What follows is a response, what I’m calling a “Dissection,” (essentially selected quotes with commentary) to and ’s piece If We Didn’t Have Wombs. It’s a revision of my original note/comment.
As the briefest of Intros, the purpose of this Dissection is to call out the Project of Fairer Disputations, which self-describes as “Sex-realist feminism for the 21st century,” but which is essentially an attempt to craft an anti-abortion/Conservative-friendly Feminism, and to save what can be saved (in their view, a lot) from Second-Wave Feminism. As Isabel puts it, to “let the phoenix of a new woman’s movement rise.”
Second-Wave Feminism cannot be saved, and all Christians and Conservatives of good-will, including the Editors of Fairer Disputations and Isabel Hogben, should support a Return of the Patriarchy rather than trying to craft a Conservative or Christian Feminism.
“[B]y Steinem’s account, her life only properly began with the end of her child’s.” “[I]t’s often difficult to disentangle the good she achieved from the faultiness of its core premise: what Steinem called ‘the basic issue.’”
That depends on your worldview and the story you are trying to tell. It’s difficult for the Fairer Disputations and the author to disentangle, because their core mission is to save what can be saved from Feminism, and to re-construct a pro-life conservative Feminism.
But we should take a step back here and ask ourselves - What are we doing here? Why are we trying to salvage some good from a woman whose entire project was done in a state of mortal sin and in the service of said evil? The woman herself said that this core evil was what everything else she believed was structured around - Why can’t Fairer Disputations simply take her at her word and believe Ms. Steinem?
I don’t know if I believe all women, but I certainly do believe her.
Instead of trying to save the good that Ms. Steinem supposedly advanced, should we not at least question whether much of that was in fact good? If someone so revolutionary is advancing other revolutionary ideas, including one that is incredibly evil, and she says that’s the most important one - should we not distrust what she’s saying and therefore distrust what she’s doing?
“Basic to every strand of feminism is the implicit reality that women, by nature of their physiology, bear the consequences of sex disproportionately”
There are plenty of modern-day Feminists who support the transgender madness, as well as the surrogacy you mention later on in the article. These self-described Feminists might even be the majority today. Are they not “real” Feminists in the views of the author and Fairer Disputations?
No, they are Feminists. The author and Fairer Disputations have simply misidentified the core principle of Feminism, which is not, in fact, a recognition of sex-difference.
I’m pretty sure this has been known for quite a while, actually.
And, at the risk of rudely interrupting in on a bunch of women discussing Feminism amongst themselves (as they tend to do), there is a clear need here for a man to explain what Feminism’s core principle actually is, which is a denial of and rebellion against nature and God’s design.
You see it in Third-Wave Feminism. You see it in Second-Wave Feminism. And you see it in First-Wave Feminism.
“Though men and women are differently sexed bodies, and this sexual difference affects the person as a whole, men and women still share the same human purpose: to live life to its fullest.”
Are there any other differences between men and women that Fairer Disputations and the author can tell us about, when it comes to their differently sexed bodies, other than the ability to bear a child? For something that supposedly “affects the person as a whole” so much, vaguely stating that men and women have the same human purpose (to live life to the fullest) doesn’t seem to really do it justice, does it?
Careful though. We wouldn’t want there to be any nasty naughty non-Feminist implications that can be clearly discerned through the same teleology/faith that leads Fairer Disputations and the author to reject abortion. Nothing threatening women’s precious, hard-fought, “right” to adopt man’s curse voluntarily in service of the destruction of the family, for instance.
That certainly would be a very troubling not-very-nice kind-of-a-meanie why-do-you-hate-women implication to derive from differently sexed bodies now, wouldn’t it?
Notice too, is there no mention of God, or His purpose for our lives as men and women (and whether He might have different plans for our lives since there’s this difference between us that supposedly affects us as whole persons, and therefore presumably has lots of different (unstated in the article) effects).
But hey, what’s the big deal - The phrase is really so vague as to be practically meaningless. Yea sure, no problem, we need to live life to the fullest, yea!
“But in the righteous pursuit of the equality of the sexes, Steinem’s feminism undermined the core difference between the sexes. As a result, motherhood lost its status and moral authority, too.”
Contrary to the premise of Fairer Disputations, all forms of Feminism undermine the differences between the sexes, thereby leading to a decline of the status of motherhood.
Notice too that “the equality of the sexes” being a righteous pursuit is not only assumed rather than argued for, but that equality is not defined (despite women having full access to the legal profession these days).
Defining what equality is supposed to actually entail is the entire controversy. That’s why Ms. Steinem believed that, “In…egalitarian cultures, women can decide the fate of their own bodies. If we didn’t have wombs, we’d be fine.”
If Feminist Disputations or the author want to put forward an alternative vision of “equality,” that’s on them to define. And no, vaguely saying we need a Feminism “to affirm, celebrate, support, and accommodate full femaleness as full humanness” isn’t good enough.
No one know what that means, and no one (ok very few people) disagrees. You can’t argue for what you want without actually stating it and saying what you want.
“Second-wave feminism rightly recognized that men and women possess equal human dignity”
Yes, a discovery that wasn’t made until 1960s America, yes yes. Or perhaps 1840s America? Where were we, after all, until some 19th century women came along and discovered female dignity for us!
The Feminist movement is built on a mythological history, and relies on its marxist reading of history - the lie that the history of mankind is that of men oppressing women until some ladies screeched about it enough in the 19th and 20th Centuries, convincing men to give them legal rights (and supposedly to study history too).
We actually don’t need a movement from the 1800s that claims women like Queen Isabella, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and St. Catherine of Sienna were oppressed. Just go back and read what the original Feminists had to say about the Bible, St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. Titus, and the Christians of the last 1800 years.
They hated God and Christianity almost as much as they hated men.
Fairer Disputations’ commitment to a Feminism that is against abortion is A Fool’s Errand, as trying to find the good within Gloria Steinem shows. We don’t need a movement whose self-proclaimed “basic issue” is child-murder.
We were not born “into a world of unfinished feminism.” We were born into a world where Feminism’s failures and evils have become clear. The destruction of the family has gone on long enough, and it’s time to clearly name the problem - Feminism.
There can be no Christian Feminism. It’s time to let go.
Feminism premises itself on the conceit that it is defined as whatever is good for women. So how could you not be a Feminist, what do you hate women?? A clever rhetorical trick, and this is why the bad guys (the Feminists) are winning, because they had the best propaganda.
Patriarchy is protection. It is the loving rule of God the Father, instituted among earthly Fathers who participate in the Fatherhood of God as icons of His love.
The Feminist rebellion against Patriarchy is a rebellion against God the Father and the protections He established for men, women, and children in the family.
“God rest the soul of Gloria Steinem.”
Just for the record, Christians say this all the time, but it seems pretty blasphemous to me. If Ms. Steinem did not repent before she died, we can know with close to moral certainty that she is burning in hell - Praise be to Jesus Christ for His justice, and may we forgive the trespasses of others and beg God for mercy lest we too are sent to Hell to be tortured forever, as we heard in Sunday’s Gospel, Matthew 18:21-35.
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