The feminism which ends in tears

Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, 25 May 2005 13:32.

Virginia Haussegger is becoming well-known in Australia as a feminist critic of feminism.

She already had a public profile as a TV journalist when she wrote an explosive newspaper article in 2002, “The sins of our feminist mothers”.

In this article she describes how her generation of women was brought up to believe “We could be and do whatever we pleased”. This is the basic principle of liberalism: that we should be “free” to create who we are and what we do through our own individual choices.

At first things seemed to go well. She writes of a generation of women who “crashed through barriers and carved out good, successful and even some brilliant careers.”

But the story ends unhappily. The feminist mothers forgot “to warn us that we would need to stop, take time out and learn to nurture our partnerships and relationships.”

Virginia Haussegger describes very well the incompetent attitude to relationships of women brought up in a culture of liberal individualism:

“For those of us that did marry, marriage was perhaps akin to an accessory. And in our high-disposable-income lives, accessories pass their use-by date, and are thoughtlessly tossed aside. Frankly, the dominant message was to not let our man, or any man for that matter, get in the way of career and our own personal progress.”

Nor did the feminist mothers warn their daughters of the biological clock, so that:

“We are the ones, now in our late 30s and early 40s, who are suddenly sitting before a sheepish doctor listening to the words: “Well, I’m sorry, but you may have left your run too late. Women at your age find it very difficult to get pregnant naturally ...”

For Virginia Haussegger the end result is that,

“here we are, supposedly “having it all” as we edge 40; excellent education; good qualifications; great jobs; fast-moving careers; good incomes ... It’s a nice caffe-latte kind of life, really.

“But the truth is – for me at least – the career is no longer a challenge, the lifestyle trappings are joyless ... and the point of it all seems, well, pointless.

“I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase.

“It was wrong. It was crap.”

Of course, Virginia Haussegger received a bucketing from the sisterhood for her bold complaints. She has, though, held firm in making criticisms of feminism, even publishing a book this month, Wonder Woman, in which she declares feminism to be “an inadequate structure from which to build a life.”

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how far she goes in really challenging feminism. Not too far, I expect, as this would require a radical rethinking of the way things are valued in a liberal society.

Is the important thing in life, as liberals claim, establishing an unimpeded individual choice? If yes, then women who break down traditional restrictions on their choices, for instance by “breaking through” career barriers, really are the feminist heroines they are made out to be.

But what if this assumption is wrong? What if the important thing is to fulfil the better and deeper parts of our own inborn natures? Then the task would not be to break through traditional stereotypes but to create the best conditions in which we could fulfil our masculine or feminine natures – for instance, by protecting the conditions in which women could express and experience marital and maternal love.

Virginia Haussegger is trying to warn us that even when the liberal option is undertaken most successfully, even when we create the greatest level of individual autonomy, in which our individual choices are least impeded, all we get is a pleasant and comfortable, but barren and pointless existence.

Tags: Feminism

Comments:

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 25 May 2005 14:43 | #

De facto corporate polygyny resulting from centralization of assets required for affordable family formation is the key to understanding feminism.

Centralized assets means:

1) Young men have less to offer young women than corporate lords.

2) Young women seek subservience to corporate lords as a means of acquiring the resources their instincts are telling them they need to bear children.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the corporate lords were actually conscious of their role as harem masters, and the women conscious of their role as corporate concubines—because then at least the women could have children sired by the few corporate lords, and the corporate lords might have a little guilt over “downsizing” the women out of their middle management jobs when those women hit middle age and their value as an office ornament decreases.

But everyone is in denial that the corporate lords are gutting the populace of the resources required for affordable family formation: the corporate lords, the feminists and the young men who should be joining armies to destroy the system that supports such a perverse notion of property rights. The young men are at an even lesser likelyhood of having offspring than the sterile de facto polygyny the corporate concubines and their corporate lords.

Posted by ben tillman on Wed, 25 May 2005 21:45 | #

Interesting perspective, JB.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Wed, 25 May 2005 22:44 | #

James’ comment highlights the fact that the feminist women don’t really achieve “autonomy” even though that’s the ideological aim.

Nearly all of them will become dependent on either their employers or on the state (the arts faculty types often get to about 30 and become single mums on welfare - the Australian blogger Gianna being a classic example).

At least traditional marriage offered them membership of an autonomous unit: the family. And within this family the roles were complementary and interdependent, in contrast to the impersonal relationships in business or the welfare system.

Posted by ummjack on Wed, 25 May 2005 23:30 | #

JB, that might be true if it were in fact true that the resources for affordable family formation had been gutted. But it’s not true. I am a stay-at-home mother of three living very comfortably in one of the most expensive cities in the world. We buy no new adult clothes, hand all the children’s clothes down, buy food in bulk and cook almost all our meals, own one second hand car, homeschool and own very few electronics. And what do you know, the job satisfaction I gain from being a thrifty housewife makes me a much happier woman than your average climber of the corporate ladder.

People are *choosing* lives of immediate gratifaction over lives of deep satisfaction. They’re not being forced into it by actual need. Our society’s incredible wealth will support a vast array of choices. No one is making me stay home; no one is making married women with employed husbands work.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 26 May 2005 01:26 | #

ummjack, when I say the resources for affordable family formation, I’m including women like you as such a resource. These resources can be gutted via a variety of routes and women like you are being gutted primarily through corporate/governmental/academic indoctrination of young women toward materialism.

In other words, I agree with you.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 26 May 2005 02:11 | #

“ummjack, when I say the resources for affordable family formation, I’m including women like you as such a resource. These resources can be gutted via a variety of routes and women like you are being gutted primarily through corporate/governmental/academic indoctrination of young women toward materialism.” (—James Bowery)

They’re also being gutted through high taxes that are pushed up in part by government outlays for daycare so moms who prefer to work rather than take care of their kids can be subsidized in that unwise choice by hard-working men like ummjack’s husband, leaving him with less disposable income for his own family’s needs. They’re also gutted by governmental ruination of neighborhoods, of schools, and so on.

Posted by ummjack on Thu, 26 May 2005 20:40 | #

Oooh, nobody ever called me a resource before. You sure know how to flatter a girl.

Please insert sarcasticons. *Your attitude is part of the problem.*

Posted by ummjack on Thu, 26 May 2005 20:53 | #

As I am speaking to gentlemen, I may have to elaborate here: neo-traditionalist dating and relationship advice books, like “The Rules” or “Fascinating Womanhood,” contain frequent reminders to women that we do not need to be attractive or desireable enough to marry to men as a group - only to one man.

I am finding that men making anti-feminist critiques make exactly the same mistake. Gentlemen, you don’t need to undo the feminist indoctrination of every woman you meet. You just need to *be a real man* for *one woman,* and I guarantee you she is out there. Then you raise your one free family.

If you are having trouble believing that woman is out there, either you are looking in the wrong places, or you’re not actually ready to get married. If you are already married, then your attention ought to be occupied by creating a social world for your children to meet their spouses. The world that JB describes will die. We are going to see it die. It can’t sustain itself.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 26 May 2005 21:32 | #

Well, I don’t want to love another woman, whether or not for her that act transmogrifies into a liberation from liberation. I do want to, for example, formulate to my own satisfaction the differences between personal liberty through self-authorship and classical liberation from self, if such exists. I do want to arrive at a proper understanding of political liberty and its non-viability. I do want to present this idea to as many people as possible.

I guess I see my field of action as societal in this respect and not personal, whilst recognising that the “liberation” I protest is necessarily both.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Thu, 26 May 2005 22:31 | #

Ummjack, I agree that men shouldn’t wait to undo feminism before trying to find a wife.

Exactly as you suggest, I spent my 20s reminding myself, as I met one glum, mannish, promiscuous woman after another, that I only had to find one woman.

It’s a good way of staying psychologically healthy and hopeful, but in my case the exceptional woman never appeared.

It wasn’t until the women I was meeting had turned 30 and had become more serious themselves about marriage and family, that I began to meet suitable women.

I think Ummjack is right too that our focus should be on improving conditions for the next generation.

But I think that’s what many of us here are already trying to do. This is not one of those anti-feminists sites in which disappointed men preach essentially negative messages like “reject marriage, you’ll be ripped off” or “reject Western women and marry an Asian”.

I’m happily married myself, to a lovely Australian girl, who has proved to be a terrific mother to our baby son. No complaints - except that I would rather have achieved this in my mid-20s rather than my mid-30s.

Posted by ummjack on Fri, 27 May 2005 02:38 | #

I love those anti_feminist sites to bits, I really do. At least they tell the truth.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 29 May 2005 00:47 | #

Oooh, nobody ever called me a resource before. Please insert sarcasticons. *Your attitude is part of the problem.*

You may not like the word “resource” but that is precisely what you are. If you find this insulting then you’re demonstrating why public dialogue should be left to men. Sorry ummjack. That’s the way it is.