Modern WisdomThe Dark Side Of Feminism's "Liberation" - Mary Harrington
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,624 words- 0:00 – 0:33
Intro
- MHMary Harrington
... pervasive cultural message that says commodifying yourself, even to the point of making yourself a subscription product on OnlyFans, is not only legitimate, but it's also empowering. It leaves people in the situation where you've got this incredibly kind of adversarial and incredibly hostile and incredibly exploitative dynamic between the sexes, such that it, it's now almost impossible to extend enough trust and enough vulnerability, I think, to another person to be willing to take the risk of loving someone. And I think that's catastrophic over the long term for people just being able to find happiness or kids or anything really. Tell me,
- 0:33 – 9:00
What Qualifies Mary to Critique Feminism?
- MHMary Harrington
how do you arrive at giving a critique of feminism? Why do you have any credentials to do this? (laughs) Well, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a woman, which is a start. Um, I was a fairly rabidly, fully paid up, um, second wave feminist in my teens, and then third wave/woke/ well, early adopter of the whole kind of woke, um, post-modern world view in my 20s, and did my level best to live it, I'd say, until I was about 28. And then for a whole load of very complicated reasons, kind of lost my faith in that way of living. Um, and in the process of kind of reassembling a world view which made sense, um, which, which I reckon took about seven years, um, having, having kind of hit that quarter life crisis, um, I came out the other end thinking, "Well, I don't believe in progress anymore." And then I thought, "Well, I've always thought of myself as a feminist, but if being a f- if feminism is held up as one of the kind of central planks in the, in the sort of evidence stack that says we're, we're on a sort of never-ending upward path of progress," right? Um, like, and people say, you know, the first thing people say when you say, "Well, you know, prove it," like, well, I- if you say, "I don't believe in progress," and they'll be like, "Well, how can you say that? You're a woman." Like, you know, things are much better for women now than they were before. Mm. You know, that's just kind of treated as self-evident. And I thought, "Okay, well, this, um, is it, is it still possible to be a feminist if you don't believe in progress?" And I thought, "Well, I still care about women's interests and I still think those are often sidelined." Um, but, but then I- that sort of started me down a whole rabbit hole of, um, you know, the, the relationship between feminism and progress, and, um, and that, in the course of which I got married, I had a baby, and having a baby made me think a great deal more about what feminism thinks, considers progress to mean, most of which seems kind of, um, structurally predicated on not being a mother, or, you know, being a mother, put, put it this way, like, being a mum and being, um, emancipated in the terms that are sort of normally set out by what I think of as magazine feminism, you know, the kind of Jezebel kind of cosmopolitan variant, um, (coughs) they just don't, they don't stack, they don't, they don't square very comfortably. And so I spent, I spent, uh, you know, personally quite a bit of time trying to, trying to make sense of that problem, um, pushing a buggy around the empty daytime streets of a small town in England, um, trying, um, you know, it's not like your mind stops working just 'cause you've had a baby. Um, so there I am, sort of pushing the buggy around, thinking about, thinking about second wave feminism and thinking about being a stay-at-home mum and thinking about how different it was actually to the impression that I'd always absorb- internalized of it from feminists, from the, the, the sort of liberal feminist orthodoxy which says there's, there's nothing more
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
...in for dig basically, and this is, this is you being oppressed, and this is terrible. And I'm like, "Well, actually, it's, I" (sighs) You know, in, in practice for me, um, you know, it's, it's quite a nice life. Um, you know, but the, the major downsides of being a stay-at-home mum are loneliness, um, and, um, well, it's, it's a nice life provided, uh, the main, the main downside is loneliness, and it's quite a nice life provided you have enough funds and provided, uh, you get on with your husband. You know, if either of those things is, uh, is not there, you know, you've, you've got problems. And, and I mean, that, and that led me down a whole rabbit hole of looking at how we got to thinking of, um, how, how we got to thinking of women's, of the good for women as being something which was just anything but that. Um, and that- Yeah, there's a, there's a quote from Helen Roy that I keep on coming up against which is, "Today, women especially, are sincerely frightened by the idea of becoming just a wife and a mother. American women willingly run from the home, from the specter of becoming a prisoner or a parasite, or even worse, a domestic prostitute, into the arms of a corporate employer. Laughably, we call this process freedom." Right, and it, you know, it, it's, it remains an open question for me, absolutely, as to, you know, just how... I mean, Wendell Berry put it really nicely, he wrote a superb essay, Feminism, the Body and the Machine, where he talks about his wife, um, who doesn't have a, she doesn't have a paid employer, she's his wife, and he's got to be with his... well, she's her own boss, um, and it's fin- it's, he, he, he's, he's like, "I struggle to see how, um, sending her off to work for a- an employer who gets to tell her what to do all day, is, makes her, in any ca- in any way meaningfully more free than she currently is." Um, and he makes the point more generally about the transition from agrarian life, where people were kind of economically productive within a home, to, and, and particularly, you know, the role of women in a household like that, where you might be looking, looking after a smallholding and raising kids and making, making, processing raw materials into goods for the family and doing all sorts of other subsistence work, all of which is economically productive. Um, and comparing that to, uh, you know, in what, in what meaningful sense is, is a woman like that, um, liberated by being sent to punch the same four holes on an assembly line all day? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to square. But I mean, this, this was all, this is all what led me to, to write, to writing the book which I've, which, which I've just finished writing, Feminism Against Progress. (coughs) I spent the first third of it sort of looking at, uh, setting out the rabbit hole that I went down, and setting out, you know, this, this sort of deep... It en- it ended up with me doing a sort of deep reread of the whole history of feminism since the Industrial Revolution. Which is, it's a lot less dry than it sounds 'cause, I mean, it's the history of how men and women lived together in, in just normal life, and you know, obviously you can't do that in incredibly granular detail 'cause it varies depending on where you are and, um-... who you're talking to. But the sort of broad outlines of it are reas- are consistent enough that you can make some sort of general claims. And, and really it's the story of, um, men and women of, of work leaving the home. Uh, that's the story of the Industrial Revolution, is, you know, from, from the point of view of family life, it's the story of work leaving the home. Um, sure, so some people have always worked outside the home. You know, I mean, soldiers obviously are not... is the sol- being a soldier is not a work from home occupation. But you know, in a, in a s- in a how- in a economy, a sort of pre-modern economy that's mostly, um, artisan or agrarian, um, work, um, it, the, the basic unit of production isn't an individual, um, you know, with a sort of economic relationship to an employer in the state. The other basic unit of production is a household, um, and actually the legal structures which women in one, uh, which in the industrial era women started to find incredibly oppressive, were oppressive because they were the e- the, they, they were the economic, they were the legal structures, which were designed to accommodate a productive household, um, with... And then so there was a, there was one single legal head which was, in the pre-modern world, the man, um, who was, who, who, who had the official title of the property and w- had, had the sort of formal power. Um, but whether or not women were radically disempowered in that context, in, in every, in every case, I think is much more up for debate. And it's generally treated as axiomatic that women were just sort of effectively kind of chattel slaves and property up until that, up to that point, and I think, I think the literature doesn't really support that. You know, if you look at, if you look at characters like The Wife of Bath in Chaucer, um, you know, who's writing in the sort- in the Middle Ages, um, he has these incredibly sort of larger than life female characters. And I mean, yeah, you can point to things like, you know, like the scold's bridle and so on, but, you know, there, the sort of device that was placed on, on, on the, the head of a woman who was, who was deemed to be talking too much, um, but, um, are you... There's, there's a fair amount of evidence from, from the literature and also from, from anthropological studies of small village life, um, that makes a fairly compelling case that, you know, in a lot of these settings, not all of them but in a lot of them, you know, women, women may, women generally don't wield formal, formal power. You know, they're not, they're not the decision makers and the property owners, but they wield considerable informal power in ways which is much more difficult to put your finger on, because it doesn't come with title deeds and so on. But they, but, but women in a village, in a sort of, you know, pre, pre-modern style village will, will wield power by controlling access to reputation, or controlling ac- qu- controlling their husband's access to information, or, you know, the power of gossip and the power of public shame, and there are all sorts of very subtle, um, very-very subtle community-based forms of power which I think are not, are often not accounted for in-
- 9:00 – 21:28
Hasn’t There Been Progress for Women Since the Industrial Revolution?
- MHMary Harrington
- CWChris Williamson
This is why I've been so interested in female intrasexual competition recently-
- MHMary Harrington
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... because it's way more interesting than male intrasexual competition. Male compete in these kind of very brazen, upfront, loud, garish ways, whereas the sword that women wield is significantly more subtle and nuanced. So to go back to your '20s story to now, it kind of feels a little bit to me almost like a, uh, a PTSD rehabilitation that you needed to work out philosophically, morally, ethically, existentially what had happened to you during that period, and then you have this, whatever, seven-year reflection which is capped off with having husband, child, dog, and then that is a, a vector. It's like a, like a synthesis of all of this stuff coming to the front. Maybe you had some questionings beforehand and you go, "What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean?" And then finally you've got this experience. What does it mean given the fact that rights for women have changed over the last 100 years during the Industrial Revolution or the last 200 years, th- through the Industrial Revolution? Does that not suggest that there has been some sort of progress?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, things change, obviously. Um, you know, I don't think it necessarily follows... I, I don't think it follows from that that everything has got better in some sort of absolute sense. You know, I think you can make, you can make a good, very, you know, it's- it's obviously the case that some things, on some metrics, life is a lot better than it used to be. Um, I just don't think it's possible to prove, um, in any, in any convincing way that the absolute sum of human felicity or virtue or happiness or wellbeing or, you know, any metric you care to name, um, is, is better now than it was a couple of thousand years ago. You know, it's not to say, you know, by the same token, I, I don't think it's possible to prove that it's worse. You know, I'm not a declinist or one of those, the world is going to hell in a handbasket people. I ju- I just don't think it's... Like, the moment, the moment you say, "Well, well, pro- we're making progress," you're like, "Sure, but you know, on what metric?" And the moment you've just like, you've, you've, the moment you point at a metric, you've already assumed the truth of what you set out to prove. Do you see what I mean?
- CWChris Williamson
You've begged the question a little bit.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, you've beg- you've begged the question, exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
So okay, in what ways, in- in what ways is, would you consider or what are the main ways in which you consider, uh, progress to have been downwardly trajected for women over the last period?
- MHMary Harrington
Um ... Well, some things have got a lot, some things are a lot better. I think I- I wouldn't frame it quite like that. I wouldn't say some things have got... Yeah, I mean, yeah, yes some things have got better and some things have got worse, but my argument is that, um, what we think of as a story of progress, if we can just, if we can just bracket progress for a minute, if what we think of as a story of progress is actually the story ... it's a story of technology above a- and it's about, it's a story of men and women, um, responding and women and... Feminism is women's particular response in aggregate to the way, the ways the Industrial Revolution changed family life, and- and women's lives in particular. Um, first by taking work out of the home and second, you know, so- for- for bourgeois women, well, for- for women at the top end of the food chain and also for women at the bottom of the food chain in a different way, um, f- forcing-... women's work out of the home as well, so it was working-class women went into factories and then had to, had to find a way of look at, uh, fi- figure out what to do with their children. And women- and sort- and women of the- the sort of clerical, clerical class and- and the upper class, um, suddenly had much more comfortable lives and wondered what to do with themselves, and so agitated for access to, um, a- access to public life, you know, in- in sort of knowledge work, so you know, started to- started to demand access to clerical jobs and medical training and, um, access to universities, et cetera and so on. So there's... And- and all of this is really downstream of the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution which suddenly, you know, it radically reordered how society worked and changed the way what work meant, changed where it happened, and changed how men and women- h- m- men and women lived together. And what- and what I think is really interesting is that over the course of really the... In- in- from- in England from the 18th century and in America from the 19th century, because that was where- how the sort of tidal wave of industrialization moved, you see this intense preoccupation with, um, the- the role of the sexes, uh, particularly with the role of women. There's a huge amount of discourse that happens about, you know, what- what- how men and women should relate to one another and how- what women- what- what the role of women now is, and that- and rightly so because- because it was- everything was suddenly different and all of the settled norms that had-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- MHMary Harrington
... had obtained up un- up to that point just weren't there anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, so women- women were displaced from the home by things like the washing machine...
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... in a strange way because they were liberated from having to do the... I mean it was hours per day, right, that women would have to wash and dry clothes typically in the past or other...
- MHMary Harrington
Right. I mean- I mean white goods- white goods is a 20th century phenomenon. That sort of had a- that ha- that had a different set of effects, but I mean if you think about- if- if you think about the fact that, you know, your bourgeois housewife in the 19th century is suddenly not required to be a farmer's wife anymore, um, and- and in a sense- in a sense her ro- her role has got easier because she doesn't have to spend, you know, 16 hours a day kind of on- on grinding manual labor whilst also watching kids, um, but on the other hand, her role has also shrunk because she's no longer economically productive. In a sense, she- she's now- she's now dependent on her husband, and that come that... Yeah, at scale, you know, like- like I said, you know, when I was a stay-at-home mom, I had a- I had a pretty nice life 'cause we could afford to live on- on one income and I had a good relationship with my husband. But, you know, for- for women where that wasn't the case in the 19th century, um, you know, wh- it's- that- that's... It's all very well if you've got a- if you've got a good relationship with your spouse and you've got funds, but what happens if your husband drinks all the money? What happens if he beats you and- and you're still living under a legal regime which is- which is c- designed for productive households where women wield a measure of informal power and they're also economically productive members of the household? Um, and- and s- and suddenly you've got these totally economically dependent (coughs) female role in the 19th century, um, where- where- but- but- but women in this situation are not... They're not legally allowed to own property. They give up all of their property to their husband when they get married because that was how it worked in the pre-modern era, you know. You ha- you became a- you became an economically productive household and- and- and that was... And that- and- and women had enough clout in an informal way to s- I think on the whole more than- more or less make that work. But in the- in the industrial era, suddenly they were radically disempowered relative to the way things had worked before, um, and- and for women who found themselves in an unhappy marriage, that was- it was awful. And they were like, "Oh, you know, if I leave him, I have to leave my children behind and I ha- I have no- I- I've got no claim to my children. I can't divorce him. Oh, it's- it's almost impossible to divorce him and I can't- I won't have any property. He can leave me destitute." Um, you know, it's a- it's a terrible situation. So obviously women start... You know, there w- there was all of this agitation for legal personhood independently of their husbands. There was a- you know, the Married Women's Property Act, which I think is late 19th century in England, and there's an equivalent one in similar time in America. Um, then there's- there's all of these campaigns, the- the sort of first-wave feminists, for- for- for legal- legal and cultural remedies to try and offset, um, the- the disadvantages that women had been left with as a result of this massive kind of social and economic change. So really- really, I mean, this is- this is just to kind of explain what I mean when I say feminism isn't... It's not- it's not moral progress and people saying, "Oh, okay, now we see we were doing it badly before 'cause we were wicked people." It's- it's- it's downstream of much, much larger, um, material changes, um, and the way- the way societies have to adapt in aggregate, um, plus particularly the way- the way the relations between the sexes had to adapt in the context of that, and the way... And- and women in particular pushed for changes to the law, um, to social norms, um, in response to what they understood their inter- how they saw their interests to have changed.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
And of course that's where it gets really complicated as well because not all- you know, not all women are created the same. You know, posh women and working-class women don't necessarily have the same interests. And at that point, you know, feminism starts to, you know (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... it starts to multiply and become extremely fractious and- and that's what-
- CWChris Williamson
That was one of the...
- MHMary Harrington
... politics, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
... biggest lessons I think I learned from you the last time that we spoke, which was that some of the, uh, emancipation of women and men from previous expectations, for instance chivalry amongst men, the fact that men were expected to maybe hold the door open for women or to be protectors, preservers, providers for women, if you get rid of that and you are a woman in a relationship with a man who's maybe had strong re- male role models in the household, and has been through higher education, and has done all of these things, and has a good moral compass, uh, maybe that does open up a more fluid and colorful, enjoyable way of living. But if you are a woman who is perhaps in the underclass who is with a partner who didn't have such tight constraints on what he considered to be good behavior and didn't have those same sort of good male role models, what is the justification for your husband not hitting you anymore? Like how much baby bathwater and bath has been thrown out of the window here? And that- I mean that- that just blows my mind. And again, um, talking about feminism or women as one big...... hegemon, right? One big block that you are trying to fit, okay, we'll do this thing that is good for all women. It's like, well, no, it's going to be good for some women on average and bad for other women-
- MHMary Harrington
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... on average, and-
- MHMary Harrington
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... because the ones that h- wield the most power culturally, intellectually tend to be the ones toward the top of that echelon, they are the ones that this sort of system seems-
- MHMary Harrington
Yep. Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... to be optimized for, and it forgets-
- MHMary Harrington
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... the women in the working class.
- 21:28 – 25:50
Feminism After the 1800s
- CWChris Williamson
rolling the clock forward from 1800 into 1900, what is the story of the unpaid debts that start to accrue for feminism throughout that time?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I mean, uh, where I've w- where I think the clock really starts ticking is when, is where you take, you take the sort of paradigm of women's, women's emancipation from all, all of the things, all, all, all of the ways that, you know, that life has been gendered and constrained, and y- and you take that campaign, the, the, the, the feminism of freedom, if you like. I mean, I've been, I, I think what, what you need to say, like this, this camp, this, this process of women demand, you know, calling for adjustments to the way we live together, you know, throughout the industrial era, um, it w- it was justified. I hope I've sort of made the case for that, you know. There, there was, there was a lot of it that was completely legitimate and made sense. Um, but all in all, and what I find, what I found interesting was that there are sort of two poles of it, which I, I just saw coming through again and again. You know, very, very crudely, you could call it the feminism of care or interdependence or the feminism of freedom. You know, and these are, and I mean, you know, it's a, it's an enormously rich debate, and there was plenty of internal conflict between different groups of women who thought different things mattered most. Um, but broadly speaking, there are, you know, there's the, there are the voices who say, "No, actually, you know, we, we need to, we need to accept that, you know, women and mothers, and we, you know, we, we live in relationship, and this, this stuff matters, and the work, you know, the work of caring for dependents is important. And that's part of being a woman, and it's part of being a mother." And then there were other women who said, "No, no, actually what we want is wh- what's, what's in, what women's interests look like being able to enter the market and enter public life on the same terms as men." Um, and what the moment, on- once you start breaking those down in a bit more detail, there's a lot of tension between them, because, you know, obviously if you, if you h- if you have a public, if you live, you, you engage in public life, to take an extreme example, if you work as an MP, you know, if you're, if you're breastfeeding, you know that, that obviously, and you have an all night debate, you know, you, you've got a problem. You know. At a point it becomes zero sum. And then you get these sort of ridiculous stories about, you know, high powered executives having hav- pumping breast milk and then f- having it flown home so that their nanny can... Yeah. Um, you know, but obviously at a, at a point, at some point, at some point being a mother and, and you know, very high powered public life is, is, is zero sum contest. But, but rough- broadly speaking, you've got these two poles, the feminism of care and the feminism of, um, freedom. Um, and where I think the rubber really starts to hit the road in terms of, um, tensions is w- where I've s- wh- where I think the feminism of freedom definitively won. You know, that was a battle that ran from the mid 18th century in Britain up to the mid, mid 1960s, and then in, in the '60s in both Britain and America, the, what changed it was another technology transition, um, two, two new developments with namely the contraceptive revolution and the digital revolution. And after, you know, after that just nothing is the same. It's a new era. We don't, we no longer live in the industrial era.... um, you know, elsewhere I've, I've, not, not in the book, but elsewhere, I've argued that now we li- we live in the transhuman era, which is to say, or the cyborg era, I think I've called it in the book. You know (laughs) , the, which, which is the same thing really. Um, you know, d- to a, to a degree, o- once, once women embraced the contraceptive pill as a sort of basic precondition for personhood on the same terms as men, um, you know, that, that effectively makes you a cyborg in the sense that your, your personhood is inseparable from a technology.
- CWChris Williamson
You say as well, the, the reason that that's transhumanism is that instead of medical care being predicated on trying to fix a problem, it's predicated on trying to fix something which is natural.
- MHMary Harrington
Right, exactly. It, it's, it, it's premised on upgrading normal rather than just restoring, restoring you to normal.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Okay, so the legislation of abortion, introduction of the pill, fundamental hinge moment.
- MHMary Harrington
Fundamental hinge moment, and I think the, the degree to which that just changed everything is still under-priced. And my great friend Louise Perry has done, has done a fairly solid analysis on, on just how many ways, you know, from a, from a really quite sort of left feminist perspective, of, uh, some, some of the undercounted costs of that, of, and of, of the sexual revolution that followed, um, particularly for women.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see-
- MHMary Harrington
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
I wanna interject there. Did
- 25:50 – 30:20
When Men ‘White-Knight’ for Women
- CWChris Williamson
you see the clip that went, it's currently still going semi-viral between her and Peterson, and it's about, uh, f- men that are forcing themselves on women, and a bunch of very far left YouTubers have responded to this. Have you seen this? You don't spend as much time on the internet as me.
- MHMary Harrington
No, I, I actually haven't, I actually haven't viewed it, although, although, there, there's been some discussion of it in my circles ...
- CWChris Williamson
The base British Women's group chat has been going off, has it?
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's been, there's been, there's been some discussion of it, but I actually haven't seen the clip. It's, it's half-term and so I've been less extremely online than usual (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Got you. Okay, well, it's Sam, Sam Seder is the main person that's done this, and then it got, uh, like signal boosted by Ethan Klein from h3h3, and bla, bla, bla. It's all, they're all internet people that you don't need to worry yourself with.
- MHMary Harrington
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
You, you can c- keep writing nice things.
- MHMary Harrington
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
But, um, given Louise's background, and your background as well, as like the most card carrying ... I, I, I've served my time in the trenches doing the reading, living in the places, having their hair cut, you know, like doing the full thing, full thing. Um, it, it really does, it almost feels like horseshoe theory to me a little bit, that the people who now are supposed to be, uh, the most for women, right, the ones that are, um, ostensibly helping women on the internet, especially male left-leaning contributors, are the ones that when a woman from the left who has been through the ringer, so to speak, with regards to this ideology and come out the other side, and is now perhaps a mother, or, uh, you know, Nina Power is one of your friends, like, who still has this, uh, uh, approach but isn't coming at it from quite so much of a family side, um, they still get dragged. And Ethan Klein, one of the reasons that I think he's, uh, he made a video responding to that lady who had her digital deepfake porn video leaked on the internet, and then cried on stream, she's one of the biggest female streamers in the world, cried about it, and then Ethan, uh, ally to women, laughed for, like, 30 seconds, or f- uh, a full minute with his entire crew, and then played some theme song. And he go, "Dude, like, you don't get to play both sides. You don't get to be the edgy comedian and also the ally to women." And then when Louise and Jo- Jordan are trying to play around with ideas that are a little bit difficult as soon as you're talking about forced sex and stuff, but, uh, Jordan was saying, "Maybe we need to make it even more, uh, the repercussions of a man doing this even worse." And for you to, uh, pop up as if you're, like, s- white knighting for all of the oppressed women out there, it's like, bro, I remember only two weeks ago you were laughing at a girl who cried 'cause her nudes, deepfake nudes were on the internet. Like, you don't get to do that.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, (laughs) I'll, I'll just, I'll, I'll, I'll only say one thing about this, Chris. Um, a little while ago, um, I wrote something about a problem that's been puzzling me for a lo- for a while, which is j- why it is that so many self-styled male feminists end up having a sex pest scandal. Um, I, I wrote, I wrote the article, UnHerd make me, made me take out all of the links to rumors of this, of this nature, because there were so many of them, and some of them were really quite famous names. But, but really, it's a very, very, very, very, very consistent pattern. Now obviously, I'm not making any imputations at all about any of the names that you've mentioned here, 'cause I have no idea who these people are. But, um, it's a very consistent pattern and it's one of these, it's, it's just, it's just interesting. That's all I'll say. There's a, there's a curious paradox there, and I think it's, it's probably one, one that needs, um, further exploration. My, I, I, inasmuch as I have a hypothesis about it, it's that it's just, you know, they're, if they're mistaken, um, it's because they've been led astray by the idea that men and women's sexuality is fundamentally the same, which is just obviously not true. And, you know, I, I can see how somebody would end up accidentally, could end, could end up being accidentally a sex pest if they just assumed that women have the same approach to sex as men. Um, and it's all, you know, the more, the more cynical interpretation of it would be that the, there is a subset of men for whom it works as a kind of, a- as a k- a little bit like a duck blind.
- CWChris Williamson
Sneaky fucker syndrome.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, it's, it's a way, it's a way of making yourself seem, seem more benign and harmless when perhaps, perhaps there are other things going on as well. I don't know. Anyway, but, but, but that's all, all I'll really say about the white knights, um, as a, as a class.
- CWChris Williamson
Got you. So, so, uh, abortion.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Contracepti- contraceptive
- 30:20 – 39:02
The Impact of the Sexual Revolution
- CWChris Williamson
pill. Yeah, we'll switch from white knights to abortion, exactly.
- MHMary Harrington
Moving on from insulting, moving on from insulting an entire demographic, let's go on something straightforward.
- CWChris Williamson
Killing babies.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um. (laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
I shouldn't laugh, it's not funny. Killing babies really isn't funny.
- CWChris Williamson
It's not funny. We're trying not to laugh about it.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... legislation, abortion gets introduced, pill gets introduced, emancipates women from having babies upon having sex, then the sexual revolution comes along as cultural technology to try and emancipate women from having feelings when they have sex, and fully bifurcate everything so that they can be the disembodied sex hole that all women's freedom has always wanted them to be.
- MHMary Harrington
I, I'm not sure that's quite how I'd frame it, but in practice, that's sort of what ended up happening, I suppose (laughs) . I think, I think that's more of the sort of crisp spin on, on what's been going on, but, you know, something, something like that has kind of, in practice, ended up happening. I mean, the, the, the sa- the, the feminists of the, of the second wave, all sincerely thought that the sexual revolution was going to be wonderful and emancipatory. You know, there's, there's loads, and Germaine Greer, and, you know, plenty of other writers of that, of that generation, who just sort of took a very optimistic and libertarian, um, approach to, to the sexual revolution and, and believed that it was, it was n- now, now that we could, um, emancipate ourselves from the consequences of, of sex, you know, and, and just, and, and treat it as a sort of leisure activity rather than as a ser- as a very consequential thing that needed careful, um, careful management, you know, at a social level, lest it produce sort of long-term social challenges at scale, um, that therefore, that, that, that would mean, you know, sex could just be emancipated in, in its entirety, and we, we'd all end up in this sort of marvelous kind of polymorphous zone of erogenous joy, and everybody, you know, and a thousand flowers would bloom and it would be great. And in practice it hasn't really worked out like that, um, 'cause it turns out that it's, it's harder to abolish human nature than what? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It's the polymorphous erogenous zone of orgy joy or whatever it was that you came up with. Brilliant.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah. No, I mean, you don't, I mean, it's kind of what we have, but, but I think, but, but the, but the point that I wanted to make in Feminism Against Progress is that we have the, the, the, the mistake that those guys made was imagining that we could have that but without, but, but without the market. They all thought that we could have the polymorphous erogenous zone of orgy joy or whatever it was that I just said, um, and that we, and that somehow this, you know, commerce, m- you know, d- grubby commerce wouldn't get its fingers in, but in f-
- CWChris Williamson
What do you mean commerce? What do you mean market?
- MHMary Harrington
Um, what I, what I mean by that is that it's, it's become increasingly clear to me as I've looked into the history of, um, well really the history of technology, um, you know, without sort of going on too lengthy a detour, but, you know, in as much as, in as much as the, the, the modern world has become freer, normally it's because something that used to be just a thing that we were stuck with, um, has been replaced by, by a technology. So, you know, we used to be, you know, most people used to be stuck with walking everywhere and so a certain like, getting anywhere took a certain amount of time. You know, you, you introduce a bunch of technologies into the picture like that, you know, people are suddenly freer to get from A to B more quickly. I'm taking a very, very simple example. Um, but, but, but that it, uh, doesn't come cost-free and one of the, one, one of the costs is, is just, is quite literally that the market moves in to f- f- free- well, I think what I'm trying to say, freedom and trade are impossible to separate. You know, the moment, the, the, the more freedom you have, the more trade you'll have, 'cause the moment, the moment something is liberated from the social norms that, that governed it before, um, and becomes something that you can, that you can buy or sell, people will buy and sell it.
- CWChris Williamson
What's an example of how that worked with regards to sex or relationships?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I mean, if you, the, the first Playboy Club opened the year the pill was legalized, um, and I think that's, I think it actually, I mean if, if we're gonna be really pedantic, I think the first Playboy Club actually opened a about six months before the pill was legalized, but I mean it was pretty much there already at that point. Um, and by, by the, by the 1970s, uh, radical feminists were, were running demonstrations against the, the level of violence and degradation that was now, you know, increasingly endemic in the porn industry. And, and the, and, and the, the p- the, the porn industry existing, I mean, you know, there has always been pornography, you know, to, to an extent, but the porn, but the porn industry being able to present itself in, in libertarian terms is predicated on the idea that sex is consequence-free and therefore is a, is a private matter. And the, the idea of sex being a private matter is predicated on the technology existing that, that makes it possible for it to be a private matter, which is to say contraception, because if there's no contraception, sex isn't a private matter. You know, the rest of your village really does have skin in the game about who you sleep with, right? Um, 'cause it, and particularly if you're female in there, you could end up with an unwanted baby, um, which people have got to figure out what to do with. So, you know, if there's, if sex is a consequential thing, like, you know, it's, it's not a private matter. It just isn't. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think, rolling the clock forward from that, do you think that there was a particular hinge or a unique hinge point with the introduction of OnlyFans, with the fact that you had a particularly frictionless D2C normal person to audience member platform for things like this?
- MHMary Harrington
I, I don't know. I think, I, I mean I, I think OnlyFans is a long way down the slippery slope, to be honest. Um, I mean, the, the, the hinge moment is probably, is probably online dating as such 'cause I mean, once you've, once you've got used to the idea of, you know, packaging yourself as a kind of product in an online marketplace, which is essentially what you're doing when you create a dating profile. You know, it's not, you know, I've, I've, I've run, I've done like digital commerce for, for clients back in the days when I worked in marketing, you know, and doing that and creating a dating profile are, they're not that different really. You know, at the end of the day, you're, you're, you're marketing something. You know, you're, you're creating an appealing package which is designed to, to, to, to cause somebody to click. Um, and I, and really, you know, what happens at the checkout, after the checkout process is supposed to be different, but actually, you know, there's, it's o- once you've got to the idea that you, that you're, that you're, you're, you're press- you're, you're browsing a set of products and then you're clicking on one that you like the look of, and then, you know, in a sense you're sort of checking out the product. You know, it's just not, it's just not a very big step.... from that to, you know, kind of, you know, online dating as parasocial relationship, and then it's not a great big step from that to, you know, that is a sort of subscription product. You know, I think, I, I think the beginning of the slippery slope is online dating as such. (sniffs)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, that's, that's a, a, an interesting point, that it's probably a difference of degree, not a difference of kind, particularly.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, I mean, y- yes, yes, there is a, you know, the point at which you're saying, "No, actually, I'm, I'm gonna press, I'm gonna press buy," rather than, "I'm just gonna press, like,, 'Hey, hey, baby', 'Hey baby, how's it going?' you know, message this person." Yes, that's, that, that's a qualitative difference. But it's not, it's not a very big one, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
But no, I think c- c- you know, w- once the rest of the paradigm is in place, it's not a very big one. (sniffs)
- CWChris Williamson
Before we start talking about cyborg theocracy-
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... is there anything else that we need to understand about the foundation of how we got here?
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, I think the, the critical, the critical points are that w- feminism isn't about moral progress as such. It's a response to material conditions. Um, you know, the industrial, the industrial era was a set of massive transformations in material conditions, and first and second-wave femini-... First, first-wave feminism really was a response to those material conditions. But everything changed with the digital and contraceptive revolutions. And, you know, and, and second-wave feminism was, I suppose, a, a response to that. But everything which has come since, I think, is qualitatively different, because it no longer really has very much space at all for the feminism of care. Um, it's almost, almost all of it is about the feminism of freedom, which is to say, um... And, and it's, and it's all fundamentally, um, in, it, it, it has, it has this, this premise of, um, freedom underwritten by, you know, freedom underwritten by technology baked into it, which is to say it's all, it's all underwritten by contraception, and f- uh, the, and, and the final backstop of that has to be abortion. Um, and really what you're saying when you legalize abortion is that, uh, a woman's freedom is, is that important when, or a woman's personhood, you know? I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's sufficiently important to the, to, to women's political participation that they be free and unencumbered, that they can pursue that even to the extent of ending the life of an unborn child. Uh, d- does that make sense?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, absolutely does. It does-
- MHMary Harrington
Um, so just, uh, and, and really, you know, what, where however, wherever you stand in relation to that, you, you know, I think you, we could all accept that that's a very strong statement to make in favor of freedom, you know, where, where that comes into direct conflict with, with the needs of a dependent other. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
But do you think... So, I, I really like that, that
- 39:02 – 58:25
What are the Motivations Behind Modern Feminist Progress?
- CWChris Williamson
summary, that feminism wasn't about progress. It was about the response to changes in technology and s- sort of society at large. What, what has been the fuel that has continued to push feminist progress ba- through the '60s right through to now, you know, still going stronger than ever? Is this, uh, just like a mimetic echo of a time-
- MHMary Harrington
(sniffs)
- CWChris Williamson
... when we were forging forth? Is it performative empathy that is being driven by online?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I, I ask myself that, and I think, uh, this is probably not a single answer to that. I mean, one of, one, one, one factor is surely, you know, the having, having all agreed sort of collectively, and this is a meme that's much bigger than feminism, having all agreed collectively that more freedom is generally better. Uh, we've, we've s- we've just gone on pursuing that. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Blue sky vision, yep.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, b- you know, that, that more, more liberation is just better by definition. And, and also that more, more technology will, and m- more, more, more economic growth, more technology, more innovation will, will deliver us more freedom, which is, which is obviously good. You know, that's a kind of unstated, unstated premise of, you know, most of the 20th century going into the 21st century, I would argue. It's kind of there, it's there in the water, you know? It's so, so kind of, you know, well dissolved that, you know, we, you don't even really, you don't r- don't even really think about it. It's just, it's just there in the water. Um, and, and just a, just the other point that I would underline, um, is that every time you use technology to afford yourself more freedom or more innovation or more growth, um, you don't, as, you, you, you can't, you don't as a consequence of that end up abolishing whatever it was that you were trying to emancipate yourself from before. So, so if, for example, you were using a technology to flatten the differences between men and women in reproductive terms, that doesn't end up abolishing w- that doesn't end up abolishing human nature. You know, men and women remain different, even if we've used, used a technology to flatten some of those differences. And that, that really, that, uh, uh, and all, all we've ended up doing is reordering those differences to the market. So they become supply and demand problems, or they become strategic vulnerabilities. And I suppose that that really sort of leads, leads on to, um, what I've called cyborg theocracy.
- CWChris Williamson
What is cyborg theocracy?
- MHMary Harrington
Which is... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Come on, then.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, I mean, it's, it's not actually my meme. I should, I, I, I really need to re- reiterate this. I, I owe the meme to, uh, to a magnificent Albanian called Ardian Tola, who you, you probably, who you probably know, um, who, who for whom it, yeah, who just kinda threw it out there. And I'm like, "This, this is, this is, this is such a great description." And when I, when I talk about cyborg theocracy, I mean, yeah, (sniffs) how do I, how do I put this? Um, I mean, the moral order which legitimizes the worldview which I've been trying to describe, um, in which the, the good is just understood to be the pursuit of ever more freedom underwritten by technology. Um, that sounds, it sounds very dry and very abstract put in those terms, but it's, it, it has a lot more, it has more teeth than that, um.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you've got the war on relationships between men and women as one big component of this. So, what would be, uh, an example of how that's manifested?
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, so, okay, so, so I've, I've, I've, I've looked at, um, in, in the book, I've looked at three, three aspects of, um, human nature as I, as I see it, which, which we're now waging war on. You know, having, having got, having got to the, the end of the easy wins, you know, in terms of, in terms of where industrial technology can, can get us to, um, my...... my, the way, the way I see the, the turn, the, the cyborg turn is that, you know, we, we've sort of finished industrializing the world and we've pretty much run out of, you know, places to colonize and natural resources to exploit and, you know, rivers to pollute and so on and so forth. But the same, you know, that, that sort of relentless onward march and that relentless kind of, you know, exploratory energy hasn't, hasn't stopped. And what it's done instead is it's turned inwards. So it's turned, it's, it's sort of turned inward towards colonizing the human body and turned inward towards colonizing and exploiting the human soul. And so, and, uh, through variously, biomedical advances and digital technology. And, and the former is really, really about, um, commodifying the human body and the latter is, is about commodifying the human soul, so the domain of ideas and the domain of sociality. (coughs) Um, and because, b- because the sort of be- the fundamental premise is that we can, we can use more technology to deliver more freedom and this is going to result in, you know, more, more money and also more, more felicity somehow. Um...
- CWChris Williamson
What's felicity?
- MHMary Harrington
I, I, I mean joy, happiness, wellbeing, goodness.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you.
- MHMary Harrington
You know, the g- the good stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, hav- having, having delivered all of our easy wins, um, we're now, we're, we're now setting about abolishing slightly trickier, um, aspects of human nature. So we've, we've done our best to abolish the difference between the sexes so now we're... and, and so now we're waging war on the relationship between the sexes. You know, how, how people, you know, the, the, the dance of courtship if you like. The, the, the domain of sexual desire. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Show me how that's manifested. How's that happened?
- MHMary Harrington
Um, so really that, what, what that looks like is the, the sort of slow breakdown since the contraceptive revolution of, of any sort of groundedness to, uh, why, why we, why we, why we fuck. You know, why, why we experience desire. You know, there's, there's a sort of slow, slow disintegration of the idea that it's ordered to anything, let alone fertility. Uh, l- let alone sort of, you know, relationship formation and having children. And, you know, increasingly this idea that it's a sort of, it's, it's a property of whoever it is who, you know, what, what I do with my sexuality is my own business and therefore, you know, what I choose to point it at is also my own business. Um, and while, while you could say, well, you know, of course it's some- what, what, what somebody, what somebody chooses to beat off to in the privacy of their own home is their own business. Um, but I've, but I've done my best to show how actually at scale, the, the larger consequences of that in terms of how it, how it affects the way people form relationships, even when people really long to form relationships, and even when people long for a long-term partner, uh, is actually, it's, it's enormous. Um, and if you, if, if, if you propagate this idea that really people can just, you know, do, people can just do whatever they want, then people really will do whatever they want. And particularly when you, when you, when you reinforce this with, you know, b- uh, uh, an endemic sort of, an endemic online pornography and, you know, pervasive cultural message that says commodifying yourself even to the point of making yourself a subscription product on OnlyFans is not only legitimate but it's also empowering, um, it, it leaves people in this situation where you've got this incredibly kind of adversarial and incredibly hostile and incredibly exploitative dynamic between the sexes such that it, it's now almost impossible to, to extend enough trust and enough vulnerability, I think, to another person to be willing to take the risk of, um, loving someone. And I think that's, that's catastrophic over the long term for people just being able to, you know, find happiness or kids or anything really.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that this is contributing to one of the reasons that fewer young people than ever are having sex? That...
- MHMary Harrington
Very likely, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just seems, seems chaotic, um, disorganized, and frightening. Um, you know, and if you're, I mean, honestly, if I were, if I were 22 now and all of the guys I was, I was potentially, I could be potentially dating had been marinaded in porn since they were 11, I'd, I'd be, I'd, I'd, I'd probably just take up macrame instead. 'Cause I mean, at the end of the day, you're probably not gonna have a nice time. You know? And if, if the presumption is that it's just gonna be a casual hookup, you only have a 10% of a- 10% chance of orgasm anyway, so I mean, why wouldn't you just stay at home and do macrame? Or, I don't know, start an OnlyFans? (laughs) You know, in a way, uh, I don't, I don't blame them. I don't blame them for, for, for just opting out, voting with their feet, 'cause it sounds- it seems hellish.
- CWChris Williamson
So the, uh, sacredness around not only sex, not only what it meant physically in terms of making babies, not only what it meant emotionally in terms of a connection, but then even before you get to marriage, the, um, holder, the placeholder, the, um, uh, space within which sex was typically happening which is relationships, that was also put under war, and then downstream from that, the relationship between mothers and babies was also sent to war.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a very, uh, that, that starts from a s- from a slightly different place. Um, but I mean, i- i- let me see. Where, how do, how do I talk about the war, the war on relationships between mothers and babies? I mean, that's a, that's a... Well, I mean, put, put it this way. Put it, and I mean, I was, I was, I used to have recurring nightmares about having a, about accidental pregnancy. Um, I can still remember it in my twenties. I'd just wake up in a cold sweat. Um, I don't think I'm alone in that. Um, (sighs) and it's, it's not just, it's not just the prospect of sort of being left literally holding the baby. Um, there's, there's some- you know, if you've... What I, what I've tried to show is this, this sense, this increasingly strong sense I've had that a lot of the pro-choice activism which is around now le- mu- much more so than was the case even, even 15 or 20 years ago. But a lot of the women who are, who are campaigning for the right to abort babies now are doing so because they're viscerally frightened.... by the prospect of pregnancy. There's something so horrifying about the idea of letting that happen to your body, for a lot of women. And I, I see it. I mean, this is ... I, I couldn't point you to, point you to a particular tweet, but, but I see them a lot, you know. There's ... It, it's this ... There's a, there's a growing constituency of young women for whom the idea of, the idea of being pregnant is ... You know, the response is body horror. You know, it's like, it's like the sort of H. R. Giger kind of xenomorph that, you know, bursts its way out of your chi- ... You know, the, the response is in that sort of order. It's not a kind of ... It's not perceived as a wonderful thing at all.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think that is?
- MHMary Harrington
Um, I've b- I've been trying to understand it. I've been trying to get my head round what's going on there, and I think it has to do, um, y- with just how radically everyone is expected to be self-contained now, just how radically everyone is, you know ... The, the good, the right, the, you know, the, the fi- ... The good upstanding person is supposed to be completely atomized. You know, you're not ... It's, it's shameful to de- to depend on somebody else. It's shameful to be vulnerable. It's shameful to be weak. Um, it's shameful to, um ... You, y- you have to be in command of all of your own shit all the time. That just seems ... It ... That, that seems to be a sort of basic expectation, and if you're not, if you're not willing to ... If, if you need other people, you're, you've failed. That seem, that seems to be the sort of basic, basic presumption. And fundamentally, you can't be pregnant and not need other people, you know. That, that just doesn't work.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, so the getting pregnant is an amplifying of fragility around your own personal sovereignty?
- MHMary Harrington
Some- ... Yeah, I think that's probably a good way of putting it. Um, and also, I mean, you know (laughs) if y- if you think about the prem- uh, th- there are some much more sort of basic things as well. You think about the premium that's, that's on looking a certain way, and we also think about the, th- the premium of, that's, that's on controlling your physiology and controlling your appearance. I mean, you know, e- even just not being fat is a massive flex, you know, in, in the, the Instagram world, um, you know. (laughs) And then you, you add, you know, a, a series of totally involuntary bodily changes into that, and you can see how people would react with just total body horror. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean look at the Kardashians. Look at what they do. They go the full surrogate route.
- MHMary Harrington
Right. Right, right, right. And, and this is the ... And this is really where the, the, the war on, the war on relationship between mothers and babies st- ... The, the rubber hits the road. Um, 'cause once, once you start, um ... (sighs) It ... Once you accept the basic premise that women's autonomy as atomized individuals, a- and atomized market par- participants, is so politically important that it's commercialized medical interventions into your body as the route towards emancipation. And once o- once you've started down that road, then you think, "Well, why, why should it stop? Why, why, why should it stop with lev- with controlling my fertility? Why should it stop with underwriting my autonomy by, by ending an accidental pregnancy? Why shouldn't I extend that to all of the other ways that biomedical technologies can, can, can alleviate the burden of motherhood?" 'Cause it is. It's a considerable burden. I mean, I reached escape velocity from atomized life too late to have more than one child, but, you know, I nearly died in the process of giving birth to her, and I'm, I'm grateful to modern ... You know, I, I have ... I spend a lot of time dunking on, on medicine, uh, but dunking on, you know, modern, modern technologies, but honestly I'd, I wouldn't be here without-
- 58:25 – 1:11:21
The Worrying Rise of 'Transhumanism'
- CWChris Williamson
su-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... something super icky. Okay-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, something really gross about that.
- CWChris Williamson
... so the final war, final war-
- MHMary Harrington
The final war-
- CWChris Williamson
... the relationship between women and their bodies.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, the, the, the relationship between all of us and our bodies really. I mean, but, um, I think it's particularly acute for young people and it's particularly acute for adolescent girls. But yeah, I think, you know, o- once you start... once you accept the premise that we can use technology to just continue emancipating ourselves indefinitely then, you know, why, why should we, why shouldn't we extend beyond, um, controlling our fertility to flattening all the differences between the sexes? And why shouldn't we extend beyond that again to the idea that we can remodel our bodies as we see fit, um, in any way we, in any way we choose? And really the bow wave of that is, is the, the activist, you know, movement, the activist groundswell for, um, freedom of gender. And that's vote to, to use a phrase from Martin Rothblatt who's a very, who's a very well-known transgender activist and transhumanist activist. Um, Rothblatt has written a book called From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto for Freedom of Form, uh, which argues that, um, the, the freedom to be... to present, you know, with whatever secondary sex characteristics we choose and that most aligns with our sense of self is only the precursor to the, the... a much more radical freedom to just present physiologically however we like. You know, if we wanted to grow a pair of horns or a tail or extra limbs then fine, you know, you should just go for it. Or, or just to upload ourselves digitally into the cloud and be digital persons and that ought to be fine as well. Um, and, and you see... when you've... and, and really there isn't. You know, it's... if, if you can, if you can have whatever secondary sex characteristics you like, you know, as you, as you choose then I... it's sort of difficult to see why you shouldn't just extend that way beyond that. And actually you're, you know, you're beginning to see that in some of the gender clinics where, you know, a, a far greater variety of surgeries is on offer than-
- CWChris Williamson
I sat next to, at dinner, about-
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, don't google. Don't google. I
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
... think you've just seen-
- CWChris Williamson
I sat next to at dinner about a month and a half ago the number one transgender surgeon in America. This guy does between 300 and 400 transgender surgeries per year and he owns a clinic that does over 1000, a number of clinics actually that are around the country. And, uh, I was incredibly surprised by him, like unbelievably surprised. Zero ideology. Absolutely no i-... not ideologically captured at all. I didn't... I was... the first time that I'd met this entire group of people and I was like, "I don't want to be the, like, so how do you feel about the ethics of the duh-duh-duh-duh? Like, we're having steak. Like just, you know, just listen and, and maybe the second time that I go back I'll be able to push a little bit more." But he was, uh, mentioning some of the different procedures that he does where some people would like to add a penis but also would like to keep their vagina. And a lot of the time these individuals will come in and they'll have researched I guess the same way as if you want to-... get a fringe or something, you might have some examples of someone's fringe that you like, and so, "I'm looking for a fringe like this." And apparently, it's- it's borderline obsessive. The, "Well, I- I like the shape of, do you see how the head of the penis kind of does the- this thing? And then, toward the base, it's sort of got, it gets a little bit thicker, so it's like, I- I really, really like this." And he was like, "Uh, with the best will in the world, I'm taking flesh from your forearm and forming it into something that remotely resembles a penis. If it looks anything like a penis, let's call that a win." Do you know, this is- this is insane to talk about the transhumanist stuff, do you know how trans penises get hard?
- MHMary Harrington
I- I- I have some, I s- have some sort of rudimentary under- yep.
- CWChris Williamson
Let me tell you, let me tell you in, let me tell you in depth. Uh, so-
- MHMary Harrington
It's a sort of inf- inflating device, isn't it?
- CWChris Williamson
That's correct. So there is a- a pouch of saline that is, um, inserted into the body behind the bladder, uh, so there's a- a little pouch at all times in there, and there's testicles, right? A penis, uh, even if it's made from your forearm, w- if, to make it look like a real thing, it would have testicles. One of the testicles is a fake ball. The other testicle is a pump attached to a series of one-way valves that goes from the pouch behind the bladder up into the penis, and it's a, you, like, pump it. Do you remember those, uh, were they Nike Dunk Kicks or whatever from the '90s?
- MHMary Harrington
Chris, are you telling me that- that this guy was talking you through all of this while you were eating steak?
- CWChris Williamson
This was after we'd finished eating steak, mercifully.
- MHMary Harrington
I was gonna say. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, 'cause it was pretty red under steak as well, so I would've been quite uncomfortable. Um, but yeah, and you pff, tff, tff, tff, tff, tff, tff, pump it up, and then there's a chhh, there's a valve that you can, uh, release it, and you can even fit ways to, uh, make fluids come out of it at the opportune moment as well. Uh, so, uh, the- the s- the bodily modification is unbounded now, and, um, pretty terrifying.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, and I, yeah, I suppose that's- that's the conclusion I've found myself coming to, that, uh, that I've- I've found myself c- we- essentially coming to the same conclusion as Martine Rothblatt, that this is, this is, as in Rothblatt's words, the on-ramp to transhumanism. And you may think, "Well, fine, you know, let's- let's all, let's all go transhumanist." And, you know, arguably, you know, um, on my, by- by my own logic, given that we've been- we've been in the transhumanist era for over- over half a century now, you know, having embraced it with the contraceptive pill, why- why shouldn't we just lean all the way into it? And I think, well, y- I- I suppose that that's one response, sure, but I- I look at, I look at this transhumanist revolution, and I think, well, you know, the- the lefty in me says, "Well, hang on a minute. Um, you know, it's, this is probably gonna be fine for people like the Kardashians and, or Grimes, who- who's just had- had another Elon Musk baby via surrogacy because she didn't like giv- have giving birth the first time." Uh, this- this is fine for people like that, but people further down the food chain... I mean, what- what generally- what generally happens when- when a whole new domain of human social life is enclosed and f- and marketized is that people at the top do really nicely, and then people further down, you know, find it's- it's they- they- they get- they get all- all of the disruption and very, and considerably less of the benefit. And I'm thinking, "Well, where are all these body parts gonna come from?" Um, you know, who's gonna donate all of the uteruses to be- to be transplanted into male bodies? Um, and thinking, and then I- I stumbled, sort of un- semi-unrelatedly on a story about, um, farm workers, like female farm workers in Maharashtra, which is a- a district in India, um, who often voluntarily opt for hysterectomies, um, because it makes them more employable. If they- if they don't suffer from monthly menstrual cycles, they're just more employable, and they're more likely, they're more likely to be able to get a job in the- in the agricultural gig economy in Maharashtra if they can prove that they've had a hysterectomy. And I'm thinking i- uh, y- if we're, if- if we're still, if we're starting to treat human bodies as things, as s- as- as, uh, resources which can be disassembled and reassembled and transplanted and, you know, treated like sort of fleshy bits of Lego that can be assembled as we see fit, then there's gonna be a market, and some people are gonna be, you know, one class of people is gonna be buying and another class of people is gonna be selling. Um, and once- once you start, once you start looking seriously at the prospect of, you know, creating a, creating a free market in human body parts, it's gonna be the- the women in Maharashtra who are selling, and it's gonna be, uh, I- I don't know who, some- some- somebody, uh, some- some- some male with money who's gonna be buying, and I- I just don't like the look of that. You know, the- the lefty in me stands up and says, "No, no, no, we have to do something about this." The lefty in me says, "This is a- this is a grotesque, abom- this is- this is an abominable form of exploitation, and if- if there's any way we can stand athwart history and yell, 'Stop,' then we probably should."
- CWChris Williamson
That's pretty terrifying.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's like really, really concerning, and-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, and I mean, if, uh, actually, let d- uh, I'll- I'll just give you a- a more recent, um, U- United States headline along the same lines.
- CWChris Williamson
Terrorize me again, sure.
- MHMary Harrington
I- I will. I'll- I'll leave you, uh, leave you s- uh, more of the stuff of nightmares. A bill was recently introduced in a US state, I think it was Massachusetts, um, to offer convicted- convicts, in- in prison, incarcerated felons, um, a reduction in their jail sentence if they donate organs or bone marrow. And if- if that isn't the wombless farm workers of Maharashtra being, you know, e- essentially turned into resources, I don't- I don't really know what else, I- I don't know, I don't know what is. Um, and again, you know, the- the lefty in me says that if there's any way we can be standing athwart history yelling, "Stop," uh, uh, uh, uh, facing this- this kind of, this- this sort of stuff being just normalized into- into our economies and normalized into the way we see human bodies, then we should.
- CWChris Williamson
I've heard you say previously with regards to the lefty thing, um-... that Occupy Wall Street failed as we tried to take back control of our finances from people that were in control of the market, and right now, we have the opportunity to take back sovereignty of our bodies from people that are trying to marketize them as well. It's-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, I think we need an Occupy Ourselves-
- 1:11:21 – 1:25:02
Society’s Need to Abolish ‘Big Romance’
- CWChris Williamson
your other-
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... large behemoth that you want to try and tackle.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs) Abolish Big Romance?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. What is Big Romance?
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, I think this is-
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you want to abolish it?
- MHMary Harrington
... I- I think this is where your interests and mine sort of co- collide, don't they, Chris?
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
'Cause you're- you're- you're very- very preoccupied with the- the mating crisis and- and really, this is ... Abolish... Uh, Big Romance is, I suppose, my- my- my take on how we got to the mating crisis. (sniffs) I mean, you know, I don't want to... uh, I don't want to do a whole nother social history lesson 'cause I feel like I've blathered on about that enough already, um, but the- my- my argument is that we- w- how people understood marriage, what- what people understood marriage to mean has changed a number of times over the course of civilization. You know, the- the- the way people approach marriage now, um, isn't- isn't f- isn't set in stone, you know, the- what- what people ha- what people understand it to mean has changed a great deal over- over the course of time. In the Middle Ages, it was a much more pragmatic business for most people. I mean, marriages were very often arranged, um, you know, marriage- all marriages were contracted sort of relatively- relatively brusquely and were then, uh, and were- and after that were just basically impossible to dissolve, um, or nearly impossible to dissolve. And most people treated it as a fairly pragmatic arrangement, um, you know, because you were economically in- interdependent as part of a productive household, and that's just a very different relationship to one where you're expected to be all sort of lovey-dovey all the time, you know? At the end of the day, the- the- the- the pigs need feeding and- and some- somebody has got to get the wheat in the ground before it rains and that- and that's a very different set of priorities than, you know, "Did- did he- did he remember to pick his socks up?" And, you know, "Has- uh, has he- has he left- has he left a little- a little note on the kitchen table for me before he left for the day?" (sniffs) And then... But what- what changed, um, with the industrial era was that partly because women found themselves with a great deal less economic agency than they had done previously, um, the-... the preoccupation with love in a, in a relationship became proportionately stronger as women lost agency and, and it, and it became, you know, for pragmatic reasons, much more important to have a husband who loved you. You know, you can have a, you can have a husband you just get on with reasonably well and as in a sort- as a sort of business partner if you're, if you're both, you know, co-producers in a, in a productive household. But if you're, if you're an economic dependent, um, and you're unable to own property, you're unable to divorce, and you're, and you have no legal personhood, really independent from your husband, then no way of earning money, you know, it's, it's considerably more in your interest to make sure that you marry somebody who loves you and respects you. So, so at the beginning, you know, with the, with the rise of the, you know, economically inactive bourgeois housewife, you get the idea of companionate romance. Which I mean, I, I don't know if you've ever read any of the Jane Austen novels or seen them-
Episode duration: 1:44:12
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