I lived for years in a sexually liberated lesbian commune, but found true peace when I married a man

Up to the point where I got pregnant, I’d taken for granted that men and women are substantially the same apart from our dangly bits.

The experience of being a mother blew this out of the water.

Until then I’d bought uncritically into the idea that individual freedom is the highest good, that bonds or obligations are acceptable only inasmuch as they are optional, and that men and women can and should pursue this equally.

Then I went through the wonderful and disorienting experience of finding my sense of self partly merged with a dependent infant. The kind of absolute freedom I’d accepted as an unalloyed good was suddenly a great deal less appealing to me because I actively enjoyed belonging to my daughter.

It was obviously not in her interests to go on insisting that my obligations to her were optional. Where, pre-baby, I could do more or less what I liked, as a mother I couldn’t refuse to get up and feed my crying newborn at 3.30am just because I didn’t feel like it.

Her interests mattered more than my once-treasured autonomy.

Then I went through the wonderful and disorienting experience of finding my sense of self partly merged with a dependent infant. The kind of absolute freedom I’d accepted as an unalloyed good was suddenly a great deal less appealing to me because I actively enjoyed belonging to my daughter (stock image)

It meant a fundamental break with my past way of thinking. I was in my early teens when I started to notice how Mum would cook dinner and after we’d all eaten, my dad would get up and leave her to clear the table. Then my two brothers began to follow his example. This seemed unfair, to say the least.

It left me with a dilemma. As the household’s other female, I felt a clear solidarity with my mum. But I also believed I had equal status with my brothers. Should I exempt myself from these petty chores like they did?

And if I did, what did that say about how we all saw my mum? In turn, as another female, what did this imply for me when I reached adulthood? Trying to answer these questions led me to feminism and a world in which women were creatures in our own right, rather than second-class support humans.

But I soon learned that membership of the feminist club comes with small print. You cannot pursue feminist goals without signing up to a larger bundle of commitments under the banner of ‘progress’, such as climate justice, racial and gender-minority rights, wealth redistribution and so on. Reject those, and you will be excommunicated from the coalition of the righteous.

I tried living my adult life according to those ideals, pursuing low-carbon life, non-hierarchical social forms and maximum sexual freedom, in a culture hell-bent on individualism and fluid relationships.

By the end of my 20s, however, I had found that being determinedly counter-cultural was taking a great deal of emotional and intellectual effort, for questionable returns. I concluded that sexual freedom brings alienation and that too little interdependence, rather than too much, is actually precipitating a collapse of social life.

A website I co-founded with four others imploded, turning out not to be the harmonious co-operative I’d envisaged but beset by muddled objectives and bitter interpersonal conflicts in which I lost my best friend and my social circle.

Around the same time, I also discovered that the supposedly egalitarian and sexually liberated all-lesbian community I lived in was in fact hierarchical and riddled with competition. Whether the issue was who was cleaning the kitchen or who was sleeping with whom, excluding males from the household did not vanquish rivalry and exploitation.

Even as I wrestled with these discoveries, I met the man who became my husband. Even as my life was falling apart, I had already started to rebuild it — in a different form.

Some years into our life together, I have found more peace and equality, not to mention more freedom from futile power games, in the countless ways we co-operate building a home and family than I ever achieved in my progressive 20s, trying to run away from commitment and constraint.

It turns out that accepting some limits is liberating, not restrictive. And getting to grips with how we divide the countless little jobs that keep a home going hasn’t stuffed me into a patriarchal box at all. Rather, it has produced a set-up that looks fairly conventional but is well adapted to each of us and our shared goals.

Around the same time, I also discovered that the supposedly egalitarian and sexually liberated all-lesbian community I lived in was in fact hierarchical and riddled with competition (stock image)

As I’ve set about trying to square these discoveries with my previous beliefs, I have come to rethink my previous belief that patriarchy is a mass conspiracy to oppress women. Instead, I have come to see it as the result of historical human efforts to balance the conflicting interests of the two sexes.

Admittedly, that result hasn’t always been perfect. You can point to plenty of abuses and injustices, many targeted especially at women. These are rightly to be condemned. But the solution is not to be found in some state of perfect symmetry between the sexes — because this can’t be had. The sexes are not interchangeable.

Take premarital sex as an example. The truth is that it carries much greater risks for women than for men. Marriage as a precondition for sex benefits women (and children) — and it’s not clear to me that feminist efforts to smash the norms around this have delivered greater happiness for women.

Don’t get me wrong. My aim is not to stuff feminism back into its box. I have no wish to be banned from voting or working, any more than I want my political agency to be subsumed into that of my husband.

Nor do I want to return to a pre-1960s understanding of marriage, and with it the ‘traditional’ relationship in which women serve as home-makers, while relying on their husband’s goodwill and good character to offset the loss of agency this implies.

As if such a thing were even possible. Such a notion ignores the downsides that drove women to abandon this model in the first place. And in any case, those material conditions are long gone. Dual-earner households are now the norm and the ‘two-income trap’ means supporting a stay-at-home parent is economically unfeasible below a certain earning threshold.

But sex continues to be politically important. Men and women will continue to exist, and certain basic facts about us will remain true. Most of us want children; most want a life lived in common, usually with a member of the opposite sex.

Same-sex-attracted men and women exist, of course, but heterosexuality is still the default.

Humans can’t change sex. The shape of our bodies still matters, despite everything the modern world has done to minimise those disparities.

But that doesn’t leave women powerless. We can and must work out how men and women can be human together, opting for certain constraints which are in fact beneficial and help us live well.

But sex continues to be politically important. Men and women will continue to exist, and certain basic facts about us will remain true. Most of us want children; most want a life lived in common, usually with a member of the opposite sex (stock image)

Happily, there already exists a vintage social technology we can deploy, if we can only upcycle it for the 21st century: marriage.

It’s not a magic bullet to solve every challenge. Nothing will ever do that. Nor, as even happily married people will tell you, is every marriage utopian. But the fact is that women who are mothers flourish in a society where their role is more clearly defined — and married family units are essential to creating stability.

I recognise that this puts me at odds with the prevailing feminist culture in our society. But I’m not alone in thinking this. Many who grew up in the post-1960s world of autonomy and self-actualisation are now rebelling against the culture of absolute self-centredness and seeking and sustaining marriage as a kind of radical solidarity.

The bleak ‘liberated view’ is exemplified by the U.S. writer Honor Jones, who wrote last year about how she loved her husband — but still divorced him, because their marriage wasn’t self-expressive enough and he was an obstacle to her personal fulfilment.

From perspectives such as hers, marriage is tantamount to prostitution, a fake contract that enables exploitation of one sex by the other. Far better to deregulate relations between the sexes altogether and let everyone embrace their own needs. Ironically, you hear this from both feminists and anti-feminists.

And the cost is loneliness and mutual hostility — which is in no one’s interest.

I spent 15 adult years living as a single entity before I married. I have done all the things Jones lists as upsides of the atomised life. But from where I’m sitting, what she characterises as stifling isn’t a bugbear. Rather, the closing down of limitless options is actually liberating and what I do every day is meaningful to the extent that I have been willing to accept constraints.

I’m not claiming either that everyone must get married. There have always been women who don’t want to be mothers, who don’t want relationships with men, or who don’t want relationships full stop. But especially in today’s uncertain climate, a more stable society is an urgent feminist issue — especially if you’re among the great majority who want kids. And the simplest, most well-tested route to more widespread social stability is more marriage.

And this means I am also opposed to easy divorce. Lest anyone mistake me, this isn’t a conservative argument. With only two marriages for every divorce, there is very little left to conserve. Nor am I arguing that anyone should remain in a violent or otherwise abusive relationship ‘for the sake of the children’.

My argument for marriage is about loyalty. It’s not to be treated as a contract — a business arrangement that you drop if it stops being win/win. It’s a covenant. And as such it should be indissoluble.

Choosing one person means continuing to choose them: that is, opting to ignore all the ways the grass might be greener somewhere else — and continuing to do so, even when things are a bit rough. Every marriage has ups and downs, and some of them can last for years. But in most cases this isn’t an argument for calling it quits.

According to sociologist Dr Paul Amato, ‘high-conflict’ marriages are characterised by heated argument or even violence, and in these cases divorce may be beneficial for children.

But around half of divorces are in what he calls ‘low-conflict’ marriages: that is, the relationship was not perfect but they muddled along well enough. For 55-60 per cent of couples, he says, ‘these are not bad marriages. They are just not ecstatic marriages’.

Same-sex-attracted men and women exist, of course, but heterosexuality is still the default (stock image)

And where things are not ecstatic, which is to say for most marriages at least occasionally, the reactionary feminist emphasis has to be on absolute, unshakable loyalty. You can get a long way on stoicism and common purpose —but to do so, you have to foreclose separation as a possibility.

And those who wish to do this are up against a modern belief that if a partnership isn’t perfect at all times, like a consumer product, you should take it back to the shop. Backing out of this destructive illusion won’t be easy. Every millennial couple I know with young children struggles with the gap between ideal and reality, especially where parenting disrupts the relationship: new resentments, new asymmetries, sometimes simmering tensions.

But it’s exactly in functional but less-than-perfect families that statistics show children are most deeply hurt by divorce — because, actually, it was good enough for them. In many cases, little more than a change in attitude can make it good enough for us as well.

Lest anyone accuse me of arguing against women’s emancipation and wellbeing in the name of family stability, studies show that a third of men and women who get divorced subsequently regret it. More freedom doesn’t always equal more happiness.

And sticking with an imperfect-but-functional partnership doesn’t self-evidently mean never-ending misery. Life is long, and I have seen even extended rough patches in relationships smooth back out into affection, respect and intimacy.

We just need to tilt the scales back towards erring on the side of stability rather than that of freedom. By shifting our focus from emotional fulfilment to long-term thinking and the practical work of building together, we can reclaim marriage as a post-romantic covenant between two willing partners that gives all of us infinitely more opportunity to thrive.

But what use is it telling women to get married, if there’s no one to marry? In just contemplating this we run the gauntlet of every feminist who has ever conceived of women’s interests as necessitating the total exclusion or defeat of men. In my vision, women operate alongside men. Where, though, have all the good men gone?

Part of the answer is that, outside the elite and labouring classes, they are increasingly out-competed by women.

This has resulted in a devastating loss of purpose and dignity that has disproportionately affected working-class and lower middle-class men. Over recent decades, there has been a steady rise in ‘deaths of despair’ — from suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and other self-inflicted conditions associated with loneliness and lack of hope.

Male friendship is on the decline. This leaves many men dependent on a partner for social connection and wider friendship, which in turn leaves them desperately vulnerable if the relationship ends.

The highest-risk group for suicide in the UK is divorced men, followed by widowers.

Yet should any straight white man show signs of distress, liberal feminism will dismiss this as further evidence of aggrieved entitlement and misogyny.

When a U.S. senator called last year for policies to restore the well-being of lower-class men, The Washington Post accused him of ‘prejudice’ and Rolling Stone magazine interpreted his plea as a return to the days when men could indulge their masculine urges ‘by groping women and worse’.

And yet the wellbeing of working-class men is straightforwardly in women’s interests — specifically, the interests of those women who might form families with such men. They would also benefit from more and better jobs for men: more dignity; less porn and video games; more responsibility.

I maintain that there’s nothing anti-feminist (at least, not for a reactionary feminist) about defending men’s interests as distinct from those of women. And even if the big economic picture is tricky to solve, there is one thing we can help to address: the death of male friendship.

Spaces where men socialise without women are increasingly rare — and this is partly thanks to feminism. Men’s private clubs are seen as beyond the pale, prima facie evidence of patriarchy. The Garrick, for example, one of the last all-male London members’ clubs, is currently subject to a legal challenge by women demanding admission.

But it’s all very well for barristers to demand access to elite men’s clubs. What happens when that travels down the social scale? When one of the last all-male working men’s clubs, in Shropshire, sought £50,000 funding for repairs to its Grade II-listed building, it was turned down by the National Lottery on the grounds of its sex-discriminatory membership policy.

But what use is it telling women to get married, if there’s no one to marry? In just contemplating this we run the gauntlet of every feminist who has ever conceived of women’s interests as necessitating the total exclusion or defeat of men. In my vision, women operate alongside men. Where, though, have all the good men gone? (stock image)

Four years later, its members voted overwhelmingly to close down rather than succumb to institutional pressure to admit women who were not the wives of existing members.

No one talks about what might be lost, for ordinary men, when their spaces go mixed-sex. Harvard evolutionary biologist Dr Joyce Benenson argues that women and men socialise in distinct ways, a disparity structured around evolved strategies for survival.

Human female survival strategies turn on excluding other females in the search for mates, then enlisting peers and elders to help with the care of dependents. In contrast, males tend towards social patterns in which they co-operate with peers and compete with those they see as opponents.

This means men find companionship with other male peers in ways that often don’t make sense to the opposite sex.

Sometimes, out running with the dog, I pass a field where two or three (always male) figures stand hundreds of metres apart, scanning with metal detectors. It’s obvious to me that for these men, what they are doing counts as socialising, even if they’re not exchanging a word.

You often read concerned women saying that men would be less lonely if only they’d spend time in groups or talk about their feelings more — but really, that just means telling men to be more like women.

What if, actually, men socialising together looks like nothing women would want to do? What if it’s not possible in mixed company?

Last year, woman farmer Lisa Edwards faced a fierce backlash when she accused the 94-year-old Liverpool Agricultural Discussion Society of sexism for restricting membership to men and excluding her.

A senior member told her: ‘There are conversations that are different between men and women. To take away a space to chat is wrong.’

I agree. If we want a world of good men, we need to accept that good men are formed not by women but by other men — and be willing to let that happen without us.

Of course, this carries the risk that male mentorship will take forms that women find uncomfortable. But if you look at the popularity of so-called ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate, you’ll see that this is still happening, even when men’s opportunities for single-sex social life are heavily scrutinised for anti-feminist wrongthink.

If we don’t grant good men space to be themselves, we will get more Andrew Tates: not good men but isolated, bitter ones who blame women for their suffering.

This is not the world I want my young daughter to grow up in.

It might seem perverse for a feminist to make the case for men being freer to exclude women. But we cannot wring our hands about men’s ailing mental health while reacting with fear and hostility to every fraternal organisation that focuses on practical activities and produces, as a side-effect, more confident and well-adjusted men.

If we want to see more of these men in the world, women need to step back a little and give them space.

Doing this might also have a bonus — returning a measure of mystery to the opposite sex, which in turn creates more space for desire to flourish.

• Adapted from Feminism Against Progress, by Mary Harrington, to be published by Forum on March 2 at £16.99. © Mary Harrington 2023. To order a copy for £15.29 (valid to 11/03/23; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.