The H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness by Jill Filipovic
Thinking back to the 2016 campaign it seems hard to come up with any highlights that were edifying. But there was a positive outcome of the coverage of the campaign, I got to discover the writing of Jill Filipovic, an extremely astute feminist chronicler, on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Cosmopolitan.com, amongst others.
She turned her critical, observant lens on all manner of issues that frankly men would not really see because, well, they’re not women. From “The Men Feminists Left Behind”, how far we still have to go in the workplace, and why the sexism in the election was not a minor issue. She has continued to opine (in the best possible way) post-election too and I am an avid reader.
Her new book, The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness, digs deeper into so many of the issues that were raised during the campaign but didn’t get their full, deserved airing. But her framing is, perhaps, a surprising one, happiness, a right enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, has for the most part, passed women by.
Society’s measure of happiness is usually tied to consumerism. But what have our political, economic and social forces contributed to women’s happiness? “When it comes to pleasure, our political forces run the gamut from indifference to outright hostility, either ignoring any interest in feeling good or writing off pleasure as immoral, hedonistic, even lazy.”
Filipovic is a feminist fighting not just for equality, but for happiness too. At the outset that may seem to diminish the important work of the fight for equality, but what she manages to do is to argue that perhaps they are connected, that real equality itself will lead to happiness. During much of American history women lacked agency thus “it was men, and male ideas about women’s roles, that defined what female happiness looked like.”
When women are economically independent, in control of their bodies, and defined as individuals in our society then perhaps happiness will follow. She posits that for all the advances we have made, women are still held back by a political and economic structure built by white men; childcare is still considered women’s work: government and businesses still act as if there is a caregiver at home; marriage is still “definitional for women and tangential for men;" caregiving in any form comes with “an emasculating stigma.”
It’s an effective framework because it focuses on every aspect of women’s lives and how policy shapes them. So many of the discussions about “women’s issues” are framed as social issues, none more so than women’s reproductive rights. Filipovic makes the connection between the control women have over their bodies, or not, and how tied that is to their economic wellbeing, and thus, ultimately, their happiness. Without being able to plan your family, without access to birth control, without access to affordable healthcare and childcare women, the primary caregivers of children are left behind economically, and that makes it hard to be happy. For one of the characters she features, Janet, survival was her priority, “chasing after a mirage of what she’s supposed to have – a job, a house, a partner, children –but which the complexities of poverty, racism, and sexism keep yanking just out of her reach.”
Combining stories of individual women across the country with her own experiences and a broad range of research and data Filipovic takes a deep dive into the world women are circumscribed by and how that impacts their ability to be masters (or should I say mistresses) of their own fate.
Sexual desire and contentment for women is frowned upon. “So much of how women (especially but not exclusively heterosexual ones) see, understand, and even desire sex is filtered through male experiences and norms…female sexiness is commercialized while female sexual desire is politicized.”
Filipovic touches on every aspect of women’s lives and examines the continued lack of progress or understanding of parenting, marriage, work and even food and how women are disproportionately affected. She devotes attention to the importance of female friendships from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on. Because of the strictures placed around women, female friendships are qualitatively different than those of males. I found myself re-examining every one of the issues she raises and realize that at my age I may have become too complacent or maybe a little resigned that this is the way the world is.
Filipovic concerns herself with the way the world could be and ends with some policy proposals that would promote happiness and pleasure, among them fostering relationships; promoting sexual pleasure; time for pleasure, time for parenting, time for play; make food feminist.
The author is clearly a liberal, feminist and her political detractors will dismiss these policies as a liberal manifesto that does not square with “American values.” But what she has done is to connect public policy to the lot of women in our country. Why shouldn’t policy work for the other half of our population who also might want to pursue the inalienable right to happiness that our founders thought highly enough of that they enshrined it in our Declaration of Independence?
BEFORE YOU READ:
Length: 279 pages
Genre: non-fiction; women; public policy; feminism
Themes: Women’s lives, happiness,Commitment: Well written, compelling effort to get you to think about public policy a little bit differently.
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