Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Come, please give me give me any just a little bit more. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. My name is delano squires. Im a Research Fellow here in a divorce for life, religion and family. Im extremely excited to serve as moderator for panel on reaction. Our sucks in the market so were going to talk about a lot of things about what it means to be a woman today as the meaning of sex and preferences rapidly shift each technological development. Let let me just read a really quick description to sort of set up our discussion today. So womens liberation was the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material concept of the industrial revolution. Weve now left the industrial era for the age of air, biotech and all pervasive computing. As a result, technology liberating us from natural limits, embodied differences. Although this shift benefits a small class of successful professional women, it also makes it easier to commodify womens bodies, human intimacy and free female reproductive abilities. Only an elite minority women seem to benefit from this socalled progress. So again, one of the questions that we will address today. As i said, what it means to be a woman and how advances in technology affected sex and sort of the market of the relationships between between men and women. So without further ado, because you all and come to see me, im going to introduce our panelists and ill ask them to join me on stage. I just a brief bio first is Mary Harrington, a selfdescribed reactionary feminist Mary Harrington, the author of the new book feminism progress and a contributing editor at unheard. Her work has appeared in the times of london spectator, the new statesman the daily mail, the American Mind and first things. Mary, you join us. Please. Next is erica. Erica is a fellow with epp c and a legal scholar specializing in equal protection jurisprudence. Since feminist legal theory, catholic social teaching and ethics. She is also senior fellow at the Abigail Adams institute in cambridge, massachusetts, where she founded and directs the walsh tone craft project. Her newest book, the rights of women reclaiming a lost vision, was published by Notre Dame University press in 2021. Erica, welcome to the stage. And last but certainly not least, is Arthur Milikh arthur is the executive director of the center for the american way of life, the Claremont Institute in washington, d. C. Authors writing has appeared in claremont review of books National Affairs city real clear politics, greatness and the daily signal. Arthur holds masters from the university of chicago, a b. A. From emory, and is currently working towards ph. D. In philosophy at catholic university. Arthur would you join us. All right. So im going to take my seat and were going to get our conversation. Okay. Mary, i feel so far from you. I know. I think i was supposed to sit there rather than here. But we can we can all shuffle up one, if you like, and just crack on. I dont mind. Lets crack on. Lets cracker. All right. So. So, mary, can you. Id love one to read a definition. Feminism that ive heard you give before. Its a definition have havent heard anyone else give before. You say that feminism is a doctrine. Argues that we can and should use technology to the fullest extent possible to flatten the differences between the sexes, even at the expense of unborn life. I find it to be a fascinating definition. Can you speak little bit about that definition of feminism and, the tension it creates between the feminism of freedom and the feminism care you describe in your book . Sure. The first thing i would say is just for the to be clear, that definition you just read is what i would characterize as feminism or really the ascendant of whats been traveling under sign of feminism for the best part of 50 years now. And it was actually ericas work in the rights woman reclaiming lost legacy, which made me realize that when we talk about feminism, particularly when conservatives talk about feminism, theyre missing half the story. And eric has done a phenomenal scholarly work on on on recovering what what she rightly calls a lost legacy of kind of womens advocacy for women prior to sexual revolution, which is no longer treated as feminist and its no longer read as feminism, its been effectively memory holed and untreated as it gets described as womens history. But its not. Its not feminism. And that that includes, for example, the Temperance Movement and it particularly the great body of work in the 19th century, which on advocacy for women embodied female individuals equal in dignity to two men but different you know we have we are not the sex and the end and the but that form of womens advocacy since the sexual revolution has largely and the first the first step, the first third of the book, the feminism against progress ive spent seeking to recover that invisible history that that memory hold. And to ask the question, why has it been memory hold and how is it memory hold . And the conclusion i came to is that the winners write the history books and that what happened was that one side of in fact, a two sided movement of womens advocacy had won, cleared the field and, had rewritten the history books in order to in order to render the other the other side of the other side invisible. So so this is trying trying to look back through the through the looking. Is quite difficult to do. But the the the story really begins at the beginning of the industrial era which i have argued radically. I mean, History History of tests radically transformed in family life, radically transformed everything about, peoples lives and and did so with with particular impact on women because to the industrial era, most the principal economic unit was not as it is today. It was household and within what what historians call a productive household which were largely agrarian or perhaps artisanal. You know, most most were of that nature. Men and women worked, and they may have done different tasks. But its not simply not meaningful to say that one one of one of one partner was economically productive and the other one was not because everybody was processing Raw Materials into textile for clothes. The family is no less, is no less. Work in any meaningful sense than than plowing fields in order to grow crops for the family. Its all just the work within a productive household. And then industrialization along and a great many of the of those those forms of work which were previously done by women were well drained from the home and, were now done in factories which left with a whole set of new dilemmas, which theyd previously not had to deal with. For example, balancing home and family, balancing work. Family had not just wasnt a thing. When work, family were all just the work load of the same thing. But when you were in a situation, if you want, lets say your that say you need to run a wage and suddenly thats something which happens the home. You if youre a mother you have the question what youre going to do what happens to your baby. You know if you are hand weaving at home you could do that with toddlers on the foot. If youre you cant very well take your toddler to a large factory for that heavy and dangerous machinery when it certainly is not advisable. And so, so so women. Women. And in the book, ive set out two characteristic ways that women responded to this new dilemma. One was to make a case for the values and virtues of the now private domestic sphere from which Economic Activity has been drained. And this is what ive characterized as the feminism of care. And erica writes wonderfully about this in the rights of women. The third, the great body, womens writing and womens advocacy, which on the recognition of the valorization, the recognition of the importance of care, of the importance of motherhood, of the value of family life under these industrial conditions, in which thats reframed from being just where where life happens to being a space of respite from from the Market Society which is now emerging and the and in which the moral of children, the care of children, the care of dependents and the the business of relationship remains of equal value. And this was and in a situation where women have effectively lost a great deal of Economic Agency, this mattered. If youre an agrarian housewife in the middle ages, doesnt doesnt doesnt need be very defensive about the fact that shes pulling her weight within the home but in a situation youve lost Economic Agency and didnt and you havent really gained any political in order to to compensate for that in any sense you suddenly these bourgeois housewives need to make a case for why what theyre doing Still Matters because because obviously they in their view, rightly it did still matter. And so theres this huge body of writing which is which has been, i think, dismissive leigh title by by liberal feminist historiography is the cult of domesticity is a huge body of womens writing largely from the 19th century which which seeks to, to, to give, to give shape to that and to give value to that and to make the case for that. And, and i read this straightforwardly a kind of feminism, even if the liberal feminist historiography frames it as, patriarchal propaganda. But to me, to me, it straightforwardly, its womens advocacy for for the work that women still rightly assess to be important. So this is the feminism of care but against that theres also the those women who said was still isnt enough because weve lost Economic Agency and we dont really have any Political Agency and the solution this isnt you know, youve handed us lemons, so lets make lemonade. Thats thats not good enough. And actually, we need to enter the market on the same terms as men because otherwise were never going to be equal. And so and so this, this side of the ledger i characterize as the feminism of freedom, which says that men and women, men and women should be equal and where equal rights and dignity and so on. And we should have equal to public life and we should be we should have all the opportunities. Both sexes should have access to public life and all of the opportunities and and the affordances of public life and and really made the case for women entering, the market on the same terms as men as being the proper solution to the new dilemmas delivered by the industrial era. And its my contention that that that back and forth which really characterized you see the Womens Movement from from the late 18th century and the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft up to the second wave that that that was that was definitively won the feminism freedom with the legalization of abortion. And this is a point that i owe to you, erica, and i think is off and on then. Weve been living living under a what what characterizes itself as feminism, but is really only one side of feminism. The feminism freedom. And this is this is really the feminism which the right tends to critique. And its without without really acknowledging the whole missing story of the other side of the coin. Feminism of, care. And and this is this is a form of feminism which which which is characterized by definition that you read out to open up conversation where we seek to flatten the differences of embodied, embodied human life through, through any and all technologies to the fullest extent possible in the name of individual freedom, individual desire understood as something which h not be constrained by any limits of our physical bodies. So im going to turn to you. You wrote something in recent commentary that talks about feminism and industrialization and the cleavage of work and home. So i want to read a short quote and ask you to respond to it. Although can be most grateful for the technological advance, as the industrial era wrote, the concomitant cleavage that recalls between work and home, particularly care of children and labor, is the most enduring of the period. One that has perhaps become most imposing in our time. Can you talk about that cleavage and whether theres anything to sort of shrink that gap between work and home, particularly in technologically advanced area . Thank you. Its an honor to be here. And i have to say that had Mary Harrington been the only who read my book, it would have been a enormous success. So it was funny. Reading a review she did was that she was able to encapsulate in one sentence what i belabored believably did in 400 pages. And so i just want to say that because i think its such a beautiful statement. What i think she then does in such a brilliant way in her, as she said and i think actually said this at nat con to that that our feminism did not begin but end the sexual revolution. I think that was sort of my claim again that took long time with lots of footnotes very good footnotes. So i encourage you all to buy the book. So i so appreciate marys work. I dont think that i know and ive read a lot feminist theory, feminist history. I dont think theres a more brilliant book on sort of the history and sort of theory and sort of practice of feminism. And i would really commend it to everyone. I hope it to be a classic. It seemed to have taken britain storm. I think its going to take the United States by storm as well. So going back to i think in some sense answered a lot of this idea of what happened in industrialization terms of this cleavage that happens when when work does the home. I think, you know as a as a legal theorist one of the one of the things i would just underscore is the way in which theres this great interdependence and collaboration and reciprocity in agrarian household that know women were legally subordinate men at that point in terms of the law of coverture from the common law. But theres no complaint at that point because because as she mentioned, theres just such interdependency and so only is when you know, men of industrialization leave the home and work for wages that then women become economically dependent. And when in a way they werent on those wages and puts them in a difficult position with a virtuous man, it probably would absolutely fine and was for many women but when you know the other temptations that that industrialization wrought because of the really you know horrific workplace and what the Temperance Movement was really responding to is bars and brothels and those kinds of things. So a man who was not virtuous was not holding up to his responsibilities in the family. And this is really those early womens rights advocates were arguing against, really sort of trying to make claim in terms of all sorts of different legal moves, doing Property Ownership protective legislation in the workplace and all that. So what i what i think is really a key point, and i love how mary talks about sort of that the liberal the liberal feminist vision really one. And thats why dont hear much about the rest of that theres sort of this cognitive dissonance. A lot of liberal feminists, progressive feminist today really bemoan the lack of the workplace seriously. The work of care in the home, because while they, you know, some of them have children and, you know, vast majority of women have children for, of course, our our recent, you know, younger women claiming that they dont want them anymore. But and we sort of wonder, like, where did that come from . And it seems to me quite obvious when you elevate the capacity for women to, as you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would it in her scholarship to become equal citizens on the same footing with men through right to abortion . And you claim that that right necessary for womens equality, womens citizenship, that pretty easy for all the Market Institution and including Public Institutions to sort of say great well right along with you. I mean, the way i think of it is that liberal feminism really capitulating to the to Market Forces and sort of saying, like, we dont need to really make space for or accommodate women as in but embodied beings who are the ones who are disproportionately impact by reproduction, human reproduction. And so well just, you know, sort of allow the marketplace and the workplace to stay just as it always was which is formed along sort of the unencumbered male, sort of the ideal male. And so thats why have rampant pregnancy discrimination, you know, thats why we dont see as as as many sort of accommodations for not just womens work, but really the work of the home, the work of the family that, you know, you know, americas work is is is often, you know just very profit oriented in terms of business oriented. So theres a real way in which those two things sort of ratcheted together to give us what we have is a real a real the way in which and you see this in modern feminism, i mean, up until president biden, i think this week talks about, you know, poor women cant get back into workplace and this is really hurting you gdp and the way in which all things are sort of thought about as all of us, men and women are breadwinners first and caregivers. And thats just an absurd and just also i mean, this starts with Betty Friedan really thinking about the home as on the workplace or the or the female caregiver parasitic on the male worker. Its like no, no, no, no. She got that entirely wrong. Theres something she got right. Its clearly the workplace. The markets pretty much everything we do from economics to, politics to civil organization. All parasitic on the work of the home. And so thats i think this you know we were to think about technol g not as something which could flatten difference its something that you know, for common good could bring more work back into the home. I think marys chapter on marriage really beautiful in terms of her just sort of, you know, showing the examples of, different people, different couples where theyve thought about. They sort of exited out of or not. Maybe not entirely but of sort of the rat race and see themselves working together for the the care in the formation of their children and also to kind of put food on their plate, but also do interesting work and that that collaboration is very much reminiscent of o