Category: feminism

I Can’t Believe the Most Essential Aspect of Sexual Reproduction and Gender Has Gone Unnoticed Until Now

by James Wallace Harris, 4/29/25

I suppose because humans have always reproduced like bunnies, we’ve always ignored an essential aspect of sexual reproduction and gender. Statistically, we need every female to have more than two children. Because some women can’t have children, and because some girls die before reaching reproductive age, to keep the population steady during current conditions requires 2,100 babies to be born to every 1,000 women. That number varies depending on the state of medicine and the number of catastrophes.

In 2024, 1,626 babies were born to every 1,000 women in the United States. That’s not enough. If we continued at that rate, we’d eventually become extinct. In many other countries, that number is much smaller than 1,626.

Why aren’t these statistics common knowledge? Why didn’t we learn them when our parents (or peers) taught us about sex? It’s a heavy responsibility to know that we should all have children. My wife and I didn’t have children. Most of my friends didn’t have children. Why did we all start doing our own thing and forget this essential aspect of life?

It’s unfair that the burden of maintaining the species falls on women. To maintain the current population, every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three. That’s assuming all women can have children. The practical need is for all women to have three children. Few women want that today.

Males don’t escape responsibility either. The species could get by with fewer males for making babies, but we need males to support the raising of children. I suppose a feminist utopia could get by with an exceedingly small number of males, or even none if women perfected cloning, but the statistics of maintaining the species are the same even if males weren’t needed.

However, we have evolved into a society/culture that doesn’t want enough children. What does that mean? Should we make people have more babies?

I wrote about this yesterday. However, the impact of these numbers didn’t hit me until 3:11 am last night.

For humanity to survive, we must deal with climate change, environmental sustainability, capitalism, inequality in all forms, artificial intelligence, and reproductive stability.

Theoretically, we could solve all these problems, but I doubt we will. The obvious solution is that civilization will collapse, and we’ll fall back into previous kinds of social organizations. It’s a fascinating challenge to imagine a society that can solve all these problems. However, can you imagine any future where all fertile women must have three children, and all men must become dedicated fathers? I can’t.

The human race needs to act radically differently. Is that possible?

JWH

Can We Avoid a Population Collapse Without Throwing Women Under the Bus?

by James Wallace Harris

Most countries around the world are worried about a population collapse that will destroy their economies and social systems. I’ve been worried about overpopulation since the 1960s, but now economists are warning us that capitalism is doomed if we don’t have more babies. Every country’s economic wellbeing depends on GDP growth. That might be impossible if birthrates continue to shrink.

The replacement birthrate to keep the population the same is around 2.1 children per woman, or 2,100 children per 1,000 women. In the U.S., we had 1,626 births per 1,000 women in 2024. At that rate, if we exclude immigration, the United States will fade away. Here are the U.S. population number by decade for the next 400 years.

YearPopulation (in millions)
2025341.7
2035330.5
2045319.8
2055309.5
2065299.6
2075290.0
2085280.8
2095271.9
2105263.3
2115255.0
2125247.0
2135239.3
2145231.8
2155224.6
2165217.6
2175210.9
2185204.4
2195198.1
2205192.0
2215186.0
2225180.2
2235174.6
2245169.1
2255163.8
2265158.6
2275153.5
2285148.6
2295143.8
2305139.1
2315134.5
2325130.0
2335125.6
2345121.3
2355117.1
2365113.0
2375109.0
2385105.1
2395101.3
240597.5

If we follow the trends of other countries that have even lower replacement birthrates, we’d shrink even faster. If we became like South Korea, we’d shrink to half our population by 2100.

At some point, we’d reach zero population. From an ecological point of view, I’d think the Earth would be better off without so many people. However, capitalism, and our support systems like Social Security depend on growth.

To solve this problem requires women having more babies. Because some women can’t have children, most women would need to have three children. That’s quite burden to put on women. Countries around the world with declining birthrates are trying various incentives to get women to have more children, but so far, those incentives aren’t working.

Can We Have Capitalism Without Growth?

What if it’s time to think about shrinking the population? What would be a sustainable population regarding the environment? Let’s just say the world would be much better without only one billion people. Could we come up with an economic system that didn’t depend on growth?

Humanoid robots are enterting the workforce. Could they take up the GDP slack for fewer people? Are there other methods to generate economic growth without people? The U.S. economy depends on consumerism. Can we create an environmental steady-state economic system that creates abundance?

How Many People Do We Need?

If we allowed ourselves to shrink the population to one billion humans, to keep from continuing to shrink, we’d be back to needing women having 2,100 children per 1,000 women. That means every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three.

Since the second wave of feminism and the creation of the birth control pill, women have chosen to have fewer children. We have to assume that’s what they want as individuals. Then is it fair to put the burden of reproduction on one gender? What if we had a society where every individual is responsible for raising their replacement? How would we force males into having kids?

Conservatives and some women are now proposing that women go back to being full-time mothers. What if most women don’t want to become mothers? Could we create a Brave New World type society where children are grown in test tubes and vats? That would allow males to have children.

This is a great idea for science fiction, but I’m not sure if it will ever happen.

What If Some Women Were Willing to Have Lots of Children?

Some women do like having children. If half of women were willing to have four or five children, and maybe a quarter of them have one child, that would allow one quarter of women to have no children.

Curently, in the U.S. 57% of all adults under 50 choose not to have children. That means we wouldn’t have enough women wanting children. Current incentive programs for woman to have more children are failing. Is there anything governments could do to convince women to have more children?

Universal guaranteed incomes are often discussed nowadays because of growing automation. What if women were guaranteed a significant income for having children? Say $75,000 a year for each child.

There is a meme going around where pretty women claim they are too beautiful to work. I don’t know how big this movement is, but it seems some women have decided that careers are not fun and they’d rather be stay-at-home moms. But as critics have pointed out, this plan only works with Mr. Right who makes a lot of money. How many women would choose a career of raising babies if they made $225,000 a year by raising three children, or $450,000 a year for raising six?

Think about how this would change our society? I have no idea if this is a good idea, but it sounds like it could make a fun science fiction story. How would this change society for males? It might make marriage more appealing. However, it would shift the power to women, and males might not like that.

However, with robots taking over everyone’s jobs, raising babies might become a new growth industry.

I’m just speculating here. If population collapse is a real problem, then we need to think of solutions. Conservatives are hell bent to bring back the large traditional family, but I doubt that will fly anymore. I think it’s obvious that many women don’t want to be moms to large broods.

How far are conservatives willing to go to recreate large families? Would they back $75,000 per child incentive? How many men would be willing to stay at home and raise children and let their wives have careers? How many people of either gender want careers? Would such an incentive balance out the responsibility of child raising if the incentive is paid to females and males? Do child raisers need to be married?

I suppose there could be new kinds of marriages, like limited partnerships. Conservatives would probably propose the incentives be payable only to married couples. Would they allow gay couples? What about two older people who are just friends and need to make some money? Maybe we need to redefine marriage as a legal bond to raise children.

Because robots and AIs are taking over everyone’s jobs, raising babies is one job they can’t have. Or could they? I suppose we could create robotic mothers and fathers to raise human babies that have been conceived in test tubes and gestated in vats.

There’s lots to think about.

I’ve thought of one other thing. What if humans are choosing not to have babies but raise robots instead? What if robots are our evolutionary replacements? If that’s the case, then population decline is right on time.

JWH

MY BRILLIANT FRIEND by Elena Ferrante

by James Wallace Harris, 10/19/24

Technically, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is the first novel in a four-volume sequence that is collectively referred to as the Neapolitan Novels. Now that I’ve read all four books, I dislike that tagline for the whole story. The four books are really one whole novel, and even though Naples, Italy is very important to the story, it doesn’t properly describe the complete novel. Each volume picks up exactly where the last one stops. If they were published in one volume with no subdivisions, you wouldn’t notice any transitions.

For this review, I’m going to refer to the whole as My Brilliant Friend, and when needed, I’ll point to the individual titles as part of the story. The structure below uses the dates for the English translation. The books were originally published in Italian one year earlier.

  1. My Brilliant Friend (2012)
    • Prologue: Eliminating All the Traces
    • Childhood: The Story of Don Achille
    • Adolescence: The Story of the Shoes
  2. The Story of a New Name (2013)
  3. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014)
    • Middle Time
  4. The Story of the Lost Child (2015)
    • Maturity
    • Old Age: The Story of Bad Blood
    • Epilogue: Restitution

Circular Plot and Recursion

The complete story begins where it ends. And throughout this long story, it constantly refers to itself. It’s so recursive that it feels like two mirrors aimed at each other. It’s also cyclical because it’s about daughters and their mothers, who eventually become mothers of daughters. In so many ways, this story mirrors its parts.

The novel is about two women, Elena Greco and Raffaella Cerullo, who call each other Lenù and Lila. The story feels like an autobiography, and we have to remember that the author’s name is Elena too. Elena Ferrante hides behind a pseudonym, but this novel feels very autobiographical. Lenù and Lila react and respond to each other so intensely that it’s hard to tell who originates what traits. I even imagined that Elena Greco is writing about two versions of her own identity, the one who writes books, and her ordinary self. And it’s interesting that Ferrante hides behind her pseudonym, claiming she wants to remain anonymous while Lila also wants to remain anonymous throughout the story. So many reflections.

Literary Novels

I’ve always thought the greatest of literary novels feel biographical or autobiographical. They don’t need to be about real people, but they do need to feel like they are, and this novel offers two realistic portraits. Another trait of great literary novel is setting. We often think of London when we think of Dickens, or Russia when we think of Tolstoy, or Ireland when we think of Joyce. Ferrante has made her book about Naples and Italy.

If you’ve only read the first volume, My Brilliant Friend, you should tell yourself that you never finished the novel. The Neapolitan Novels boxed set runs 1,965 pages. On audio the four books run 78 hours and 52 minutes. To give perspective, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy averages about 60 hours in the various audio editions. Different translations of The Bible run 82-102 hours. The seven volumes of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past runs 154 hours and 14 minutes. In other words, the whole My Brilliant Friend is a literary heavyweight.

Most novels that come out in a series are never artistically heavier than a single volume. That’s why when I finished reading the single volume entitled My Brilliant Friend, I couldn’t understand why the writers polled by The New York Times considered it the top book of the 21st century so far. It was good, but not that good. That’s because it’s only one-fourth of a whole. Now that I’ve read all four volumes, I can easily see why it was voted the top novel of this century.

Will it Become a Classic?

Whenever I read a highly respective modern novel I’ve wondered if it will someday be considered a classic. I’ve never felt sure about any modern novel to predict one before. However, for the whole of My Brilliant Friend I felt like it was at least an equal to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. That novel only runs 36-40 hours in audio, so it’s about half the size of the full version of My Brillian Friend. The Ferrante novel is far more ambitious, at least in being a biography of two women, so maybe it needs twice the space that Tolstoy used to tell us about Anna Karenina. However, Anna is never developed in such detail like Lenù and Lila.

We follow Lenù and Lila from being little girls to old women, and that makes a huge difference in storytelling ambition. This novel is primarily about friendship, even though it says almost as much about kinship. Men do not come across well in this story. This novel is feminist at a visceral level. I’d also say this book is an anti-chemistry book in the sexual sense. Time and time again, hormones overwhelm Lenù and Lila into making bad life-changing decisions. The great loves of their lives are the same evil Mr. Right. Nino Sarratore is no Mr. Darcy. Ferrante makes Nino one of the detestable bad guys of literary history. I can’t believe that Lenù and Lila didn’t immediately recognize that he was a clone of his father, Donato, the slimy seducer they knew from childhood.

The Prose

It’s hard to judge the writing of a translated novel. I do know that Ann Goldstein’s translation of Ferrante’s Italian prose is clear and precise, and the writing comes across as vivid and impactful, but the style is plain and unadorned. It lacks the colorful authorial voice of two recent novels where the prose enchanted me, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Nor does it have any the wonderful authorial commentary like old literary writers Dickens or Tolstoy since Ferrante’s story is told in the first person.

A lot of modern bestsellers have the highly refined writing style taught by MFA programs. Readability and clarity are valued over wordy digressions and colorations. This is one reason why I have a hard time predicting if a novel will become a classic a century from now. The classics we’ve crowned from the 19th century all have distinctive writer’s voices. Ferrante’s voice comes across through the characterizations of Lenù and Lila, and it’s confusing to distinguish Elena the author’s voice from Elena the character.

Final Judgment

I liked this story tremendously. It may have ruined me for reading lesser novels, especially for reading science fiction, which seldom achieves any kind of deep character development. The whole story of My Brilliant Friend reminds me of two other multi-novel sequences about characters as they age.

The first is A Dance to the Music of Time, a twelve-volume series by Anthony Powell which he wrote from 1951 to 1975 using his own life and friends for inspiration. I reviewed them here, here, and here.

And the other are books by Elizabeth Strout. Collectively, they follow the growth of two women too, Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge. I’ve reviewed them here.

This first reading of the entire My Brilliant Friend story will not be enough to truly appreciate this novel. Even though it’s told in a straightforward manner, it is quite complex in what it has to say. I listened to the books this time. Next time I’ll read them with my eyes. Luckily, I have a one-volume Kindle edition that includes all four books.

Ferrante made me think about my life as a whole. She also makes me think about aging. And she has quite a lot to say about the relationship between men and women. Her novel might be the perfect illustration as to why we don’t have free will. Whether or not it becomes a classic in future centuries, it is worth reading and contemplating now. It gives us lot to meditate on.

JWH

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

by James Wallace Harris, 8/20/24

Sometimes you find yourself deep within the rabbit’s hole before you realize you’ve fallen into one.

I wish I had read the biographical entry for Sylvia Townsend Warner in Wikipedia before I read Lolly Willowes. It was her first novel, published in 1926. Warner was born in 1893 in Middlesex, England. She was greatly influenced by her father, a successful scholar, who died in 1916. Lolly Willowes is about Laura Willowes’ life after her father died. The story begins when Laura, called Lolly by her family, is twenty-eight, a spinster, who is forced to live with her brother’s family and take care of his children.

Warner was just five years older than Laura when she wrote Laura’s story, and unmarried. In the second part of the novel, Laura is forty-seven and lives a vastly different life. After Warner wrote Lolly Willowes she became involved with a life-long lesbian relationship. Warner authored many novels, many short story and poetry collections, worked in a munitions factory during WWI, became a communist, traveled to Spain twice during the civil war working with the Red Cross, and had a long productive life in several fields, including writing a biography of T. H. White. She died in 1978 at age 84.

In 1926 Sylvia Townsend Warner imagined it would take Laura twenty years before she could free herself from the roles society defined for her. Warner didn’t wait that long. I finished Lolly Willowes yesterday, and today I read the biographical piece in Wikipedia. It inspired me to order a biography on Warner by Claire Harman.

I bought Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner because the Kindle edition by NYRB (New York Review Books) was on sale for $1.99. NYRB is famous for reprinting forgotten classics. I often buy them when they go on sale, but what really sold me on Lolly Willowes is the blurb claimed it was the very first Book-of-the-Month Club selection. A quick peek at Wikipedia told me the novel was an early feminist classic, an international bestseller when it came out, and it was about witches and Satan. The book’s subtitle, “The Loving Huntsman” refers to the devil.

The NYRB edition is no longer available on Amazon, but since the novel is in the public domain, there are many editions available, including one for forty-nine cents. NYRB’s site still lists four novels by Warner, including Lolly Willowes, which does have a nice introduction by Alison Lurie.

Now, after all that build up, I’m not sure I can recommend this novel. Sometimes, forgotten classics are forgotten for a reason. The first half of this book tells us about Lolly’s upbringing and background. And it’s told rather than shown, meaning it’s a long narrative description. It’s not until Laura’s nieces and nephews grow up and have children of their own, becoming Aunt Lolly to a new generation, that she finally rebels. Laura moves to Great Mop, a small hamlet, to live alone. It’s here where she discovers she wants to become a witch and befriends the Devil.

At the beginning of the story we feel sorry for Lolly because she’s unmarried at twenty-eight. For most of the story we feel sorry for Lolly because for the next two decades she’s trapped as a live in aunt, in a role she doesn’t want. Then at forty-seven she defies everyone to go live on her own. It’s interesting that Warner has Laura gaining her freedom around the time of menopause. I am reminded of the sociological study, Sex and the Seasoned Woman by Gail Sheehy. Sheehy profiled women who felt that after menopause they no longer had to put husband or children first, and were finally free to pursue their own life. This fits with the novel.

Lolly Willowes came out in 1926, three years before Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Late in Lolly Willowes Lolly tells the Devil, “It’s to escape all that–to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others….” Doesn’t that remind you of Woolf’s classic title?

It’s this impassioned speech that Lolly makes to the Devil that finally launches the novel into orbit. It’s a shame that it comes so late in the story. I even wonder if readers would benefit from reading it before starting Lolly Willowes. It might make all the rambling story that comes before it more powerful.

Here is that speech. Don’t read it if you think it will spoil the story. She is addressing the Devil.

“Is it true that you can poke the fire with a stick of dynamite in perfect safety? I used to take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I believe I heard it then. Anyhow, even if it isn’t true of dynamite, it’s true of women. But they know they are dynamite, and long for the concussion that may justify them. Some may get religion, then they’re all right, I expect. But for the others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them real. Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it’s there—ready! Respectable countrywomen keep their grave-clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers, hidden away, and when they want a little comfort they go and look at them, and think that once more, at any rate, they will be worth dressing with care. But the witch keeps her cloak of darkness, her dress embroidered with signs and planets; that’s better worth looking at. And think, Satan, what a compliment you pay her, pursuing her soul, lying in wait for it, following it through all its windings, crafty and patient and secret like a gentleman out killing tigers. Her soul—when no one else would give a look at her body even! And they are all so accustomed, so sure of her! They say: ‘Dear Lolly! What shall we give her for her birthday this year? Perhaps a hot-water bottle. Or what about a nice black lace scarf? Or a new workbox? Her old one is nearly worn out.’ But you say: ‘Come here, my bird! I will give you the dangerous black night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous berries to feed on, and a nest of bones and thorns, perched high up in danger where no one can climb to it.’ That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness—well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that—but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and—what is it?—‘blight the genial bed.’ Of course, given the power, one may go in for that sort of thing, either in self-defense, or just out of playfulness. But it’s a poor twopenny housewifely kind of witchcraft, black magic is, and white magic is no better. One doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that—to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life. As for the witches who can only express themselves by pins and bed-blighting, they have been warped into that shape by the dismal lives they’ve led. Think of Miss Carloe! She’s a typical witch, people would say. Really she’s the typical genteel spinster who’s spent herself being useful to people who didn’t want her. If you’d got her younger she’d never be like that.”

Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Lolly Willowes (New York Review Books (Paperback) Book 5) (pp. 149-150). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition.

Even though I bought the Kindle edition, I listened to the audiobook edition because it was part of my Spotify subscription. Hearing this speech came across far more dramatically than I can read it in my head.

I find it fascinating that Sylvia Townsend Warner could be so accepting of Lolly selling her soul to the devil. I must assume it was her way of saying how awful being confined by the traditional woman’s role was to her. Yet, Warner also portrays the Devil as Lolly’s master. Has she not traded one form of servitude for another? The biographical piece in Wikipedia also said that Warner wrote essays against the church.

Lolly Willowes does have a great deal of details about middle class life in England in the late 19th and early 20th century. I’ve always enjoyed those kinds of details about English life. There were many passages that reminded me of D. H. Lawrence. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the story was consistently told as a singular work of art. And the novel seldom featured dramatic dialog.

Lolly Willowes is not a modern novel even though it came out in 1926. I felt it was closer in style to George Elliot, but Lolly Willowes lacks the depth of Dorothea Brooke, but then Warner’s novel is only five hours on audio, and Middlemarch runs around thirty-five hours.

If you’re into English novels, especially those written by women, then give Lolly Willowes a try. However, if you want a solidly fun book about an English woman on her own, reading Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson, which came out in 1934. It’s interesting how different women can be just seven years later.

I must admit, that the more I read about Sylvia Townsend Warner, the more likely I am to reread Lolly Willowes in the future. Like many books, multiple readings brings out depths missed with just one reading. I may have missed a lot.

JWH

We’re Never Going to Change

by James Wallace Harris, 4/15/24

Years ago, I read This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. It was a passionate plea to act on climate change because if we didn’t everything would change. Her new book, Doppelganger, is a metaphor about our polarized society and what keeps us from changing even though Klein still makes a case that we need to change.

Between reading these two books I gave up all hope that humanity would change. I read Doppelganger as further proof that we won’t change even though Klein again passionately expresses the rational reasons why we should. I also believe we all need to change, but sadly, I don’t believe we will.

Doppelganger begins with Naomi Klein explaining how people on the internet often confused her with Naomi Wolf, a once respected feminist who is now considered a conspiracy crank. Klein uses the idea of the doppelganger as a metaphor for how to relate to our opposites, whether male/female, black/white, liberal/conservative, religious/atheist, Christian/Jew, Israeli/Palestinian, etc.

Klein goes to great lengths to make the metaphor work in several situations, but I found that distracting. What the book does exceptionally well is to ask: How do we decide what to do when half of us disagree with the other half? We all assume there is one truth, but everyone sees a different side of it.

In many chapters Klein makes Wolf seem ridiculous, but there are quite a few places where Klein recognizes Wolf’s point of view, or even gives her credit for being right.

I believe that extremists on the left act like naive young children, while extremists on the right act like selfish young children. In other words, I believe Klein is unrealistically hopeful, while Wolf is self-centeredly overly positive.

I must assume Klein writes her books believing we can still change. With Doppelganger she’s hoping that if we can get together and endeavor to understand each other we can make rational compromises. That would be lovely if she were successful and right. I believe Klein is right but won’t be successful.

We are doing essentially nothing towards controlling climate change. Wars, collapsing economies, and weather catastrophes are on the increase. Our responses are becoming more irrational, rather than wiser. We must face the fact that evolution works on all levels, and Darwinian conflict will always prevail.

The strong are going to take what they want at the expense of the weak. To solve all the problems Klein covers in her books would require overcoming our Darwinian natures and everyone acting for everyone else’s good. I no longer believe we’re capable of such altruism.

In the early days of Christianity, its philosophy was anti-Darwinian. But modern Christians have lost all their compassion. Christianity has been dissolving for centuries. The compassionate Christians gave up on God and became liberals, and the ones left became conservatives who rewrote Christian ideals with serving rationality that backs evolution.

In other words, I believe early Christianity, and 20th-century secular humanism were two times in history where we tried to fight our Darwinian natures, and in both instances, the movements failed.

We’re not going to change.

Not to end on a completely depressing note, I’ll try to offer a somewhat positive idea. Since we won’t change, the environment will. How can we use our Darwinian nature to build hardened societies that can survive climate catastrophes? Don’t read too much hope into that. What I’m saying is how can the strong survive the coming changes we chose not to avoid?

JWH