Mary Harrington has written an important book. In the face of wrenching societal discord, tearing away at the fabric of the family, motherhood, and at the core of what it means to be a woman, Harrington fires a shot back at the progressives. The book is almost perfectly time to throw a banana peel on the floor in front of the prancing Dylan Mulvaney. Harrington pushes back so hard in fact, she takes womanhood back to pre-romantic days.
Harrington begins her heretical, heterodoxical book by
announcing its very first line, “What started me down the path towards writing
this book was feeling like I wasn’t a separate person from my baby.”
This bold and unambiguous statement is a clear shot across
the bow, aimed at feminists that have successfully detached themselves from
their reproductive selves, through availability of birth control and, in many
jurisdictions, having the right to terminate their pregnancy up to the moment
of birth. In this opening sentence,
Harrington announces that she is about to take a sledgehammer to modern
feminist thought. There is no doubt that
she would get booed off the stage at most U.S. college campuses for making such
a statement.
Harrington’s views, it seems, involved a real life pivot. She admits that she had been swept up in
postmodernism and that she had a “visceral aversion to hierarchies.” Like Bridget Phetasy, she apparently had a
string of “loose, shifting, postmodern constellations of romantic
entanglements” that she found unsatisfying.
At the same time, her startup business venture failed and the crash of
’08 caused her to re-evaluate her life, and her role as a woman. It was then that she came to the conclusion
that “Progress Theology,” the notion that things can only get better as women
become more liberated was flawed, that the “pursuit of untrammeled freedom,
mindless hedonism or the final victory of one sex over another” was a
mirage. (I also highly recommend the
podcast discussion between Phetasy and Bret Weinstein on his Dark Horse Podcast
of October 31, 2022 dealing with many of the same issues):
Having come to this conclusion, Harrington makes a number of
astute observations about how we got to this point. She is no Phyllis Schafley, nostalgic for
the white picket fences and the Ozzie and Harriet 50’s. She goes much further.
She argues that during the industrial revolution, Big
Romance (of the Jane Austen type) helped achieve a sort of balance between the
sexes. Men had a monopoly over economic
resources and women had a monopoly over sexual resources. But as we moved into the 60’s and 70’s with
the ideas of Judith Butler’s ideas that sex and gender are social constructs
taking hold, feminism began to cause a real cleavage between men and women. As technology advanced, so did the
atomization of women and commoditization of sex, beginning with the pill (and
abortion), which separated sex from procreation.
“When individuals of both sexes really can just f**k, with no material
consequences, what is even the point of going out to dinner first?” she
decries.
What most resonated with me with Harrington’s book were two
things. First, her absolute bluntness
confronting the madness of the moment. Simple
truthful statements such as, “It is physiologically impossible to gestate a
baby without involving a woman” and her assertion that men and women have innate
natures directly contradicts Butler’s premise and the wave sweeping over the
country.
Second, Harrington’s position gives some context and
intellectual heft behind some of the women that are active dissidents against
the feminist movement--- authors Peachy Keenan (Catholic- 5 children and author
of Domestic Terrorist, Bethany Mandel (Jewish – 6 children and co-author with
Karol Markowitz of Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and
Indoctrinating a Generation). Like Harrington,
these women understand that motherhood—creating and nurturing human life is at
the core of their being and purpose in life.
They understand that human flourishing for a woman does not hinge on
liberating oneself from unchosen relationships and obligations, but often
involves finding meaning in them.
Harrington’s book helped me consolidate my thinking and some
of the recent thoughts of others, like Yoram Hazony in his book, Conservatism, A
Rediscovery, in which he asserts that in Jewish doctrinal thought, having and
nurturing children IS your purpose in life, and the earlier in life you get
that started the better. The
life-giving aspect of sex was always a touchstone of Catholic doctrine. It’s no coincidence that Peachy Keenan and
Bethany Mandel have 11 children between them, and it’s also no accident that
radical Leftists Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have none.
Harrington’s position that our roles need to be rolled back
to pre-industrial society harkens back to one of my favorite old films of all
time- Heartland with Rip Torn and Conchata Ferrell (1979), where Torn hires
Ferrell to help him homestead on the plains and they end up in a functional
marriage, relying on each other to survive in harsh conditions. There was not a lot of romance, just
tackling challenges together and surviving in a harsh environment with no
outside help. That scenario may be a bit extreme, but you get the point.
More writers like Harrington are coming around to see the
false god of Butler’s feminism. We do
not become self-actualized when we are liberated from all non voluntarily chosen
relationships. Real adulthood and
flourishing arises from taking responsibility and caring for another living
being, primarily manifested in your own children.
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