The relation between class and sex becomes clearer when you remember that chasing workplace equality gets steadily easier the less physical a job is. It’s one thing to demand an equal right to earn hundreds of thousands a year as a lawyer, but there’s no feminist campaign for an equal right to become bin men. And everyone knows why. It’s because waste collection is arduous work, and males are – as I learned aged 11 – almost always stronger than females.
Gruellingly physical jobs are just less appealing, too. You’re bound to fight harder for a crack at the jobs traditionally done by men in your social class if those jobs have titles like “lawyer” rather than “sewage worker” or “bin man”. And even for lawyers, Clinton feminism can only ignore sex so far: what we call the “gender pay gap” is mostly an effect of the brutal fact that smashing the glass ceiling is difficult to combine with having babies. Although this is also easier if you’re rich, because along with doing non-physical jobs wealthy women can subcontract the work of raising babies – and even, for some, gestating them. Seen from this perspective, the shortfall in working-class women identifying as “feminist” seems justified.
Because inasmuch as it refers to smashing stereotypes and celebrating CEOs and Vice-Presidents, at least in its mainstream usage, the word “feminism” has been colonised by the class interests of a wealthy elite. This minority of women have comprehensively liberated themselves from the constraints of female biology – whether it women’s relative physical weakness or the time constraints imposed by motherhood – and have achieved this at least in part on the backs of poorer women. That is, under Clinton feminism, the richer a woman is, the freer she is.
And it doesn’t stop there. Having freed wealthy women from their own biology, Clinton feminism has set its sights on abolishing biology for everyone – including those women still affected by it. On his inauguration day, Biden signed an executive order obliging federally funded institutions to interpret “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” in the category “sex”. In other words, it’s now forbidden to discriminate against a woman for being male, if that male identifies as a woman.
From a Clinton feminist point of view, this is self-evidently feminist progress. It’s part of the great feminist project of ending all sexist discrimination – up to and including discrimination against people who identify as women, for not being biologically female.
In a way, this is understandable. Katniss Everdeen and her ilk gave a generation of women the impression that men and women are broadly physically similar. And the more middle-class you are, the less opportunity you have to revise that view. If your understanding of male and female physical capabilities was shaped not by family members hauling bins for a living, but high-kicking action movie heroines, the idea of anyone’s choices being limited by something so trivial as “sex assigned at birth” just looks like the kind of bigotry feminism has been fighting since forever.
So an edict that forbids schools from excluding male competitors from all-female athletic competitions, provided they identify as female, may, as the Guardian put it, “offer hope for young trans athletes”. But it also abolishes at the stroke of a Clinton-feminist pen any possibility of fair sporting competition for girls and women. Meanwhile, according to radical feminist campaign group WoLF, it could also end any legal standing for sex segregation in domestic violence shelters or prisons.
This all leaves American supporters of women’s rights in a bit of a bind. Trump may have grabbed ‘em by the pussy, and bragged about it in a repulsive way. But is it really better to be governed by an administration that lacks even The Donald’s (apparent literal) grasp of female anatomy? This probably depends how you look at it.
For just as the perks of Clinton feminism trickle up the class hierarchy, its downsides sink to the bottom. It won’t be Clinton feminists who watch the athletic scholarship that was their only prospect of college funding be swept away by someone who went through male puberty. And it won’t be the Clinton feminists who get locked in prisons that are now effectively mixed-sex.
All but the wealthiest women know that you can’t just legislate biology out of existence. As the losses and indignities resulting from the Clinton feminist effort to do so multiply, outrage will build as well. I suspect we’ll see a feminist mutiny before long – and not the nice polite feminism of women who earn more than $75,000 a year. And I don’t think it will be directed at the patriarchy. It’ll be directed at the selfish elite who stole the women’s movement to feather their own nests, then tried to abolish females in the name of freedom.
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SubscribeSmashing the glass ceiling is “also easier if you’re rich, because along with doing non-physical jobs wealthy women can subcontract the work of raising babies”.
Feminism seems more about reducing social mobility amongst poorer women and ensuring the position of high status women than equal rights. This is likely why the 1000s of working class women abused by Asian grooming gangs were of no interest to them. The pattern of wokeness tends to be thus.
Indeed, a lot of identity politics can be seen similarly: a way to further the interests of the ruling classes and to harm the weak.
well stated
The ability to break rules, stretch facts, pervert ideas, act with no morals – all for personal gain is why they’re the ruling class.
Yes, and with a shrinking middle class in the West and a growing middle class in the East, this is the underlying cause of the Culture War; it’s a competition for status in a narrowing place as many are squeezed downwards. The BLM and Capitol riots are merely the first physically violent expressions of this war. Look to the Chinese Cultural Revolution for a model of how it could go. The US Constitution and the maintenance of democracy are the bulwarks against it. They are going to be tested like never before during Biden’s rein.
“it’s a competition for status in a narrowing place as many are squeezed downwards.”
Interesting post.
And as some are squeezed downwards we can expect them to cling to woke values in an attempt to continue to identify upwards. And, for a time at least, to vote against their interests rather than admit what has happened to them.
“At least we still drink milk out of a jug” syndrome.
What a brilliant comment. You have put your finger on the precise point around which the social, political, and economic issues of our day pivot. This ‘squeeze’, as the rest of the world grows to become as developed, productive and greedy as the West was in its ~70 year post-WWII golden age, will define our century.
And the issue of cultural totalitarianism and identity politics, which sometimes appears to be the only issue at all, is just one among many of the results of the great realignment of wealth and status.
That is a fascinating observation. For whatever reason I’ve thinking about apartheid, its causes and effects, a lot lately.
I was going to comment on Ralph Leonard’s article which mentioned the damage done by Cecil Rhodes, for his actions led directly to apartheid. Now your post has made the connection really pop out.
After the British defeated the Boer republics in 1902, Afrikaners felt exactly that kind of downward squeeze, as if the British colonial power was squeezing them into an underclass.
That led to various political aberrations such as communist support for the 1922 miners’ strike in opposition to non-white people being allowed to do semi-skilled jobs.
Apartheid was in many ways a response to the perceived downward squeeze – creating legal barriers which ensured a hard floor below which whites could not be squeezed, and eliminated the possibility of upward mobility for non-whites.
An interesting historical comparison. I don’t know about that particular struggle but I’d say generally the competition for status is more ferocious than the struggle for wealth. Marx said something along the lines of history is the clash of social classes. He probably had a point. Losing status makes people vulnerable to the worst atrocities humanity is capable of inflicting. People will fight tooth and nail to maintain it.
And demagogues exploit that fear of losing status, of disappearing into the underclass – magnifying it and then using it to desensitize people to the suffering of others. (cf Nazi Germany).
Although that seems to be rare among the English – from early George Orwell of the lower-upper-middle class to Adrian Mole, the English response seems to be inward rather than outward.
While Biden, etc., gloat.
“Divide and conquer” is an aspect.
Feminism seems more about reducing social mobility amongst poorer women and ensuring the position of high status women than equal rights.
that seems to be the case with all of the social justice isms. It’s interesting that while people were being forced to say “black lives matter,” a few dozen black lives were violently ended and they did not appear to matter at all.
“It won’t be Clinton feminists who watch the athletic scholarship that was their only prospect of college funding be swept away by someone who went through male puberty”. This paragraph just about sums in a few words the whole trans activist situation up.
An excellent article. Quite enjoyed the bit “But is it really better to be governed by an administration that lacks
even The Donald’s (apparent literal) grasp of female anatomy?”
Men have not been immune to this either, the average man apparently has privillage – one that shows itself very poorly in terms of education, health, judicial treatment, violent crime etc. It appears to most of us that this is just deflection by the tiny number of genuinely privillaged men.
The Woke left’s view on identity is mind bendingly warped to say the least. A man can become a woman or vice versa with ease, it’s all a ‘social construct’. The concept of race is now revered, where as it really is a social construct.
The Left is fast heading down a very dark hole. Again.
You even can be binary, a woman one day, a men next. But you cannot play Cleopatra in a movie if you are from Israel, or play a gay character when you are straight.
This is all off course, a very logical way thinking, if you are woke.
The dowager queen and princess of smashing sexist stereotypes are Hillary and Chelsea Clinton,
Really? One rode her husband’s coattails to fame and the other was born into it. Is it possible to be any more stereotypical than this pair? And while Harris broke some checkblock barriers, she was also soundly rejected by her own party during the primaries, winning not a single delegate.
Feminism faces an existential crisis; the trans movement is doing more to dismiss every argument made feminists than anything the “patriarchy” or some other malevolent force could do. When being a woman is a social construct instead of a biological reality, the rest falls by the wayside.
It won’t be Hillary or AOC who end up sharing with men in a prison or shelter or have a trans nurse conduct an intimate examination.
Katniss Everdeen and her ilk gave a generation of women the impression that men and women are broadly physically similar.
One of the reasons I’ve always thought it would be useful for girls to be taught self-defence at school is that the experience would relieve them of this dangerous and grossly foolish misapprehension.
As a younger man I did karate for about five years. This entailed having fights with lots of women. I was of average build and like all other such young men, I found that when sparring with even an adult woman, it wasn’t really necessary to block or evade any kicks or punches she aimed at you. She could bruise your face, but it didn’t hurt much and she stood nil chance of knocking you over. You could just ignore any blows she landed. Her belt being black and yours being orange or green or whatever made no difference; a woman couldn’t defeat a man in a fight.
A female of 30 or so did not seem to me to be any physically stronger than one about 12 or 14 years of age.
Noted farcical episodes such as thumping defeats of national women’s soccer sides by teams of 15-year-old boys (I can’t link, but search for FC Dallas and U.S. Women’s National Team, or Matildas and Newcastle Jets) rather bear this out. Women are segregated in most sport for a good reason: if they weren’t, they’d never win anything.
Women can defend themselves successfully against attack by a male, but to do so usually requires that they escalate the violence level very high, very fast, and be willing reflexively to inflict serious, perhaps permanent harm. Like most of us they’re mentally and physically inequipped to do this unless schooled to do so. If they are, they then stand a better chance than a man who’s attacked, because if he responds violently and effectively to an assault, he’ll be the one who gets prosecuted.
That is why I do not want my daughters to ever have to go to war.
Forget Hollywood
Trained or not, they would not last 30 seconds in a proper fight with an average 20 to 40 year old man.
I’m not sure there’s all that much hand-to-hand combat in war these days.
In most modern combat engagements a well trained woman soldier who can shoot accurately and has good stamina wouldn’t be outclassed by a man.
In a limited set of circumstances, I’d suggest. If she were firing a squad weapon from a sheltered position perhaps. But could a woman do the Royal Marine Commando “30-miler” – a trek of that distance in full kit including rifle, to be completed in 8 hours? Or even the Paras’ version – 20 miles in 4 hours 10 minutes? And shoot straight afterwards? I doubt it; her kit’s going to weigh the same as everyone else’s.
Pete,
That is absolutely not true:
https://www.marinecorpstime…
I completely agree. I too have done martial arts, and have the same experience. Younger women with high levels of skill can get round your defences, especially if you are still training into your 40s or 50s. But that is sport, not real fighting. She scores points, and you are both limiting your aggression. if both side just let loose, she’d likely be injured and fast.
I have been assaulted by women, twice. In both cases, I defended myself with minimal force, and fortunately had the training – and presence of mind – to ensure I didn’t hurt my attacker, as I knew that it would be me, not the women attackers, who faced legal trouble.
I’ve always thought that fight scenes in movies and sex scenes in movies are about equally realistic. In both cases you can see what’s supposed to be happening, but neither type of scuffle starts, proceeds or concludes like that in real life.
An 8-stone woman can’t win a fight against a 12-stone man any more than that man can win a fight against an 18-stone man. In fact, his chances in the second fight are slightly better than hers in the first, because even though the adversary is 50% bigger in each case, he’s at least got similar testosterone.
Unfortunately people believe Hollywood history, and so probably quite a few also believe its nonsense about fights.
Because it is lockdown, I have wasted a good bit of time on garbage TV. I succumbed to “Designated Survivor” on Netflix; schlocky TV melodrama.
One of the main characters is a skinny young woman (about 90lbs wet) who frequently beats up 200lb guys – soldiers, and the like. It is quite funny, really.
I think that’s mostly true but, as the OP pointed out, “going nuclear” right at the outset – knowing what parts of the body to focus on and how to inflict maximum damage in the minimum time – gives weaker men and weaker women a chance against heavier, stronger opponents. Especially if they have been trained in how to improvise weapons.
As soon as the opportunity for an expected and decapacitating first strike is past, though, the stronger, heavier combatant wins.
Agreed. If it turns into a fight, the smaller fighter is toast – whatever Hollywood says.
I studied martial arts for a few years so that I would, hopefully, have a chance if I was fast and clever, to escape if attacked. I have absolutely no illusions about this significant difference. And it borders on abuse to keep teaching young girls that they can best a grown male attacker.
And the motive for the nonsense appears, bizarrely, to be for them and the film-makers to feel good about themselves by believing in something that’s not true.
It’s amazing how many people simply no longer understand that men are considerably stronger and faster than women. Literally no longer understand this basic reality.
Yeah, just think of the possibilities if you launch your political career by sleeping with a married man more than twice your age.
Unnecessary, nasty and sexist.
And entirely true.
Calling someone out for extremely bad behaviour is not sexist. Double standards are.
And that’s the thing. Mark objects to this being brought up not because it isn’t true, but because it is.
Holding minorities to a lower standard because they are minorities does no favours, either to them or to their passengers on the airliner they thereby get to fly.
I don’t think it’s sexist at all. Nasty it may be, but that in itself doesn’t make it unnecessary. When Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984, it may well have been a stunt to energize the Democrats to fight an almost unwinnable race against Reagan, but he at least had the grace to claim, “I went looking for the best man for the job and I found her”. Biden didn’t even make a pretence of of denying Harris’s tokenism. When asked who his running mate would be, he flat out said that whoever it was, they would be black and a woman.
And that was it. Those were the qualifications. It didn’t matter that Harris had the crookedest record in America with regard to her career as a prosecutor. It didn’t matter that she’d been beaten off the stage in the Democratic debates by Tulsi Gabbard. It didn’t matter that she’s incapable of answering any kind of complex question with anything other than a highly practiced, sneering laugh. She’s black and a woman. That’ll do. What kind of a role model is that? Do those facts give her a free pass on her behaviour heretofore, behaviour which she has never even denied, let alone apologized for?
That’s a different argument than saying she got the job by sleeping with someone.
She was making about a 100k dollars a year as a know-nothing 20 year old by sitting on state government boards to which she was appointed by her “boyfriend” Willie Brown.
Do you have a reliable source for information on this? I’m involved in a related discussion on The Conversation.
I lived in Berkeley and San Francisco in the 90s and 00s.
This was common knowledge, often repeated in the press.
https://www.sfchronicle.com…
She was given two, very highly paid, sinecures by him.
Well said.
Sorry but I guess Joe has answered your questions !
She’s an entitled, privileged Indian Brahmin, with a dash of Jamaican slave owner.
Though apparently true.
“Unnecessary, nasty and sexist”
Perhaps – but perhaps we need an antidote to the happy clappy version of political ambition.
Willie Brown was the placeman for a small number of very wealthy Republican families in San Francisco who funded him to keep their taxes low (taxes for the middle class to pay for a public sector gravy train were just fine). The man is/was the complete anti thesis of what Progressives claimed to represent. Somehow, in his 20 years in power, in never did get around to doing something about Prop. 13. Odd, that, don’t you think?
Proposition 13 limits the taxation on houses to 1% of their value. It was brought in for various reasons but the most important was that older people in California, who had bought houses when they were in full-time employment, were suffering crippling property taxes imposed by a reckless administration which threatened their security in a home in which they had lived for many years. What ‘something’ Willie Brown might have ‘done’ about that as Speaker of the California state legislature or mayor of San Francisco is not clear to me, but I am glad for the sake of Californians that the limit on home taxation remains.
Prop 13 also covers commercial property. The argument that it protects little old ladies in their family home is absurd. It is a massive give-away to some of the wealthiest people in the state.
You missed out “untrue”. Does that mean it’s not?
But true
How is it sexist? It is totally true, just as the Dems summarily rejecting Harris’ campaign in the primaries is true.
Necessary because the Democrat narrative is they ALWAYS take the high road. Lies, corruption, nepotism are NEVER acknowledged. It is considered bad taste to point out Hilary’s numerous lies. Obama claims without challenge from the MSM that his administration was scandal free, illegal FISA warrants and unmasking by White House members not withstanding.
That’s Harris described to a T.
It was no more sexist than the article’s quote of Trump’s locker room comment. That type of language has been around for years, by men and women and it is crude and unnecessary. But Harris’ method of approaching the glass ceiling is in a different class.
I’m loath to say this. But. Hillary Clinton got to where she nearly got because of her bloke, Bill Clinton. Check the surname. Maggie Thatcher got to where she got because she was Maggie Thatcher.
And Maggie did not make it in to the ranks of the “gutsy women”!
The “election” of K Harris “a remarkable day for democracy and women”.
Truly remarkable….
What was it 2% of Democrats voted for her to become the presidential candidate?
As for the “democratic” election…. Yeah right!
Anyone remember Clinton’s campaign messaging in 2016? ‘I’m With Her’ and all that?
A lot of that seemed, to me at least, to be about helping her – the great Hillary – to shatter that highest of glass ceilings.
All very well, but working class and lower middle class women and men could have been forgiven for responding ‘oh yeah? What are you going to do for us?!’
Trump’s messaging – ‘MAGA’ – at least contained some promise that he would address the legitimate concerns of those who were not included by the great neo-liberal boom.
I know – talk is cheap, and it’s possible that a Clinton presidency would have benefited those voters more than the Trump presidency did in reality. But Trump’s secret weapon was how he was able to tap into these perceptions that the elites did not care about the rest of the population. And often in electoral politics, perception is reality.
Almost everything in this discussion has been about class. An interesting development since idpol was supposed to keep that from happening.
One version of feminism (not all, before anyone piles in) has always been replacing or at least emulating the privilege of upper middle class men with that of upper middle class women.
The trick has therefore been distinguishing between those who genuinely believe all people should be treated fairly and given similar opportunity regardless of their “dangly bits” or the shade of their epidermis – among whose numbers I like to include myself – and those who use feminism (and race politics) as a lever for personal advancement or partisan political lobbying.
The latter group is definitely in the ascendancy right now, and I’m not optimistic for the future.
Indeed, Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes positively lobbied against extending the vote to both working class males and working class females.
She did so, despite having her Suffragettes hand white feathers to many of those working class males who did not have the vote, but whose deprivation resulted in them being unfit to fight.
The Suffragettes exhorted them to go out and prepare to die to defend their own far more privileged livestyles.
.
Nobody – male or female – who knows anything about Kamala Harris was happy to see her become VP. If only it could have been Tulsi Gabbard instead, who is vastly superior both intellectually and morally. (Harris is utterly devoid of morality).
If Harris is “devoid of morality” she ha all the attributes to be president.
Not only are many of us not happy to see Harris as VP – we are scared to death that Biden will go to his eternal reward and she will be President. The voices that screamed for 4 years about how unqualified Trump was for the office – which he clearly was – are silent .No cries from the Woke as to how clearly Harris is as well . Can you imagine having to hear her giggle at every question during a press conference. Oh the horror!!!!!!
I find Tulsi Gabbard to be very admirable, and if the world was a better place, she would be president now. She’s probably too principled and independent to be viable as a politician, but I’m hopeful that she, or someone like her, gets a real chance somewhere down the line, possibly as a third party candidate.
You nailed it! As Joan Rivers put it: behind every strong woman is another woman cleaning her floors.
Lol. Joan Rivers is brilliant.
No mention of the president that went far beyond talking about “grabbing”, which exposes the strange compulsion of so many of these essayists to include a gratuitous Trump dig. I cannot recall millions of women marching in protest of Hillary’s husband-a fact that indicates the underlying political motives of these “feminists”. I worked in the entertainment industry for a while, and well remember guys talking about how women (“groupies” et al) would throw themselves at them-offering up whatever they wanted…The secret recording of Trump talking with a guy on a bus about this subject reminded me of all this, as did Trump’s expressed amazement at this type of behavior-a reaction that I have seen and heard from others. Somehow it always ends up being portrayed as something that he did, rather than said…meanwhile, we have actual perpetrators in Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, but they are of the correct political persuasion, and so rarely mentioned, if ever. Hillary was and is an enabler of a serial “grabber”, and is not a feminist-she is a “Hillaryist”, and most of the pink hat marchers were and are primarily political in motivation-no matter how they dress it up in woke-speak.
Stephen, thanks, I almost couldn’t read the article due to that old trope. His comment was that he couldn’t believe that if you were famous “they let you grab them by the p***y”. Not claiming do have done it nor advocating that one ought! In fact a critique of what some poorly reared women allow. And an example of what could have happened in the Kamala Harris-Brown relationship. He probably recognized immature Harris for one of those women and followed through. Btw, you missed Biden from your list of grabby men.
The groupie phenomena is so weird, but it’s true some women behave that way. And it enables a lot of inappropriate male behaviour, and gives some of those men the impression that women really are ok with things like p***y-grabbing – when in reality it’s very much a subset.
Feminism was always about improving the lot of the already comfortable – see Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
“…men and women are basically the same apart from those minor physical
details, and it’s mostly ingrained sexist stereotypes that keep women
down.”
People with knowledge, and a clear and open mind, always knew this was not true.
The sex [insert term here] gaps (that is, gaps between men and women according to some metric or other) are an interesting mechanism to explore people’s numeracy and biases. First, if they use the term “gender pay gap” it is a bit of a clue. The “gender pay gap” is a methodological mess. Moreover, how often have you ever seen (for example) anyone bleating in the oh-so-utterly-tedious Guardian whining (sorry, “opinion”) pages about any of these sex gaps:
M/F ratio in bricklaying jobs.
M/F ratio in industrial deaths or accidents.
M/F ratio in jobs created, revenue generated, companies built and sold, patents filed.
M/F ratio in imprisonment rate
M/F ratio in being murdered
I can tell you: never.
In a nutshell, why are people so utterly focussed on women in the boardroom, and not women on the construction site?
Finally, who constructed that dimwitted, divisive and crass “gender pay gap” number? Why is it tolerated, given the fictions in perpetrates?
Applications to Oxford.
English literature. Four women for each man.
Computer studies. Three and a half men for each woman.
The former is taken for granted while the latter is cause for manufactured navel gazing and recruiting campaigns.
When I studied English Lit in the 90s I was the only guy in the class. That, along with being a bar manager, completely cured the chronic shyness I suffered with girls during my teenage years. I ruined it all by asking my then-girlfriend to move in with me.
Ssshhh.
Last week in a discussion about Geoffrey Chaucer I weighed in with a reasonable-ish argument and got told that I needed to read more novels. Presumably this meant that the novels would help me to understand what was really going on in life.
Jordan Peterson discusses this at some length using Sweden as an example. Having pursued equality of opportunity (a good thing) for decades the ‘desired’ equality of outcome fails. Why? Well surprise surprise men and women have different interests, so women on average still prefer people orientated jobs, men technology. There are still women in technology jobs and vice versa but the idea that women would use the new opportunities to become engineers etc. in equal numbers to men didn’t happen.
Well said. And for as long as feminism (of all kinds) is about getting women into boardrooms, deriding motherhood and bleating about a phoney “gender pay gap” while at the same time ignoring or downplaying the much more serious and troubling sex gaps you list above I want nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Or perhaps we’ll all just realise that social class matters so much more.
There is a feminist mutiny happening led in the UK by for example: https://fairplayforwomen.com/, https://womansplaceuk.org/, https://www.transgendertren…, https://www.transwidows.com/, https://lgballiance.org.uk/. Personally I was disgusted when Green Party and LibDem MSPs refused to vote in favour of the Lamont Amendment to allow rape and sex abuse survivors to choose the sex of the person examining them after the attack. (https://www.thenational.sco…. But gender ideology is colonising not just the UK and US, it’s everywhere – Australia, Canada, Spain, Finland, Japan… The fallout of this doctrine is not only that shuts down debate (except places like UnHerd!) and removes female only spaces (sports, prisons etc.), but is also witnessed in the growing number of male and female de-transitioners who have to live with the mental and physical impact of what they have done to themselves.
the Lamont Amendment to allow rape and sex abuse survivors to choose the sex of the person examining them after the attack.
Surely in woke orthodoxy it’s “the person examining them after the attack” who gets “to choose the sex of the person examining them after the attack”?
If an assault victim makes a sexist gendered demand to be examined by a woman, at best all the victim is entitled to is to be examined by someone who identifies as a woman for the duration of that examination.
This would include literally anybody.
Gender madness is a Western issue, its basis is wealth and a value free society.
It will die with the West when the money disappears. Asia and the ex communist countries remember what it was like to live in a poor valueless society and they are appalled and want nothing to do with it.
Great article. I’ve long suspected that to believe in gender as a social construct you really have to have grown up without brothers.
And have no children of your own.
Saying that Kamala Harris was elected is a stretch. She herself dropped out of the race for the Democrat nomination before she could be humiliated in her own state. When Biden added her to the ticket, opinion polls showed no benefit to Biden. Unsurprising given how unpopular she is with African-Americans due to her record of incarcerating so many of them for drug possession before joking about smoking spliffs when she hung out with the cool kids on The Breakfast Club. Her vacuity and lack of morality was shown by her then withdrawing the accusations of racism she had made against the man with whom she was now happy to stand on the same ticket. Hopefully, she will have to stand for election before she becomes President instead of Biden just handing her the keys to the Oval Office.
She also stated she believed the women that had accused Biden of sexual misconduct.
Didn’t you hear Kop Kamala explain that that was just a ‘debating point’ and therefore inconsequential?
At the risk of getting Catholic, women were abolished long ago, at least fifty years ago, with the advent of artificial contraception and abortion. The notion that a man can become a woman by force of will or by legal statute can only occur in a fundamentally post-procreative society.
But follow the money: gender ideology is a tool and weapon of the neoliberal global corporations, to confuse and disorientate, to divide and atomise, to disintegrate, demoralise, conquer and exploit.
One hundred different Facebook genders multiplied by a hundred different racial categories multiplied by a hundred other meaningless group identities: a paradox: the true individual dies, but also a bonded humanity dies, and a billion sovereign states are born, defenceless in the face of neoliberal globalist corporate exploitation. No coherent sovereign nations to oppose.
That’s why Trump had to go, of course, and why Biden will be doing what the corporations tell him to do: gender identity, multiculturalism, diversity, etc, etc.
Because the corporations always win.
Thomas Frank touched on this topic in his book Listen Liberal, and you expanded on this in a wonderfully personal way. Democrats celebrate women when they become CEOs but not when they hold down minimum wage jobs at Walmart while trying to raise two children. Simply raising the minimum wage greatly helps women and minorities, as they disproportionately hold working class jobs. Trump at least acknowledged problems of the working class, even if he didn’t do anything for them. Dems said “Not everyone deserves a pony.” And blamed Russia for brainwashing them.
I read ‘Listen Liberal’ very recently. It is an excellent book.
Pre-virus, Trump got many of them a job, which by definition brought self pride back from a long hiatus. And a role model in to many homes. Work is way more than a paycheck.
Sounds like the Labour Party in the UK, they’ve all but abandoned their core constituents.
Trump presided over historically low unemployment rates for blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women and high school dropouts. Wages for the lowest paid rose at the highest rates.
Very interesting article, thanks. I especially like the focus on how your class provides you a very different perspective on feminism.
However, if you quote someone, please quote him correctly, even if it is a person like T. Making a misquote a central part of your essay is diminishing an otherwise excellent article.
T. never bragged that he grabbed women by the p***y, he bragged that when you’re famous, women allow you to grab them by the p***y. I.e. the groupie effect. I agree that it is still locker talk but it was a private conversation.
The feminist mutiny has already started…. in a big way. Plenty females already look with outrage at laws that are being passed.
Let’s hope
Examples please?
That “gutsy women” book was also the one that omitted Margaret Thatcher. It reminded me of the Women’s Hour “powerful” women of the Year which didn’t contain a single woman in Government. I think there is a common denominator somewhere. Can someone help me out?
Wrong kind of women? Only counts as diversity if all have uniform (correct) opinion.
Also omitted Priti Patel but she has the wrong ideas.
Chelsea Clinton’s first job out of college was a $600,000 a year gig with NBC news. Boy, does she know hardship.
This is actually a clever piece of sleight of hand since it rules out a priori the possibility that some aspects of male and female behaviour might be rooted in biology. It simply leaves no conceptual space for anything that is neither physical nor socially determined.
I don’t know that it rules it out, but it doesn’t make it an easy discussion. Maybe because often the biology and culture are intertwined and really indivisible, rather than separate things altogether..
Greatly aided, of course, by progress in the special effects department.
Feminist politics is an on-going sh*t show but the author makes a good point that at the end of the day there are always those with enough money to engage in their own bespoke version of feminism and that includes the ability to avoid the trans trap.
The daughters of the elite will be safely ensconced in private schools or sports clubs where they won’t have to worry about arm-wrestling or sharing a bathroom with Robert-A or Stephen-IE while children of the systemically transphobic proletariat will have to endure mandatory gender bias training when they’re not getting their asses kicked on the sports field.
It is disingenuous to make the argument that women who support the right of women to challenge ‘gender’ stereotypes and do previously ‘male’ jobs also support the ‘transgender’ nonsense. Actually, it is completely the opposite.
What is called here ‘Clinton feminism’; 1970s second wave feminism, rejects ‘gender’ stereotypes in their entirety. The ‘transgender’ ideology embraces and imposes them. Second wave feminism says that a woman can drive a lorry and have a relationship with another woman, as a woman. ‘Gender’ ideology says that she is ‘really’ a man. ‘Gender’ ideology is deeply misogynistic and homophobic. There is nothing of any sort of feminism about it.
And, having spent years working on farms when I was younger, handling livestock in the Northern hills, I often beat men at arm wrestling when I was young. I’m sure that I could beat most 60 year old men now!
‘Gender’ ideology is deeply misogynistic and homophobic. There is nothing of any sort of feminism about it.
and yet, the self-proclaimed feminists either sit in silence or support it.
Not this one. And not the women from the trade union movement who formed Women’s Place UK or the lesbians who formed LGB Alliance. Not JK Rowling or Julie Bindel or Professor Kathleen Stock or Johann Lamont MSP or Joanna Cherry MSP. Women in the UK are fighting back and most are on the Left and of working class origin.
and look at how the likes of Rowling or Martina Navratilova are treated for daring to speak malicious truths. I believe a couple of women have lost jobs over such radical thought at “only women get pregnant.”
Of course they’re on the left. This is a savage, intra-left internecine feud. Women like those you mention are being subjected to the kind of vicious abuse they have themselves meted out in the past to people on the right,. by people even further off the reservation than they are.
Where I live, a very poor area, women are choosing life without men. Why be reliant on men when the state will pay?. The local police force, when it is not fining people for Covid violations, spends about 90% of its time rushing to ‘domestics’. This means where a women has 2 or 3 kids by different fathers, father 2 wants to see his child but father 1 is standing in the doorway. A fight ensues, the men are dragged away and the ‘poor’ woman is surrounded by Victim Support. But who is the real victim?
In perverse fashion, that is precisely what LBJ’s Great Society program accomplished, disproportionately harming minorities. A woman who gave birth could receive govt help if the father was not present. Not hard to see how that would play out.
This sounds like Good Cop vs Bad Cop. You are the good version because yo speak English without hate. Therefore, you are not fit to speak for the cause.
“…I’m sure that I could beat most 60 year old men now!”
The honest construction should be 60 yr old female vs 60 yr old male.
I think it was, I imagine Caroline is probably about 60 given the context of her comments.
I’m doubtful though – certainly to beat other 60 year old male farm workers would be very unlikely, but I think she might be surprised to find that even that a 60 year old office worker would prevail more than expected.
OK, but in any event, muscle mass is a function of testosterone. The possession of testes generally favors the balance for males. If Caroline’s level is excessively high she’s an exception.
I think Harrington’s point is that it is the simplistic devision of sex and gender by second wave feminists that led to the kind of Clintonesque feminism she describes. As soon as you create a hard line between them, as if “gender” as it exists in culture is always somehow arbitrarily assigned to sex, sex itself is no longer hinged to the problems of being a woman.
If gender norms, or at least some of them, do have some inherent attachment to sex – say the stereotype that women are less likely to be firefighters – then feminism would have to admit that there may be any number of ways in which women and men will not have the same kinds of roles in even an enlightened society. Part of the discussion within feminism would have to be when this is in fact the case, or whether that might include things impacted by motherhood.
Many feminists have been deeply uncomfortable with that kind of discussion, and I would say extremely aggressive about policing that kind of perspective within feminism – in facts it’s often simply disallowed as conservative or right wing, and therefore “not feminist”.
To me, it is obvious why many feminists would feel upset about proper conversation – because their feminism is about calling names and hiding behind political slogans. My wife is a real feminist because she can talk to men and women about her thoughts and not come up with stupid thoughts like, “I could beat most 60-year old men at arm wrestling.” Who could take this seriously? But then I am a man so I wouldn’t understand.
If you don’t understand, ask.
But my (female) partner couldn’t buy chainsaw boots in her size. (Women’s six 6 if I emember).
Hardly reasonable to expect a manufacturer to create a product for which there is almost no demand.
My dad could beat your dad.
I’ve got a black cat
01
I have to laugh at all of these people who discuss Hillary Clinton as anything other than a thoroughly despicable character. Her ENTIRE career, starting with the early days with the Rose Law firm and spectacular futures trading results (this is a way for bribes to be laundered by lobbyists in finance who take both sides of a trade, and then send the winning side to a bribetaker influence peddler) with Bill as Arkansas governor, through Bill in White House and more recently with Bill making speeches for quid pro quo payments into the so-called “Clinton Foundation” with Hillary in Obama’s Cabinet, Hillary has been a professional influence peddler selling “pay for play” schemes in the most obvious and cynical manner possible since her college years.
Like Obama, an astoundlingly unaccomplished and ignorant man who happens to have mulatto skin color, Hillary’s entire career and favoritism shown by mainstream press and so forth, is based solely upon her sex.
Joe Biden is a career-long boldfaced, unsubtle liar as well — remember when he was caught plagiarizing Neil Kinnock’s entire life story (from an autobiographical speech by Kinnock in the ’80s) while running in the Democrat primary for PotUS in 1988? Then as now, Joe simply denied his blatant public lie for several weeks (“c’mon man ..”) before quietly bowing out of the race when it became clear that he had no chance. Biden does it the old-fashioned way — he simply demands bribes paid to his brother and son and so forth, with big kickbacks to Joe in the mix. Peter Schweitzer devoted an entire chapter (or was it two?) to this in his fairly recent book, in addition to coverage of the Clintons and other corrupt Democrats (but I repeat myself).
All of these disgustingly corrupt and self-centered/interested pol’s are protected by the deep state and the mainstream press. The latter benefits by being fed false stories and propaganda from the deep state and the corrupt pol’s.
There is really nothing at all more to the likes of Barack and Hillary and Joe. Bill Clnton was a more complex and accomplished pol than the others, but he had his wife to manage the laundered bribery business for his entire career starting as AG in Arkansas.
Anyone notice that the Clinton Foundation was shut down within days of Hillary losing in 2016?
These are people to be mocked and ignored. Wake up, people, including those across the pond.
Spot on! Being a 58 year old American male I was raised, educated and competed during the Title 9 era. My male colleague and I were just commenting yesterday about just where all the “pink p***y” hatted feminists were now that with a stroke of the pen forty years of progress was undone. For the record both my wife and one of my daughters competed in collegiate sports, what’s to become of women’s collegiate sports in the US now?
They will be dominated by biological men.
Fundamentally, all social injustices are really about class war. Not sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. The oligarchs know how to get and maintain power no matter who they’re oppressing. https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
The idea that gender is a “social construct” arises from the requirement of feminist dogma that the differences between men and women are an arbitrary imposition by the “patriarchy” rather than a natural consequence of innate psychological differences between the genders.
This is accomplished by a rhetorical sleight of hand: by defining gender only in terms of social markers for gender, it is possible to argue that gender is only social– because that’s how you defined it in the first place.
Instead, we should ask whether the physical differences between the sexes, driven by evolutionary factors, may not also have their counterpart in psychological differences as well. In fact, it would be astounding if there weren’t such innate differences, given the evolutionary necessity for males and females to pursue different mating strategies to enhance their evolutionary success.
This strategy of defining the terms of an argument to suit your conclusion shows up everywhere in radical- left reasoning. The term “systemic sexism”, for example, was deliberately constructed as a means of ensuring that we will never discuss female sexism against men, something that would demonstrate that feminists would accept equality in examining gender prejudice.
But we never will have that discussion, because the term “systemic sexism” is deliberately constructed to argue that men can never be the victims of discrimination, because it is not “systemic”, but simply a result of the prejudice of particular women, not the system. So a man not hired because of his sex is not the victim of sexism, while a woman denied employment because of her gender is.
The Canadian government still advertises for positions open only to women, while Trudeau continues to virtue signal by declaring himself against discrimination based on gender.
All of this, of course, from people who demand an end to double standards.
A copy and paste argument for race and homophobia. Heteros and whites must “like” or at least not mention while the opposite is rarely policed. Canada has been leading the PC Woke ‘ism’ movement for at least 25 years.
gender is only social, because anything that doesn’t exist and yet is believed in by people owes its existence solely to social construction. Think ghosts, the “soul”, and phlogiston/caloric.
Working in construction, I do meet women who have chosen to work in this industry. They generally tend to be very dexterous and most are not afraid to borrow some brawn when they need it, which happens in a physical job. I think that the attitude of the whole “elite” male and female, is one of diminishing the value of manual work, which is why ( along with bad pay) is why both men and women shun it. Good article though.
Don’t feel able to comment because I am a man.
You illustrate a glaring problem with far too many men, living in our “feminized” societies. To imagine that you’re unable to comment because you are a man is to surrender your autonomy, your personal power, and your God given rights to self determination and self-expression. Our world has been turned upside down when one needs to quote Karl Marx: “You have nothing to lose but your chains” . . .
I am detecting irony in the comment.
The possibilities are endless. Apparently there are more David’s running FTSE 100 companies than woman. So if they all change their name to Davina the problem is solved and the gender pay gap eliminated – two birds with one stone!!
The latest census in the UK will still ask your birth’ sex so that the data on census form isn’t skewed by the fact that some women were previously male and have accrued the benefits of being male. It will also include an additional trans section.
In Scotland they are debating not asking that question on birth sex, only a question on gender
How many categories will they have?
I believe they only plan to ask what gender you identify as, but from what I can read it has not been decided yet
With more then 100 identified. Will they all be listed? It won’t simply be male and female as that would leave out nonbinary people for starters. Plus all the others.
That I don’t know, but when it comes to the Scottish Devolved Administration indulging in a bit of virtue signalling it would not surprise me!
Hopefully people will select an interesting one when given the chance. Probably could not resist myself.
For Clinton feminists, not all women are equal. Nor are all rapists. Some are innocent and are are condemned by the uncorroborated word of one woman. Some are guilty and thankfully are imprisoned. Some hang out with Jeffrey Epstein.
And some become Presidents
I doubt the women on the Grunwick picket line (1965?) have much in common with Judith Butler.
One of my local ‘bin men’ is actually a young woman, but I imagine the job is not as physically demanding as when metal bins were used and had to be lifted up and tipped into the lorry, in the olden days.
In the factory where I work, there’s always been a small minority of women who can cut it doing the real grunt work. Everyone’s happy when one appears, but it’s always been 95% men doing the real physically punishing stuff.
Men are less concerned by the state of their nails, I guess.
As the article points out, feminists aren’t looking for equality of opportunity to do the dirty and dangerous jobs. In 2019-20 in the UK, 97% of those killed in the workplace were men.
Ditto. I think it’s wrong to think that women are incapable of hard physical work, but fewer are willing to do it.
After all, at one time there were women carrying fish in baskets sixty miles to the market in Aberdeen. And doubtless the same elsewhere. It would kill most of us regardless of gender.
The authors main point is right though about the essential middle-class-ness of current feminism.
“After all, at one time there were women carrying fish in baskets sixty
miles to the market in Aberdeen. And doubtless the same elsewhere. It
would kill most of us regardless of gender.”
Yes, on their backs or even their heads. Women are stronger on a line through the head down to the feet, because of their broader hips (cf. female water carriers in the Third World). Males who routinely carry heavy weights (on the head or by other means) are notorious for ‘back pain’, after ‘depression’ the highest number of claimants for benefit, I would guess. Picking weights up by bending down instead of squatting is also a cause (I was at one stage a postal worker handling heavy parcels as well as letters).
It remains a nonsense the either Clinton is able to pose as freedom fighters on any issue. They are representative of a class not a gender, and that class is wealthy, white and connected in ways that only come about after years of “networking”. Whatever personal strengths Chelsea might have are submerged in her role as the chosen golden child and no doubt we will have to put up with her in some political role sooner or later. Hillary poses as a champion of women’s rights but is disconnected form working class women, from women of color and from any kind of mainstream. This brand of liberation sees the election of Thatcher as somehow an advance for women despite Thatcher’s role as advocate for a right wing agenda. To paraphrase from MacBeth, “stand not upon the order of your going,Hillary, just go”.
The Clintons strike me as the nearest thing to pure evil ever to have occupied the White House. Literally nobody else comes near them.
Hillary Clinton is not a feminist. She is a Clintonist.
At the core of things…
Sex is all about pro-creation.
Trans sex is all about rec-reation.
Kamala Harris wasn’t elected Vice President. While that might be technically correct in practice that is not how it works. I’m yet to meet anyone who has said they didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 because they were actually voting for Pence.
By the time she dropped out of the Democratic primaries her poll numbers were so bad that she decided not to face the voters in her home state. The probable reason for her low numbers was Democrat voters being turned off by her record as Attorney General in California when she was a “tough on crime” politician.
Misdirected anger much, Mary? I am just as keen to dump on Hillary Clinton, the war heroine of Tuzla airport, as the next man (or woman, in your case) but it does seem really strange to write an op-ed about Clinton feminists after Joe Biden, on his first day in office, took a wrecking ball to female sports in US high schools and colleges. You figured out after arm-wrestling with your brother that girls aren’t generally as strong as boys, so why does it just rate a passing mention that Biden wants an America where a high school girl in a throwing event like shotput or javelin would have to compete against a much bigger boy, with full masculine equipment below the waste, who declared that he identified as a girl? And please tone down your anti-Trump rhetoric. Trump’s jock talk from the Access Hollywood tape dates from 12 years before he became president. If that’s really all that offends you about him in his treatment of women, why are you wasting any space on him when you should be attacking Biden?
I don’t think you actually read the article; otherwise, you couldn’t possibly have said “female sports gets only a passing mention” or “why waste time on him when you should be attacking Biden,” as the entire i article was clearly inspired by Biden’s executive order on “gender recognition,” as mentioned in the article.
Comment (not discussion point). Great article, Mary…..
I can’t wait for the feminist mutiny… directed at the selfish elite who stole the women’s movement to feather their own nests, then tried to abolish females in the name of freedom.
I’m with you on that Mary.
Trump boasted that because of his celebrity women “..LET you grab ’em by the p***y” Context matters. The truth matters.
Yes, but it’s very hard for some to admit that there are women who will be with men because they have money and/or celebrity. Stormi Daniels didn’t believe that Donald Trump would marry her. Or become her boyfriend.
How do these complete idiots literally think Trump would go round grabbing female genitalia?
Well, it would not be unknown for women to want to be with men simply because they were rich and famous. Paulina Porizkova didn’t marry Rick Ocasek because he was young and beautiful. Salma Hayek didn’t marry Francois-Henri Pinault for that reason either. We can all think of examples of beautiful women with ugly old rich guys.
There are currently two strains of feminism: one of them seeks to give women as much freedom as men, the other seeks to constrain men as much as women. The latter seems to be winning out.
I’d put it slightly differently and say that one strain seeks equality for women while the other seeks advantage for women over men. The problem is that a remarkable number of feminists genuinely think they’re in the first camp, which I’ll call Type 1, while their attitudes, opinions and behaviour place them firmly in the second (Type 2).
An example of this is the debate we’ve had here about conception. A lot of women will argue that men have complete control over their fertility. If a man doesn’t want children, goes the argument, he should use a condom, get a vasectomy, or abstain from sex, without his partner’s consent (and within marriage, apparently, where to do any of these would categorically be grounds for divorce).
It doesn’t occur to any feminist that if a woman doesn’t want children she need do none of the above. She can go on the pill and keep the fact secret. She doesn’t need to do without sex or make herself permanently infertile. Equally, she can also come off the pill if she wants to become pregnant, keep that fact secret likewise, and be at no disadvantage.
Pretty well all women fail to acknowledge the inequity of this situation. Yet many who can’t see this will nonetheless identify as Type 1 feminists.
The net effect of this I think is that in many men’s perception feminists who profess to be Type 1 are in fact Type 2 whether they accept it or not, so that all feminism appears to seek advantage.
I’d put it slightly differently and say that one strain seeks equality and the other seeks advantage.
which is the one seeking equality because if such a strain exists, it can lay down its sword and claim victory. In the US, college enrollment is majority female. Every negative marker, from suicide to dying on the job to dropping out is tilted toward men. Not long ago, there was a “news” story about professional women lamenting the lack of financially suitable male partners.
One male-heavy field after another is lauded for its efforts in recruiting women, yet the opposite never happens. Why not? If the quality of the STEM professions is improved purely by having more females, then the same would apply to nursing, marketing, psychology, and a lot of the woman-heavy professions.
You’d think there’d be a goal of getting more women killed at work, too.
I think the problem is that women are conditioned to believe themselves disadvantaged. Hence they screen out all evidence to the contrary and see only what confirms their prejudice – a prejudice they are routinely applauded for holding.
I’ll be honest with you – I think the over-abundance of women in teaching has emasculated the teaching profession. It’s become toxically therapeutic, but also perversely money-driven (especially Higher Ed). Many male teachers are leaving in droves – me included. I’m currently looking to move into the private sector.
Lots of female-heavy jobs were previously male dominated – eg. veterinarians, secretarial work, waiters. What happens every time there is a shift from male to female domination of a job is that salaries decline. When it moves the other way, from female to male domination- salaries increase, eg. computer programming. Why do you think that is?
You’ve made the claim. You tell us why.
You mentioned condoms, then forgot all about them. There is no inequity, you don’t need to go without sex or make yourself infertile to have control over your own fertility. Just wear a condom.
I have described you in my penultimate paragraph.
Women don’t have to wear condoms. They can take the pill and say they aren’t doing so, and they can not take the pill and say they are doing so.
Men wearing condoms does not give them equivalent control over women’s fertility. Ergo, there is sex inequality in women’s favour, which Type 2s are – of course! – most reluctant to recognise, in case something gets invented to rebalance that.
No. One form of feminism wishes to find equality. The other form of feminism seeks the impossible – to mould men in the image of woman.
I laugh when I see a tiny woman defeat a large, powerful man in a cinematically choreographed martial arts fight. Yet they never show women competing with men in football, American or European. I wonder why. Could it be that is too unrealistic even for the movies?
Yet you will now see biological men competing on women’s teams, in the US at least. That’s certainly one way to reduce athletic scholarships for women.
I think when the stink goes up there will be some “adjustments”. Those wealthy people who are the backbone of support for such nonsense will see their daughters no longer able to compete and then it will become real.
I’m not so sure. People are intimidated about the whole thing as if they are doing something wrong in wanting girls sports to be for females. Today we all have to pretend that people who say they are female actually are, even when they are not. But I hope you are correct because girls need opportunities for sports and scholarships.
There was a big “tell” in the Jan 6 Capitol riots. Lickle AOC said she didn’t feel “safe” huddled in the basement with her GOP colleagues.
But, sports fans, the whole point of politics is to be the fearless leader to protect your people. As Worcester said to King Henry, he:
“That brought you home and boldly did outdare
The dangers of the time.”
The fact is that women are not into “outdaring the dangers of the time” Women expect to be protected. And if they are not protected they complain about not feeling “safe.”
High status women in particular expect to be protected. Lower-status women, not so much.
Anyone remember H Clintons racist and sexist attack on CFK who was at the time President of Argentina? Exposed on Wikileaks late 2010 her language and behaviour seem very typical of an uneducated racist deep south redneck….oh, wait a minute! I expect Harris is the same but a bit more preppy in her language. Their contempt for ordinary women may not be completely down to sexism as they have the same contempt for ordinary men. If you’re neither man nor woman i expect they are OK with you.
an uneducated racist deep south redneck
if you are going to complain about bigotry, exposing your own is not a credibility enhancer.
I’m not complaining about Clinton’s bigotry, just her cynical real-politik. As for Peckerwoods the socio/geographical group, some are thick and racist, some are not. Even someone as pure as yourself must admit they do have a certain rep not just in the US but far and wide. It is this constituency in Little Rock etc that built the Clintons poitical machine.
As for Peckerwoods the socio/geographical group, some are thick and racist, some are not.
doubling down on an already bad argument does not improve it. Hillary grew up in the north and went to the type school that happily treats all southerners as inbred hicks.
What you are noting is who she is. It has nothing to do with the South, yet I don’t see you summing it up as just another case of upper-income left-wingers letting their bigot flag fly.
I have tried but I don’t get it. I live in the middle of a large extended family and the rich ones are women. Other families local to me seem to be the same. In family rituals the women are the organisers and the men follow.
The women dictate over what the children can do or not do. The women decide when to have children, whatever the men think.
The women have been having mammograms and smear tests for years but only recently have the men had routine prostate tests.
The women suffer from PMT and make sure that the men suffer as well. The women suffer for years with the ‘change’ and they make damned sure that the men suffer.
A long time ago, when we were hunter-gatherers, the woman had children and carried on as normal, the men got killed in the hunting expeditions.
Now, today in Covid time, you can see on the ONS site statistics of Covid deaths and Covid infections. Just under twice as many women are infected than men in all age groups but almost twice as many deaths are with men compared to women – apparently because of the chromosomes. So the women are doing the hugging and the partying, takings selfies in groups, etc, and the men are dying.
But still, apparently, the women have a rough life.
Don’t believe it.
You seem to harbour a lot of resentment towards women. Do you think your views could be the result of your jaundiced view, rather than a reflection of reality?
I think you are the jaundiced one. Nothing above says anything bad about women. It’s just what I see.
How come that any view which doesn’t agree with yours’ is jaundiced? Discuss.
Well you seem to have a nice family. When women are in charge it generally seems to be good for everyone. The trouble is in a patriarchal society at large, especially during this pandemic, women are suffering most. On average a woman is killed by a man every 3 days (https://www.femicidecensus…., women take on most of the unpaid caring responsibilities (https://www.weforum.org/age…, there is even a gender bias within medicine in that your needs as a man will be better understood (https://www.theiwi.org/thel…. It’s a good job women have a biological advantage to staying healthy. And yes, women are usually better at talking and sharing; men are being encouraged to talk more too because it’s good for you (e.g. https://ukmensheds.co.uk/).
Very bad mistake on President Trump, he was speaking about a group of women who exist in real life that will let you grab them by the p***y just to be in the circle of multi millionaires and billionaires, he was describing a group of women that exist with low morals, his remark was that these women will let you grab them by the p***y anytime, anytime you feel like it. It’s TRUE so there’s no shame or problem with the remark. If your outraged by it your lowIQ.
Do you realise how bizarre this passage sounds? Do you think that schools attended by working class people don’t discourage bullying and don’t punish physical violence? Do you think working class women are at a daily disadvantage because men are stronger than them?
It’s almost as though you think that all working class people inhabit a world of daily violence and physically gruelling labour.
Lol. Nicely put.
Brilliantly argued and all, sadly, so true. I really despair at how the rights of young girls and women in sports are simply being trampled over. The success of so many well-educated women in their careers is achieved only by the support and hard graft of their less-educated ‘sisters’ who are left holding the babies. It just isn’t acknowledged enough.
Plenty of well educated women with careers have children. And raise them themselves. But I totally agree with you that the rights of girls in sports are being trampled.
I can soooo relate to the am wrestling that changed your life bit. My brother and I were physically evenly matched all through our childhood and used to fight quite a bit, with equal results. Then all of a sudden, I didn’t stand a chance, and my brother for a while kind of enjoyed his new found power and abused it. I had to back down from all confrontations. Fortunately, as we grew older he matured and grew out of it, more aware of the responsibilities of his new power (comes from having a Dad and wider male role models who were good ones not poor ones). I on the other hand resented it, this new sense of disempowerment, the physical disempowerment seemed to go, inevitably, with a mental one. I took this resentment into Uni where the wall to wall focus on Marxist-feminist identitarianism and an obsession with oppression, hierarchy and patriarchy. A-ha! It was like a lightbulb going off. And I became quite the little militant. I saw everything through a lens of male power and oppression. And this was compounded by my occasional interactions with not so nice men. It took years to deprogram myself from this as I realised that the world was so much more complex, that some things were rooted in biology and evolution, that male power often led to male suffering. That the people I had so revered back then were almost entirely middle class, with no understanding of any hardships that women AND men suffered – and suffered and weathered together. That women had power of their own. And used it. What I was taught at Uni affected my life, it was simplistic, cult-like thinking. And to now, years later, to see it reflected back again, amplified, like a monster from the dark, horrifies me.
Thank you Mary Harrington. Maybe finally we’ll be quit of this idiotic harridan’ tyranny.
But, get ready for the death threats; you won’t get away with this.
Oh, wait til you hear about real feminism
Last time I checked out the WEP’s website I noted that an event offered a “friendly wine bar”.
The whole argument is stupid and pointless. I doubt you’d find a female boss hiring just women. A woman POTUS is as likely to carry and deploy the launch codes as a man. She wouldn’t hold off because of hormones.
A woman athlete in training for the Olympics is going to out run, out jump the average man -as long as she’s not pregnant and I doubt she’d come last even then.
This “feminism” stinks of emasculation. If they can’t climb any higher they damn well want to make sure nobody else can. Thankfully most sensible women reject the nonsense and get on with it.
I doubt you’d find a female boss hiring just women.
Have you looked at your HR department lately?
I have a female report who always wants to hire “girls” because she thinks they do more work than “boys”.
We could be here all day debating that. Oil rig? Plumbing? Electrician? I dare say men are lazy and shiftless at times, that some women are more conscientious but it’s horses for courses and I think you stray from the point, that feminism is nonsense.
are you seriously suggesting that because an olympic female athlete could, say, outrun most men, they have nothing to worry about from male athletes transitioned to female? Are you kidding? It’s well known that the top female sprinter could be beat by hundreds of high school lads. Martina Navratilova says there are 2,000 male tennis players who could beat the top Serena Williams. Get real.
A bit unfair on Hillary here Mary – I’ve read nothing that says she buys into gender identity over sex. Quite the opposite. She’s a solid second wave feminist and has been a staunch campaigner for women’s sex-based rights. The glass ceiling etc was just one part of that. You also can’t neatly combine the women’s march campaigners with the third wave gender identity extremists. The women’s marchers were condemned as biological essentialists for wearing p***y hats! You had one idea for this article, but it’s not as neat as you’d like it to be.
No, the p***y hat wearers were condemned for being stupid. Just as men would be if they walked around with giant male genitalia hats.
Clinton is not a feminist of any kind. There’s only one woman she is interested in getting ahead and that’s Hillary Clinton. She is perfectly happy to condemn other women as deplorables. And she has never once campaigned for the rights of any of the women her own husband has mistreated.
Oh please! What type of “feminist” stays with a husband who so publicly betrays their marriage? Not really a role model in that respect.
Many good points, my only quibble is that there is no evidence (or even claim) that Trump actually ‘grabbed anything’ rather he just engaged in crude talk, unlike Mrs Clinton’s husband of course who is a well known sexual predator
I’ve never seen a woman be any good at a commercial leadership role. The workplace invariably sinks into a hive of cliques and skulduggery. Every single time.
To be fair there are many, many male managers who are exactly the same.
I have known this for about 20 years. Racism is the same. Bleeding obvious. Divide and conquer the working class.
Honey Ryder is not a good example of a passive woman – she murdered the man who raped her, remember? A poisoned spider – “It took him 3 whole days to die”. p***y grabbers please note.
Thank you Mary. Been trying to figure out why in the world would feminism suicide itself on the mantle of transgenderism and you put your finger on it. It is that sex really doesn’t exist as a thing in the life of the cognitive meritocrats and so they can go ahead and delude themselves it doesn’t exit.
Feminist rhetoric has always been a middle-class racket. The idea is still pumped out that World War I suddenly gave women access to the labour market, but working class women had always… erm… worked; in factories, as domestic servants, as seamstresses, as nurses, in agriculture, etc, etc. The Old Bailey online archives are a great source of social history, and just browsing the statements shows you that working class women by and large worked, with or without children to look after.
We know that there is a divide in feminism over whether to be gender critical or not. I do not know if there has been any research to find out what proportion of feminists are gender critical, it would be interesting to know. I am not sure either whether the division in feminism on this topic divides along class lines either.
Quite so. And what’s amazing, as in all these discussions, is that they just can’t see it.
PS You don’t have a fear of mats
I noticed long ago that women only demand equal opportunity for high paying, white collar jobs. You never hear women complain about a lack of female sanitation workers, coal miners, lumberjacks, etc.
Lots of men don’t want those jobs either. Just like lots of men don’t want low paying jobs such as childcare providers, cashiers and house cleaners.
Thank you Mary.
Thank you Mary; a well-written article with keen observations.
The comparison with superhero films does not work. In those films both men and women can do things they can’t do in real life. It is about the opportunity to try traditionally male-dominated jobs.
Another banger from Ms Harrington. This is a very powerful argument and one that should be presented to all of your nice, unthinkingly liberal friends. Class is closer to the core of the issue than anything identitarian, as seems to always be the case
Have to say I’m not really sure what the author is saying but I get the overall picture that she does t like some aspect of feminism. Personally I do think that all people are pretty much the same and in spite of what the author says, some women are physically strong and some men are physically weak – there is a significant overlap in terms of physical , mental, and especially emotional features of men and women. If the authors beef is with ‘middle class centred feminism’ then yes I can see her point, it is a world and a language, a discussion that means little or nothing to e.g the myriads of cleaners ( who to this day are predominately female) and the sooner and its failure to do little or nothing for such ‘working class women needs addressing – soon!
If her beef is with the transgender etc issue I can’t but help think this is a red herring and again, there is little or no difference between ‘people’ of what ever gender
The only study I’ve read on the subject of male vs female strength showed that the top 10 %of women were stronger than only the bottom 10% of men.
Not really much of an overlap.
No, it’s widely recognised that there are distinct biological differences between men and women, including musculature and skeletal system, that many men are generally significantly stronger and faster than women. One way to verify this, without having to resort to scholarly studies, is simply to check metrics in elite sport. Where strength and speed count, men will always beat women by a significant margin.
You do realize that my post said essentially the same thing, right?
Absolutely amazing. Apparently Hillary and Chelsea have not yet been beaten up enough; now this. I suggest that this article is among the most stunning examples yet of the fact that we feminists import patriarchal perfectionism, not to mention extreme internalized misogyny and matrophobia, into our analysis, – what most of us – all with varied perspectives – consider our own “REAL” feminism. I am stunned that these two women who have worked more courageously through the decades for the well-being of humans especially women and children – nevertheless are being smeared here – yet again. The people who identify with them are human and female despite being, for example, the beneficiaries of good educations. You may not realize that it has always been women with a little extra – time, $$$, education – who have moved women’s evolution toward our full human rights. By the way I have been an activist opposing the trans invasion ever since it began. I’m well aware of the lack of awareness exhibited by countless public servants about the destruction of women’s sex-based rights and protections. But THIS is yet another kind of erasure. We have lost our memory, our herstory, our foundation, our foremothers and what they could have taught us – because we have done this to each other again and again. Not PERFECT as a feminist according to YOUR concept (one of billions)? Then – disappear them. Easy to do; the whole patriarchal world is with you. OR we could GET THROUGH to these people who have not yet understood the impact of the trans erasure of the Female. Incidentally, Hillary has said that she’s having concerns about human rights for women and the trans cult. It is possible for people to educate other people.
What has Hillary Clinton or Chelsea Clinton done that you consider working tirelessly for women? Hillary couldn’t even support the women her own husband harassed.
The article is a critique but offers no alternative view of feminism.
I agree with Mary in that many of the actions taken in the name of feminism, and proposed in the name of feminism, are often designed to enable women to ‘compete’ in the systems and hierarchies we’ve developed that are dominated by men and in which men have an unfair advantage. But I don’t thank that is due to biology. Celebrating women who do well in male dominated arenas isn’t inherently wrong but it’s not all that liberating.
The gender pay gap Mary describes is only one aspect of gender pay inequality.
Cleaning work, personal care work or catering work are just as demanding jobs, physically, as bricklaying, labouring or carpentry but are paid less. Not because of biology but because society places a higher value on jobs men generally do than on jobs women generally do because they’re done by women. That is the gender pay gap that needs addressing not just the fact that maternity leave takes women out of the work place for a few months and they carry most of the responsibility for childcare.
The final part of Mary’s piece is repetition of the well rehearsed arguments around non-binary gender identity rights and sex-based rights which needs much more careful discussion and creative thinking rather than we see in the media at the moment which generally presents the extremes of either side.
Cleaning work, personal care work or catering work are just as demanding jobs, physically, as bricklaying, labouring or carpentry but are paid less
What a ridiculous statement. They’re nothing like as physically demanding. If they were, why don’t women compete with men for these well-paid jobs “labouring”? A woman can shift just as many 60lb bags of cement in a day as a man, because it’s only like cleaning, right?
Furthermore, as well as physical strength, bricklaying and carpentry require skills. Cleaning and personal care require none beyond those everyone already possesses in order to accomplish these for themselves.
So there are jobs anyone can do equally well, and there are jobs men can do better than women, stronger men best of all. Market forces duly assign the correct wage respectively to catering and to bricklaying.
Out of the list of jobs there personal care is the only one that couldn’t be automated. There are robotic machines now that can lay bricks incredibly quickly and they have no problem lifting sacks. Personal care on the other hand requires a much more nuanced set of skills. Good personal care requires empathy and compassion. It is hard emotional and physical labour. Not everyone can do it. Market forces have not been able to assign the correct wage to take into account the skills needed, but if it becomes male dominated in future I’m sure that will be rectified. Though, few men seem to want to do that kind of work.
What men want is beside the point. How many women want intimate personal care rendered by a man?
Actually, me! I had my first child in Amsterdam (delivered by a male doctor) and was cared for by a young male midwife after the birth. He was so much gentler and more caring than the female ones caring for the other 3 mum’s in my ward. (He was married to a sweet young nurse in another area of the hospital.) And I have generally almost always had male doctors. I prefer them.
I think there is no doubt that we underpay certain caring jobs – nursery workers being a prime example. In large part I believe this is because if those jobs were structured so they paid more, most parents won’t be able to afford childcare – the only solution to that is socialising the industry.
I also think you are correct that if somehow we could get rid of the effect pregnancy and childbearing has on wages, there might still be a difference left. But it would be significantly smaller.
But as far as the kinds of jobs you mention being equally physically demanding, I think you are incorrect. They are not. A cashier or domestic cleaning is not usually physically demanding in the same way as bricklaying or being in the infantry or warehouse work. (Not that warehouse work pays much.) Even when you get into industrial cleaning you will begin to see far more men in those roles, and the fact that the work is heavier is a factor in that. None of this is to say that women can’t go into trades – many of them aren’t reliant primarily on brute strength and I’ve known plenty of great women carpenters. But it can be a factor, and especially during a pregnancy – which also has other safety implications in some types of work, such as chemical exposure.
if those jobs are structured so they are pad more, most parents won’t be able to afford childcare
Well, yes. The rate for the job is what the market can afford to pay to have it done.
Britain’s miners discovered this economic principle in the 1980s. That’s why there are no mines any more.
I’ve known plenty of great women carpenters
I don’t know any myself, but to the extent that the job can be done with power tools you are certainly right about carpentry, I would think.
However, that doesn’t mean the results that the market gives us are “right” in some abstract way, which is meaningless if they don’t give the result we want.
Look at nursery workers. In many cases nurseries have a high turnover, and sometimes the quality of the carers can really leave something to be desired. Even where they are good, the business itself does not always create an environment where they can do a good job, because that would be too expensive.
That’s probably not what most really want for our kids. There is a strong argument that if we are going to have a culture where a two income family is a necessity for most families, we should have socialised care, where the workers get paid a reasonable income and is a respected occupation. It would then be a position that attracted better candidates or ones who could justify getting a qualification in that area, and maybe more importantly would stay long term in the job – which is really important to children who form a bond with their carer.
A two-income family is a necessity because so many families have two incomes. House prices are 3x two salaries where they used to be 3x one. Women who thought men had all the power through having a job now have to work as well in order to have what one salary used to pay for. It’s a good example of dogmatists failing to think through what else will happen if they get what they think they want.
So what are you proposing for childcare – a higher minimum wage by law that nobody will be able to afford?
I think, idealistically, that the best outcome would be for society to rethink the two income thing, and consider that generally there will be some sort of distribution of one income per family in most cases. People would i suspect be happier, and it would be better for kids.
Realistically I don’t see that happening. The answer would be to socialise nurseries and pay the workers, or some significant portion of them, a good middle class income. That would justify some real qualification for the work and create a level of continuity of the carers that would be much better for the children.
Of course if you live in a place where schools are already run shoddily this will seem likely to fail. But it can be done and is done in some places, so it’s really a matter of political will.
Childcare, education, health, are never going to work if they are run according to market forces. The results of that are just not adequate to achieve the results we want them to.
The gender pay gap Mary describes is only one aspect of gender pay inequality.
The gender pay gap is a fantasy. There is not one pay scale for male (fill in the profession blank) and another for women. If there were, then women would be hired for those roles far more often.
Cleaning work, personal care work or catering work are just as demanding jobs, physically, as bricklaying, labouring or carpentry but are paid less.
Which has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with scarcity of skills. Do you imagine it’s easier to find a housekeeper or a mason?
Actually, as the studies have repeatedly shown, there is no “pay gap” between the sexes, there is an earning gap, because men work more hours, and in particular, work more overtime hours, than women. In fact, the law in Canada and the States both forbid sexual discrimination in pay, and have done so since 1964. This is why even self-professed feminist leaders like Trudeau never introduce legislation demanding pay equality– because it already exists.
Nor does “society” somehow “place a higher value on the jobs men do”. The market determines what people are paid, based on what they can command in the marketplace. Dangerous, difficult and dirty jobs are paid better than many office jobs for that reason.
These articles always bring the MRAs out
As they should.
It’s time to balance the discussion by including more, diverse voices.
What you need perhaps is to have a clubroom where only people who say the ‘right’ things are admitted. That would be very cosy.
Yeah. MRAs are bad.
You know, I’m not the biggest friend of the trans community, because I feel like they are demanding that I believe in things that make no sense to me and then calling me hateful for not agreeing that two plus two equals five, but… Having listened to a number of TERFs over the last few years, I think they’re starting to annoy me just as much.
Look. Transwomen are, what? Point three percent of the p***s-having community? For every 3 transwomen who are coming to steal your scholarships and invade your bathrooms, there are 997 cismen who the laws protect you from every bit as much as before. Are you really telling me that those laws are so perfect and ironclad that 3 more people in every 1000 slipping through the cracks is going to make a crippling difference in how well they protect you? Because I find that hard to believe.
In fact, the whole wailing and gnashing of teeth over “the scawwwwwy p***s is coming to hurt me!!!!” is reminding me of what I like least about contemporary feminism, the abject cowardice and eternal claims of victimisation. You complain about women being treated as equal. So should I take it then that you would prefer to be treated as a fragile flower who needs protection? All of feminism was a big mistake, is that what you’re telling me?
Because if so, that’s no skin of my nose. You want to put men back in charge of everything, fine, I’m a man so that will only benefit me. But seeing as a full century of women have clamoured to not be treated as if they were made of porcelain, it does seem like a strange about-turn.
Good post, and I agree with you 95%.
As for men “being in charge of everything”, I don’t think that benefits men at all, because it makes men responsible for the care of women. I would much rather ensure that women took care of themselves, freeing men from the necessity of marriage.
the 0.3% are enough to take away sport scholarships, which after all only go to another tiny percentage of the population) and do lots of damage in women’s shelters, locker rooms and prisons.
I can see where you are coming from, but I don’t think this is the real complaint, as much as people get whiny about it.
The real difficulty is that the acceptance of the principle TWAW fundamentally destroys the difference between the sexes in things like law. As much as gender ideology says sex and gender are different, in function it seems to say the former isn’t actually significant. That’s the only reason it can somehow claim, for example, that male transwomen should compete in women’s sport – which is clearly about your sex, not the cut of your running shorts.
There are bad people and many of them will do whatever gives them an advantage. So it’s not just the few old school transexuals, it’s also men with personality disorders, perverts, people who want to move out of the male prison population, middling male athletes, whatever.
Men were never in charge of everything in the first place, so rest your mind on that score. Although many men probably thought they were in charge. But the larger point is that I would not take what any one woman claims about feminism to be the be all and end all of anything. Nor does every woman who would like to see women treated fairly call herself a feminist. The word feminist has as many definitions as there are people. Men and women.
Treating women as equals in the matter of sports competition doesn’t mean having men on women’s teams. It means having opportunities for women to have teams the same way men do. Nothing even slightly unfair about that. In the same vein, we don’t have adults on youth soccer teams because it would be fundamentally unfair to the children competing to have adults competing against them. But yes sure biological adult males could win all the games if they just played on youth teams.
I don’t know any women made of porcelain so I can’t speak to that comment. But surely there are men and women who want to be treated in specific ways simply because of their biological sex.
I have no idea where this author is coming from. Her remarks reflect a certain time warp. I am 74, a retired professor in gender studies and part of the second wave of feminism which WAS elitist in its roots and ideology. Today, at least in America, things are far different. Women of color and working class women have begun to take charge of the movement. People like Alexandra Casio-Cortez, for example. Thankfully, the elitism to which the author refers is becoming more and more a thing of the past.
AOC is the daughter of a middle-class architect.
About a dozen women were elected to Congress. As Repubs. I somehow suspect they’re not the ones you’re talking about. Meanwhile, the left treats womanhood as a social construct and the feminists say nothing. The few who dare speak out are themselves targeted for destruction.
Cortez is kind of the epitome of a middle-class feminist, though. How does she represent the interests of working class women?
Get real. So if you are not dirt poor you shouldn’t be in politics. I f you read more about her backgeound, you would not say she was exactly middle-class either.
I think the most working class, and real, feminists I know of stood in the Grunwick picket lines. Much went downhill after that.
Cortez grew up in the suburbs with an architect as a father. It’s true that her mother later had economic issues as a widow, but Cortez by that point had a university degree. That’s middle class.
She appeared on a Vanity Fair cover wearing a 14,000 dollar dress.
Feminism went wrong when it left the picket line and slipped into academia.