5/15/2023 0 Comments Mary harrington unherd![]() ![]() But there are many other areas of human interaction in which sex differences also matter, perhaps somewhat less urgently but no less significantly, and it’s not clear that Harrington is prepared to take them on too. Perhaps understandably, Harrington’s main concern in this regard is the convicted rapist who claims a female identity in order to be placed in a women’s prison. Here are a few examples, based mainly on the Triggernometry interview (also one at UnHerd), and therefore necessarily partial. On the minus side, Harrington seems to be, like the vast majority of feminists, unable to think outside a framework in which women’s interests vastly override those of men or even children. On the plus side, she is an intelligent, quirky woman who is advocating a major pushback against feminist assumptions in order to improve the lives of women (and perhaps men). In her willingness to cast a jaundiced eye on the downstream effects of women’s so-called liberation, Harrington is both the answer to many men’s advocates’ hopes and the stuff of our continuing unease. If I understand her correctly, she sees much of what followed the 1960s as a terrible miscalculation, in which insistence on sexual and other freedoms eviscerated women’s affiliation with caregiving and home. Nothing says “Women are wonderful” quite like the applause in conservative and non-feminist circles that greets a feminist who makes even the mildest criticisms of feminism, and Harrington’s criticisms are not minor. Overall, Harrison’s arguments, explored in a substantial interview with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster on Triggernometry (her book is not yet available in North America), provide a welcome opportunity to consider the possibilities and limitations of a feminist critique of feminism. And she is even willing to hold feminism (indirectly and partially) responsible for some male misery and resentment. She recognizes trans ideology-particularly its emphasis on creating oneself as one desires-as a logical extension of cyborg feminism. She thinks that abortion has been a net-negative for women. ![]() She is calling for the revaluing of marriage not as a guarantee of individual happiness but as the foundation of social stability and caring. In particular, Harrington has taken aim at birth control technology-the pill-as an aspect of what she dubs cyborg feminism, the bio-medical upgrading of the body in the service of a false conception of female freedom. ![]() Mary Harrington, author of the just-published Feminism Against Progress, is one of a number of women (Louise Perry is another) criticizing feminism from the inside. ![]()
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