This week: Dr. Petra Bueskens on Australia's dangerous precedent, Tickle v. Giggle:
"Far from being a feminist victory, this ruling—and the ideology it represents—is a subversion of the work of foundational thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir."
"Liberals need to gird their loins for the dinner party circuit or the school gate, and start saying in public and with some conviction that certain sexual behaviours are unacceptable."
@Docstockk
in
@unherd
A powerful appeal to consider the babies from
@miriam_cates
:
"It struck me as unspeakably sad that children born to—and taken away from—surrogate mothers will never know the woman who was on the other end of their umbilical cord."
Exciting news:
@HJoyceGender
, Director of Advocacy for
@SexMattersOrg
, has come on board as our newest featured author, and she and
@Nina_Compact
will be joining us for Thursday’s event. Don’t miss it!
"Kathleen Stock has spent the past month speaking to a range of clinicians, NHS professionals and parents of dysphoric children — to find out whether Gids’s new service will be an improvement."
Important reporting from
@Docstockk
Here it is:
@RizomaSchool
's thoughtful, hopeful response to the "cutting edge" sex ed at her daughter's Chicago public school
"After this experience, I feel that I must implore other parents to pay attention. Use your agency where you can. Show up."
I have an article coming out tomorrow in
@FairerSexFD
about my experience and shock with the sex ed curriculum at Chicago Public Schools.
I'm nervous. I rarely speak so freely on these topics but our kids are at stake. I hope it is helpful and reasonable not shock bait.
"It doesn’t matter what language we come up with or cognitive games we play. Mutuality is essential in any sexual encounter, and mutuality cannot be bought."
@MiaChristina_
argues that "consent" can't prevent harm in prostitution
"There is no security for a baby like being held in his mother’s arms and hearing his mother’s voice. To bring a child into the world with the deliberate intention of breaking that bond at birth raises serious ethical questions."
@miriam_cates
How is it in a newborn baby’s best interests to be separated permanently from his mother, sold to a 49-year-old man and taken to another country?
Surrogacy is anything but ‘progressive’.
Essex man stuck in Cyprus after surrogate baby born
This is simply false. As the scholarship of
@erikabachiochi
demonstrates, competing feminisms of care and autonomy have existed since the very beginnings of the movement. It wasn’t until the 1970s that maternalist feminism was sidelined. Now, it’s coming back in full force.
Feminism has been aggressively anti-family since its inception. There are only a few short decades between the “first wave” and the legalization of abortion nationwide. There is no good feminism. It’s always been destructive and poisonous.
"No law will end prostitution, just as no rape law will make rapists stop raping. But we still have rape laws. We don’t say, 'well, they’re not working,' and legalize rape."
@MiaChristina_
defends the Nordic Model
"Surrogacy bakes mother-loss into a baby’s earliest experience — and inflicts this loss on a profoundly vulnerable infant, in the name of adult desire."
@moveincircles
Babies do best with attuned care from birth. Pregnancy facilitates this. Surrogacy bakes that deprivation into a baby’s very earliest experiences. This isn’t “kneejerk MAGA contrarianism” it’s how humans work
"Many mothers—and some fathers—step out of the workforce for a time to care for their children. What is done to identify, support, and protect American homemakers? Too often, the answer is “little to nothing.”
@IvanaDGreco
"The interests of women, particularly mothers, are less likely to be given voice in the corridors of power. Feminism—specifically, a feminism orientated towards maternity—is the political movement that exists to counteract this problem."
@Louise_m_perry
Today at FD: Could The Irish Constitution’s Support for Mothers Actually Be Progressive?
@laurenbari1
and
@DrKarleenG
tackle the Irish referendum on Article 41.2, which recognizes the vital role women play in caregiving
This week:
@MiaChristina_
on what the Nordic Model gets right:
"Prostitution—paid rape—doesn’t exist because of poverty or drug addiction. It exists because men create the market for it. The Nordic Model justly recognizes and responds to this reality."
"How can we support a woman’s right to reject domesticity, without also devaluing an area of life which, for many people, both male and female, remains an important source of meaning and identity?"
@Louise_m_perry
in
@TheCriticMag
"The therapist transitioned a whole group of six girls together, like a class project."
From the archives - parents of trans-identifying children speak out
@elizamondegreen
This International Women's Day, we're proud to host an important debate:
Did Feminism Create Transgender Ideology? A Symposium
With contributions from
@Louise_m_perry
,
@aytchellesse
, and
@FavaleAbs
"I am taking an active role educating my daughters. I am finding out what their peers are being taught and explaining the concepts to them in a way they can understand and a way that aligns with our family’s morals."
@RizomaSchool
College students: interested in starting/joining a FD reading group?
Participants get free books & opportunities to participate in exclusive zoom conversations with some of our most popular authors—starting with
@Louise_m_perry
.
Contact info
@fairerdisputations
.org by Monday!
Modern chivalry isn't some benighted holdover from the Church’s effort to smother women’s ambitions in a prison of soft luxuries. It's a response to the Church’s teaching that men need women to give their lives direction & their souls grace.
@SpencerKlavan
"When Estee says a husband shouldn’t have to 'lift a finger' when at home, she is effectively saying that the only form of service he can ever provide the family is financial."
@FelixJMiller
on how tradwives devalue their men
@moveincircles
on the contradictions exposed by reproductive technologies:
"The oncoming collision between the feminist desire to defend women’s genetic role in fertility & the progressive desire to advance LGBTQ equality" is just the tip of the iceberg
"The girls who make the rules have watched films about the poors, but no director has ever captured that desperate feeling of having no money, recourse, authority, or protection."
@RoisinMichaux
for
@4WPub
"There were plenty of female scapegoats resembling Eve in Greek literature. But there was nothing close to Mary, mother of God."
@SpencerKlavan
on how Christianity transformed the relationship between the sexes
"Gender theory is an updates what women have been hearing for years – that our bodies and our selves are the problem; that when there is a mismatch between us and our society’s expectations, it is we who have to change."
@LeahLibresco
in
@Plough
This week:
@SpencerKlavan
's account of how Christianity fundamentally transformed the relationship between the sexes—and his warning about the bleakness of a "post-sex" future.
Long before sex-traffickers get ahold of them, trafficking victims are "groomed by a sexually saturated society that tells them that, as women, their bodies exist for the sexual gratification of men."
"If you live a very modern life...you're not really using your sexed body for anything and living the life of the mind, you could believe that sex differences are trivial."
@Louise_m_perry
at [32:46] of her interview with
@jordanbpeterson
"The twentieth-century fetish for 'equality' at all costs runs with fear from the idea that men and women have different strengths, but sexual difference is real."
@Nina_Compact
From the archives: our first symposium on sex-realist feminism
This week,
@EricaKomisarCSW
with a rousing call for "maternal feminism."
"The work of raising emotionally healthy children is as or more critical to our society’s future as any career achievement."
"Children are the only truly universal experience shared by members of this body, and by all members of the human race. Whether or not you become a parent, each of you was once a child."
@LeahLibresco
"I’m asking you to put children first, prioritizing them well beyond what the world around you considers prudent. After all, children are the only truly universal experience shared by all members of the human race."
@LeahLibresco
"By treating housework as unworthy by comparison to the waged labor men did on the market, feminists only reinforced the messages that had enabled their own exploitation."
Evergreen from
@philipljeffery
on Social Reproduction Theory
"Today's sexually saturated environment steals children’s natural defense against those in our society whose aim is to abuse, use, & exploit them."
Liz Miller on today's pornified world
NEW:
@MeghanEMurphy
responds to
@moveincircles
in the latest Fairer Disputations symposium.
"It wasn’t all bad. I did have a lot of fun, along with the bad. But pretending away human nature did not serve me—nor does it serve most women."
"The existence of the fertility equality movement highlights the problems inherent to a liberal doctrine that promises self-fulfillment while neglecting the ways in which we are interdependent."
A throwback from
@Louise_m_perry
for
@unherd
This week:
@byrne_a
responds to
@FavaleAbs
on the merits of the sex/gender distinction:
"The uninhibited use of “gender” has already ruined swathes of philosophy, not to mention the public discourse; we can each do our part to limit the damage."
This week: philosopher Kate Phelan critiques
@moveincircles
's reactionary feminism:
"But the world that Harrington envisions...is not a world of interdependence. It is a world of female subjection."
"It is disordered male desire that is centred in transgenderism—the desire to roll back women’s rights, to frighten women, and to steal their image (or at least the pornified version of it)."
@Nina_Compact
on not blaming women
Today,
@FelixJMiller
argues tradwives have a low view of their husbands: "many tradwives present a vision of family life that reduces a man’s role to nothing more than the breadwinner."
Plus: must-readsy by
@ElizabethGMat
,
@helen_of_roy
, and
@glosswitch
"When feminists argue that biology isn’t destiny, they mean that there’s nothing in particular a woman should be or do just because she is female. They don’t mean that males should be able to become female."
@aytchellesse
"How can a pro-woman movement work toward legal and social conditions in which abortions become unnecessary because of the dignity, support, & honor bestowed on motherhood and childbearing?"
@calebmorell
on
@monicaklem
's new book & the early feminists
"Misunderstanding womanhood as a commodity that can be purchased and consumed in pursuit of male self-fulfillment, these men reject their sexual nature through medical violence done to their own bodies."
@DonovanCleckley
“Only I could labor to bring our daughters into the world, but my husband was no passive observer. I depended on him more than our midwives or our doula.”
@LeahLibresco
’s response to
@erikabachiochi
in the FD symposium
Kids on social media "are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it."
@freyaindiaa
on zoomers online
Thrilled to have written for
@JonHaidt
!
"Gen Z didn't just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick."
You can read here at After Babel:
@aytchellesse
@aaron_renn
@Tyler_A_Harper
@Louise_m_perry
"Feminism eludes concrete definitions, but questions regarding work often fit under its umbrella. How can women contribute to a variety of civic and professional roles while respecting the vocation and obligations of motherhood?"
@moveincircles
And
@moveincircles
responds!
"Phelan seems to misunderstand me as accepting these premises and seeking only to quibble over the standing of women within the modern catechism. But I question the premises themselves."
"In Butler’s phantasmagoric world, the oceans are boiling, bisexuals lie dying in the streets, & the empty shelves of school libraries gather dust. On a hillside, J. K. Rowling stands between Vladimir Putin & the Pope."
@byrne_a
on Judith Butler
@Louise_m_perry
and Katherine Dee's conversation on the latest episode of
@maiden_podcast
covers the cultural conversation on human sexuality from the corners of the internet to the center of the public square.
"By 'male' Turban doesn’t seem to mean the male sex, but precisely what he does mean is unclear...
The effect of all this complexity is to shroud the notion of being transgender in a dense fog."
@byrne_a
on
@jack_turban
's new book
"Homemakers constitute a broad cross-section of American society, and they deserve support and help should they wish to return to the paid workforce."
Our newest Featured Author,
@IvanaDGreco
, on why we need a "G.I. bill" for homemakers
Today,
@DonovanCleckley
on "Gender-Affirming Care" as the New Conversion Therapy: "'Gender-Affirming care' is just the latest form of medicalized dehumanization."
Plus:
@elizamondegreen
on gender clinicians,
@carmel_writes
on surrogacy & more.
"It may well be the case that some feminist ideas have led to less than optimal outcomes for women...But in understanding how ideas have affected reality and vice versa, it is incumbent on us to trace the genealogy of ideas with great care."
@Nina_Compact
Women's fertility should not be for sale.
And babies also suffer from surrogacy:
"To bring a child into the world with the deliberate intention of breaking that bond at birth raises serious ethical questions."
“Commoditising the fertility of young, mostly low-income girls and women is deeply exploitative”
👏
As with all these liberal hyper-capitalist ideas around buying & selling female bodies: if its such a great choice would we promote it for our daughters?
"Children are good in themselves & they’re also good for you.
What I’m counseling is an openness to life, in your own life & marriage...but also an openness to life in the form of the interruptions & chaos that other people’s kids bring."
@LeahLibresco
This week: "sex-realism on the ground," from
@RizomaSchool
After nearly a decade in Uruguay, she recently returned to her hometown of Chicago & enrolled her daughters in public schools. When she saw their sex ed curriculum, she knew she had to speak up.
"There is anti-feminism, & there is anti-womanism that masquerades as a critique of feminism.
There is anti-feminism, & there is the deliberate misinterpretation of feminism for misogynist ends.
In both cases, the latter sells."
@default_friend
Introducing our newest Featured Author:
@aytchellesse
& featuring her argument for rehabilitating biological essentialism:
"We should reject biological normativity and accept biological determinism."
"Progressives claim the good and open-minded are in a constant battle against the evil right, who wishes to stamp out the struggling and marginalized."
@MeghanEMurphy
on the sources of the movement against trans ideology.
"When we say no to children, we say no not only to the vision of the particular future we anticipate for them, but the idea of a future at all."
So excited to publish
@LeahLibresco
's remarks from her debate at Yale, "Resolved: Have More Kids"
"We can disagree without attacking the character of our opponents, without imputing motives, and without going after people’s livelihoods. We can, and if we want to be taken seriously, we must."
From the archives:
@TaraRHenley
on women & cancel culture
"Beyond their economic impact, the women and men who devote themselves to the work of the home play crucial roles in caring for America’s children, her elderly, and their communities."
@IvanaDGreco