It is indeed important that women can be independent from men, and the social revolutions enabling that condition were necessary to the advancing cause of women’s equality. But the process of social change has not been accompanied by serious effort to replace the good in what was lost. We broke the intergenerational home into the nuclear family. We broke the nuclear family into the individual. But we have not done enough to replace the security and safety of the family with a social equivalent.
In keeping with her established pattern, Crispin starts by bemoaning the difficulties of making a living as a single freelance writer and proceeds to the inevitable conclusion that we therefore need a political/sexual/social revolution. Seems like it would be easier to just rethink your career choices. I think my favorite part is how the same woman who admits she backed out of a vegetable share rather than put in required volunteer work is eager for society at large to turn childrearing into a possibly-communal contractual arrangement separate from marriage. Pipe dreams aside, though, since when do would-be radical bohemian artists complain about not having job security, a wide social network and a living wage? I thought dying young in some fleabag European hostel or toiling in penury and obscurity was how you proved you weren’t one of the wretched bourgeoisie.