Feminist Pre-History’s Most Avant-Garde Reactionary
Mary Harrington on Mary Gove Nichols
This week, Featured Author Mary Harrington tells the little-known story of one of early feminism’s most fascinating characters: Mary Gove Nichols. Nichols was a nineteenth century writer who suffered domestic abuse, advocated freedom from coverture marriage and health reform, created a utopian community—and experienced an unlikely conversion.
Mary Gove Nichols: Feminist Pre-History’s Most Avant-Garde Reactionary
Mary Harrington
Over one prescient lifetime, Mary Gove Nichols speed-ran the narrative arc of liberal feminism, from emergence in the crucible of industrialisation, to an ecstasy of individual freedom, followed by a long slow collision with reality. The eventual synthesis that emerged in her writings between legitimate calls for emancipation, advocacy for self-discipline, and solidarity between the sexes anticipates by almost a century and a half those contemporary women now seeking a synthesis between the positive achievements of feminism and the pragmatic realities of our sexed life in common.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Tradewives, Mastectomies, and What Children Are For
This week: Mary Harrington on Ballerina Farm, Helen Joyce on mastectomies, Serena Sigillito interviews Rachel Wiseman and Anastasia Berg on what children are for, prenatal gender hormones, the new fertility inequality, AI boyfriends, an Olympic roundup—and more!
From the Archives:
Featured Author Helen Roy takes on the glamorization of violence against women’s bodies endemic in “transgender healthcare” and journalism.
Cruelty as Care
Helen Roy
“To skirt the profound suffering of childbirth in favor of a gripe about language, as if misgendering is the true cross to bear while your uterus is being sliced open, illustrates the constant state of denial at the heart of transgender ideology.”