Can Feminism Make Sense of Conservative Women?
Lois Shearing’s new book doesn’t improve on Andrea Dworkin’s classic endeavor.
This week, Beatrice Scudeler compares radical feminist Andrea Dworkin’s 1983 book Right-Wing Women with activist Lois Shearing’s new release, Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right. She argues that, even forty years after its release, Dworkin's work remains relevant and well worth engaging, especially for those who wish to uphold feminism while critiquing the excesses of the sexual revolution.
Can Feminism Make Sense of Conservative Women?
Beatrice Scudeler
Forty years ago, Dworkin saw women being exploited across the political spectrum. She viewed women on the right particularly as making a compromise that would protect them from all men except their own husbands. Conservative women may understandably object to this characterization, which discounts the philosophical reasons for their political beliefs. Nonetheless, Dworkin’s work remains worthy of our attention, and her insights help clarify the work that must be done.
We must build a feminist movement that doesn’t pit the interests of men and women against each other—a feminism that values motherhood and the female body instead of seeing them as obstacles to women’s fulfilment. We need a feminism that takes male violence seriously, while still defending a vision of marriage and family life based on love, mutual respect, and growth in virtue.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism:
This week: Christine Emba on porn's harms, Elizabeth Grace Matthew on maternal ambivalence, and Ivana Greco on the other "greedy" jobs. Plus: a non-neurotic modern motherhood, the stories girls need, a matchmaking event—and more!
From the Archives:
Featured Author Spencer Klavan on the November election and the beginning of the end of the war between the sexes.
The Fap/NoFap Election
Spencer Klavan
“It could be we are groping, often in spite of ourselves, toward something like a new digital-age consensus between men and women to the effect that sex is serious business, to be approached with mutual care. And if that’s true, then the war between the sexes is over—if you want it.”