Dead Scenes and Sexual Kryptonite

Five theses on "Women leaving the New Right"

There was a ton of hoo-ha last month, in response to Sam Adler-Bell’s NY Mag article on “The Women Leaving the New Right”. I didn’t want to weigh into the discourse specifically on that essay then, and don’t now, but this is a theme I’ve been pondering for some time - because it describes something that’s actually happening.

Instead, below are five theses on “women leaving the New Right”, that reflect a more extended period of mulling over and discussing this theme among friends. The first two theses relate to the structure of scenes, in general, and online discourse in particular. The other three are more specifically about how these dynamics map onto contemporary sex relations.

The whole thing is perhaps a little more polemical than usual, because otherwise it would be boringly long, and I fully expect a fair few of you to be angry at me. So let me make a few things clear first:

1. I still stand by every argument I set out in Feminism Against Progress. Meat Lego is still the wrong way to think about humans, and definitely the wrong mindset for solving challenges intrinsic to being human. And we still have to figure out how to live together, in our sexed dimorphism, in the world as it is now, on the basis that we need one another. But if Feminism Against Progress responded to the heyday of a cultural moment, the below is perhaps more of a response to the shed husk of that scene.

2. I’m genuinely hopeful about the future. In work and public appearances, I’m privileged to meet many young men and women who are not trapped in these mutually destructive internet-exacerbated genderslop dynamics, but genuinely on a path of figuring life out in the world as it is now. Importantly, if people like this have something in common it’s generally that they seem to treat online ideologies as suggestions rather than precise codes, and to exercise judgement in where they apply - or don’t.

3. None of this adds up to a political programme, and never did. I have political views, of course, about a whole range of things beyond the Gender Ishoo. But where sex relations are concerned my stance has always been that prudence and sex realism takes precedence over ideology. The upshot of this is that where ideology ceases to offer something that’s conducive to living together in the world as it is, especially where there are kids involved, then I’m going to bin the ideology. I don’t think I’m alone in this, and would add that this is perhaps the most critical factor for any would-be movement to bear in mind, that aspires to reach beyond the young and fiery to encompass families, kids, and the future.

I’m paywalling this whole thing, because, well, you know.