I was just reading an essay about this from 1998. I think Houellebecq was prescient, here:
Thirty years after the beginnings of ‘mainstream’ feminism, the results are appalling... In short, the immense process of domestication accomplished by women over the previous millennia in order to suppress a man’s primitive inclinations (violence, fucking, drunkenness, play) and to make him a creature more or less able to lead a social life has been reduced to nothing, in the space of a generation.
Houellebecq, Michel. Interventions 2020 (p. 84). Polity Press. Kindle Edition.
Sadly, I agree. And it seems to be getting worse. I keep meaning to read Houellebecq, but haven't yet - any recommendations?
Hmm... His early stuff is a little over-the-top "doomer" but it's got a unique vibe. Really captures the disillusionment of liberal, turn of the 21st century Western culture. I'm reading Annihilation now; so far it strikes me as his most gentle book.
I might start with Submission. It was his most controversial; the popular take was that it was anti-Muslim, and it was tied up with the Charlie Hebdo murders of French journalists by Muslim extremists. The premise of the book being that a Muslim party wins a majority in French elections and, overnight, the French are living under Sharia law. Women fired from all professional positions and required to wear head-scarves, etc.
To me, the story read as sympathetic to the Muslims, showing how a Frenchman who had grown disenchanted with Western culture (including Christianity's abdication of the defense of Western culture) could find contentment in the structure provided by a traditional society with very differing values. But at the same time I think he wanted us to contemplate how horrifying that could be. What does it mean when your values change and you find yourself happy with that? (And he does a nice job comparing this shift with Huysmans, a 19th century atheist who converted to Christianity late in life.)
I'm probably totally wrong here but it sounds a little like The Handmaid's Tale, but obviously with a Muslim focus instead of a Christian one? Thanks! I'm gonna look for that!
Our collective values certainly seem to be undergoing some pretty serious shifts lately, and I'm not sure they're necessarily good ones, either.