NATURE EXISTS:

Kathleen Stock (who wrote the foreword to my book), has written critically of the "dream of gender abolition" and its sometimes troubling consequences: "In a real-life approximation of an attempt at gender abolition - that is, during Mao's Cultural Revolution - there were still sex-associated norms for women. These norms dictated that women should behave more like men. As the slogan went: 'Times have changed. Whatever men comrades can do, women comrades can do too.' ... In practice this norm meant that women under Mao faced the double burden of heavy agricultural work duties in addition to domestic and child-rearing ones."

One consequence of this historical attempt at gender abolition was that pregnant and postpartum women were given the same work tasks and hours as their comrades, resulting in many cases of miscarriage and haemorrhaging. Men and women are not the same, and it is usually women who suffer when we pretend otherwise.

Sex-positive feminism is just one instantiation of a larger liberal movement intent on maximising individual freedom - which is a fine project, up to a point. But the push for ever greater freedom is now butting up against the limits of our biology, and thus a feminist movement that was once concerned only with securing liberty for women finds itself in a futile war with nature.

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