the strange history of feminism

Following on from my recent post on the TERF wars, I’ve recently been involved in several discussions elsewhere on the subject of feminism and I’ve been surprised just how little most people know about the odd but fascinating history of this ideology.

The first interesting thing is the enormous gulf between first wave feminism in Britain and the United States. In Britain feminism emerged in the late 18th century (the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792 is usually considered to be the starting point). It emerged from the same soil as early pre-Marxist socialism, liberalism and militant atheism, in other words it was a product of the Enlightenment.

American feminism was an outgrowth of Puritan religious zealotry. It emerged directly from the Temperance Movement. Early American feminise wanted to ban alcohol, and in fact they were rather keen on the idea of banning stuff in general. Stuff like prostitution. They had high moral standards which they fully intended to impose, forcibly, on everyone else. Of course their high moral standards mostly amounted to extreme disapproval of the pleasures of the flesh. They had the typical Puritan attitude that if it feels good it’s wicked. And they were sure that anything that men enjoyed was wicked.

The disaster of Prohibition pretty thoroughly discredited feminism. When feminism re-emerged in the US in the early 60s it didn’t take long for it to split into bitterly opposing factions. There was considerable tension between the lesbians and the heterosexual feminists. There was also tension between the more liberal feminism who thought feminism was all about choice and the Puritans who thought feminism was all about banning things. Only enough the lesbians tended to line up with the Puritans, a tendency that reached its apogee with Andrea Dworkin’s pronouncement that all heterosexual sex was rape. This conflict culminated in the Feminist Sex Wars, which ended in victory for the so-called sex-positive feminists.

Another odd thing is that the Puritan feminists were overwhelmingly atheists. Their Puritanism was a kind of distinctly American cultural Puritanism.

Modern-day TERFs are largely composed of the remnants of Second Wave feminism, and to a large extent they’re the remnants of the Puritan wing. This has led some on the dissident right to see them as possible allies, especially since TERFs are very strongly committed to the idea that biological differences between men and women are real. Some have speculated that the TERFs will gradually drift towards the Right.

An interesting further factor to consider is that the dissident right also has a strong Puritan  faction, and their Puritanism is almost as extreme as that of some of the Second Wave feminists. An alliance with the TERFs though would be awkward. Both groups seem to share a belief that sexual pleasure is wicked but the dissident right Puritans want women to breed lots and lots of babies (to serve as soldiers in the civil war for which they hope). They think sex is OK as long as you don’t enjoy it, while the TERFs think sex is OK as long as men don’t enjoy it. But the TERFs are not very keen on babies.

The bitter internal conflicts within feminism may seem to be the factor most likely to cause the Coalition of the Fringes to split, but bitter internal conflicts have been part and parcel of feminism for sixty years. Feminism is a mixture of mutually contradictory and in fact mutually incompatible ideologies – liberalism, Marxism and Puritanism – with a seasoning of pure craziness. Their internal bloodlettings will continue indefinitely and it’s an inherently unpredictable movement.