by Carrie Gress
CHAPTER 2
Satan’s Point of Entry:
The Malcontent Heart
“Envy is thin because it bites but never eats.”
—Spanish Proverb
Stories are one of the earliest teaching tools known to man. Tales and epic adventures told around fires passed along lessons to teach the next generation about life and about what it means to be a man, a woman, a family, a tribe.
One of the best-known stories of all ages goes back to Eve. We know it well. She is tempted by Satan to eat of the fruit of the tree from which God told her not to eat. When she hesitated, Satan dangled the bait: “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gn 3:4–5). He knew how to get to her—to offer her something appealing that she didn’t already have. This ancient story tells us something about the deep vices of women.
Men and women living together in a state of grace are an icon of God, made in his image and likeness, building each other up. But the opposite is also true. The man and woman outside the state of grace can quickly become an icon of Satan—portraying his vices, particularly envy and pride—while also mutually tearing each other apart. A quick look at Harvey Weinstein and the parade of women who either auditioned or who helped facilitate the auditioning on his “casting couch” is revealing. Their mutual collaboration, when it was mutual, was denigrating, not edifying. And when it wasn’t mutual, it was devastating.
It’s easy to find trenchant criticism of men and their faults (and of course, they are abundant in our age), but there is very little available content that considers the vices and weaknesses of women. Feminism has made such conversations impossible. If a man engages in pointing out a woman’s faults, he is sexist; if a woman does, she is ignorant or blaming the victim (because all women are victims, as we will see later). But it doesn’t serve women well to ignore our faults and failings.
Deep in the heart of most women is the desire to want more. This desire, like most things, can be directed to the good, as in wanting more of God’s will, or it can be directed to the bad, such as wanting more of something no matter what the cost. Sociologist Joyce Benenson, who has seen this phenomenon among women the world over, offers an explanation.1 The reality is that motherhood is hardwired into a woman’s soul, whether she is conscious of it or not. The motherhood dimension of women plays itself out in many ways, but particularly in two: 1) women are weaker than men, so they can’t go about getting things based purely on physical strength; and 2) when women are pregnant and having children, they are in a very vulnerable position because they are not able to go hunt for food, or get a job with ease to keep all the mouths fed and bodies clothed. In other words, women have fundamental vulnerabilities for which they must find ways to compensate. The natural solution throughout most of history was to look for a husband to take care of the necessities. This is simply the way that families are built, sustained, and future generations are brought into the world. But every woman, with or without a husband, still faces a world of uncertainty. Fear, lack of control, hunger, and loss of status are all motivating factors for a woman to want more, to protect herself and her children.
Problems arise, however, when women use their vices, rather than their virtues, to get what they want or need. Because there are a limited number of good husbands to be gotten, or opportunities are scarce, women who find themselves competing against other women often resort to destructive ways to edge out the others. Virginia Woolf captured the vicious element of female competition in her essay “Room of One’s Own”:
A woman dresses “to kill,” to arouse
Jealous, devastate other women, to “star” in
The room, to make an economic/romantic
“killing” with a man. Some women take the
beauty of other women as a personal
Affront; their first cool, side-glance
Appraisal dissolves into a little girl’s pout.
This fear of a gain in women, so often
Criticized as proof of her narcissism, is not
That. She is desperately trying to outlive her
Approved shelf life.
Women will stop being dependent and
Masochistic when they are free. For now,
Women are just as bad as men in the matter
Of their slavery, to which they cling.2
The stakes for women are high, and what women fear are not trifles. Women throughout history have experienced real and genuine hardships, struggles, and pain associated with the weaknesses of our human state. Women often carry burdens of fear or hurt to which they respond to with a desire to control situations or others. Others try to avoid vulnerability and steel themselves against anything that could hurt them again. These are the types of scenarios that have led to so many jaded, cynical, and defensive women.
The curious piece of this puzzle, however, is the way in which women compete for limited resources. The competition cannot be an open one. Women won’t tolerate, Benenson says, other women who are openly competing with them, so the competition happens quietly and subtly. “Women honestly believe they are not competing and will not tolerate a woman they think is competing.”3 The desire to conceal open competition is innate in women, starting at the tenderest of ages in young girls. When the competition surfaces somehow, making things tense, women defuse it by automatically smiling intensely to present a veneer of kindness in the face of conflict. When hidden conflict becomes open conflict, it usually does not amount to punches thrown, as so often happens with the other sex, but behind the scenes with backstabbing and manipulation.
Competition is not the only thing to be avoided; so is non-conformity. Women operate on a fundamentally egalitarian model. “One girl cannot be seen to be superior to another,” Benenson says, “not in plain sight at least.”4 These situations play themselves out every day in the workplace, with a significant proportion of women preferring not to work under another woman. A large percentage of women, Benenson reports, will not help a female subordinate unless there is some sort of quid pro quo, perhaps fearing that her own position would be threatened by a rising colleague. This egalitarian model is very different from the hierarchical model evidenced among men. Rather than seeing others, particularly subordinates, as competition, men have a more fundamental capacity to see how those with different gifts can be useful for the common good since, unlike women, they don’t live with this sense of vulnerability. This is not to say women don’t have this capacity to see the good in others—they do—but this is a virtue they must more consciously develop.
The most toxic situations for female relationships, resulting in the frequent, albeit hidden, violence, is a polygamous family where “sister-wives” are constantly competing for resources, for themselves and their children. Open conflict in such situations usually does not erupt, but quiet and hidden sabotage of other women’s property or children is a common form of aggression. Though polygamy is illegal and rare, it is not far from the dynamic in which many women, working for a single boss, compete for attention and limited promotions. Perhaps this is why women often don’t treat each other well in the workplace.
The innate strain for resources takes its toll on a woman’s thought patterns, character, and sense of happiness. Many women desire more than what they currently have or are. The common complaint of many women reflects some kind of discontent best summarized as the desire “to have it all.” The “I want it all!” mentality has stirred endless national debates for decades, fed by rhetoric such as Gloria Steinem’s cool assurance, “You are woman. You can do everything a man can do and do it better. You can have it all.” Women continue in their quest to find the perfect job, husband, home, children, travel schedule, leisure time, and enough me time to achieve personal fulfillment. Magazines and media, as we shall see later, often serve as bellows fanning the flames of a woman’s malcontent by subtly hinting that she is a victim, that there is more out there that she is mi
ssing, or perhaps that she chose the wrong mate, career, or lifestyle. All these types of subtle signals have the collective effect of destabilizing a woman, leaving her guessing about what more she ought to have or be doing rather than resting in gratitude for what she may already have.
The answer, of course, is that no woman can have all of this, but this illusion doesn’t curb the female desire for it. Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, touched upon this longing in the woman’s heart of the 1960s when she asked, “Is this all?” She described it as “the ache without a name.” But the ache she described was not unique to the women of the 1960s; it is a universal restlessness that cannot be resolved until the heart rests in God. Since Friedan asked the question six decades ago, women have tried every ill-conceived thing under the sun to fill this heart hole, the Capax Dei, that we all have, that only God can fill. But without this Divine Key that fits perfectly in the feminine heart, Satan has a point of entry: our discontent. “If only I had x, or if only I could do y,” the running dialogue goes in our heads, “then I would be happy.” But wisdom and experience tell us that even when we get x or y, we find yet another x to yearn for shortly thereafter, which comes, yet again, with the false promise of authentic satisfaction.
This discontent acts as a seed in our soul that, if we feed with jealousy, envy, cunning, gossip, and conniving, only pushes us further away from the one thing that can bring satisfaction. But oh, how women have been encouraged to nurture it! History is full of stories of a woman feeding what started as a prick of discontent that grew into her own destruction. It is exactly this seed of discontent that opens women to the anti-Marian spirit, the perfect nourishment for its malignant fruit.
The Modern Fairy Tale
If we look back again to the idea of stories, particularly fairy tales, there is ample evidence of many a woman’s ruin because of malcontent. Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty—these are the stories that have animated the imaginations of little girls for centuries. Popularized by Disney, different versions of these stories, particularly Cinderella, have crossed the divides of cultures and time throughout much of history. Fairy tales help us understand that we can and should overcome adversity. They tell us a great deal about the static nature of humanity. Were human nature ever-shifting, as our culture would have us believe, they would not continue to resonate with us the way they have for millennia.
Fairy tales such as these often follow a particular story pattern. There is generally an older woman—a mother, witch, or queen—who relishes her position as top cat, and then some upstart comes along and threatens her prized place as “fairest of them all.” The young maiden must, at all costs, be stopped. And from there, the fairy tales unfold into a common ending: things don’t go well for the old hag and the young maiden and her prince live happily ever after.
There are many lessons that can be extracted from such fairy tales, but often a primary issue is the timeless vice of envy, offering a keen window into a discontented heart. Envy and jealousy are generally used interchangeably, but they are actually quite distinct. Jealousy is a desire directed at a particular good or object, but the desire stops there. Envy takes jealousy to a new level—it wants something, but it sees the person who has the desired object, or who is an obstacle to it, to be taking something away from them. The word envy comes from the Latin word invidere, which means to “look askance upon,” or to give someone an “evil eye” full of malice and spite. Envy fosters the impulse to destroy others and, unlike over vices, does not have pleasure as its end; unlike gluttony or lust, there is nothing pleasurable about being envious. It has been insightfully described as “a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite.”5 Such are the old women in our fairy tales.
Because envy is such a commonplace vice, it isn’t surprising to see the role it plays in radical feminism, but what is most curious is to see the similarities between it and the pattern of fairy tales whose plots are dripping with vice. Envy’s first and foremost role plays out in the relationship radical feminists have come to have with their children. The ideology behind unfettered abortion, we are told, is that it must exist so that women can get ahead. A child’s life is a threat—the threat—to the mother’s success and happiness. Much like Snow White, the child is silenced, but for much longer than one hundred years. How else is it that people could come to rejoice in such an act of destruction, or think it empowering to “shout your abortion,” or to tell others about your favorite abortion, like Martha Plimpton recently has.
And what about men? Men usually don’t figure into fairy tales as antagonists, but our contemporary version has set its sights on them. Women decided that if only they could have the lives that men had, then they would be happy. The attitude they often take toward men reveals the destructive and belittling marks of envy. Women no longer embrace the goodness that men have to offer society but view it as an evil that must be eliminated. The important impulses of protection and responsibility that have so often inspired men to greatness have been reduced to “toxic masculinity.” The unspoken feminist mantra says, “Men, even though we want to be just like you, you must change.” The venom of envy is directed daily at men, particularly on the ubiquitous TV ads and shows where every one of them bumbles along until a sage woman comes to the rescue.
And how do feminist women treat those women who don’t embrace their ideals? Women who choose to have many children or pick family over career are frequently disparaged as fools and, on occasion, are compared to rabbits. (Many feminists seem to miss the irony that “sexually liberated women” literally dress up like rabbits—or bunnies—to show their empowerment.) Arizona senator Krysten Sinema made it clear what she thinks about stay-at-home moms: “These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks, is some sort of feminism because they’re choosing to live that life. … That’s bulls***. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?”6 Speaking of motherhood, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “Motherly love ain’t everything it has been cracked up to be. To some extent it’s a myth that men have created to make women think that they do this job to perfection.” One sociologist in the ’70s went so far as to suggest that “to be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, women must be slightly mentally ill.”7
Over and over, the importance of the “sisterhood” is extolled, with Madeleine Albright chiming in that “there is a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.” But the sisterhood is extended only to those women who check off the right ideological boxes. Support for abortion is an imperative, otherwise the sisterhood not only neglects a particular woman, it seeks to destroy her politically. The treatment received by Sarah Palin and Sarah Huckabee at the hands of radical feminists is a sample of how the rules of the sisterhood change when the politics of abortion come into play.
One of the more telling trends of our day is the continual fixation even liberated women have with royalty and the ideal of being a princess. Despite their allegiance to aloof sophistication and radical independence, magazines such as Cosmopolitan, People, The Cut, and Elle are practically wallpapered with stories about royalty. Whatever William and Kate, or Harry and Meghan—or any other royals—are up to makes their pages. Nary a concern about the patriarchy tinges their reporting. Curiously, princess stories still sell, even among women who are “supposed to know better.”
Tragically, the feminist solution to malcontent hasn’t been a solution at all, as the statistics tell us. It has brought no relief to Betty Friedan’s “ache that has no name.” The ache is still alive and well, swelling wildly as women become more and more convinced that there is a cure for their malcontent somewhere out there.
Sadly, and most important for our understanding of what is truly going on, this dissatisfaction, this thirsting for more, this lack of co
ntentment and discernment, this emotional wave, has opened up a most dramatic weak spot that the devil continues to exacerbate with designs of his own. The feminists are right: there is a cure. But their so-called enlightenment has blinded them to it and made their situation much worse.
____________________
1Joyce Benenson and Henry Markovits, Warriors and Worriers (Oxford University Press, 2014).
2Quoted in Phyllis Chesler, A Politically Incorrect Feminist (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), loc. 432, Kindle.
3Benenson, Warriors and Worriers, 177.
4Ibid., 181.
5Natalie Angier, “In Pain and Joy of Envy the Brain May Play a Role,” The New York Times, February 16, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/science/17angi.html.
6Hank Berrien, “Krysten Simena, Stay-at-Home-Moms ‘Leech Off their Husbands,’” Daily Wire, October 19, 2018, https://www.dailywire.com/news/37369/kyrsten-sinema-stay-home-moms-leech-their-husbands-hank-berrien.
7Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage (World Publishing, 1972), 48.
CHAPTER 3
Goddess Worship Is Afoot
“Monotheism makes me grouchy. I don’t trust any
religion that makes God look like one of the ruling
class. I guess I’m a pagan or an animist.”
—Gloria Steinem
When looking at contemporary culture, it can be difficult to see any kind of a collective or orchestrated anti-Mary movement. Like scattershot, women appear to be acting badly independently of each other. What is not widely known are the anti-Marian roots that run deep in the goddess movement, also known as Wicca (or witchcraft). Goddess worship among pagans is a very ancient thing, but it is suddenly new and hip again, given new life with a fabricated narrative constructed in the 1970s. A current estimate of witches is around 1.5 million in the US, outpacing the 1.4 million mainline Presbyterians nationwide.1 Where there is goddess worship, radical feminism isn’t far behind, and vice versa.