Late July, The Wall Street Journal published five short pieces under the title, “Have We Ruined Sex?” Among the five pieces was one by Mary Harrington. In her contribution she argues that the sexual revolution has mainly benefitted the “entrepreneurial class.” Since this appeared not in The Nation but WSJ, I was amused, so I decided to read her (2023) Feminism Against Progress.
Feminism Against Progress is reactionary, but it cites Karl Polanyi approvingly and also rails against Adam Smith and Hayek; the political right is indeed transforming. (Harrington spoke at this year’s National Conservatism Conference.) As the mention of Polanyi hints at, Harrington’s sensibility is, in many ways, a culturally traditional, social democratic left (and I was not surprised to find a piece of hers on the SDP blog here.) I expect Keith Starmer’s Labour party (which is by no means liberal in sensibility) to find use for her downstream.