Welcome to the weekly Fairer Disputations round-up: your one-stop shop for the best in sex-realist feminism. This week: Featured Author Rachel Lu on what Beauvoir gets right, Patrick T. Brown on reconsidering the ‘success sequence’, Julie Bindel on Canada’s pimp lobby, Rachel Cusk, Lia Thomas, feminist films, FD recommends a book—and more!
First, Featured Author Rachel Lu takes on Simone de Beauvoir: Are women the second sex? If so, why? And is this a misfortune?
Next, Julie Bindel narrates her experience protesting the sex trade in Canada—a trade that depends for its existence on the oppression of women.
Finally, Patrick T. Brown suggests that proponents of the ‘success sequence’ are missing out on deeper, non-economic forms of success.
More Great Reads & Listens:
- Rachel Cusk’s Cruel Misandry, Valerie Stivers, Compact
- Why Is the Met Police Investigating Me for a Tweet About a Trans Doctor? Maya Forstater, UnHerd
- Lia Thomas’s Olympic Ban is a Victory for Women’s Sport, Jennifer Sey, UnHerd
- Can Feminist Films Be Conservative?, Jack Hunter, Modern Age
- Louise Perry vs Mary Harrington on the Ethics of Designer Babies, Spectator TV
Fairer Disputations Recommends:
Starting this week, we will be highlighting one book each week that we consider essential reading (find more on our recommended reads page).
First up: Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism, by historian and social critic Christopher Lasch (and edited posthumously by his daughter, Elisabeth). This fascinating collection of essays examines women, the relationship between the sexes and the family through history, branching of from such topics as the querelle des femmes, clandestine marriage, and the rise of the suburbs.
Can (and should) love and sexual attraction coexist? What is “women’s work,” and how has our understanding of it changed over the modern era? Can feminism benefit from appealing to the distinctly “womanly” virtues, or does this reaffirm stereotypes that have held women back? These are just some of the thought-provoking questions that Lasch tackles.
