Modern WisdomWhy You Shouldn’t Share Your Private Life Online - Mary Harrington (4K)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,149 words- 0:00 – 6:14
The Idea of Digital Modesty
- CWChris Williamson
What do you mean by digital modesty?
- MHMary Harrington
(clears throat) Oh, yeah, that's- that's an idea I've been playing with a lot recently, which is really just about where we've got to with the exposure of everything on the internet. Um, this is something I found myself thinking about a lot more, uh, the more I- the more I found myself writing in public and speaking in public and really sort of being present online, whether it's on Twitter or wherever, which is, is- is there anything that we shouldn't be posting? Um, and the more I think about that, the more- the more I conclude that, yes, there are absolutely things that we shouldn't be posting, or rather, um, if there are things which if- if we- if we do share them, we should expect negative consequences to follow from that. I mean, I've... And the more I thought, I- I've read, I've derived a set, I guess, of basic principles for what I won't post. I won't post selfies online. I mean, I'll- I'll post... M- my face is all over the internet, right? But in the context of a conversation. You know, I'm, you and I here, you and I here is not, we're not here to talk about my face. I mean, my face is just my face. We're here to, uh, we're here to exchange ideas and to have a conversation. But I won't post, I won't post selfies. Yeah, I can... Uh, actually, I remember the point where I realized that you should, I shouldn't, I didn't want to post selfies was- was just after I could, I ran over the finish line of a marathon a couple of years ago, and I trained for it, and I trained for it, and I trained for it, and I worked so hard at it. And at that point, I think I had maybe 10,000 followers on Twitter, and I- and I took a photo of myself having crossed the finish line looking like hell, um, completely exhausted and I'd, uh, high as a kite on endorphins, and I nearly, I nearly pressed send and then I was like, "Whoa, don't do that. Do not do that." And I, and I deleted it, and I didn't, I- I did not post the selfie of myself having just crossed the finish line.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- MHMary Harrington
'Cause, because I realized if I did, like, probably 75% of the people who follow me would say, "Great, well done. Congratulations," and I get lots of love. The other 25% will be the people who hate follow, because they- they exist. Once you get past a certain point, you go, you have haters on the internet, 'cause like people can find, people can hate anything. You know, that's just the law of the internet. People will find something insane to hate, even if it's just people doing, like middle-aged women doing marathons. Um, and- and then, and- and it would have, there would have been one mean comment which would have just crushed me and it would have ruined my day. And I thought, what's the easiest way of not experiencing that one mean comment is just not... n- just don't post a picture. But it's more than that. It's also that it- it exposes something intimate and personal, which I realized was just not something which was, it wasn't for everybody else. It was my- my- my f- that- that moment was for me and it was for my, for my family and for the people who'd supported me. It wasn't for... And- and for the people who'd, who'd, who'd sp- who'd supported me to fundraise. It wasn't for general consumption. And- and I realized that- that actually there is a boundary. Um, and then I've, I've spent more time online. I've- I've- I've appeared in public more since then. And the more, the more I do it, the more I've- I've come to think that actually we need, yeah, the more exposed you are potentially online, the more, the more intentional you have to be about thinking, thinking, thinking clearly on, uh, where you draw the line.
- CWChris Williamson
Like a digital hijab.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah. (laughs) Well, I've- I've- I wouldn't use... I've, that's, that'll be a problematic way of putting it in public, because I think, you know, there are, uh, m- borrowing from other peop- from a faith which I don't personally espouse, um, as- as a metaphor, uh...
- CWChris Williamson
Digital modesty will do. Okay, so no selfies.
- MHMary Harrington
So no selfies, no pictures of my home, no pictures of my child, no pictures of my husband. No discussing my husband, my child, or my home, um, except in the most general terms. Um, and, you know, and really no, no, no discussing intimate matters from my social life and my, my family life and my home life-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... um, unless it's in- in the most general terms or with the consent of anybody else involved. Because ultimately, like, these are my, these... by virtue of being relationships, they're things which don't just belong to me. And because it doesn't just belong to me, I can't mine it, I have no right to mine that for content.
- CWChris Williamson
Justify for the non-content creator people why a degree of digital modesty is also a good idea.
- MHMary Harrington
Okay, so the- the more I thought about digital modesty, the more I realized that what we're actually talking about is dre- is- is- is setting boundaries on the culture of transparency. Um, this is really something which I think we've inherited from the 1960s and the sort of hippie utopianism, and this idea that, you know, if we all let it all hang out, if we're just open about everything, if we all just share and we're- we're honest and we're authentic, then somehow everything's gonna be better. And that might have been true bef-, maybe that was true to an extent before the internet because there was a limit on what you could share. But now we have the internet, we could theoretically be documenting literally every moment of our lives. And on those occa- you know, those people who've tried documenting li- literally every aspect of their lives online have generally ended up in some pretty horrible places. I mean, I can't remember the name of the guy, but there was, there was a famous, there- there was a famous subculture... The- the- the- the, there was some guy online who- who- who documented literally ev- every aspect of his life and he ended up getting trolled and he- he basically went to some very dark places and ended up, you know, yeah, in an, in- in profound kind of, yeah, the, uh, really sinister kinds of audience capture. Um...
- CWChris Williamson
It wasn't Nikocado Avocado, was it? The guy who ate...
- MHMary Harrington
Oh, he, he, he's a more recent case in point, actually.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Okay.
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, you know, people who end up sort of, you know, crying and breaking up with, with... and- and getting back together again with his boyfriend whilst eating-
- CWChris Williamson
For views.
- MHMary Harrington
... enormous plates of food basically for internet clout. You know, there's a, there's a sort of race to the bottom aspect there. But- but- but more generally, even for people who are not, uh, professional internet, uh, uh, presence havers-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... um, the- the culture of, the- the culture of transparency and the sort of tyranny of transparency has negative effects. Now, I b- I was thinking about this be- like in the context of dating. I mean, you- you- you know periodically you see these TikToks which- which young men or women put out where they're like, "Oh, you know, I d- I've just, I- I- I..." Point of view, you're on a date, and they're literally filming the date, um, while they're on the date, and then they're criticizing the- the- the- their counterpart on the date while they're actually doing it, or they've gone to the loo to make a TikTok about how- how their date is going wrong while they're actually having the date. And I'm thinking, well, if you, if you never draw a line and say... if- if you co-, if you arrive in a sort of potentially intimate situation, you always got that imagined audience in your head-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... which is potentially everybody on the internet, how are you ever supposed to create a shared intimacy with anybody? And I was thinking, so it's like transparency is not just the en- en- enemy of desire. Transparency is the enemy of intimacy. It's the enemy of relationships. And you... if- if there's nothing, if there's no gap at all between what you'd say on main and what you'd say in private, there's- this intimacy is just meaningless. It's not a thing.
- CWChris Williamson
One of
- 6:14 – 11:59
How Phones Have Created a Surveillance Society
- CWChris Williamson
my friends who I came up doing club promo with, he was in Southampton and I was in Newcastle running the same event, Carnage, which was an event where you bought a T-shirt as your ticket and y- there was tasks on the back, like, uh, pull the pig, got off with three randoms, uh, swap shoes with somebody, et cetera, et cetera, right? Very sort of mid-noughties, lairy British drinking culture stuff. Um, and I was asking him where he thought that the lairy culture, which although maybe not exactly, like, emotionally healthy, is a kind of, uh, liberated licentiousness, uh, which kind of speaks of a degree of transparency and honesty and truth. Like, "I'm just going to do what I want," right? "I'm not going to perform." Uh, and where that had gone, where, like, the lairy, like, you know, pulled randoms in a club type thing, 'cause that's not what happens. We see-
- MHMary Harrington
Doesn't happen anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
No, and he said it's because of this sort of-
- MHMary Harrington
Imaginary audience.
- CWChris Williamson
... Stasi surveillance state run by gullible volunteers, which is everybody with a phone in their pocket.
- MHMary Harrington
Yep. Yep. Exactly that. You know, there's no, there, there's no s- You, you can't do pranks. You can't, you can't have a, a, a crazy night out with your friends anymore. I mean, I (laughs) we, we threw some completely bonkers parties when I was, when I was i- you know, late teens, early 20s. And r- I remember the, the absinthe and laughing gas party, which I can only remember kind of in, in bursts. And that was a magical evening, which are, you know, unforgettable and also unrememberable. Um, but there's absolutely no way that could have happened, any of it, um, if, if, if camera phones had been a thing at the time. And I'm thinking, you know, there are, there are a huge number of benefits that come. You know, there are new kinds of communication and there are new forms of relationship. I mean, you and I wouldn't be sitting here talking to one another if it wasn't for this phenomenal technology that we have that brings people together in some ways. But if we, if we're not able and willing to set boundaries, um, on what we will and won't share, then it, it, it will eventually scoop out everything that's inside us and leave us no scope for intimacy or, uh, interpersonal connection at all.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, ultimately, everything becomes performant. Everything's content.
- MHMary Harrington
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
So I had a conversation with George, my friend, earlier on, and we were saying I had an aversion to taking photos for a while because given my Love Island alumnus status, I had seen a lot of people who did photos and I'd associated every time you take a photo of yourself or what you're doing or whatever, that is you shilling yourself for content on the internet. But that's not true. People took photos way longer before social media existed, so I had associated the only reason for taking a photo is to post it online, therefore I won't take a photo 'cause I don't wanna be one of those wanky Love Island people that post all of their life online. But that caused me to not post my life online, which I wasn't gonna do anyway, but also not take any photos of the fun stuff that I was doing. So I've got these huge dearths of, of my life where I don't have photos of me and my friends doing stuff. I went for lunch with Douglas the other day. I wanted to ca- uh, like, I was like, "I wanna remember this. I wanna remember the pink shirt that he was wearing and the fact that I had Crocs on," and like, you know, just, like, stuff. And I'm like, "Okay, let's take a photo, but I have to get over my own fear that I'm doing it for content, even though I know I'm not gonna post it." You know, it's like a, uh, y- like, like, fucking projecting myself into the future that I'm not a part of.
- MHMary Harrington
But is there stuff that you would just categorically never photograph?
- CWChris Williamson
No. No, I would, I would, it would be, like, times with friends, you know, like, I'm on a hike with some friends or whatever, but I'm in nature and I feel like I'm supposed to be, like, I'm primitive man here and I shouldn't have my phone out because it feels gauche somehow to do it or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It's like, "Here I am at the top of the mountain," but it's not. It's, "Here I am with my friend that I've just taken a hike with and I really want to remember this. Or maybe I'll frame it and put it on my wall at some point," or something like... That seems like all of that stuff's a good idea, that's a good use of technology up until the point at which you, everything becomes an OnlyFans for yourself.
- MHMary Harrington
I don't know, I'm possibly slightly more radical than that in the sense that, uh, well, I mean, I mean, I think about wh- when I'm, I, I run a lot, um, so I'll, I'll run, y-
- CWChris Williamson
Red flag.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs) Well, you, you, you lift, I run. It's just, you know, if it (laughs) . Uh, so, so I run a lot, and, and th- one of the reasons I run is 'cause I can't do that s- whilst simultaneously scrolling. Like I, I, but, the, the reason-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, yeah. But you can lift actually. You can do it in between sets of the gym.
- MHMary Harrington
But the, the reason, the reason I obsess about all of this stuff is because ulta- like, I'm, I'm so, so, like, hardwired to, to the, the, the rage machine. Like, I'm so plugged into the internet, which is why I, I find myself kind of wre- wrestling with the outer limits of it at all. And one of the reasons I run and one of the reasons I, I treat that as absolutely sacrosanct space in my life is because it's physically impossible to do that while simultaneously scrolling. And I have a, an absolutely cast iron rule for myself that it doesn't matter how beautiful the scene, doesn't matter how gorgeous the sunrise when I've gone for, like, a two-hour dawn run and I'm out in the middle of nowhere-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... I will not stop and photograph it.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- MHMary Harrington
I will not, I will not stop and record that because I don't want to allow space for that imaginary audience.
- CWChris Williamson
But, and, and s- see there, again, there's no reason... I, I understand why you do that. I think that's a noble, like, set of rules to set for yourself. The reason that that has happened is because of the social media side, not because of the photo side. Let's say that you had a beautiful photo album of all of the beautiful sunsets that you'd ever seen. It is, again, this sort of crossing over of the barrier of not just this is for me, but that there is something inbuilt into technology that kind of, like, infects, it gets into me. And if I open my phone, oh my god, what if I see a fucking notification from Twitter and then I'm sucked into a scroll hole-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and my entire run is, is ruined and stuff like that. And it's a, it's a shame that something which can be, you know, m- my videographer's got this, like, real special sort of point-and-click camera that is very low friction, and he bought it specifically, even though he had all of the kit in the world, but he bought this very specific camera, which is just point-and-shoot, and all it does is that. And he bought to remove the friction and remove the performative nature of this. So I just think it's, it's an interesting blend. But we s- you, you were talking before about how, um, uh,
- 11:59 – 18:31
The Danger of Political Opinion on Social Media
- CWChris Williamson
people who put a lot of themselves online, they can have unforeseen, uh, repercussions.
- MHMary Harrington
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I guess if a lot of people are clustering together over their political opinions, and if you even pseudonymously post hardcore political opinions on the internet, eventually the person that you're potentially looking to date is presumably gonna get exposed to whatever it is that you do online. And if you are a hardcore, i- if you're fucking st-... Bronze Age pervert or something. It's like, oh, all right, like and now I have this entire other side of you that needs to be folded into our dating pool.
- MHMary Harrington
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And I learned from Scott Galloway, in 1960, one in 25 parents had concerns about their child marrying someone from the opposite political party. By 2018, almost half of Democrat parents and a third of Republican parents had such concerns, and a third of each party sees the other party as an enemy. So given this sort of clustering around political opinions, more than many other things, and a lot of people doing the pseudonymous anonymous shit-posting online thing, you are potentially creating a future in which your, uh, entire mating pool has been restricted by opinions that you had six months ago, and you've got the choice between either lying to somebody about your shit-posting online thing or trying to somehow fold that into a conversation that they can be accepting of.
- MHMary Harrington
I'm not even sure how you, how you resolve that. I mean, I, I'm fortunate, I'm immensely blessed in that, uh, my husband and I met some time ago, and this was just, this has just never really been, you know, before, before even really-
- CWChris Williamson
Before you were an opinion sprayer.
- MHMary Harrington
B- before I was a professional opinion haver, a long time before I was a professional opinion haver, um, and really long before political polarization was anywhere near its current level of completely batshit crazy. So, I mean, it was, it was completely academic and, and the... (laughs) Ho- honestly, honestly, Chris, the, the advice I give to anybody, uh, anybody who's single and extremely online is date somebody who's just not very online.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
You know, you can only have one very online person in a relationship, you know, except in the most unusual circumstances.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, not two.
- MHMary Harrington
Because... And, and (laughs) anecdotally, from younger friends I know who are also opinion havers, whether anonymously or, uh, or, or un- on their, under their own faces, um, anecdotally, it's a real problem. Because (laughs) ... Well, I mean, you know, to quote one, one, n- one right-wing anon who I chat to periodically, who shall remain nameless, um, told me that... I mean, uh, I'm, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but, but essentially, um, he, he, he has a r- he has a real problem because he, if he... Like, he, he says I- if y- your choice is, your choice is between an e-girl, uh, a right-wing e-girl, and they're generally un- like, uh, a little uns- they can be on the unstable side, um, or somebody who doesn't know anything about your opinions, in which case, how on earth are you going to explain what you do, what you spend all day doing online? And furthermore, what, what's gonna happen when she finds out about your opinions on the internet?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
You know, it's, it's not gonna be great. No, it's a real problem. So, like, how, how, uh, how are you supposed to form any kind of a, any, any kind of a, a genuine mutually satisfying relationship under those circumstances? I don't know the answer. I mean, it, I, well, I suppose I come back again to, to digital modesty and the idea that we have to reserve some, some space for intimacy which is protected from, from the imaginary audience that we have on the internet. And actually, I think in some ways, what the anons do is, is wise in that sense, because by virtue of being anon, they've already drawn a, a very clear boundary. You know, they said there are... But, but, you know, if you want to stay, if you're anon and you want to stay anon, um, you, there are, there are, there's a whole swathe of stuff that you just can't share. You can't really post anything about where you are or what you do for a living or, you know, or, or anything that's too close to what, what your, what your day-to-day activity is. And so, and so that, that creates just by... Uh, it's, uh, it's a very, uh, ver- a very blanket way of setting some boundaries on what you're willing to share. But for the rest of us, uh, it's, it's a real challenge knowing, knowing where to draw those lines and where to, uh, and where to protect your, wh- wh- where to protect what's just yours and what belongs to you and the people you love.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. D- Douglas taught me a couple of years ago, uh, keep your private life private.
- MHMary Harrington
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
And, um, I think, you know, one of the things that people can see is that relationships and makeups and breakups and the vicissitudes of your personal life can be a very effective wedge to begin levering, uh, to be able to create, uh, an audience, right?
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the same as, it's the same as every person who decides to call out some other internet commentator and have an argument with them. That's a very effective way to garner...
- MHMary Harrington
Eyeballs.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, uh, yeah, attention and eyeballs. But at what cost? What does it say about you? What sorts of conversations does it open up?
- MHMary Harrington
And the machine always wants more.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, correct.
- MHMary Harrington
Doesn't, doesn't matter what, how much you feed it, the machine always wants more.
- CWChris Williamson
If you think that having a relationship is hard, try having a relationship with a couple of million people who are also invested in the outcomes of your relationship.
- MHMary Harrington
Right. You know, e- but every so often, I see, you know, some, I, uh, I see anons with a bit of a platform, you know, report that n- it, it's somehow, it somehow comes out that the, the two, two people who have a bit of a platform are, are having a relationship with one another. And all of a sudden, everybody cares and everybody want... And I'm like, "Why am I even invested in this? I have no idea who these people are."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
But it's... I, I don't know, may- maybe it's just a byproduct of being otherwise f- relatively atomized and feel like... And, uh, there's a basic human need-
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- MHMary Harrington
... to sort of feel like you have a wider community.
- 18:31 – 21:17
Why the Left Wouldn’t Date OnlyFans Subscribers
- CWChris Williamson
I found a study that I think is, is-... kind of associated. A survey was sent out, breaking down whether participants of different political ideologies would refuse to date a current OnlyFans worker and an OnlyFans subscriber. Percentages of participants who would not date a current OnlyFans worker, left-leaning 43, moderate 63, right-leaning 84. Percentages of women who would not date a current OnlyFans subscriber, left-leaning 70, moderate 78, right 84. So right is 84 for both, but there are way more left-leaning people who would date an OnlyFans worker than would date an OnlyFans subscriber. And I think that that says kind of quite a lot about some of the signaling that people on the left are looking to do at the moment, that like sex work is real work and we, you know, you can like monetize yourself as you wish. But there is still an inherent ick from women to the men who are a part of that ecosystem, even-
- MHMary Harrington
I wo- I would be curious to- to hear, like, what the s- what the methodology was and whether there was any effort to control for preference falsification.
- CWChris Williamson
How so?
- MHMary Harrington
Um, well, I mean, if y- when you think about- when it- when w- when you think about what orthodoxy is on the left, um, parti- well, around, you know, sex work is work and yada, yada, yada, um, I'd be willing to bet that there, there would be a subset of people who asked, you know, "Would you be willing to date an OnlyFans worker?" would lie, um, even if they weren't actually... e- e- even if, uh, actually, honestly, if you ask them in the pub, privately, off the record, it, they, they'd be like, "Yeah, no. Yeah, no, that gives me the ick." Um, if, if you ask them in that sort of a context, they would give, they would give the morally approved answer for, for their political tribe, which is, "Oh, yeah, that's fine, sex work is work." Or, I, I don't know, maybe some of them genuinely don't care, but I, but I, I'm willing to bet that, uh, it's a higher proportion, actually, of, uh, of, of men on, on both sides of the political spectrum who, who don't-
- CWChris Williamson
And what-
- MHMary Harrington
... actually find that appealing.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you learn about the wouldn't-date-a-current-OnlyFans-subscriber thing?
- MHMary Harrington
Okay. So, so the difference between ... well, I mean, let, let ... like, a guy who's addicted to porn is ba- is fundamentally low, low status, you know? And I think it's, it's poli- it's moral- it's considered morally acceptable across the entire political spectrum to dunk on, to, to, to, to dunk on lonely, like masturbatory horndogs.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
That's like no- nobody, nobody cares about them, you know? That, that's, that's ... you know, incels are low status.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
And so, so, so, yeah, yeah-
- CWChris Williamson
The simps and the perverts and the porn addicts.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, the, the simps, the simps, the perverts and the, and the porn-sick, like losers, like no- nobody cares about them. Everyone's happy to, to dunk on them. So there's less of a, less of a pressure to preference falsification, whereas, whereas, uh, women, women in the sex industry have a much b- much heftier architecture of sort of moral hectoring around them-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- MHMary Harrington
... at least on the left. So, so that would be, that would be my read on what's going on there-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
... uh, preference falsification.
- CWChris Williamson
What did you learn after the release of the Barbie movie?
- 21:17 – 24:30
The Message Behind the Barbie Movie
- CWChris Williamson
Did you reflect on sort of what that did culturally?
- MHMary Harrington
Did it do anything culturally?
- CWChris Williamson
I think that there was an awful lot of conversations around what true feminist power, feminine power means and whether or not there is still this sort of rampant patriarchy that is kind of keeping women down-
- MHMary Harrington
Huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... and so on and so forth. And then there was the right-wing reaction and there was the left ring, left-wing re-reaction to the right-wing reaction and all the rest of it. So I, I thought it was interesting, you know? If ... anything that Ben Shapiro needs to do a 45-minute video about, like, after he's watched Dressed as Ken-
- MHMary Harrington
(clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
... I thought was an interesting, uh ... yeah, I thought it was an interesting opportunity.
- MHMary Harrington
My favorite read on the Barbie movie was, was that, that it was a straightforwardly reactionary text, um, that it was-
- CWChris Williamson
What do you mean?
- MHMary Harrington
My ... an- and that it was, it was arguing fu- fundamentally against feminism and arguing fundamentally for women as, w- the, for, for, for the embodied differences between men and women, and that, that there was, there was nothing, there was nothing progressive or feminist about it at all. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
How so? How, uh, what would you say to the people who are like, "How could you say this?" There is, it was, um ... obviously it was pushing back against men and men were on the receiving end of all of the jokes and they laughed at them and all the rest of the things.
- MHMary Harrington
But they ... but pregnant Barbie was expelled from the Barbieverse. I mean, there's no darker commentary on the, on the pr- on the boundaries of liberal feminism (laughs) . I mean, this is, this is what I spend my entire professional career harping on about, Chris-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... is the, is the fact that liberal feminism has a mother-shaped blind spot. And it's right there in the film. It's, uh, you know, it's as though, it's as though the ... I mean, even if it was meant as a liberal feminist text, it's a liberal feminist text that's telling on itself in a, in a sort of compulsive, verbal diarrheal-ish way-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
... and I ... and, and, and this is the, th- this is the reactionary read of, of the Barbie movie. I mean, you know, pro- from y- I suppose you could say that it's, it's in the nat- like, a good piece of art is never, i- is never a straightforward politic- piece of political propaganda, you know? It doesn't work. Like, good stories are never, are never straightforward moral lectures. You know, good stories always, always contain the, the, the, the other perspective and good stories are always just more complicated than that. But I mean, even if, even if it was intended as a piece of, of feminist propaganda, it told on itself in some powerful ways, um, including by hi- th- that detail of expelling pregnant Barbie from the Barbieverse.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 24:30 – 29:33
Is Our Culture Anti-Family?
- CWChris Williamson
I was talking to Louise about the unobvious ways in which our culture is anti-family. I didn't get-
- MHMary Harrington
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... round to actually finding out, I just harped on myself.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, what would you say some of the-... ways that people might not realize that culture could be anti-family.
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I, I can give you a very straightforward anecdote. So I don't live in London, I live, I live out in the boonies. Um, uh, I have, I've traveled into London with a toddler in a pushchair. Um, and you know, occasionally somebody will help you up and down the steps on the Tube with your pushchair. Sometimes people do, and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes people don't. Um, but like nobody will really give you the time of day, nobody looks at your kid. Um, c- can't really ex-, I'm not sure that I could explain why. I've also traveled into London with a dog. Um, everybody wants to talk to your dog.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Is, is it not just that dogs are better than humans across the board?
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, you're, you're, you're daughter's beautiful and, and, and very lovely, but it's impossible to be better than a dog, I think. That's the way it works.
- MHMary Harrington
You, you only say that 'cause you don't have kids.
- CWChris Williamson
True, fair enough. Look, here's the thing that I, I've also realized. Dog walks past you, you're, everybody... A dog is kind of like, it's the world's pet. It's not your pet because you are allowed to go over and tap it on the head and, "What's your name?" And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If someone... Presumably, it might be nicer if more people acknowledged your daughter as she walked by, but if they started coming over and patting her on the head, and, and feeding it treats-
- MHMary Harrington
Do you think in other countries that actually happens? I mean, maybe not the feeding treats, but in other countries, like people respond to a, to a random child completely differently. You get warm looks, you get interactions from strangers.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
It's only in Britain that people are like, "Oh, I must not look at your child." And I don't, I don't know that I under- I don't fully understand the psychology behind not looking at somebody else's child or not wanting to even acknowledge that there's a little person in the vicinity.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you wonder if, do you wonder if-
- MHMary Harrington
But there's something very distinctive about it.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you wonder if it's like the nonce radar thing, that people are so concerned of being seen as like some latent sexual predator?
- MHMary Harrington
There is, for men that's definitely a factor, and I, I know that because I've, I've spoken about it with, with male friends and peers who-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
... you know, who, who confirm to me that they, they'll, they'll be very cautious about interacting with, with mothers and children in, in, in a public setting-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
... um, because they're terrified of being labeled in that way. And I think there's something really toxic about that, and something-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I've found, I think I've told you this, that over the last few years my paternal instinct has started to kick in, and children have gone from being super annoying and lame to like kind of cute. So, but I, I see a child now, like let's say it's like some little girl is being walked along by her mother or her father or whatever in the park near where I live, and I'm like, I wanna, like I grin at whoever the... Over the top, go over the top.
- MHMary Harrington
I'm like, "No, no, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. I'm going this way." Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Um, and I'm like-
- MHMary Harrington
This is, this is huge. Like I-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, well it's enough water, you're high, you're a highly performance athlete. Um, and I like have a grin at the child as they walk past, and I'm thinking, "Oh, fucking hell."
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- 29:33 – 40:28
The Crisis of Masculinity & Femininity
- MHMary Harrington
from that.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a lot, you know, going back to kind of, I guess, Barbie's cultural commentary, uh, there's a lot of talk about the crisis of masculinity at the moment. If I was to make a prediction for the next sort of five to 10 years, I think that I would project out that there will be a big crisis of femininity coming down the pike, at least a little bit. I, I think that it, it, it can't be the case that women continue to grow up, because there is a dearth of good male role models, but the female role models-... are no better. The only difference is that they're allowed to be on TV more, that they get more air time, and that when women have problems, there is a little bit more mainstream sympathy.
- MHMary Harrington
I think that's probably true. I mean, I- I suppose I would frame it very slightly differently. Um, like the- the problem as I see it isn't... It's not- it's not necessarily just a crisis of masculinity or a crisis of femininity. It's a total crisis of embodied humanness which hits the sexes differently, um, and which is downstream of having developed a culture in which almost nothing about our physical bodies makes very much difference at all, um, at least if you- if you live in- i- if- if you do a knowledge-based... if your- if your occupation is in the world of information. I mean if you- if- if... I mean, if you're an oil rig worker, obviously, like, your- your physical body matters a lot, you know, d- to an ex- you know, if you do something physical. Um, but those- those... that- that pr- as a proportion of the economy has been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking with- with indus- de-industrial... first- first with, uh, the- the- the de- rural depopulation as agriculture industrialized, and then with the Industrial Rev- with- with de-industrialization- de-industrialization as the second tier of that. You know, the number of people who do manual work has been shrinking with every generation-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... and- and the number of people who do- w- who- who work in the world of information has been growing. And, I mean, if you work in the world of information, it doesn't matter what shape your body is, really.
- CWChris Williamson
Gender-neutral occupations.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, exactly. They're- they're all gender-neutral occupations. In theory, any of us could be driving a spreadsheet. It doesn't matter, you know? And- and-
- CWChris Williamson
Driving a spreadsheet.
- MHMary Harrington
And arguably... I mean, the same, the same goes arguably to a great extent for the, for the... being a professional opinion-haver, it doesn't matter what sex you are. And-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, the keyboard wielders can be the same sex.
- MHMary Harrington
Right. It do- it doesn't matter, and- and- and there's a real... there's a concrete question which face- confronts all of us in that context, which is, "To what extent does... do our bodies even matter?" And I think really this is what the gender ideologues are pushing at from the opposite direction. You know, c- that they're- they're making a very strong statement that, you know, "What shape my body is doesn't matter, so much so in fact that I'm entitled to remodel mine as I see fit," and- and they... and- and making, building a whole prof- political platform on the basis of that premise. And- and wha- uh, else... bu- bu- but everybody is confronted with the same que- even people who are not signed up to the whole sort of Meet Lego worldview. Ev- everyone's confronted with the same question. "If- if I'm driving a spreadsheet or being a professional opinion-haver, like, what diff- what difference does it even matter? You know, who cares? Who cares what shape my body is?" You know, is- is masculinity... or, you know, what does it mean to be a man or to be a woman when- when we're all just, you know, disembodied heads on the internet?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
I- I don't know the answer to that, but I grapple with it every day.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's definitely something I think that people grapple with, and ultimately, you know, given that work is maybe one of the most important things that you do, that might contribute. But there will be times where your biology and your predisposition smash up against your nature and the experiences that you have in life.
- MHMary Harrington
I completely agree, and I think this is... this is what we... this is what it would benefit all of us to- to be more... to be talking more about and to be leaning more into. And, I mean, sometimes it... you- I- you... I see people making early attempts at that or sort of trying to, trying to find ways into that, and you get these sort of ridiculous kind of trans-subcultures, for example, who are trying to find ways to be men and women-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... in a sort of post-human age, which is really kinda what we're talking about here. You know, and- and it kind of doesn't work, and it's kind of cringe, and often, I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Wha- what would be an example?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I mean... Okay, so, uh, j- uh, backing up a bit, so there was a, there was a real... like, among the alt-right in particular, this is something which I've been reading into a bit recently. Um, among the alt-right, you know, in the... between sort of 2016 and maybe 2020, there was a real... there- there were... there was a real boom in influences of both sexes but actually quite a lot of young women, um, who were, who were calling for... you know, pushing back against the kind of modern degeneracy and saying, "You know, we should all, we should all re-embrace traditional gender roles, and we should have more tr- sort of traditional set-up relationships, and that m- we could fight back against the collapse of everything in that way." Um, as it turned out, a lot of those... a lot of the women who actually tried doing that, um, just absolutely hated it or, or at least the- the relationships were really messed up, and it turned... you know, a lot of the relationships were abusive. And there are women who are coming out of that now having survived an at- an alt-right attempt at a trad relationship who were just massively beaten up and traumatized by the experience and who are now this sort of unhinged kind of subset of, uh, like, post-alt-right radical feminists, and-
- CWChris Williamson
What was their... what was their experience of the relationship like?
- MHMary Harrington
Um, well, I mean, um, I- I... Uh, if you... if- if you want an example of somebody who went... who went all the way through s- one, uh, one variant of this, you should look up Lauren Southern's story.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, you know, w- without wanting to make any comment on her opinions or her political trajectory, but, I mean, she- sh- she went through something along these lines and ended up living in a trailer park with a- with a toddler, um, you know, having, having married somebody who was possibly a fed? Uh, it was- it was all- all very-
- CWChris Williamson
That's full horseshoe.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah. Right, I mean, it- it was a cr- absolutely crazy arc, and, you know, having, having leaned all the way into being a kind of alt-right, you know, trad, anti-feminist influencer, she en- yeah, she ended up as a single mother living in a trailer park, um, and is now... I don't- I don't know what she's doing now. But yeah, I mean, there are... there are a great many people who d- who sincerely tried to kind of re-synthesize something like the old- the old way of- of men and women interacting and have found that it just- just blew up underneath them. And I don't know. For all I know, there were... there are relationships who formed and- that- which are still flourishing, but there are a lot... there are a lot of others that went extremely wrong.
- CWChris Williamson
What is it that's blowing it up?
- MHMary Harrington
(sighs) I don't know. I- I- I... honestly, I think, like, trying to- trying to reverse engineer a set of- a set of soc- sex differences without the material underpinnings which created those sexed diff- those different sexed social norms is just... it's a- it's a fool's errand, honestly.
- CWChris Williamson
What like? Can you get specific?
- MHMary Harrington
Okay. (sighs) I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Like, vague but specific.
- 40:28 – 47:39
Why The Trad Wife Movement Won’t Work
- CWChris Williamson
the, we should return to a tradcon history in the future is that, that's just a, a dead end, as far as you're concerned?
- MHMary Harrington
Well, I, I, I think we need to be m- we just need to be a bit more attentive to where we are, and I think we can, we can afford to be a little bit more respectful of indi- the, the dynamics within individual couples. I mean, it's, it, it's generally... Like, there are patterns which emerge, you know? In any, in any given heterosexual couple, you know, that's been together long term, there'll be, there'll be things which are more typical of the male partner and things which are more typical of the female partner. And I th- and that's fine, you know? We shouldn't be trying to fight against those stereotypes if th- if they're what works for people. But I, uh, but, uh, but I don't see much point in imposing, im- imposing kind of you should be doing this or you shouldn't be doing that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
You know? 'Cause, 'cause ultimately, you know, people, people work out-
- CWChris Williamson
But people need guidelines. People do need guidelines.
- MHMary Harrington
... but, but people, you know, p- people work, people, people can figure out what works best for them. I mean, here's h- here's one example. Uh, so like talking in very general terms, I mean, I've made the argument that the problem with tradwives as such is that they're just not trad enough, um, in the sense that the, w- what they're harking back to is a sort of midce- mid-20th century template, which was actually only true for a very small subset of the middle class.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- MHMary Harrington
And which is distinct- in itself distinctively modern, because in, in premodern times, all women worked, pretty m- apart from the, the very, very richest.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. So you're saying-
- MHMary Harrington
And so, so the idea of like-
- CWChris Williamson
... "Fucking send it further back, agrarian, grab your"-
- MHMary Harrington
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... "pestle and mortar and hoe and get working in the-"
- MHMary Harrington
So, so, so the question I want to ask is what, what does a 21st century version of the premodern inc- productive household look like? You know, the, the, the house, you know, wh- where the, the basic economic unit is your household. And so you, you've agreed you're all in it together, you're there for the long term. You know, everything that you do, you do for the team. Um, and then it's, then it's just a matter of agreeing of, of, of figuring out how, how we, how to get the best out of everybody. And I, and I, I can't, I'm not interested in legislating for any given couple what that looks like.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, and in, in a, in a modern context, whereas most of us work in the world of, in the world of bits and bytes anyway, I, I, I don't know. I can't, I can't s- I can't make that determination for you.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, but, but you, but there will be a way, you know? When you, when you form your household, and you, and you, and you make your decision about how you can get the best out of your productive household, there'll be a, there'll be a, there'll be a pattern. And I think there's, there's no shame in, in accepting that sometimes that can fit into a more traditional mold.
- CWChris Williamson
What-Was that insight that you had about women needing to develop a strategy for not having it all?
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs) Well, I guess, that's just a variation on talking about productive households. Because, I mean, when, a- again, in Feminism Against Progress, uh, the, the analogy I've given is weaving, which I think is, it's a very, it's a very powerful illustration of what happened to, to women's work at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in that, for, for some sort of 10, 20, 30,000 years prior to the Industrial Revolution, weaving was always women's work, and there are very, there are solid practical reasons for that. Um, you can... Weaving is something, I mean, the- a household needs textiles, right? You know, you don't have textile factories, somebody needs to make textiles. You know, you need them for clothes, and you need them for all sorts of different things. So, so somebody's got to do the weaving, um, and, and somebody's also got to look after the kids. Happily, weaving and looking after kids are fairly compatible 'cause you can raise a loom off the floor, um, you can, you can put down, you can put down your repetitive... Well, you can do it whilst keeping an eye on, you know, toddlers or small people running around. And it's interruptible and it's social, so, so it's, it's ideal work to be, to be getting on with while you've also got small children underfoot. And so, for, for millennia, millennia after millennia, uh, weaving has been women's work. Um, but, but weaving was also one of the first industries to move out of the home, um, into factories. And at that point, uh, at that point, it was very, it was much more difficult for it to continue to be women's work and, you know, those, those working class women who went to work in the textile mills had real dilemmas on their hands, 'cause, I mean, what are you meant to do with your breastfed baby, you know? And there was, there was, there are horror stories-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
... about, you know, how, how women tried, tried their best to cope with that, you know, babies drugged with opium or, you know, left to starve, or, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... in, you know, left in the inadequate care of, uh... Yeah, there was awf- awful stuff. And then, and then there were those women who, tho- there were those women who, who respond by just saying, "Okay, fine. We're, we're not gonna make the textiles anymore, so we're just gonna focus on, on different stuff." Um, but, but, but the point is that, um, if you're, if it... Weave- yeah, wi- wi- weaving is a, is a fine example of, of, of the kind of work which w- which can wi- which in the i- in pre-modern times took place within a productive household. And, and I suppose the question I have is, you know, what kinds of work? Like, let's say you want to be a mum, th- and let's say you've got small children around underfoot, what's, wha- what's the equivalent work that's a bit interruptible, that's a bit social, that's a bit, um, you can pick it up and put it down again? Um-
- CWChris Williamson
That's not what people think about when they think about have it all though, right? It's, "I want to-"
- MHMary Harrington
Well, you can't have it all. Come on. Everybody knows that. Or they ought to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
Like, enough feminists prior to me have, have, have, have, have leveled with the world, you know, you can't have it all. You know, you can have a lot, um, and you can, you can have a great time doing it, but you can't have it all, all of the time, all at once, you know? You have to do so- some things one after another.
- CWChris Williamson
Louise said that she, uh, she worked it out and she was doing 40 hours a week of breastfeeding.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- 47:39 – 52:33
How Divorce is a PsyOp
- MHMary Harrington
them.
- CWChris Williamson
Adam Lane-Smith's got this thing about how, um, "Don't forget that moving out of the house at 18 is a psy-op by the mortgage industry to turn one family into two homes."
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, you could, you could make the argument, same argument for the divorce industry. You know, there are, there are genuinely op- oh, opinion pieces out there from divorce lawyers, um, arguing that divorce is good for the GDP, which it is.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. I mean, Mia Khali-
- MHMary Harrington
And it's kind of dark.
- CWChris Williamson
Mia Khalifa-
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, very famous porn star, said, um, uh, "Marriage is nothing sacred." This is a recent video she put up. "Marriage is nothing sacred. It's just a piece of paper. If the person that you're with isn't helping you grow, you need to let them go." Uh, obviously, Mia Khalifa is a paragon of successful relationships, um, and-
- MHMary Harrington
I would respectfully disagree with the sentiment.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, I just thought, uh, I, I had this really, really great guy, and I'm gonna send you the episode when it goes up, this dude called Mads Laursen.
- MHMary Harrington
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And he tracked all of the different Western mating ideologies over time and how they were, uh, adaptive for the particular cultural, uh, time. And he goes through, you know, the, like, agrarian, the, uh, romantic, and he calls the one that we're in now the confluent.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... era, you know. Uh-
- MHMary Harrington
I mean, the, the coinage which I've used in the book is, uh, it's not actually my coinage. I forget the, the sociologist who coined it, but the self-expressive marriage, which I think is a very good... And, and really what, what... The quote, the quote from Khalifa that you just-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... you just offered, is a perfect expression-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... of the, the self-expressive marriage.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
This idea that, you know, your, your partner is, is, is a vector for your self-actualization, and the moment they stop delivering on that front, you can kick 'em to the curb.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
You know, there's no, there's no sense of mutual solidarity, there's no sense of being in it for the long haul, there's no commitment to anything which is bigger than yourself, uh, necessarily.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, except as it, um... In, except in this very transactional sense of it, it, it bri- de- delivering goods for you. And, and the mom- the moment that starts to, that, that starts to falter or you, it goes through a rough patch for any reason, you're wholly entitled to sever the contract and go and look for it somewhere else. It's incredibly consumerist paradigm, but I would, I, I've ar- I argue that the, the issue with that, um, is that we, we don't live in the age of... We no longer live in the age of, age of economic abundance, which, which underpinned and gave rise to that marriage ideology. It's just, you know, v- except for, except for the wealthiest who are just rich enough to survive divorce and to have their children come out, you know, only mildly fucked up rather than deeply fucked up.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
Um, you know, for everybody else who's further down the food chain, you know, I mean, divorce, you know, divorce and single parenthood is an absolute catastrophe for a great many of the women who go through it, because they, it's almost always the women who end up with, with, with care of the children. And, I mean, the, and the feminization of poverty, quote unquote, is directly downstream of the breakdown of, of families.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, uh, it, it comes back to it again, the luxury beliefs idea. Rob was here this morning.
- MHMary Harrington
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and, yeah, it just bears repeating again. The best thing that I've learned from you, and you taught me it before your book was even out, the rules that are made by the upper classes are luxury beliefs that don't impact them. They impact the poorest women and the poorest families and the poorest children. So, it is one straight line from chivalry is good and you should hold the door open for women that you don't know as you go in and out of a hotel, right down to, you shouldn't beat your wife. Like it is a single, straight-
- 52:33 – 59:13
Mary’s Thoughts on Surrogacy
- CWChris Williamson
What's your thoughts on the surrogacy industry?
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs) I think it should be banned, all of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Banned?
- MHMary Harrington
Yep. Across the board. I don't think surrogacy should be a thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- MHMary Harrington
Little ba- little babies need their mothers. Um, and, and mothers are not in t- uh, um, uh, no, no woman... Uh, a woman is not a factory, you know. Gestation is not a process of manufacturing to, the, for, uh, to produce a product which can then be handed over willy-nilly to, to another, another carer. Um, pregnancy doesn't just create a baby. Pregnancy creates a mother. Um, it, it... Pregnancy rewires your brain. It, it transforms you through a series of, you know, b- you know, you, you get sort of ho- hormone-bathed f- for nine months over the c- You know, and over the course of that, your body changes. Your, your, your breasts change. Ev- everything about you changes in a... And, and you... It, it completely reorients you towards pri-
- CWChris Williamson
Ready to receive baby.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah. Re- ready to receive, and, and to, to receive baby and to prioritize the care of baby. So in, in a cert- you're, you're, uh, this is, this is not just true across the human species. It's true across countless animal species. You're primed for attachment and you're primed for atten- attunement-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
... to your child. Um, and, uh, uh, of course, this is not to say that, th- th- this is not to say that adoptive parents don't do a brilliant job, and there are countless adoptive parents who do wonderful jobs and, and do, and care for... and, and care wonderfully for their adopted children. However, um, everybody, everybody accepts that a motherless child is in a... Is off to a weaker start than, than, than the, uh, uh, than a child born into a loving home where, w- w- with, with their mother and father. And there's a reason for that, and it's because the, the attu- uh, attunement, the, the, that come the... That, that basic biological level of attunement and attachment that's primed through the process of pregnancy, um, is, is essential from birth onwards to, to laying the absolute foundations of what it means to be an integrated person. Um, and, and to say... And, and I think it's just profoundly morally wrong to say we should, we should create a h- you know, a new life with the, with the expressed intention of severing that bond at birth because somebody... just for the sake of adult desires. I think that's profoundly inverting the duty of care that we owe to dependent infants. You know, we should be prioritizing their needs, not ours.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see the episode I did with Dr. Anna Machin about Life of Dad and about how... Yes, this... I'll send it to you. It's so good. So she looked at the role of fathers kind of throughout all of a child's...... upbringing to they leave the home, and talked about how, I think, that one of her pregnancies was, uh, particularly difficult and, um, th- then she and the child had been taken away after the birth, which was successful and, and she was okay. Uh, and the dad was just left in there. No one even came up to him, and he just thought that like mom could be dead, daughter c-
- MHMary Harrington
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... child could be dead, uh, a- and no one e- ever spoke to him about it. You know, all of the pre-child classes, I don't know what they're called, um, all of them are focused on mom. Mom's the one that's gonna give birth, it's her body that goes through the stress, et cetera, et cetera. But she said fathers can deal with, uh, uh, like post-child depression. What's it called?
- MHMary Harrington
Postpartum.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. Postpartum depression. Dads can get that, um, there's this really, really common, uh, issue that fathers encounter, which I saw firsthand and then she talks about in the book, which is that, uh, wife is pregnant, future dad-to-be knows that wife is pregnant six, seven, eight, nine months deep. Dad doesn't feel like he cares about child. Dad doesn't have any change in paternal instinct. Dad doesn't have any cascading-
- MHMary Harrington
The bond develops after birth for dads. It develops.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, and then there's plenty of evidence he-
- CWChris Williamson
But they feel guilt and shame.
- MHMary Harrington
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I was s- sat in this... I remember where I was sat in Austin with this room, like, m- 100 millionaire, 100 millionaire, billionaire, millionaire, millionaire, 100 millionaire, or like big hitters all the way around this room. And it was one of these, "You know, guys, if anyone's got anything that they're, you know, they wanted a bit of advice on, we've got a room of people that are pretty capable in here and you can say what you want." This dude was like, "Wife's eight months pregnant, don't think I'm gonna love the kid. What do I do?" And the dude sat across from him was like, "Give it six months after the birth, everything will change." But that fear and the guilt and the shame and, "Can I tell my partner? Does this mean I don't love my partner? Does this mean I'm gonna be a terrible father?" You know, all of these things, like that one insight from that episode, I haven't had so many tags and messages from guys in a really long time 'cause they... I thought, I thought I was broken. I thought I was defective, uh, or I am going through this right now. My wife is X months pregnant or the child is three months old. And I'm like, "I just feel nothing for this kid." And-
- MHMary Harrington
And it, and it just takes longer for men. Okay, so now bringing it back to surrogacy. So now imagine that, um, instead of, instead of it being the dad who takes, who takes that long to develop the bond with the child, now it's both parents because neither parent has been through the biological priming process of pregnancy.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, now, and now imagine... Now, let- let's... We... I can't prove that this is gonna do, this is gonna impact on the n- on the life of a newborn baby, but I would bet you any money that it will. And I think it's just profoundly wrong to take that immediate, immediate love of, of, of motherhood away from... To intentionally deprive a child of that in the name of adult desire. I just think that's profoundly morally wrong and we shouldn't be allowing it.
- CWChris Williamson
I think I saw a video. I was told about a video of one of the Kardashians.
- MHMary Harrington
Yes. The, one of the Kardashians who was very open about this and she's, you know, she, she procured a child by surrogacy, um, and then-
- CWChris Williamson
Procured. (laughs)
- MHMary Harrington
Yep, um, uh, it's, it's human trafficking, Chris. It's human trafficking.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Just using your own genetics.
- MHMary Harrington
So... Yeah. It's human trafficking using y- using sometimes your own genetics. So she proci- she procured a baby via surrogacy and was very open about the fact that she really struggled to bond with, with the baby. And I was thinking, you know, so, so okay, like, well, we can all, we can all empathize with you maybe, but, like, can we, can we just think about what the baby's going through here? This is a newborn baby who needs to be surrounded by love and t- and responded to with care and, you know, nursed whenever it n- and he- picked up and held whenever he or she needs it. And, and, and both parents are struggling to bond. Uh, both parents are, are, are feeling nothing and both parents have-
- 59:13 – 1:11:57
The Problem With Matt Walsh & the Right
- CWChris Williamson
that?
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Tell me about Matt Walshism.
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs) This is, this my... I mean, I don't, I don't normally, I don't normally pick named fights with, with people and wh- but when I, when I talk about Ma- Matt Walshism, this is, this is a frustration I have sometimes with the, with certain elements on the, on, on the right, the, the sort of anti-feminist right, if you like. You know, and this, this, this really comes down to, you know, where, where my arguments come from which is about the, uh, material conditions and feminism emerging out of the, the technological transformations first of the industrial era and later of the cyborg era. Um, and, uh, and my, my argument that really we have to, we have to look at where we are in terms of the, the material and the technological conditions which are producing the, uh, these, these challenges that we now face. And sometimes I, I find, uh, find myself frustrated with those elements on the right who seem to think that everything about modern life can stay the same except what women do and then everything will be fine.
- CWChris Williamson
Give me an example.
- MHMary Harrington
Um, so, so for example, you know, it's... Uh, let me, um, let me think of an example. That everything of, everything that's wrong in the dating culture will be wrong if, if the... would be fixed if women would just stop being whores. To tell... I mean, that's a very crude example but it's a sentiment that I hear. You know, women just need to stop being whores and everything will be fine. And I'm like, "Well, okay, but, you know, you... Uh, does that mean you're gonna stop shagging around? Does that mean you're gonna s- stop having contraceptived sex with, with random women? Does that mean you're going to stop watching porn?" Does that mean... I mean, so many (laughs) I mean, some- somebody... Yep. So, so, so many of these quote unquote "trad men" have semi-public porn habits, you know, and will... a, a, uh, completely indiscriminate about liking, like, sort of ethot accounts on, on Instagram-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
... you know, whilst simultaneously inveighing against, you know, against, you know, trad women, you know, cov- sh- i- displaying more than a few square inches of skin-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- MHMary Harrington
... on the internet. And I'm thinking, you know, will you look at yourselves for a minute?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
You know what I mean? If we're gonna have chastity, can we have fucking chastity across the board? You know, I'm, I'm all for more chastity but let's all, let's all be in, in the party, please. You know? And if it, and if it really is just about everything staying the same except what women do, then, uh, oh, yeah, I... to, to me it's the right wing equivalent of thumb sucking. It's just failing to look at any of those deeper structural drivers of some of, of the difficulties that we face and just, just re- retreating back into, "Oh, it's all... Oh, it's just the fault of those nasty women."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
And sometimes, sometimes it is the fault of those nasty women but not always and it's never just us.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that's interesting. And to think about, um, that-... you got some rule of thumb about how every political movement, when it becomes mainstream, is reduced to its-
- MHMary Harrington
The most-
- CWChris Williamson
... most idiot possible-
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... i- idiotic possible-
- MHMary Harrington
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... version?
- MHMary Harrington
Yes. The most imbecilic possible version of it-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
... well, is guaranteed to be the one that goes mainstream.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's just th- the path of least resistance of memes, right?
- MHMary Harrington
I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the more, the more reductive something becomes, the more-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MHMary Harrington
... yeah, the more reductive it becomes.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, I, again, I had a conversation for two hours today about memes, you know, and the number of times that we quoted "meme first, explain later."
- MHMary Harrington
(laughs)
Episode duration: 1:19:37
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