that's rely, that's reliant
31:37
on the the hospitality of my body.
31:40
You know if you're saying that you've you've if you if you're
31:42
if you've signed up to that paradigm, you've chosen freedom
31:45
over care. So I mean it's it's not really
31:47
surprising that maternal feminism has not had a look in
31:49
sense, you know, it's it's like the end there.
31:51
Says, if you choose care over freedom, then the societal
31:56
construct today is, well, that's fully on you then.
31:59
It's almost like you chose this privilege of sorts to be a
32:02
caring mother as opposed to abortion or rejection of the
32:06
child. And now society is not going to
32:08
help even. Why should anyone bother to help
32:11
you too much with that? Because you could have chosen
32:13
freedom. Exactly, exactly.
32:15
And what we're seeing, we're actually seeing the same
32:17
argument happening now in the field of euthanasia and the same
32:20
I, I. And it's very clear already from
32:22
what's happening in Canada that the same logic applies.
32:25
You know the same logic of choice and the fact that it's
32:27
all on you if you choose life is now is now playing out in so,
32:32
so-called Canadian healthcare which is to say the choice which
32:36
is now available to have a doctor in your life for you.
32:39
And and it's you know what the word there are horror stories
32:41
that seem to come out on a monthly basis of of of people
32:44
who are effectively being pressured into ending their
32:46
lives. Much as you know countless women
32:50
are are pressured into ending the lives of an unborn child
32:53
because because the because everybody around them doesn't
32:57
want doesn't want the burden of having to continue looking after
33:00
them effectively. Yeah.
33:03
It's it's the and it's the same. It's the same logic.
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35:24
I want to pick up something you said earlier and then I want to
35:26
talk about solutions in the in the in the current era of that
35:31
we're we find ourselves in. But you were talking about the
35:33
economic contributions effectively of women and say the
35:37
Middle Ages and you know, and 19th century pre the industrial
35:40
Revolution and how things just, you know, changed dramatically
35:43
with industrial revolution, men leaving the home.
35:45
The household economy was now very different, you know,
35:49
textiles and food and all the, you know, animal husbandry, all
35:52
the things that typically would happen on the kind of family
35:54
household project are now changing rapidly.
35:57
But the, the core of what you, what part of the core of what
36:00
you were saying is that, you know, women had economic value
36:04
obviously for the sake of raising their kids with their
36:07
spouses, but in order to develop the economy around their
36:11
household so that they could raise their kids and feed
36:13
themselves and shelter themselves, etcetera.
36:16
And you know, part of the, the change that happened was that
36:19
now it wasn't needed anymore. You know, those economic
36:23
contributions in those ways were not needed anymore.
36:26
And then you have the 1940s, you know, housewife stereotype,
36:30
right, who has the refrigerator, and she has the washing machine.
36:35
And she has all of these tools that make her job theoretically
36:37
even easier. And then you have Betty Friedan
36:40
writing in The Feminine Mystique that this, you know, 1940s
36:43
housewife is so miserable. Like she's just bored out.
36:46
She's basically bored out of her mind.
36:48
She's stuck alone in suburbia with the white picket fence.
36:51
You know, she's divided away from society or, you know,
36:54
contribute, you know, work that's contributing to the
36:57
economy. And she's just with these very
36:59
tiny children that need her so desperately.
37:01
And she's lonely as can be. And she has this terrible, she's
37:05
terribly disaffected and so we've got to get her back into
37:08
the workforce, right. So I'm, I'm curious how you do
37:13
you see that narrative? First of all, do you agree with
37:15
that, that, you know, framing or is there something we're missing
37:18
with the puzzle? Let's start with that.
37:21
Oh, there's, I mean I'm, I'm a little bit less, I'm a little
37:24
bit less marinated in American social history.
37:27
So the the pictures may be a little bit different between
37:30
Britain and the US. I mean the the picture is
37:33
definitely more complicated than that in the UK.
37:35
I mean I recommend to any anybody who's interested in
37:38
Betty Friedan and the early 20th century in the United States.
37:41
I strongly wrote there's a superb book by Christopher Lash
37:44
called Women in the Common Life. And he he has a really
37:47
interesting comment there where he talks about the withdrawal of
37:50
the withdrawal of women into the suburbs in early 20th century
37:53
America. And really the the the
37:55
disintegration of these these very rich maternalist networks
37:58
which have been heavily concentrated in in urban
38:01
environments prior to that and throughout the 19th century.
38:04
There's a huge maternalist movement in America in the 19th
38:06
century also and and what and what Lash says about about that
38:11
that disintegration and that withdrawal into the suburbs is
38:14
that it really was revealed preference.
38:16
It was what everybody wanted. Everybody wanted that freedom
38:19
from from interpersonal obligation.
38:22
And then when they had it they discovered they they, you know,
38:25
some of them discovered that it sucked and that in fact there
38:28
was, there was a trade off in terms of alienation that comes
38:30
with personal freedom. And I think that's that's part
38:33
of the picture really, really through, you know, much, much
38:36
more broadly than than the story of the women's movement that I
38:39
think, you know, there are a huge, there are a huge number of
38:41
areas where really we like the personal for, we like the
38:44
freedom to do what we do to do our own thing.
38:47
But then as it turns out, it's also quite lonely.
38:49
And sometimes we have very mixed feelings about that.
38:52
Now this is, this is something that we see again and again in,
38:54
you know, in all sorts of contexts.
38:56
But but perhaps perhaps it's particularly painful in the
38:59
context of motherhood because you're so needed by, you know,
39:03
the little children's needs have not changed, right.
39:06
You know so even if you've decided you don't need other
39:08
people, your children still need you and the buck kind of stops
39:10
with you. So.
39:12
So I think you know you may I mean there was a whole there was
39:15
a whole argument on Twitter recently about you know there's
39:19
this there's this woman who doesn't want the nursing chair
39:21
from her from our in laws that's been in the family for
39:24
generations and her husband's really angry about it but
39:27
because it doesn't fit with her nursery thing and and he's he's
39:30
really sore about it and she's like the chair that I bought was
39:33
uncomfortable but it's still mine so there and I was I was I
39:37
was thinking this is a really stupid thing to argue about this
39:39
is all this is so. Especially on Twitter.
39:42
Right. I mean you know you're you're
39:43
crazy if you add that kind of stuff on Twitter.
39:45
But the point is you know that's I can I I I thought she was nuts
39:49
but I I could also completely see where she was coming from.
39:51
Because actually when when, you know when we have kids, we do
39:54
kind of want to do our own thing and maybe maybe actually if we
39:57
were all living in multi generational households, we'd
39:59
absolutely hate it. I don't know.
40:02
And there are times when I wonder if if this, you know,
40:04
there's a there's an aspect to this atomization which really is
40:07
just revealed preference, and it just turns out that we're maybe
40:10
not not quite as ready for the tradeoffs as we thought.
40:14
Well. And.
40:15
You become ready. You become ready for the
40:16
tradeoffs, right in part through a sort of inculcation.
40:20
In the trade off, you're raised with the trade off you're raised
40:22
with the intergenerational household, You're raised with
40:25
certain gender roles your that your parents may be living out.
40:27
And so it becomes more normal, you know, it becomes sort of
40:31
second nature to you. If you're raised in an
40:33
experimental household, let's say, or a more modern household
40:36
as we can call it today, it is harder for you to appreciate or
40:40
or be able to even have the the habit be habituated to
40:44
appreciate the you know what we're talking about.
40:47
The these intergenerational households are these, I mean
40:49
these responsibility trade-offs, we could call them.
40:52
Just on on Betty Friedan as well.
40:54
Her book was hugely influential but it's also important to
40:56
remember that like like socio socio economically she was elite
41:01
she she was you know she was a high she was highly educated she
41:05
had a she had a professional career before she became a mum.
41:07
She she never really gave it up. You know she she went on working
41:12
this idea that she was some kind of bored alienated housewife is
41:15
not not completely true. You know she she went on she
41:19
went on working. So yeah, I don't know, there's
41:23
a. She spun a strong narrative.
41:25
Mary I. Mean she She spun.
41:27
She was. A very talented writer, and she
41:29
spun a very compelling picture that resonated to some degree
41:33
with the experience, at least at some point of many women, even
41:36
if it wasn't the full picture. And that became its own force in
41:40
politics exactly was used. Politically, I mean my my sense
41:43
as well is that in in in her era, it was also becoming, again
41:47
for material reasons, it was genuinely becoming more possible
41:51
for more women to do more work outside the home because there
41:54
just wasn't a whole lot to do for them inside the home.
41:57
And that that created a whole new set of tensions because, you
42:00
know, your kids still need you just as much.
42:02
But then what else are you doing all day?
42:04
And there were, there were some women who were like, you know, I
42:06
can fill up my time. And then there are others who
42:08
are living in this maybe living in the suburbs a long distance
42:12
from friends who they could meet up with, who were just really
42:15
lonely and really bored, and who who decided that actually,
42:18
probably the best solution is for me to find more work and
42:21
then set about trying to make that happen.
42:23
If you've written a fair amount on you know your comment on you
42:26
know current events obviously frequently and your your
42:29
Twitter, your ex is quite interesting and fun so I
42:32
recommend the follow, follow move in circles on Twitter.
42:34
Mary's a great follow, but you know what?
42:37
Okay, here we are today. You made the comments about the,
42:41
you know, economic or technological realities
42:43
affecting thought, you know, prevailing thoughts or
42:47
narratives about how we should behave and who we are as humans,
42:49
etcetera. How do you think?
42:52
What do you think is the solution today to all?
42:55
The best I don't think I I don't.
42:59
I honestly don't think there is one.
43:01
I mean, if there was no conclusion, I came.
43:02
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. They're like they're just.
43:04
I don't have a I don't have a monocausal explanation for
43:07
everything that's gone wrong, and nor do I have a single
43:09
solution that's gonna work for everybody.
43:10
I just don't. Think some solutions.
43:12
I mean, I think, I think. Potions.
43:15
Part of part of where part of where liberal feminism has gone
43:18
wrong is in proposing that in fact all of women's interests
43:21
are identical. And that's just obviously not
43:22
true. You know, I think I mean for you
43:26
know, if you if you live on a little Greek island and
43:28
everybody is still pretty traditional, then you know my
43:30
what what I suggest might not actually make sense for you at
43:33
all. But in the particularly in the
43:35
context of you know, extremely, you know, digitally advanced
43:38
post industrial highly networked, western kind of
43:44
increasingly post liberal say specifically you know middle and
43:48
upper class Britain and America. I have, I have some thoughts.
43:51
I have some suggestions. One of them is that we need we
43:54
need to be getting married. I recommend to me marriage is a
43:58
no brainer. If you want, you know it's
44:00
straightforwardly A feminist project to be encouraging and
44:03
supporting marriage from the from the kind of radical,
44:06
atomite, radically atomized point of view of middle and
44:10
upper class life in 20th century Britain and America.
44:12
It's it's a complete no brainer. Like why would you not want to
44:16
look for a good man who's got your back.
44:17
But this is, this is not to say any any old marriage.
44:22
I'm very, I'm very keen of. I think, I think we need to
44:25
rethink what it's for and I think we need to rethink what
44:27
we're filtering for. You know this this sort of
44:29
capstone marriage which has become the norm now where people
44:32
wait until much later and they see it as kind of the the icing
44:35
on the cake of personal fulfillment.
44:37
I think. I I think I was thinking about
44:38
it wrong and actually what we need we need to be seeing, we
44:42
need to be seeing getting married as an enabling condition
44:44
for life in common and particularly for kids.
44:47
And and we should probably we should possibly be filtering
44:50
less for the big romance and you know and the you know the one in
44:55
the wrong consents and more more for for loyalty for shared
44:59
values and for and and for the long haul really.
45:04
And we should be thinking about it in those terms and and the
45:07
reason I say this is actually because I don't think never I
45:09
don't believe in never ending progress and I think you know it
45:12
might life might go on getting richer and more safer and more
45:15
comfortable for a for a tiny minority in extremely wealthy
45:18
parts of the world. But for a but for a lot of
45:21
people it's it's going in the opposite direction.
45:22
And that means for a lot of women it's going in the opposite
45:24
direction. And I think about my own
45:26
daughter who's 7 and I think about the world she's going to
45:29
grow up in. And I think would I rather tell
45:32
her that she can go boss it all on her own and have her go into
45:36
adult life with those beliefs or would I rather encourage her to
45:39
find to find a a good guy who's going to have her back.
45:42
You know, it's, you know, given given the Poly crisis, given
45:47
possible climate change, given even rising crime rates.
45:50
Given all of the other things which seem to be going per
45:52
shape. You know what what should I be
45:54
encouraging her to do? You know, it's it's pretty
45:55
obvious, you know, maybe and maybe she'll be lucky, but maybe
45:59
she won't. And the prerequisites in your
46:02
prerequisites in your view, Mary, for that.
46:04
Because there's a big debate about that.
46:06
When to get married how how to marry.
46:08
I know you're recommending don't just go for this romantic you
46:11
know ideal ROM com. The one perfect experience of
46:15
the thing you know. Look for the shared values
46:16
looked for the the person that has your back.
46:18
But you know, I think there is a, a recommendation for money
46:21
to, you know, get get your college degree, put a few years
46:24
into the workforce, you know, get yourself in an economically
46:27
good place. And this is for the message for
46:29
both men and women. And then, you know, you hit your
46:32
30s, you hit a certain period of time and then you get married.
46:36
Once you've got establishment, a certain level of economic
46:40
establishment taken place, what? What's your take?
46:43
I think, I think Princeton Mum was right.
46:47
She got, she got complete. She got so much blowback for
46:50
saying that you're you're never going to be more surrounded by
46:52
eligible men than when you're at college.
46:55
But I don't know. I think she was right.
46:57
You know, for that kind of elite women, you're never going to be
47:00
as surrounded by eligible men as as you will be at college.
47:03
Get. Get the message the message.
47:05
Degree. It's it's not terrible advice.
47:07
I don't know. You know your your mileage may
47:10
vary but it's it's not the worst advice in the world.
47:14
So so so say thinking of marriage as an enabling
47:17
condition and I'm thinking of it as you know it's as it's not
47:21
something that you opt in that you opt in and out of.
47:23
It's not something you you do with your options open once
47:26
you'd once you're doing it you're doing it for the long
47:27
haul and and so but but if you're going to do that then we
47:32
need you know if we want, if we want good men.
47:34
If we want, if we want to marry good men, then we need there
47:37
needs to be some good men. I mean, this is, this is a
47:41
little bit more more difficult to argue succinctly.
47:44
But I my view is that we just need to leave men alone to hang
47:47
out with each other a little bit more.
47:49
And we probably might possibly get more support in protecting
47:54
single sex women's spaces, for example from men who say they're
47:56
women if we if we let men have some of their own single sex
48:01
spaces, maybe a little bit more. And this is, I mean this this
48:05
10, this is a talking point that doesn't usually leave the
48:07
manosphere and it can sometimes take on a kind of a kind of
48:11
nasty tone, which I I don't, I I don't share.
48:14
But I think there's, I think there's something to it because
48:17
I mean there's a big argument going on in Britain at the
48:19
moment about the Garrett Club which is a very elite private
48:22
members club in London. Where there are, which is, which
48:26
is one of the very few exclusively all now one.
48:29
It doesn't admit women except as guests and there's a huge
48:31
argument going on about whether or not it's socially acceptable
48:34
for this this place to still exist.
48:36
I don't care or you know leave leave leave them alone.
48:39
But, but, and I but I think there are, there are some
48:43
high-powered, ambitious women who say these spaces shouldn't
48:45
exist because it allows men to gatekeep access to power and
48:49
resources and deal making and networking in a way which is
48:52
structurally sexist and fundamentally unfair.
48:55
Maybe. But if you apply that logic all
48:57
the way down the social scale it ends up affecting, It ends up
49:00
also dissolving single sex spaces for men who are not
49:04
gatekeeping resources. And they're not gatekeeping
49:06
networks and they're not gatekeeping power or anything
49:09
really. They just, they just want to
49:10
have a few beers with their friends and now and now they
49:13
sort of can't because it's sexist.
49:15
And and I think I think that that has a that's a contributing
49:18
factor in rising male loneliness.
49:21
I also think it's a contributing factor in the in the
49:24
disintegration of male mentorship networks which are
49:27
fundamentally what are required to form the next generation of
49:31
good men. And if we if we don't, if we
49:33
won't leave space for men to form one another throughout the
49:36
through the down the generations, then there will be
49:38
no good men and then we'll end up with no, no male role models
49:42
apart from these usually really quite toxic high profiles kind
49:45
of masculinist role models. I won't name any names but I'm
49:48
sure you you know the kind I'm talking about if they crop up on
49:51
the Internet and they usually they're usually pretty
49:53
contemptuous of the opposite sex and they they they sort of talk
49:57
about weightlifting and making money and it's just it's just
49:59
very crass and actually what what it would be so much better
50:03
if we just left the guys alone so they could I don't know do
50:06
what I don't know what they talk about when we're not around.
50:08
But I think we should we should leave them alone to do it and
50:14
this is. Yeah.
50:15
And and that it would be it would be better for everybody.
50:18
There would be more good men to to marry if we did.
50:22
And point #3 is the feminist case against birth control for
50:25
all the reasons I've already gone into earlier on the
50:27
programme. Again I think there are this is
50:30
this is a very anti to to be clear, this is an anti
50:33
universalist argument. You know, I'm not saying I'm,
50:35
I'm not I'm not even necessarily making this case for everybody.
50:38
You know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend to somebody
50:41
who has low social status or you know is in a violent
50:44
relationship or has no personal capacity for self-control
50:48
necessarily to to reject, to reject the pill.
50:51
If that was going to keep her safe, you know I wouldn't.
50:54
I wouldn't would necessarily recommend it to somebody with
50:55
no, no impulse control. But for for women who for women
50:59
who are otherwise have their have their thing together, you
51:02
know who are capable of self-control, who are capable of
51:05
maintaining personal boundaries. You should not be on birth
51:07
control. You should not be on the pill.
51:09
It messes with your mind. It makes you fat and mad and
51:11
sexless and it's and and and it reorders you as a kind of
51:15
commodity for consumption in a way which is profoundly counter
51:18
to your interests. So yeah I think there's a I
51:21
think there's a powerful particularly yeah, I mean this
51:24
is this is really addressed more more towards bourgeois bourgeois
51:27
women in the developed world than anywhere else but for but
51:30
for that demographic there's a strong feminist case against
51:33
against contraception and and so and so that's .3 on my on my
51:38
slightly slightly eccentric set of feminist program for renewal
51:43
at the other side of liberal feminism and into the
51:45
reactionary kind. Now I I appreciate that.
51:49
I asked this and I I know we've got a wrap here in a moment.
51:51
I I asked this of Erica when she was on the show we had Carrie
51:55
Grass. He's a bit of a, you know
51:58
disagree disagrees with Erica and sort of the the historical
52:02
view that you I think and Erica shared to a large degree about
52:04
how we got where we are. But I asked this is this
52:07
question do we should we continue to use this term
52:10
feminist. Clearly you've chosen to it's
52:13
been hijacked quite terribly I would argue in the last several
52:17
decades. What's your take on that?
52:20
I mean, again, your mileage may vary.
52:24
I, I I like it. I mean, I reaction reactionary
52:29
feminists started as a joke. Seriously, it really did.
52:32
I had a long argument with somebody about whether or not,
52:34
whether or because I had. I had Post liberal feminist on
52:37
my Twitter buyer and then I had a long argument with somebody
52:39
about whether I should use post liberal because he he said I he
52:43
said I shouldn't because reasons it went on for ages.
52:45
I'm not I'm not going to bore you with the whole argument but
52:47
the Long story short in the end in the end I decided he won.
52:50
I agreed with him and I was going to change it to
52:52
reactionary because because that that was just a better term.
52:55
So I changed it to reactionary feminist and then match mitts
52:57
from first things got got in touch like a week later saying
53:01
that's a that's what is a reactionary feminist.
53:03
Will you please explain in at length in first things And I'm
53:07
like oh OK now I have to figure out what I mean by that and I'm
53:10
like this is this is it's literally just a joke which I
53:12
coined to put on my Twitter profile.
53:14
So and then it turned into a 1500 word article which is kind
53:17
of a thesis of the book. So obviously I meant something
53:19
by it but so so I guess I'm now it's a thing.
53:23
I mean I've come across people who described themselves as
53:25
reactionary feminists in the wild.
53:27
You know I'm comfortable with it.
53:28
You know it's it's a thing it has a Wikipedia page.
53:31
I don't but reactionary feminism does so, so so I'm sticking with
53:35
it. I'm sticking with it it seems
53:38
but but I but what I've what I loved about what I've loved
53:40
about it is that it it really works as a signal scrambler.
53:43
People like people aren't completely sure where to put you
53:46
or at least they weren't for a long time.
53:47
Now they're like oh oh, it's the reactionary feminist and like
53:50
it. It's a thing now but but for a
53:51
long time it just scrambled everybody.
53:53
So they didn't know where to place me and I I I just had fun
53:55
with that. So.
53:57
So you know I'm hopefully. You keep the attention along for
54:00
the ride and you can share your your thoughts with them along
54:03
the way. But you know, I mean it's it's I
54:06
think it's become a very empty signifier in the West.
54:09
Feminism, you know the the liberals want it just to be the
54:12
doctrine of whatever and wherever and whoever for anyone.
54:16
It's just you know the the the doctrine of total gratification
54:19
of individual desire is is just what feminism means for the
54:23
liberals. But then and so so it's sort of
54:25
it's sort of content free at that end and I think, you know
54:28
why shouldn't we take it back. You know it does mean something.
54:30
Women still exist, you know, we're still distinct from men in
54:33
some politically important ways. Why shouldn't we have it back?
54:36
You know, why shouldn't we take our ball and go home?
54:41
It could just as easily be ours as theirs.
54:43
So. So I'm going to have it back.
54:45
I'm I'm with you equal the difference and and to not reject
54:48
the differences and instead to celebrate them and encourage
54:51
them. I think is is the key to help
54:53
women be fully not free, but fully, I think whole.
54:57
And then the same with men. I mean, and yes, fully free.
55:00
Towards the end of wholeness. You know, freedom.
55:01
That word has been so perverted today to mean, you know, endless
55:05
choices at it at for any reason. As opposed to what is my
55:08
responsibilities? What is my purpose?
55:10
And aiming your choices, your freedom, towards those things.
55:14
Mary, this has been fascinating. Your delight.
55:17
Thank you so much for joining us where people find your work.
55:21
So my you can find me at Unheard UNHERD.
55:24
That's where most of my regular column is a reactionary feminist
55:28
on Subset Sub Stack. That's my personal newsletter,
55:31
and on Twitter I'm at Move in circles.
55:35
Excellent. Thanks so much, Mary.
55:36
Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for listening to
55:40
this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
55:43
It was a delight to get to chat with Mary.
55:45
I hope you follow her work. Obviously some of her last
55:48
comments you're saying. Well, for some women, I guess I
55:50
could say that's birth control is fine.
55:51
I would say for any woman, birth control is not going to be
55:54
helpful to you. If you're an abusive
55:55
relationship, birth control is not going to help you because
55:58
you should get out of that relationship.
56:00
And if you don't have good self-control, birth control is
56:02
not going to help you. Because if you live without
56:04
self-control, eventually that birth control is going to fail
56:06
you and you will be faced with probably an unexpected
56:09
pregnancy. So bottom line is it's not good
56:12
for anybody. So maybe that's one tiny point
56:14
of departure between Mary and I. But overall, I thought she had
56:17
such great things to share. As always, don't forget to
56:21
subscribe to the show. You can do that on podcast apps
56:23
or on YouTube and send me an e-mail.
56:25
I love to hear what you guys think about the show, about what
56:28
we're talking about. Any guest ideas, topic, ideas?
56:31
You can e-mail me at lila@gtbmedia.com.
56:35
That's Lila at GTB media.com. The GTV, by the way, is
56:39
goodness, truth, beauty. So e-mail me elila@gtvmedia.com.
56:42
And also don't forget to join our locals and our Patreon
56:45
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56:47
coming down the pipeline. As you guys know, I'm on
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56:51
I'll be back soon and we're going to be doing some very
56:53
exciting things. So that's Patreon and locals.
56:55
You can get those links in the bio.
56:57
Thanks so much and we'll see you next time.