Welcome to the weekly Fairer Disputations round-up: your one-stop shop for the best in sex-realist feminism. This week: Yasmine Mohammed on forced marriage in Islam, Ari Schulman on a coming vibe shift on IVF, and Caroline Criado Perez on the Gisèle Pélicot case and the response of good men. Plus: digital masks, sex as binary, the mixed legacy of #metoo, Oberlin lacrosse coach and women’s sports, FD recommends a book—and more!
First, Yasmine Mohammed tells the story of her own forced marriage while arguing that child marriage and forced marriage should be seen not as benign cultural difference, but abuse.
Next, Ari Schulman writes about a potential—and potentially justified—backlash against assisted reproductive technologies, including IVG (Featured Author Mary Harrington has published her own warning about IVG here at Fairer Disputations).
Finally, Caroline Criado Perez discusses a shocking French case in which a woman’s husband repeatedly drugged her and facilitated her rape by dozens of men over several decades—and argues that good men must respond. (Content warning: this story includes explicit and tragic details).
More Great Reads:
- What is Your Digital Mask Hiding?, Mary Harrington, UnHerd
- Race Is a Spectrum. Sex Is Pretty Damn Binary., Richard Dawkins, Quillette
- Frequent Porn Use Is Linked to Negative Mental Health Among Gen-Z and Millennials, Wendy Wang and Michael Toscano, Institute for Family Studies
- “How Much For a Dozen?”, Patricia Patnode, The American Mind
- The Mixed Legacy of #MeToo, Victoria Smith, The Critic
- Oberlin College Lacrosse Coach “Burned at the Stake” for Supporting Women’s Sports, Andrea Mew, Independent Women’s Forum
Fairer Disputations Recommends:
Mary Wollstonecraft features prominently in this week’s original essay, and her work is essential reading for anyone with an interest in sex-realist feminism. Fairer Disputations Editor-in-Chief Erika Bachiochi has written:
Against liberal feminism’s illusions about autonomy-as-radical-independence, Wollstonecraft writes beautifully of not only our deep dependence upon each other as we grow in the virtues, but also our own personal accountability to do so. Both are characteristics, she thought, of our “creatureliness”: “[W]e are all dependent on each other; and this dependence is wisely ordered by our Heavenly Father, to call forth many virtues, to exercise the best affections of the human heart, and fix them into habits.” But we are also, she writes, “created accountable creatures [who] must run the race ourselves, and by our own exertions acquire virtue: the utmost our friends can do is point out the right road, and clear away some of the loose rubbish which might at first retard our progress.”
…It is this making virtue one’s own that afforded women “independence”: the capacity of carrying out their obligations to others virtuously and thus freely.
