Abstract
"As we enter the foothills of this technological revolution, this essay explores how changing material conditions contributed to the renegotiation of sex roles in the past. For these changes were the crucible in which feminism as we understand it today was originally forged. I will first show how the preindustrial social model for relations between the sexes was renegotiated for the industrial era. Then, I will outline the ways in which the legacy of this initial renegotiation is now driving a mismatch between settled social norms concerning human sex relations and emerging material conditions. This mismatch in turn calls for a reevaluation of the industrial-era privileging of freedom and progress, which has now turned conclusively against the interests of women."
Table of Contents:
- I. The Personal Is Political
- II: The Natural Course of Things
- III: The Cult of True Womanhood
- IV: Entering the Marketplace
- V: Conservatism’s “Women Problem”
- VI: Feminism beyond Liberalism
This article appears in American Affairs Volume V, Number 3 (Fall 2021): 185–99