Child-free choice (and four other stories)

Five reads on gender (in)equality and the backlash against feminism to start your weekend.

It’s a long weekend here in London, the sun is shining, and I am thoroughly enjoying my Saturday morning. I hope you are, too. This week’s reads cover the scandalous racial disparities in maternal deaths, online incel beef, and the perpetual judgement of women who don’t have kids. Oh, and we also have the British prime minister’s endorsement of a tabloid campaign “against trans extremism”.

Here they are…..

1) The freedom to choose not to have children

Deciding not to procreate seems like the final taboo for women. The women I know who have not had kids, for whatever reason, all say they feel judged for it, no matter how full or happy their lives. On her Substack,

Jill Filipovic

has interviewed Ruby Warrington, who wrote a book about women who make that choice in the context of the trend of global population decline. She powerfully articulates why women without children are so challenging for so many people:

For all the gains of the feminist movement….the bearing and raising of children is where the buck stops when it comes to gender equality. Women without kids therefore are symbolic of true gender equality—our mere existence is a powerful reminder of all women’s right to freedom of choice, bodily autonomy, and self-authorship.

On a related note, this Spectator podcast on “motherhood in crisis” with self-described post-liberal feminist Louise Perry makes opposite arguments and is quite an irritating listen. I didn’t get all the way through, but I did get to the part where Perry and the host, Winston Marshall, discuss how all women will regret not having children in later life, whether they want them or not.

2) The scandal of Black maternity deaths

Last week, the Women and Equalities Committee in the UK parliament released a report on the stark racial disparities in maternal healthcare in this country. The co-CEO’s of Birthrights, Janaki Mahadevan and Shanthi Gunesekera, a charity that has long campaigned on this issue, wrote about this scandal and what needs to happen to end it:

Black women in the UK are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. The fact this figure has changed little in the two decades since the data started being published is nothing short of a scandal.

On a related note, in The Nation, Regina Mahon reports on how Black birth workers are key to solving the maternal health care crisis in the US, where maternal deaths across all racial groups were up 40 per cent in 2021, and where racial disparities are as stark as in the UK.

3) A right-wing tabloid launches a “women’s rights crusade”

A British right-wing tabloid, the Daily Express, last week launched a “crusade”, supported by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, no less, to “to protect crucial women’s rights.” The Express campaign is fronted by a Labour MP, Rosie Duffield, and a Conservative MP, Miriam Cates, who, the paper wrote, “joined forces across the political divide in the battle to defend single-sex spaces” and “against trans extremism which means even words like woman or mother are being called into question”. The PM said:

“When it comes to women’s spaces, women’s prisons, changing rooms, sports, health, I believe that biological sex really matters…I know what a woman is – and I’ll protect women’s rights and women’s spaces. That’s why I am supporting the Express’s campaign today.”

For those who are unfamiliar with British politics, politicians declaring that they know “what a woman is” has become increasingly commonplace. During the Conservative leadership race last year, Sunak brought the trans rights culture war into the mix, touting his credentials as someone who “cares about women”. Labour’s leader Keir Starmer, as I noted here recently, has also been known to declare that he knows what a woman is.

P.S. A while ago now, I wrote about why I don’t think gender-neutral language endangers women’s rights.

4) Men’s rights activist tries to get a British politician’s kids taken away

The Labour MP Stella Creasy has spoken out about being subjected to a social services investigation after an online troll complained about her to police because of her “anti-men views”. According to the report in The Times, the police believed he was “entitled to the view that her children should be taken into care.” This is a pretty shocking example of the backlash against feminism in action. It is also a reminder of how difficult it is to be a woman in public life. I would embed the tweet itself here, but the acrimony between Elon Musk and this platform continues (and it seems that I can’t!), so here are some screenshots instead:

5) What happens when an incel gets a girlfriend

And last but not least, in Rolling Stone, Miles Klee reports on how a moderator in an “involuntary celibate” forum left after telling everyone he had a girlfriend, prompting major fallout that ended up on Twitter:

The incel (or “involuntarily celibate”) community has never been a particularly supportive or amicable one. Whatever nasty remark you could level at men who spend their days seething that “stuck-up” women won’t sleep with them, they’ve heard far worse in toxic forums where they constantly put one another down, mocking the supposed flaws that make them such unloved losers, and indulging in collective despair.

Occasionally, though, niche drama will push their nihilistic squabbling into a higher gear. The latest is an uproar over one incel claiming that he’s now in a fulfilling sexual relationship.

On Tuesday, in a thread on the forum Incels.is that has since been deleted (it remains available through the Internet Archive), a moderator who goes by the username “Komesarj” announced his departure from the group. He explained that he had already taken several months off from the site to focus on self-improvement. “And I have to say, my efforts paid off,” he wrote. “I made it as a 33 year old, [5’6″], ugly, bald, formerly disabled, deathnik. And with a really cute [19-year-old] girl too. We’re dating now.” In his original and followup statements, he attributed the relationship to exercise, diet, and the use of testosterone therapy.

Thanks so much for reading, have a great weekend, and see you next time! If there is anything else you have spotted from the past week, please share it in the comments.