Mihail Pojarsky/Feminism and Capitalism

Interesting touches on the history of feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft is a late 18th-century British woman who is now considered the great-grandmother of feminism. First she wrote a treatise "In Defense of the Rights of the People", where she defended the ideals of the French Revolution against Edmund Burke. Then she went to look at the revolution herself, where something happened that often, but every time unexpectedly happens to revolutionaries: terror began, some of Mary's friends were drunk, and she herself had to run back to conservative Britain, sparkling with her heels. Then there was the treatise "In Defense of Women's Rights", where she argued not with conservatives, but with Rousseau, who wrote in "Emil" that boys were created by nature to be smart, and girls - gentle. Wollstonecraft seems to be one of the first writings where the idea was expressed that gender differences are something that is constructed by education, and not at all "given by nature."

In France, Wollstonecraft became entangled with the American crook Imlay, who then refused to marry her and abandoned her with her illegitimate daughter (Fanny) in his arms. As a result, suicide attempts. Wollstonecraft fished out of the Thames by passers-by. Then she barely survives doing paid translations. Funny nuance: she crosses out sexist passages from children's books and inserts her fempropaganda. Then she converges with the philosopher Godwin. Both despise the institution of marriage, but are forced to marry because of pregnancy. A philosophical couple arranges for themselves some kind of autistic life with separate accommodation and meetings in the evenings. As a result, Wollstonecraft dies 10 days after the birth of her second daughter (Mary) - apparently from infection (doctors thought of washing their front paws only in the 19th century). After her death, Godwin writes a biography, where with naive frankness he paints all threesomes, suicide attempts and the like. But the public of the late 18th century, to put it mildly, did not like it.

And in this text they add quite delightful details. They write (albeit specifying that this is a legend) that the second daughter Mary (Mary Shelley, best known as the author of "Frankenstein") at the age of 16 fucked Percy Shelley at her mother's grave. And the first daughter Fanny (Imlai) committed suicide because of unrequited love for the same Shelley. And Shelley himself then turned out to be an asshole poet (as often happens) and managed the family budget so effectively that three of his four children with Mary died, incl. because of poverty.

There is a good point at the end. They say that education and the rights of women are, of course, great. But before, women lived in a world where there were no contraceptives, but there was a risk of dying from sepsis, giving birth to children, of which half would not survive anyway, and organizing life with children was hard labor - and first of all they were in slavery to its biology. And then came damned capitalism, which brought contraceptives, antiseptics, diapers, washing machines and everything else that frees us from the slavery of biology. And who is now to blame for inequality and other horrors? Of course, capitalism.

Mihail Pojarsky 2020-11-19