Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington.
Reviewed by Joanna Bogle
This is a necessary and almost overdue book. Mary Harrington was involved in drugs, the “genderqueer” scene, online chats where any new identity could be adopted…and then, very slowly, various truths and warm realities fostered a time of questioning.
It was, powerfully, motherhood that produced a challenging change. She had some idea that having a baby was a profound experience, but ”the starkness of the contrast between how I’d experienced the world previously, and how I experienced it once my daughter was in my life, still took me by surprise.”
This book chronicles the experience, and in doing so raises some crucial questions. Many of us – including this reviewer – have read books and feature articles questioning the ideology of extreme feminism, and the linked publicly-funded projects promoting it, for some while. But Harrington’s book is something new. It is the voice of the generation brought up to assume that ideology as normal, and to blend it with the 1990s/2000s emphasis on entrepreneurial online start-up businesses combined with lobby-group politics…and then to discover that there is much more to life, its meaning and purpose, and to explore all this in depth.
Harrington’s style is readable and she seems to relish challenge us to re-think cliches and to explore new territory. She gives voice to the hurt and frustration of women who know that motherhood and family life are richly important and are being denied a fair place in the discussion of these things. This is no “back to the 1950s” whimsy…this is a good look at the lives of women in today’s Britain and an assessment of why there is so much frustration and unhappiness among many of them.
She asks questions that few seem to dare to raise: has the experience of women in the frontline military services been a positive one? Does “gender neutrality” always make sense in assessing physical strength, or the way one person relates to another? Has urging girls into early sexual activity produced women who are confident and positive about life and the future?
A book to read and to share – provocative and thoughtful, with good analysis and well-researched information backed by useful footnotes. It will challenge you.
Feminism Against Progress is available in bookstores and online for around £14.