by Carrie Gress
Many of us have experienced the feeling that feminists are intransigent on so many ideas, even when the science directly opposes their arguments, but this is the crux of why. Like we already saw, radical feminism is an enslaving attitude that they have sunk their faith into; it is a perfect new dogma that must be defended at all costs, even the cost of complete surreality. Instead of saying, “We were wrong about how much kids need parents or about when life begins,” they dig their heels in deeper, saying they just need more sex, government programs, or better education. Anything but the family. Anything but life.
After looking further, it seems clear that the deeper currents of thought in feminist philosophy are completely absent in the public national debates. When talking about women’s issues, feminists aren’t searching for truth but pushing savvy talking points; they aren’t seeking authentic justice but maintaining a shallow narrative; and they aren’t promoting real love for womanhood but furthering a distorted agenda. Ultimately, feminism and its goals appear to be built upon trends, fads, emotional whims, and political posturing that are all tethered to the dogma of abortion. No longer a compelling philosophy, it is simply another big business, where billions are made, careers are built for power and prestige, and women sipping chardonnay over salads glibly make decisions that will affect thousands and thousands of lives (and deaths). As Gloria Steinem said, “Logic is in the eye of the logician.”
The feminist movement hasn’t always been a hollow shell. Once upon a time, it was founded upon principles of justice and truth. It appears, however, that the feminists of the ’60s discovered that logic and tight reasoning are nothing compared to the power of images and sound bites; for example, wire hangers, GI Jane Fonda, and pink sneakers seem to say it all, while catch-phrases like pro-choice, war on women, and rare, safe, and legal stymie any rational debate about what is truly good for American women.
Ironically, for a movement originally trying to dispel the belief that women are not the intellectual equals of men and are too emotional, much of the feminist rhetoric is simply that: spewed emotions. Even feminist Camille Paglia has been critical. “The headlong rush to judgment by so many well-educated, middle-class women in the #MeToo movement has been startling and dismaying,” she said in a recent interview. “Their elevation of emotion and group solidarity over fact and logic has resurrected damaging stereotypes of women’s irrationality that were once used to deny us the vote.”8 Any of the intellectual pillars that once held feminism aloft have been reduced to arguments based on emotions, bullying, mockery, or childish tantrums. Modern feminists unconsciously embody the old misogynistic stereotypes that early feminists fought to refute.
The Future Is Female?
One of the pithy slogans, that we saw back in chapter 4, to come out of Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign was “The future is female.” As the Washington Post reported, Clinton recycled this phrase from a couple of lesbians from the 1970s. Liza Cowan snapped a photo of her then-girlfriend Alix Dobkin sporting the phrase on a t-shirt, publishing it as part of a slide show, “What the Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear.” Explaining how the slogan came about, Cowan said, “If we are to have a future, it must be female, because the rule of men—patriarchy—has just about devastated life on this beautiful little planet. The essence and the spirit of the future must be female. So the phrase becomes not just a slogan, but a spell. For the good of all.”9
What Cowan makes clear in her now-famous slogan is that she, too, has bought into a myth about the women’s movement, that if women were to rule the world, peace, harmony, and love would be the natural result. As author Leland Lewis wrote, “If women governed the entire world, it is my theory that soon we would have world peace and healing of the entire planet.”10 Actor Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise, recently tweeted this on the topic: “For centuries, men have had their chance to rule government with middling-to-poor results. Who’s ready to let women take charge completely? Just women. I know I am.”11
While it sounds lovely, the reality is that there is very little evidence this sort of utopia could happen when women are in charge. If we just look at the women’s movement itself, Phyllis Chesler makes it very clear that the movement was not led by saintly women; back stabbing, intellectual theft, jealousy, envy, and pettiness were part and parcel of the feminist experience. “Women did not always treat each other kindly,” Chesler explains. “Somehow we expected feminists, who are also women, to behave in radically different ways. We were shocked as we learned one by one, that feminists didn’t always treat each other with respect or compassion.”12 She adds, “Like most women, feminists engaged in smear and ostracism campaigns against any woman with whom they disagreed, whom they envied, or who was different in some way.”13 As a trained psychologist, Chesler admits, “Only now, half a century later, do I understand that women in groups tend to demand uniformity, conformity, shoulder-to-shoulder nonhierarchical sisterhood—one in which no one is more rewarded than anyone else. Marxism and female psychology are a natural fit psychologically.”14 What Chesler finally discovered is that women generally have a very different approach to the world, which is something we saw in chapter 2; it is not hierarchical, like the military, Church hierarchy, or royalty, but is meant to be egalitarian, where all women are to remain on the same level, and those who rise above the others must be brought back down into conformity. Like communism before it, its adherents would rather see their whole enterprise destroy itself than to see others succeed.
Up until now, the ramifications that the matriarchy has had upon men has not been discussed, but the evidence is more than significant that men have not flourished under the current matriarchal monopoly. The open vilification of men, of testosterone, of “toxic masculinity,” has left men not knowing their place. Explaining the problem, Bishop Robert Barron said, “In the midst of a ‘you-go-girl’ feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive.”15 The auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles calls the now ubiquitous avenging woman of our culture the “all conquering female.” This type of woman is portrayed over and over again in the media, as Bishop Barron explains, “Almost without exception, she is underestimated by men and then proves herself more intelligent, cleverer, more courageous, and more skilled than any man. Whether we’re talking about a romantic comedy, an office-drama, or an adventure movie, the all conquering female will almost inevitably show up. And she has to show her worth in a domineering way, that is to say, over and against the men. For her to appear strong, they have to appear weak.”16
The “all conquering female” is not just in movies but everywhere—commercials, novels, soap operas, music videos—while male virtues are trampled upon. In the book The Great Mother, psychologist Erich Neumann says, “Matriarchal womanhood assumes a character of the ‘terrible’ in its relation to the males.”17 That is, the power and position that women are given when they are put in charge, unless tempered by virtue, most often leads to maltreatment of men by rendering them useless. Like we saw in chapter 2, because of women’s built-in vulnerability, without virtue they will naturally gravitate toward the vices of jealousy and envy, which will not allow others to flourish.
Beyond Neumann’s extensive research, other matriarchies have been scrutinized with similar results: take away men’s responsibility to lead, protect, and care for the general welfare of his people or family, and he ends up unfocused, without a mission, and adrift in life. Keith Pariot, a member of the matriarchal Indian state of Meghalaya, speaks of the kind of demoralization that happens to him and other men in the tribe. In his language, “[a] tree is masculine, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine. The same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female.”18 What happens to the men, he adds, is that “matriliny breeds a culture of men who feel useless.”19 In another matriliny tribe in China, “Men are little more than
studs, sperm donors who inseminate women but have, more often than not, little involvement in their children’s upbringing.20
It is arguable that, because of feminism, we live in an unrecognized matriliny, where the current matriarchy is doing what they always do: setting men adrift, unmooring them from authentic responsibility, a sense of purpose, and a mission. As author Joseph Pearce wrote, “The truth is that the healthiest societies are always in one important sense matriarchies. They are societies in which strong and virtuous women raise strong and virtuous children, and in which well-behaved wives rein in the unruly passions of their poorly-behaved husbands. The unhealthiest societies are patriarchies in which the power of men runs riot because the power of well-behaved women to restrain them has been weakened. The most unhealthy society of all is one in which the women want to run riot with the men.”21 It seems clear that not only are we living in a society where the women want to run riot with the men but even one step further, where the women want to run everything.
The Kavanaugh Crucible
The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 was hugely revelatory of the typical tactics used by the matriarchy to get its way. All of the theatrics, every anti-Marian tactic, was summoned because of the concern that their “sacrament”—abortion—could be on the chopping block.
Despite the lack of evidence against him beyond one woman’s testimony that went uncorroborated by any of the other witnesses present, Kavanaugh was subject to terrible abuse.22 Beyond the accusations, his character was first under attack because he was too outspoken, too forthright, too strong in his opinions as he defended himself against evidence-less accusations. He then received further scorn when his eyes welled up with tears as Senator Lindsey Graham spoke about Kavanaugh’s daughter praying for the very woman who was trying to destroy his life. There is no satisfying the insatiable.
In response to the Kavanaugh hearing, retired history professor Victoria Bissell Brown published news of her rant toward men in the Washington Post in an article entitled “Thanks for not raping us, all you ‘good men.’ But it’s not enough.” “I yelled at my husband last night. Not pick-up-your-socks yell. Not how-could-you-ignore-that-red-light yell. This was real yelling. This was 30 minutes of from-the-gut yelling,” Bissell Brown explains. “I blew. Hard and fast. And it terrified me. I’m still terrified by what I felt and what I said. … In that roiling moment, screaming at my husband as if he represented every clueless male on the planet (and I every angry woman of 2018), I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead.”23 The angry seventy-year-old grandmother continued:
I said the meanest thing I’ve ever said to him: Don’t you dare sit there and sympathetically promise to change. Don’t say you will stop yourself before you blurt out some impatient, annoyed, controlling remark. No, I said, you can’t change. You are unable to change. You don’t have the skills and you won’t do it. You, I said, are one of the good men. You respect women, you believe in women, you like women, you don’t hit women or rape women or in any way abuse women. You have applauded and funded feminism for a half-century. You are one of the good men. And you cannot change. You can listen all you want, but that will not create one iota of change.24
Bissell Brown spewed her vitriol at her shocked and hurt husband because he and other men hadn’t gotten together to change the world like feminists had. Because men didn’t act like women. For decades, women have been asking men to listen to them while simultaneously telling them to shut up (they don’t know anything about women or victimhood). One can almost hear echoes of Eve screaming at Adam as they leave the garden, “Why didn’t you do something?”
Ironically, in the end, Bissell Brown laments that there is no longer the patriarch, Noah, ready to help us combat the flood of memories that she claims every woman is drowning in (remember, we are all victims), “Pay attention people: If we do not raise boys to walk humbly and care deeply, if we do not demand that men do more than just listen, we will all drown in the flood. And there is no patriarchal Noah to save us.”25
Peggy Noonan also chimed in on the histrionics provoked by the confirmation hearings:
The howling and screeching that interrupted the hearings and the voting, the people who clawed on the door of the court, the ones who chased senators through the halls and screamed at them in elevators, who surrounded and harassed one at dinner with his wife, who disrupted and brought an air of chaos, who attempted to thwart democratic processes so that the people could not listen and make their judgments:
Do you know how that sounded to normal people, Republican and Democratic and unaffiliated? It sounded demonic. It didn’t sound like “the resistance” or #MeToo. It sounded like the shrieking in the background of an old audiotape of an exorcism.26
All of these theatrics were yet again fueled by an irrational rage, unhinged from reason and civility. And when it seemed women couldn’t go lower, their next response was predictable: witches rallied together and put hexes upon him. The witches said, “We will be embracing witchcraft’s true roots as the magik[sic] of the poor, the downtrodden and disenfranchised and it’s [sic] history as often the only weapon, the only means of exacting justice available to those of us who have been wronged by men just like him.”27
Why Don’t Men Fight Back?
Why is it, then, that men don’t fight back and defend themselves better against the matriarchy? There are four basic reasons: First, by and large, men are simply at a loss as to how to combat this scourge on the culture without seemingly adding to the problem—of appearing sexist, or somehow trying to undo the advances that women have been able to make over the last five decades. They love women and don’t want to rock the boat that the majority of women have boarded, especially if they are going to be targeted in such a way that will undermine their relationships, income, or social status.
Second, fighting women goes against men’s better nature. Men in Western cultures are generally not comfortable with the idea of hitting or verbally attacking women (yes, domestic violence is sadly a different thing). From their earliest days, boys have an innate desire to fight the bad guys. Even boys given dolls to play with will use the dolls as makeshift guns. Soldiering comes naturally to them. But women aren’t supposed to be the enemy. It shouldn’t surprise us that even Adam (before the fall!) was more inclined just to eat the fruit than to fight with Eve.
Third, feminism satisfies men’s baser instincts. Men on the more predatory scale consider themselves beneficiaries of feminism, which allows them to have shallow and frequent hook-ups whenever they fancy, particularly with social media apps like Tinder.
And finally, the sexual revolution has provided them with a way out of dealing with women altogether. Porn saps the spirit and the outrage of many a man, leaving him satisfied and spent, such that he isn’t much motivated to react or even to engage women. The rise in sexbots allow men to sidestep them entirely.
The tactics invoked by anti-Marian women, tantrums and bullying, have done much to simultaneously keep men in check while also creating a deep poison and division between the sexes. Both are marks of the fallen angel who wants to destroy the natural icon of God found in men and women living in harmony with one another. This raises the likelihood that there is something significant for women concerning the complementarity of men: maybe women need men to balance them out, to reign in their inclinations to insatiability, irrationality, and envy. Perhaps the “all conquering female” doesn’t know when to quit, except when she has truly conquered everything, totally demolishing it and grinding it into a powder (to borrow a phrase from Lenin). Perhaps it is this dominant political posturing of women, unhinged from rationality and civility, that has led us once again to the “terrible mother” type of culture?
The matriarchy has been incredibly successful in making over women to be the whores, dykes, and bitches they envisioned. Ironically, they also show us daily how miserable they are in their debased state. The girl of our day “has degraded hersel
f from an archetypical princess, whose beauty was both a challenge and a prize for a young man, to a beggar that hopes that the man she is living with and to whom she is trying to prove she can be a good wife will eventually marry her,” said cultural commentator Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. By following the feminist logic, she opens herself up to exploitation that “no ‘patriarch’ of the traditional family would ever impose upon his wife.” In giving herself away for nothing in exchange, a woman’s “classical power to challenge the young man to ‘man up’ is consumed and lost.”28
The Power of Pink
As we saw previously, it’s no secret that women are slaves to fashion and the dictates of other women. This is nothing new. For one thousand years, Chinese girls were subjected to the agonizing process of foot-binding. The rite of passage first started when a girl was five or six: any younger and it was too painful, any older and the foot was too long. The practice was first a sign of allurement for the opposite sex and later took on a sort of national pride when outsiders tried to ban the grisly practice.
In a similar but even more horrifying way, abortion takes what had been a healthy heart and distorts it into something almost unrecognizable, as when Wendy Davis—to abundant national acclaim—sported her pink sneakers to filibuster a bill that would block late term abortions. When nearly the entire media class and a large portion of the population think it is permissible to kill a viable baby for any reason whatsoever, what is fashionable has definitely trumped what is rational.
The one essential to all the cultural fads, however, is the free and easy access to abortion, since women cannot be man-like if they have to be women; that is, mothers. And so the women of Planned Parenthood thrive off of the myth that women must be like men and that our children are often the enemy who stifle and undermine our pursuit of happiness. They carefully craft a message of compassion, empowerment, and “the sky will fall if we don’t have this” rhetoric, slowly leading us to believe in the power of their kind of pink.