Your Enemy isn't Feminism or Capitalism. It's "Not Being Rich."

Women aren't happy with the state of things, but maybe the problem is just that we're not aristocrats and heiresses.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

If you read a lot of content by women (especially moms) you’ll notice on theme which is a general sense of dissatisfaction—we’re supposed to do it all while continually feeling like we’re falling short. We feel like we aren’t able to reach our potential both at work and at home. We’re stressed, we’re angry, we have no help, so we tie these feelings to a vague social force.

I’ve been loving Elena Bridgers’ writing lately, and she recently wrote an article about how many moms are frustrated with feminism, in which she used a survey to show that her mostly liberal, mostly feminist audience still felt that modern feminism had some drawbacks, especially the pressure to “have it all,” the glorification of casual sex, or the fact that the more extreme feminist “cancel culture” pushed boys into the manosphere, which makes things worse for both boys and girls.

Bridgers faced a great degree of criticism for her piece, which even led her to edit the article with an apology (boy, have I been there before.) The Substack responses didn’t seem too unhinged, but things really popped off on Instagram, where numerous followers lobbed the “white woman” (derogatory) label at her. It feels worth mentioning that many of these people were, in fact, white women. Most of them corrected her that any frustration she thinks she feels with feminism is actually just frustration with capitalism, especially as it relates to the stress of being a working mom. But a much more nuanced and respectful response came from talented writer Darby Saxbe, postulating that perhaps feminism isn’t the issue plaguing women today, but rather, capitalism.

I don’t fully disagree with either writer (and I wouldn’t tag them here if I didn’t think they were good! I follow both of them!) but I’ve had a slightly different take on this for a while, which is that a lot of the complaints women have which they say are the result of “girlboss feminism” or “late stage capitalism” are things that wouldn’t be solved by the abolition of feminism or capitalism. A lot of the time, the ideal reality they envision is really just a world where they happen to be richer than they are now. Things aren’t worse than they’ve ever been (bad as things can be sometimes, they are probably better than they’ve ever been) but they could still be so much better, if we all just had a lot more money and free time.