What’s Wrong with Feminism?
In this interview, John Anderson talks with Mary Harrington, who shares her journey from radical leftist and non-conformist, to discovering fulfilment in embracing traditional societal expectations.
She offers commentary on elitism and the current state of democracy, arguing that its current form fails to represent the will of the masses. This, she suggests, is due to their diminishing leverage over the ruling class in the modern age.
Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd. She writes on Substack at Reactionary Feminist, and tweets as @moveincircles. Feminism Against Progress (Regnery, 25 April 2023) is her first book.
Mary’s grandmother once advised her to ‘grow her hair and get married!’ Perhaps this was the best advice she had ever been given. She did!
The idea of the ‘normal nuclear family’ is ridiculed by the ‘right’ (the Conservative Party, in the UK). What hope then have those who feel that this is the best recipe for raising healthy, well-balanced children? No wonder the ‘far right’ is growing across the Western world.
In a shaft of light, Mary explained why the suffragettes did so well after World War I. So many men had been slaughtered in the Great War, that women simply had to be given the opportunities previously the preserve of only males. They had leverage. Mary fully supported original feminism.
However, for today’s feminism, Mary politely mounted argument upon argument as to why it’s bad for women, why it’s bad for society and most importantly, why it’s bad for children.
Progress?
There was a great discussion about the origins of the idea of ‘progress’. Our society, based on the Judaeo-Christian tradition has, built into our culture, the salvation story. God created us, we fell, we were offered a saviour in Jesus Christ; He is coming back in the last days, and ultimately, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. In other words, everyone’s journey can be seen as a ‘progress’ towards ‘heaven on earth’.
Mary then pointed out that man has bought the progress goal and said: he can bring about progress without God. And that this is the ultimate error that will bring about the collapse of our civilisation if we let it.
Returning to Mary’s grandmothers’ advice, to ‘grow her hair and get married!’, Mary talked about today’s ‘dating app’ generations. She said that the simplicity and accessibility of ‘alternatives’ simply means that today’s women aren’t expected to compromise and work it out with the ‘one’. Rather today, feminism encourages them to ‘move on’ to the ‘next one’.
Mary talked at length about the experience of bringing her first child into the world:
Why are mothers always marginalised? One in four babies in the US are put into daycare at two weeks, I think this is barbarous. (Mary, 1hr 3 min)
This is no way to care for the most vulnerable in society, the newborn, the ones with no voice. Mary felt that for mothers to go back to work after a year (typical in the UK), is too early. She feels it should be no sooner than after 18 months.
Science Experiments
The discussion ended on the topic of ‘transhumanism’, the welding of biotechnology with our unique God-given DNA. Mary reported that the Japanese have engineered mice from entirely male mice DNA. As you can imagine, this has raised the expectations for male same-sex couples to have their ‘own’ children.
Children will pay the price for this quest for freedom. Who are the most vulnerable in this context? It’s always the babies. (Mary, 1hr 15 min)
John reflected on the potential horrific ‘mistakes’ that will no doubt accompany transhumanism experimentation:
True freedom is never licence. (John, 1hr 16 min)
I have long admired John’s selection of interviewees. He doesn’t agree with everything they say, but there is always a lesson to be learned. For example, Mary Harrington admitted to having had a Christian faith, that she has now lost. I don’t think that this need minimise any of her observations. I would argue it equips us to better understand our world, so that we can go out and be salt and light everywhere we go.
2 Comments
Leave A Comment
Recent Articles:
5 November 2024
3.3 MINS
One label that has stuck to Trump is “bully”. But according to Dr Phil, Trump is no bully. Now he explains why.
5 November 2024
3.2 MINS
Between 2009 and 2013, I led the team of whistleblowers who exposed a great Australian intelligence scandal. Unbelievably, records of this were scrubbed from the internet this year. This coverup argues strongly against the proposed 'misinformation' bill.
5 November 2024
4.9 MINS
Donald Trump briefly took the role of garbage collector, in response to vitriolic comments from President Joe Biden calling Trump’s supporters “garbage” and apparently threatening to drown the 45th president.
5 November 2024
7.7 MINS
"I prefer a Trump team to a Harris team in the same way I’d rather spend a month on the beach in Maui than a month trapped underground in a collapsed mine. It’s not close."
5 November 2024
3.9 MINS
What is it about the Jews that cause them to be hated, maligned and misrepresented throughout history? Surely, it must be because, by their very nature, they remind the world of God.
4 November 2024
6.2 MINS
The effort to blast away the ability of the Internet to have a verified history fits neatly into the stakeholder model of information distribution that has clearly been prioritised on a global level.
4 November 2024
1.5 MINS
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet recently published its independent inquiry into the COVID-19 Response in Australia. More, not less, bureaucratic control seems to be the theme of the report. A Royal Commission is well overdue.
Dear Jim
Thank you for writing about Mary Harrington’s interview with John Anderson. I will take the time to view it. It would seem Mary’s values stem from an earlier time in society when Christian values were accepted/taught and practiced. Society’s “progress” probably means we will never return to a time when Christian beliefs and values are accepted culturally. Christian faith and practice can be accepted by each individual. And that because of the grace of God.
Stephen, thanks for reading my piece. I for one believe that we don’t know what the future holds. Consider the untold stories of ‘pushback’. The tide is turning in the UK, Europe and the US. I can cee a revival being born out of all this mayhem.
It seems to me the that the biggest criminals today are the legacy media editors who decide what stories, ‘not to run’. In this way, they are manipulating our minds, as if by hypnosis, and we are being ‘changed’ into something that is not based on ‘reality’.