Yes, today's mainstream feminism is amoral, myopic, ahistorical, incorrect, and ultimately against women's and society's best interests. So is today's antifeminism.
It's really disappointing to see Carrie Gress' perspective get this kind of air time on such an influential podcast. But one thing I've learned is that the loudest voices often have the most unnuanced opinions. The people who actually know what's what are out there living and doing meaningful on-the-ground work, not mostly doing the podcast circuit or cranking out books.
If Matt Fradd is as interested in nuance as he claims he is, he would have a dissenting voice on the show to make a case for Catholic feminism. I hope he does!
I realize it’s meant to be poetic and profound but something about reducing the personhood of women to “a shelter in which other souls unfold” — that is, devices that only matter insofar as they can be used and instrumentalized by others — is deeply creepy and wrong. Women are adult female people and we don’t need to shelter and birth or unfold or do anything in particular to be women except be female, human, and adults.
I believe that phrase is echoing St Edith Stein. It's not a utilitarian claim, at least as I read it. Even a woman who never bears a biological child has the capacity to nourish in a way a man does not. Maybe I just like poetic phrases lol but "woman" is so difficult to capture the essence of, a biological definition alone seems too cold to me.
Thank you for re-posting this review here! I remember enjoying it on Law & Liberty. I’m in the process of reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792) right now, and it’s definitely not a modern feminist piece, despite what Carrie Gress and others might claim. Reading primary sources can certainly be enlightening. The anti-feminism movement is becoming concerning in Christin circles, and I’ve unfortunately known several people who have been taken by Carrie Gress’s more extreme opinions and treat them like historical and religious truths. She does seem to analyze second wave and modern feminism well, but her views on first wave feminism are off the rails.
In reading this, I realized I have been guilty of rejecting the title of feminist whilst forgetting the actual origins of the movement and simultaneously feeling very rebellious against today’s third wave iteration of the term as I disagree with the majority of what it prioritizes. It’s fun to put the “anti” label on oneself when it means you get to rage against the current system but I was doing it at the expense of recognizing the value of what early suffragists were fighting for.
The way early feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft recognized the innate vulnerability that female physiology brings with it and wanted legal protections for this. This is something I both agree with and also feel has been wholly neglected in the last several years of feminism. As a woman who escaped a very physically and verbally abusive relationship as a young woman and was able to keep the child born of that relationship without issue, I can recognize I have directly benefited from the work of these women.
I especially appreciated the descriptions of how those women would have found much of what second wave feminism brought with it to be immoral, which I also agree with for the most part.
Feminism abandoned virtue, and in doing so largely abandoned mothers. That doesn’t mean the history it holds or it’s founders are evil, the way Gress describes them (to be clear and fair, I do enjoy much of her work in general). It also doesn’t mean we need to abandon those origins, but instead maybe we should look to them as a way to reformulate what feminism should be—informed by the true reality and vulnerability of the female experience, which is informed by biology and by the work that biology bestows upon the majority of us as mothers (worldwide, the majority of women still do become mothers at this point in time after all!).
This is a great essay and kudos to you for being generous with Gress and taking her seriously rather than insulting her character, intelligence, or faith.
As long as feminists in academia justify selling porn to teen boys as morally acceptable they are digging their own graves. Literally. These boys will become dangerous.
I’ve listened recently to both of Gress’ interviews on Pints with Aquinas, because the more recent one was advertised to me (and then I saw lots of posts coming out against her). One thing that struck me in her first interview, about a year ago according to YouTube, was the claim that the first wave feminists living just after the American Civil War practiced spiritualism and held seances and communed with unknown spirits.
If this is true, I don’t really care about the finer details about what Wollstonecraft’s original intentions were. If first wave feminists (and I know Wollstonecraft predates them) were communing with demons, then they are bad, and their ideas are untrustworthy. It’s as simple as that.
I didn’t see anything in your article about this, and I thought it was a major point, possibly the biggest point, against the popular narrative among traditional Christians today that first wave feminism is good. I admit a deficiency in my own knowledge on this point, so I’d like you to tell me whether or not it is true that some (more than one) prominent first wave feminists participated in these demonic practices.
It is legitimate to talk about an “essence of masculinity” - a set of virtues that a man should aspire to. In the same way, it is legitimate to talk about an “essence of femininity”.
Actually defining those virtues in a universal manner is difficult. It’s easier but unhelpful to reduce them to a set of checkboxes that favours a particular interlocutor’s preferences
For example, men should aspire to be both resolute & compassionate. But to make either of those an absolute excludes the other.
On the other hand, it’s also unhealthy to say that all people should equally aspire to all virtues and thus erase the characteristic gifts and needs of each sex
I was thinking this when the author asked if a real man knows in his bones he is a man.
I think that, yes, he does. By “real man” and “real woman,” people usually aren’t delineating an ontological category. Those are certainly delineated by bodily realities (and XY vs XX, used by the author, is actually an oversimplification). But we will say of a coward who is ontologically a man that he’s not a “real man” because he doesn’t act like one.
It's really disappointing to see Carrie Gress' perspective get this kind of air time on such an influential podcast. But one thing I've learned is that the loudest voices often have the most unnuanced opinions. The people who actually know what's what are out there living and doing meaningful on-the-ground work, not mostly doing the podcast circuit or cranking out books.
If Matt Fradd is as interested in nuance as he claims he is, he would have a dissenting voice on the show to make a case for Catholic feminism. I hope he does!
Thanks for this excellent article.
I realize it’s meant to be poetic and profound but something about reducing the personhood of women to “a shelter in which other souls unfold” — that is, devices that only matter insofar as they can be used and instrumentalized by others — is deeply creepy and wrong. Women are adult female people and we don’t need to shelter and birth or unfold or do anything in particular to be women except be female, human, and adults.
💯
I believe that phrase is echoing St Edith Stein. It's not a utilitarian claim, at least as I read it. Even a woman who never bears a biological child has the capacity to nourish in a way a man does not. Maybe I just like poetic phrases lol but "woman" is so difficult to capture the essence of, a biological definition alone seems too cold to me.
Thank you for re-posting this review here! I remember enjoying it on Law & Liberty. I’m in the process of reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792) right now, and it’s definitely not a modern feminist piece, despite what Carrie Gress and others might claim. Reading primary sources can certainly be enlightening. The anti-feminism movement is becoming concerning in Christin circles, and I’ve unfortunately known several people who have been taken by Carrie Gress’s more extreme opinions and treat them like historical and religious truths. She does seem to analyze second wave and modern feminism well, but her views on first wave feminism are off the rails.
Thank you!
Precisely! I agree with a lot of what she says, but she is so off with regard to the first wave! I want to send her a copy of The Rights of Women.
In reading this, I realized I have been guilty of rejecting the title of feminist whilst forgetting the actual origins of the movement and simultaneously feeling very rebellious against today’s third wave iteration of the term as I disagree with the majority of what it prioritizes. It’s fun to put the “anti” label on oneself when it means you get to rage against the current system but I was doing it at the expense of recognizing the value of what early suffragists were fighting for.
The way early feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft recognized the innate vulnerability that female physiology brings with it and wanted legal protections for this. This is something I both agree with and also feel has been wholly neglected in the last several years of feminism. As a woman who escaped a very physically and verbally abusive relationship as a young woman and was able to keep the child born of that relationship without issue, I can recognize I have directly benefited from the work of these women.
I especially appreciated the descriptions of how those women would have found much of what second wave feminism brought with it to be immoral, which I also agree with for the most part.
Feminism abandoned virtue, and in doing so largely abandoned mothers. That doesn’t mean the history it holds or it’s founders are evil, the way Gress describes them (to be clear and fair, I do enjoy much of her work in general). It also doesn’t mean we need to abandon those origins, but instead maybe we should look to them as a way to reformulate what feminism should be—informed by the true reality and vulnerability of the female experience, which is informed by biology and by the work that biology bestows upon the majority of us as mothers (worldwide, the majority of women still do become mothers at this point in time after all!).
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your story!
This is a great essay and kudos to you for being generous with Gress and taking her seriously rather than insulting her character, intelligence, or faith.
Thank you so much!
As long as feminists in academia justify selling porn to teen boys as morally acceptable they are digging their own graves. Literally. These boys will become dangerous.
Can someone give me a definition of feminism? What is feminism? And What is the definition of Catholic feminism?
I’ve listened recently to both of Gress’ interviews on Pints with Aquinas, because the more recent one was advertised to me (and then I saw lots of posts coming out against her). One thing that struck me in her first interview, about a year ago according to YouTube, was the claim that the first wave feminists living just after the American Civil War practiced spiritualism and held seances and communed with unknown spirits.
If this is true, I don’t really care about the finer details about what Wollstonecraft’s original intentions were. If first wave feminists (and I know Wollstonecraft predates them) were communing with demons, then they are bad, and their ideas are untrustworthy. It’s as simple as that.
I didn’t see anything in your article about this, and I thought it was a major point, possibly the biggest point, against the popular narrative among traditional Christians today that first wave feminism is good. I admit a deficiency in my own knowledge on this point, so I’d like you to tell me whether or not it is true that some (more than one) prominent first wave feminists participated in these demonic practices.
It is legitimate to talk about an “essence of masculinity” - a set of virtues that a man should aspire to. In the same way, it is legitimate to talk about an “essence of femininity”.
Actually defining those virtues in a universal manner is difficult. It’s easier but unhelpful to reduce them to a set of checkboxes that favours a particular interlocutor’s preferences
For example, men should aspire to be both resolute & compassionate. But to make either of those an absolute excludes the other.
On the other hand, it’s also unhealthy to say that all people should equally aspire to all virtues and thus erase the characteristic gifts and needs of each sex
I was thinking this when the author asked if a real man knows in his bones he is a man.
I think that, yes, he does. By “real man” and “real woman,” people usually aren’t delineating an ontological category. Those are certainly delineated by bodily realities (and XY vs XX, used by the author, is actually an oversimplification). But we will say of a coward who is ontologically a man that he’s not a “real man” because he doesn’t act like one.