This Essay Made Me An Even Angrier Angry Feminist
Progressive Feminism or Patriarchy - Which Is Worse??? (I'm So Tired)
Feminism has been consistently manipulated, watered down, weaponized, and misunderstood since its inception. In public discourse, the feminist can shape-shift to embody the cultural anxiety of almost any given historical moment. She’s cool like that. Feminists are bra-burners, man-haters, girlbosses, and corporate hustlers. They are tradwives, bitter divorcees, and joyless mothers. And feminists are also to blame for patriarchy - did you know?!
In response to an essay fed to me by the Substack algorithm a few weeks ago,
and I will attempt to understand whether progressive feminists allegedly policing the desires and joys of other women are to blame for a country that is desperate to define and control women according to their reproductive potential. Due to the personal nature of the discussion (and the fact that the trolls tend to come out when women interrogate mandated expressions of maternal bliss), we’ve paywalled this piece.
Sara: The other day, I came across a Substack essay by Sarah Menkedick which vehemently argued that the London Times profile of Hannah Neeleman (the one that cast Daniel as controlling) was essentially a hit piece written by a motherless woman eager to forward her unyielding, incurious feminist agenda. The piece sort of blew me away and I immediately wanted to talk about it with you, Kate! Maybe this quote is a good place to start the conversation:
The problem, particularly for those feminists stridently arguing against ‘choice feminism,’ is that sometimes what women want – to stay home with a baby, to give up their career for a stretch to be with their children, to savor domestic life – is also what patriarchy wants women to want. So the feminist answer has been a stark and simple one: stop wanting it. Your wanting it forces us all to want it.
Kate: I am filled with suspicion every time someone refers vaguely to “feminism” and “feminists” rather than individual feminists who have argued specific things. I don’t know of any feminists, at least since Simone de Beauvoir, who have derogated the vital caregiving and childrearing labor that Menkedick lauds in her piece. What concerns me the most about this framing is that this type of labor is invaluable, will always need doing, and that due to patriarchal structures, men refuse to do it. So women end up massively overburdened in a way that is both unfair and exploits us in service of male dominance.
Sara: Right. Proclaiming love for caregiving, or talking about how maternity has expanded our consciousness, is not going to change anything structurally for women. It has always struck me as fundamentally paradoxical that essays like this seem to forget that many feminists are ALSO mothers.
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