My main criticism of this post, as with much GC thought, is that it represents a failure to imagine that the world in several hundred years might be vastly different from the world today, and that technological advancements as well as social transformations will likely (and not just possibly) massively transform the lives of women and men in a way that really will make gender irrelevant.

Throughout this piece, Stock suggests that certain “biological realities” will be constant and unchanging. She writes:

“For most human females, no matter where or when they are culturally located, there are certain life-changing events produced biologically: puberty, menstruation, menopause. Given the naturally-bestowed facts of human reproduction – i.e. the involvement of one sperm and one egg - for most women there are experiences of interactions with the opposite sex of some kind, wanted or unwanted: flirtation, love, rejection, sexual encounters, decisions to form couples, fights, marriages, breakups, betrayals, and bereavement.  For most women too, there is a distinctive realm of experience associated with the general understanding, often acquired early on, that males as a sex tend to be stronger and more physically aggressive and have a potential sexual interest in you. For those to whom it happens, there is a realm of sex-associated experiences to do with pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood generally, that are not interchangeable with the experiences of fatherhood.”

The idea seems to be that there will be no future in which (for example) artificial wombs make human gestation (as well as miscarriages/live births) a thing of the past; advances in medical treatment and anti-aging efforts make make menstruation/menopause unnecessary (perhaps girls and women will routinely suppress periods and never have them in the first place) ; and further interventions reduce or eliminate physical strength differences between men and women. (Whether or not you think these things sound good is beside the point; I just don’t think for a second they represent biological or technological impossibilities. )

Yes, these things might sound unlikely to us now. But hundreds of years ago, I believe the average person would have thought the idea of safe, reliable birth control was also highly implausible, or the idea that women could forego breastfeeding by using formula to feed babies was a pipe dream, or the idea that women could freeze their eggs and give birth via IVF at 45 was silly sci-fi nonsense. Yet all of this happened, and more importantly, became normalized, in an incredibly brief span of human history.

This is to say nothing of the social changes that are coming. Throughout the piece, I get the sense Stock believes relations between males and females in late 21st century Britain represent, if not the best feminists can hope for, at least something close to it. While “decent” men will hopefully always exist (and remain a majority of the male population), she suggests there will always be a significant minority of men who are deeply, perhaps inherently depraved and so women will always require single sex bathrooms, facilities, etc. I disagree; it seems hardly utopian to think that, as the influence of toxic religious traditions fades and strides are made to address conditions that lead men to become rapists and abusers in the first place, male psychopathy towards women will also recede. Maybe it’s impossible to 100% eliminate all crime against women, but it may be that, in the distant (or not-so-distant) future, such crimes are infrequent enough as to not necessitate single sex spaces, etc.

In short, reading this piece, I came away with the opposite conclusion from Stock. I think the vision of Shulamith Firestone, rather than the vision of the GC feminists, will be the one that stands the test of time. While Stock and other GC feminists have undoubtedly done great work for women in the short term, the vision they present for women’s future seems, to put it bluntly, rather parochial. 21st century Britain is no feminist paradise, but it’s a dramatically different, and superior, world for women than the Britain of the 1800s. There is no reason to think technological and social progress will stop here, and we need a feminism that recognizes that fact and provides a guiding light moving forward.