I agree—it feels like there's just too much "post" all around us. And now we're even seeing post post'ing, as in post postmodernism (or metamodernism...). I just looked it up, because I thought I need to know for sure there's not a hidden meaning in this prefix. But as I suspected there isn't. It means just plainly that which comes or happens just after something, as in postmodern or postcolonial. Why bother? Because I'm struggling with the women's equality issue. Please note that I'm NOT talking about gender equality. My problem is that it actually doesn't seem to be be about dismantling the patriarchal, but about a patriarchally defined and driven remodeling of what it means to be a women: from housewifery and mothering, to formal work and careering. Hence, what we see at the moment is not at all the freeing of women from home, bed, kitchen, but a kicking of them out in the male world of work, in which family life is perceived of as suffocation rather than as a re-creative part of life. I know I sound like a radical religious voice of opposition. That's not however my point of departure. Let me try and explain this in some more detail.
We talk of the 1960's as the decade of revolutions, and most celebrated is the sexual revolution which has become directly connected to women's liberation (because we got the contraceptive pill freely distributed on the market, in the North as well as in the South—i.e. women could suddenly have sex without fearing pregnancy, consequently they could regulate their fertility without the knowledge of any one else than their physician). This is of course worth celebrating. No two words about that. However, it also liberated men from a sexual-reproductive responsibility, and removed the quite obvious excuse for refusing sex, on the part of women, i.e. that they didn't want sex because they were afraid of (yet another) pregnancy and birth. So, the sexual revolution might be seen as a revolution of men's interests in ready access to the women they have a relationship with. The major problem here is not the pill—it is about interests. The discourse surrounding modern (and postmodern!) sex is that it is always nice, however it is practiced as long as those involved consent to it. But what is consent? If anal sex is defined as 'not risky' in whose interests is this? When clean shaved vaginas are defined as OK (as long as you see to it not to get any cuts, or to use particular cleansing products to avoid infections), in whose interests is this defined so?
When you are told to postpone family-making till after you have secured a career, in whose interests is this advise? We may note that in the anglo-saxon tradition this is a particularly patriarchal practice with long and deep roots, not only among the nobility, but also among the working poor (see Jeffrey Weeks). Or , when we are told that prefab food is just as good for us as home cooked meals from fresh produce, in whose interest is it that you buy such prefab stuff?
What kind of society would take the re-generation of us seriously? How would it look like? The focus would not be on working life, it would be on family. It would not be on the "right" to sex, but the gratefulness of being bestowed access to each others secrets. Focus would be on relational stability and mutual respect of interests and wishes. A focus on time as valuable, not in monetary, but in social terms.
What we are living today is not a gender equal dream, but a post-patriarchal nightmare, in which the backlash into old-fashioned patriarchalism is imminent, and in which people who try hard to live as equals are forced on their knees, overburdened by juggling the demands on careering and re-generation.
