Welcome to the weekly Fairer Disputations round-up: your one-stop shop for the best in sex-realist feminism. This week: Valerie Stivers on the future of feminism, Miranda Rake on AI and parenting, and Phoebe Maltz Bovy on why men and women are exactly the same. Joe Waters on hope and the crisis of families. Plus: hope and the crisis of families, Louise Perry debates Bonnie Blue, the invisible man, thought criminals and the UK police, what work-life balance is—and more!
First, Valerie Stivers places Featured Author Leah Libresco Sargeant’s new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto, in conversation with another new feminist book: Having it All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours, by Corinne Low.
Next, Miranda Rake suggests that outsourcing valuable aspects of parenting to AI can get in the way of real human connection between parents and their children.
Finally, Phoebe Maltz Bovy provides a provocative challenge to those dedicated to defending gender difference.
More Great Reads & Watches:
- The Real Crisis Behind Falling Birthrates is a Loss of Hope, Joe Waters, Deseret News
- The Modern Sex Work Debate, Louise Perry, Bonnie Blue, and Chris Williamson, Chris Williamson (Note: can get quite explicit)
- “Eliza”, Sarah Mittermaier, gender:hacked
- The Invisible Man, Julie Bindel, Julie Bindel’s writing and podcasts
- How I Was Secretly Logged as a Criminal by Police, Helen Joyce, The Critic
- What is Balance, Anyway?, Leslie Blake and Rebecca Gale, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Hard
Fairer Disputations Recommends:
Featured Author Angela Franks’s new book, Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self, is out now!
Today’s Fairer Disputations original is a reflection from Franks on how she came to write the book—but we couldn’t resist the chance to feature it here, too.
Fairer Disputations Editor Serena Sigillito also recommends this book in her recent piece, Porn, Pop Culture, and the Future of Feminism: Sophie Gilbert’s “Girl on Girl”:
Franks, like all of our featured authors, is fleshing out a conceptual framework for a renewed feminism that is responsive to the reality of today’s bleak, pornified sexual landscape. This project demands that, eventually, we have to move beyond diagnosis and into prescription, offering historically grounded solutions to our distinctively modern problems. That is what Franks and the others offer—and what Gilbert is unwilling or unable to do.
