Where now for feminism?
Feminism Against Progress
Mary Harrington
Forum, £16.99, 224 pages
From its title onwards, Feminism Against Progress puts forward a counterintuitive proposition – feminism as it is generally understood has been so pervasively associated with the progressive agenda that one might as well talk about cheese against biscuits or Ant against Dec. Yet Mary Harrington’s book is part of a growing movement of feminist writers surveying the state of the sexes and questioning – as in Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution – whether the alliance between feminism and liberalism (characterised by a focus on individual autonomy and the transcendence of bodily limits, especially in matters of contraception and pregnancy) has been positive for women.
