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Keith Lowery's avatar

Thanks for this. Had not been following Mary Harrington's work.

This comment from your review stood out to me especially:

"And there is nothing sex-specific about the black hole of unanswered suffering, nihilism, and hatred of creation that now seems to occupy the spiritual center of our civilization and which is dragging us step by step towards self-abnegation. "

It may be less "hatred of creation" and more hatred of our own createdness that we are observing (that may actually be what you mean). If God is real, then we are caught up in something not of our own choosing - we are derivative and not self-defining. The impression is growing in me that much of what we're observing is a cry of resentment at having the circumstances of our existence, especially in regard to sexuality, defined by anyone other than ourselves. The Pill, transgenderism et al are, on this basis, just various means of giving the finger to God.

This is a question that was identified long ago: "Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, 'why did you make me thus?'" (Paul the apostle in his letter to the Roman church)

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Chris Coffman's avatar

Excellent post (as usual)!

As a young man in the early 1980s I read several dozen books about intellectual / ideological lesbianism (starting at the jump-off point of feminist Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex).

To my surprise, rather than being obsessed with actual sexual activity like much male homosexual literature of the time, intellectual lesbians were theorizing and speculating about eliminating men from the reproductive process. The content was not at all about celebrating sexuality between women but about reproduction and how technological advances could make men existentially irrelevant. There was also advice about how to conceive girls, not boys.

It all seemed very sci-fi and dystopian at the time--not to mention full of anger and utterly joyless. It also turns out to have been prophetic.

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