You can’t simplify an idea without, well, simplifying it. In the process things get lost. By now I’m used to people arguing against sketch versions of “reactionary feminism” and no longer feel the urge to sprint after them yelling “Hey but that’s not actually what I think! Look at this quote from my book…”.
But of the things that get lost in simplification, one of the most important is that none of the policies I suggest would be ‘feminist’ in every context, and I’m aware of this.
I need to repeat this more. In Feminism Against Progress, I argue for “balancing the atomistic framework of ‘women’s rights’ against the more contextual, relational and grounded one of ‘women’s interests’”. But - and I really cannot emphasise this enough - this is by definition “emphatically not a universalist project”. By “universalist” I mean equally applicable everywhere, and for all women.
Because while women are women everywhere, obviously so much of what makes up the fabric of our everyday life is a function of culture, local material conditions, and other factors which are not universal. From this it follows, as the book puts it, that our interests will differ: “the same policy can serve women’s interests in one material context and undermine them elsewhere”.
This includes every suggestion I’ve made in the book or elsewhere, under the heading “reactionary feminism”. The concrete policies I set out in the book are aimed at that book’s main implied readership, which is bourgeois women in the post-industrial, digitally networked developed world. Applied to women in very different material and cultural surroundings, the same ideas would not self-evidently be in those women’s interests. My critics sometimes point this out. To which I can only say: I agree!
In the essay below, Stella Tsantekidou makes this important point, via a contrast between her own life as a young, highly educated, professional single woman living in London, and the women in her natal city of Thessaloniki in Greece.
Beware Of Feminist Luxury Beliefs
A luxury belief, according to Rob Henderson, is an idea or opinion that signals an individual's social status, often held by the affluent and educated, who can afford to support ideas that may have little risk or cost to them but could be detrimental to the less affluent.
According to many in the heterodox/reactionary space, the ultimate feminist luxury belief is prioritising career over marriage. More and more women (and men also) put off marriage and kids to pursue multiple degrees and get ahead on the career ladder. That advice was doled out liberally to my generation (millennials) by our feminist elders. And this trend is now being thrown into question by the limitations of our physical bodies (fertility doesn’t wait for ever) and the hollowness of a career without someone to share your life with.
When I first came across this ‘discourse’, I was excited. Finally, my fellow feminists were acknowledging the values I was raised with as the granddaughter of an orthodox priest, born and raised in Greece. Family is the most important thing. Human relationships are more fulfilling than corporate servitude.
Many women could use this message in London, where I went to university and now live. I met a lot of men and women who scoffed at the idea of turning down a work opportunity to spend more time with family, and would happily indulge their careers in a way that barely left any time to go on a date, let alone raise a child.
But then, every Christmas and Easter, I would go back home to Thessaloniki, a coastal Greek city with high youth unemployment, and my enlightened reactionary feminist beliefs would die on impact.
I started observing a reverse luxury belief: “Feminism went too far; we no longer need it.” Its proponents are usually women who were raised by civilised metropolitan parents who would never dream of limiting their daughter’s options on the basis of their sex and who usually found themselves in educated social circles and liberal work environments that promoted their flourishing and took their safety and comfort seriously. That is a small percentage of the global female population.
By contrast, Greece and many other countries around the world are still struggling with second, let alone third, or, God forbid, fourth-wave feminism.
In my motherland, it is still perfectly acceptable for an all-male panel of broadcasters to call women slurs, and comment on the body type of female politicians. MeToo is only now making its presence known. And say what you want about Western women abusing it in the USA, but where I am from? Sisters, in Greece, your manager slaps your ass; it is you who gets fired for making a scene.
Back when MeToo had just broken out, I was working as a speechwriter in the British Parliament. I was talking to an established female Greek journalist about an incident where a male British politician old enough to be my grandfather sexually propositioned me during a meeting. I told her I felt insulted he felt he could hit on me in my work environment. She looked at me, concerned, and said, ‘Yeah, it’s horrible; make sure nobody finds out, or else your job could be in trouble’.
I looked at her like she was from another planet. To be fair, she was. I went to university in the UK and worked for the Labour Party. If an older man made me uncomfortable at work, I fully expected to emerge victorious from the HR warpath. The OpEd was practically writing itself. To her, a woman who cut her teeth in unforgivably male Mediterranean newsrooms, she was talking me out of career suicide.
Similarly, when it comes to getting married and having kids, unlike my London peers, Greek women don’t need reminding. I remember a London journalist asking Twitter a few years back if anyone is really pushing women to get married anymore. I spit my English breakfast tea reading that. I tried to remember when was the last time I had talked to my mom without her reminding me women are finished unless they tie down a man by the time they are 30. A Greek matriarch does not hint at these matters like a polite North London mommy; she spells them out with the urgency of a woman whose misery seeks company.
I have this family friend who was the perfect daughter. Straight A student, talented, gorgeous, socially extroverted. She was relentlessly criticised and directed by her parents in the traditional way capital F (for f*ck the patriarchy) feminists have been warning throughout the 90s and naughties. In the end, she bit the bullet and did the thing it is fashionable to tell Western women to do now. Don’t look for the fairytale love affair. Find a Good Boy with a stable job with similar values to yours, settle down early and have kids. Check, check, check.
She tried so hard, but she was the only one trying. As Mary says, it is a fantasy to think that if only women behaved better, all our dating market woes would be solved; it really does take a village. She now lives with her 50-year-old boyfriend and her son from her first marriage. Her parents and their contemporaries are seething. But at least she is no longer on anti-depressants, and I am proud of her.
She is not a one-off case where our incredibly original panacea to the eternal question of human happiness failed to deliver. I know of so many women in my city who put all their happiness eggs in the husband and family basket. The symptom is particularly pernicious in my country: since the financial crisis, many young women have come to see men as essential for their well-being and social status. Seeing that their chances of having a meaningful career are slim to non-existent, they spend their young years looksmaxing their way to financial security.
The most typical women my age will spend years in dead-end jobs in the hospitality sector, living with their parents (not always a bad thing, unless your parents are old-school sexists, which many in Greece are), and spending most of their 600 euros wage on manicures, haircare and new outfits from Zara and other fast fashion outlets so that they can parade in front of the handful of eligible (i.e. meaningfully employed) bachelors. These include mostly self-styled ‘entrepreneurs’ who work in the family business. From time to time, anecdotal stories come to my ears about all the banal ways women are mistreated in this climate. Women are drugged, sexually assaulted, abused by their boyfriends and repeatedly cheated on by their husbands. But they can’t rebel, because they don’t have the practical means to move on or out, or the emotional resilience to withstand the social backlash. None of that makes the news or sparks a conversation in our social circles because Thessaloniki is not London.
There, it is my reactionary feminism, not the girl-boss liberal feminism, that is a luxury belief. Meaningful career and freedom for me in London, suffocating marriage and despotic inlaws for the losers I left behind.
You know what would help these ladies? Some good old-fashioned feminism. If their parents are misguided mouthpieces for patriarchy’s dying breaths, they should move out of their family homes, even if it is expensive. They should take off their hair extensions and acrylic nails. Let that fake tan fade, along with every illusion that some boy who takes more care picking an after-shave holds the secret to their happiness, any more than a fat bonus and a new outfit make for a good life.
Should they get a partner? Of course, if they want one. (Notwithstanding my mother’s worries, I do too). I hear university is a good place to find one of those.
Stella Tsantekidou lives in London. If you enjoyed this, you can find more of her writing here.