I had one intoxicating gulp of the old days this week, when I got into an argument about feminism. When I say “old days”, I don’t mean the kind of intrafeminist schism we used to get into three months ago, pre-pandemic: I mean a true, vintage argument, about class, consumerism, Sheryl Sandberg, rabid possessive individualism, race, Bridget Jones, depoliticising the political, Edwina Currie, the resilience myth, social fragmentation, the whole works. (No one actually mentioned Edwina Currie, but whenever gender equality smashes against the neoliberal order, I always think about her nostalgically, if not necessarily fondly.)
If you want to know more about those weighty themes, I strongly recommend the new book by the sociologist Angela McRobbie, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience. Here are some more general observations: we have spent most of this year in intellectual hibernation, where nothing seemed important except what to do in the next 12 hours. Everything else – feminism, racism, Brexit, the climate crisis – quietly receded.
It was like being invalided off the pitch and, truthfully, I have experienced some muscle wastage: I can’t remember how to argue against a proposition that I agree with 60% to 70%, or stick resolutely to a position just because it is where I started. But, on the upside, there is this tremendous clarity – there were things we talked about because they mattered and things we talked about because we were in deadlock and did not know how to stop talking about them.
We went three months without arguing about sovereignty and we all survived; we went three months without talking about racism or feminism, on the other hand, and watched as the world erupted in racist violence, while low-paid women held the country together and women’s lives – from the disempowered drudgery to the unrelenting childcare – were shunted back to the 50s. If we end up learning how to pick battles, it is possible that something useful will come of 2020 after all.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
