#114 - Dr Carrie Gress - How Feminism Became the West’s New Moral Authority

Dr Carrie Gress has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and is the editor at the online women’s magazine Theology of Home. Carrie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, First Things, Newsweek, The American Spectator, The Catholic Thing, The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Examiner. She is a frequent radio and podcast guest and has appeared on Fox, BBC, CBC, EWTN, OAN, and Russia Times television. She is the best-selling author of eleven books including The Marian Option, and The Anti-Mary Exposed, The End of Woman: How Smashing The Patriarchy Destroyed Us, Theology of Home and, her latest book, Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can't Be Fused With Christianity. She co-authored City of Saints; A Pilgrim’s Guide to John Paul II’s Krakow with George Weigel.  Carrie has lived and worked professionally in Washington, D.C. and Rome, Italy and her work has been translated into nine languages.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Carrie  and I examine how feminism has transformed the understanding of womanhood, relationships between men and women, and the moral foundations of Western society.

We explore why motherhood has been devalued, how the promise of liberation has coincided with rising anxiety and loneliness among women, and why feminism increasingly positions men and women as competitors rather than complementary partners. Carrie explains how feminism has come to function as a shadow church while displacing older sources of dignity, obligation, and community.

Drawing on history, theology, psychology, and culture, we discuss the connection between feminism and Marxist thought, the emotional mobilisation of women for political ends, the neglect of men’s roles and gifts, and why a renewal of local relationships, family life, and moral seriousness is essential if the West is to recover a more humane vision of flourishing.

If you value serious, historically grounded conversations about Britain, the West, and the civilisational forces shaping our lives, please subscribe to Thinking Class, like the episode, and share it with others who want to think more deeply about what we have inherited, and what we owe the future.

• Buy Dr Carrie Gress' books: https://amzn.to/4qgVa0g
• Visit her website: https://www.carriegress.com/about
• Subscribe to the Theology of Home Substack: https://theologyofhome.substack.com/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm joined by Dr. Carrie Gress. Carrie has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and is the editor of the online women's magazine Theology of Home. Carrie's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The National Review, First Things, Newsweek, The American Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. She is a frequent radio and podcast guest and has appeared on Fox, BBC, CBC, and many other mainstream stations. She is also the best-selling author of eleven books, including The Marion Option and The Anti-Mary Exposed, The End of Woman, How Smashing the Patriarchy Destroyed Us, Theology of Home, and her latest book, Something Wicked, Why Feminism Can't Be Fused with Christianity. In this episode, Carrie and I examine how feminism has transformed the understanding of womanhood, relationships between men and women, and the moral foundations of Western society. We think out loud about why motherhood has been devalued, how the promise of liberation has coincided with rising anxiety and loneliness among women, why feminism increasingly positions men and women as competitors rather than complementary partners, and how feminism has come to function as a shadow church. As ever on thinking class, we conclude with learning what our guest has changed their mind on during the course of their life and why. The impact on and widespread reach of feminism across Western culture is rarely discussed and almost never seriously critiqued, and this conversation seeks to bring more depth to our understanding of the successor ideology to the Christian faith. Expect a rich discussion of history, theology, psychology, and culture. If you value seriously if you value serious, historically grounded conversations about culture, politics and civilization, then you will be right at home with Thinking Class. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and share it with others who want to think more deeply about what we have inherited and what we owe to the future. You can also find essays, reflections, and further reading on Substack. Enjoy the show, classmates.

unknown 2:23

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Carrie Gress, welcome to Thinking Class. Thanks so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Well, it's my pleasure, and I'm sure my viewers and listeners will be interested to explore a topic which I haven't yet on the show. We're going to examine, I think, what one of the most consequential forces shaping modern life is, which is the impact of feminism on women's well-being, the relationship between men and women, women, and the health of Western civilization itself, I think, without too much uh hyperbole. And I think this matters now particularly because the evidence is no longer abstract. In Britain, where I'm from, one in three pregnancies ends in abortion. Nearly 11 million children have not been born since the Abortion Act was passed in 1967. And I believe in the United States, since Roe v. Wade, the number exceeds 60 million. Marriage rates are at historic lows, divorce remains high, birth rates are collapsing across the developed world, and there are mental health crises, particularly among women, that have become commonplace and not exceptional. And I think Carrie, you are uniquely placed to help us think through this moment because you're a philosopher, a theologian, a cultural critic, and you spent years examining how feminism has reshaped women's self-understanding, often at great personal and social cost. So let's get into some first principles with what we're actually talking about. Perhaps before we get to feminism, what is womanhood and why at the most basic level, uh anthropological, biological, spiritual, um why why does any civilization need a coherent answer to the question of what is womanhood?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah. No, I think that's a that's a great place to start. Um fundamentally, womanhood is corresponds with motherhood. Uh it's it's women are created and made to create life, to give life. And that doesn't mean just biologically, it also means spiritually, emotionally, um you know, there's all these different ways in which women help improve the lives of of those around us. Um so I think this has been one of the fallacies is kind of collapsing womanhood or collapsing motherhood simply into just having biological children. Um I think the whole ethos or really the whole nature of womanhood is much larger. And it has um, you know, the you could even think of the verb mothering as um, you know, a real word of what it is that that women are meant to do, whether or not they have biological children. So I think that's the the first place to start. And that's obviously one of the things that feminism has really attacked almost from the very beginning is this idea of motherhood, with, you know, and what's replaced it is this idea of um women becoming more like men. And, you know, that obviously creates all kinds of problems, not just biologically, um, in terms of, you know, women going to war with their own fertility, like we see in the abortion numbers you just gave. But also with men, um, you know, this incredible rift that's been created between men and women instead of really understanding ourselves as compliment complementary, we now are are really in a battle against one another.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

You you've mentioned a few of the supreme values, I suppose, that uh feminism has uh injected into the culture in uh to replace those uh more embodied realities of what it is to be a a woman. D do you think that modern society uh has lost the ability to speak about women uh without defaulting to abstraction? So I suppose there are always calls for more rights, autonomy, and choice are typically thrown in there rather than what you've just talked about, fertility, the relational life between men and women, has has that ability to talk about and understand women as they are being lost?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, I I think that's a really good question. Um I would say I would look at what we've seen in the culture. I mean, it really has been this effort to not speak about motherhood, to very much denigrate it. And so um it seems kind of radical to even talk about motherhood in a lot of ways. I know when I wrote my last book, um, I I had sort of this prickly sense, like I didn't want to use the word motherhood. Um, this my book called The End of Woman. And after it came out, I thought, you know, why do I feel this way? Why do I motherhood is this amazing thing that those who have had good mothers understand the depth and the beauty and the importance of it. Um, we can see it in a woman who really understands, who's who's very mature and who she's meant to be on an emotional level and spiritual level. And we appreciate and value that. So why is it that I feel so uncomfortable with this? And I think it is precisely what you know your question points to is that we've gotten so far away from it and we've we've have such a disordered understanding of it that it's hard for us to like have kind of even the moral imagination for what that actually looks like and put you know clothing on that in terms of language and and understanding what that is, because we've so denigrated it and made, you know, the the a girl boss or um you know the savvy feminist, uh um the working woman really uh much more of an ideal than um you know the things that are associated typically with motherhood.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

You you you spoke there of the the impact of what a good mother has on uh th her children. Uh uh let's think a little bit about the impact on on women who have been uh inculcated into the feminist culture and all of its ideals. So as we've talked about, feminism has promised liberation, and in many ways, um with regards to working life, as you pointed out, that has proven to be true. But if if liberation has been promised and perhaps achieved according to the feminist ideal, why do you think so many women women are more anxious, lonely, and disconnected than ever?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that goes back to the fundamental question of what womanhood is and and what it is that we're made for. And I think that um generally speaking, we we understand that women really thrive off of deep and rich relationships, that that's something very fundamentally important to women. Um one of the things that feminism has done is really pushed on us a kind of um uh you know, uh get you know, having us be absorbed in a very masculine kind of ethos. And I studied philosophy. Um I have a PhD in philosophy and and philosophy. I think other than physics is the only um um area of academia that has you know fewer women. Physics has fewer women than philosophy, but philosophy is the the second. And so there's a certain kind of ethos that you have to sort of engage in um to be able to be successful in your classes and coursework and philosophy. And I think this is one of the things that has happened to women um like me or women in um law or medicine or or any of other professions where you feel like you have to sort of take on these masculine virtues. And what happens is um women get sort of get stumped, stunted in that role. They they suddenly uh you know, uh kind of lose themselves and lose these gifts that women very come very naturally to women. Um so that was something that I started scrutinizing a very long time ago and just realizing, you know, this sort of endless ambition and and belligerence, intellectual belligerence is is really damaging my relationships and and preventing me from having the kind of family or kind of um relationships with men that I wanted and even in the workplace. And so it was um, I think that kind of scrutiny hasn't been held up um at all because we've been told that this is what will liberate us is having this kind of independence to do whatever it is that we want to do without seeing the negative flip side of that. Um so I think that there's feminism, you know, it it first of all, it's it courts itself as being good for women because it liberates women. But what is it that it's actually liberating women from? It's liberating women from not only um deep relationships with men, um, but also from children. It's also, you know, liberating liberating them, so to speak, from their bodies. Women are constantly in this battle with their own fertility. Um, and now, of course, with the trans movement, we're we're liberating women from their very body parts. Um, so you at a certain point you have to ask the question, you know, is this really what feminism was meant to do? And I think, you know, if you look back at the philosophy, you can see it's sort of front-loaded that way. I'm certain that the first wave feminism feminists never dreamed that there would be such a thing as the trans movement. But if you actually see the way that the, you know, the trajectory in which it is that they're going philosophically, it's a it's a logical conclusion to it. So anyway, I think this is part of the problem is that we've we've we decided at a certain point that it was much higher status to be like a man, and it also protects us on a certain level emotionally and otherwise. And so that's why it became kind of the preferred mode of being. Um it's also lucrative to a certain degree. It, you know, you you get honors and awards and raises and you know, all kinds of things that are not usually um typically coming along with motherhood. So that's what's made it more attractive. But the question, of course, is you know, is this really what we were liberated to do? Um, to, you know, be promiscuous, to not have deep relationships, to not have children, to be isolated, um, to be, you know, in many respects less happy than women were before feminism.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

I'm very interested in exploring that that genealogy of feminism, how we got here, but perhaps before we do that, uh I think a bit of a uh uh an exploration of how feminism itself, as you you uh have argued, has become a shadow church. And I suppose to provide the context for that is uh it's no secret that the West is really um the uh successor to Christendom. Uh our whole civilization, our institutions, our moral norms came from Christianity. And you could argue about when it was that we started to turn away from that. Some would argue 19th century, rise of the scientific revolution, all the rest of it. Uh some would say it really started to happen from the 60s and 70s, sexual revolution, we became a post-Christian society, and there's been lots of different ideologies jostling for position uh to succeed the Christian morality. Um so, yes, Carrie, you describe uh feminism as a shadow church. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, so I came up with this idea when I was I had to give a talk in front of a bunch of college students, and I thought, you know, how do I make this easy for people to understand um all of these pieces that I've discovered about feminism, going back to the early, earliest days of feminism for Mary Wallstonecraft, and of course, even her son-in-law, Percy Bis Shelley, um, whom she never met, but who was deeply influenced by her and his father-in-law, William Godwin. Um, so, you know, these very seminal ideas, how is it that they've they've grown into what we understand feminism um to be today? And I think the first thing that that really struck me was what is it that feminism is always kind of focused on? What is the goal? What's the teleology of feminism? Um, and it's this idea of of female autonomy, of trying to break women free from um being in relationships, from their fertility, from their family, from just being able to do things in in isolation um in a way in which they they want. And of course, part of that is um work is is vitally important unless you're independently wealthy because you need the the financial wherewithal to be able to do that. So these are the things that that have developed over time um is this kind of um this object of worship, this idol, so to speak, is is autonomy. So that's really was the starting place of what is it the feminine, what's the goal? Um and then I started looking at just the ways in which women's lives have been affected by this because feminism is so deeply entrenched. I think uh, you know, most women in the West today are, even if they're uh aware that that feminism is negative, that we're still recovering from it in many, many ways because it's it's affected us so much the way a religion has. Um so I noticed that there were three different kinds of commandments, um, so to speak, and these actually did come from Percy Shelley in the 1800s. Um, the first he took from his mother-in-law was contempt for men and trying to get rid of any kind of hierarchy, so egalitarianism. Um, from his father-in-law, he took the idea of promiscuity. William Godwin was the one of the lar loudest voices to try to get rid of monogamy in the early 1800s. And then um, from his own interest, he was very involved in the occult. And all three three of these things he he put in this woman named Sithna, who was in one of his poems, and she became this model for later women in the first wave of feminism. Um, and so all of this sounds very obscure until you sort of look at co-ed women today, um young women in college and and um you know, who haven't settled down yet, and what is it that they're interested in? Um actually you could see it very prevalently among boomer women as well. Um, it's this idea of contempt for men, uh promiscuity, and the occult. All of those things are very um engaged in by by Western women um today. So that that set of commandments has sort of been passed down. Another area where I saw this play out, this shadow church idea, was with the idea of um of our emotions. I think I discovered that in the 1890s, the socialists figured out, you know, if we make women angry, they're gonna be a lot more politically active for us. They're gonna be engaged in a way that they're not if they're peaceful and happy. Um, so that the idea of social consciousness or consciousness raising came about. They they got a bunch of women together to talk about their problems, and there was no effort to solve them. It was just to sort of make other women angry. And this um, you know, was spread around the world really. Mao um in China used it, and then of course it was very popular in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And so what does this replace sort of in the Christian ethos? Well, in there's the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, uh, which are the the you know the emotional backbone um and of Christianity. But feminism has replaced those with envy, contempt, and rage. Uh and I, you know, I don't think anybody needs to look far to actually see the ways in which women in the the public square exhibit those um those vices really um you know in a very generous way. So um that's and then of course it's there there's its own form of evangelization. And I I think even um abortion, I talk about this in the book, is really the sacrament because women aren't can't work um and therefore be independent if they are having children. Um women obviously uh you know are trying through feminism are trying to mimic again that the the biology of men, and abortion is what makes that possible um in the service of um of female autonomy. And I think we're we're seeing this spread out, of course, too, with the idea of freezing our eggs and surrogacy and all, you know, all those different ways in which we're trying to mini manipulate our fertility, um, largely because we've we've we now see our children as some something of a an object. Um, you know, instead of the original dignity that that women and children had, we now see them as um something to be used or disposed of. Um and I think that's the real kind of slavery that that feminism has brought about. So under the guise of being liberating, it's actually completely denigrated us, and we see that in the extreme, certainly, of um human trafficking, sex trafficking and whatnot, where um you know humans are just being treated merely as uh uh you know an object to be used, paid for, and and uh tossed aside um when finished.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

I think it's probably fair to say that the layman doesn't have uh uh uh an understanding of the various waves of feminism, but if they were to argue as to what kind of feminism they are on board with, they would say first wave feminism because ultimately that was about raising women to be um equal in uh under the eyes of the law, uh equal alongside men. Um and that was the that was the the basic understanding of it. And then they all kind of went off the deep ends after that. Um however, I think you argue that first wave feminism did lay foundations that are still with us today. So I suppose what did the early feminists introduce that um continued to shape modern feminism today?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So this is one of the things that I found most interesting in my in my research was this idea that first wave feminism was good. I had I had accepted that. In fact, one of my my earliest books, I I just state as much, you know, first the first wave had some um real principles behind it. And I I didn't dig into the first wave of feminism until I wrote my book called The End of Woman. And I I I assigned myself two days to be able to do research on the first wave feminism, just thinking I would pull out some nice quotes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Mary Wallstonecraft and be able to sort of weave those into the prose of the book that I was working on. Um, and then I got there and I just realized, you know, this is actually not at all what I've been told. This is a disaster. This isn't really just about equality for women or changing a few laws. And I, you know, I do not dispute the fact that there were things that ought to have been changed. Um, but what happened was that rather than changing and and and tweaking laws or changing legislation, um, this is really when the whole transformation of this idea of womanhood comes about. And, you know, if you start with someone like Mary Wallstonecraft, and this is really where I think the the theology gets really interesting and important, um, she was was very much sort of knit into this group of men that included William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, um um Joseph Um uh Johnson, who was her publisher, um Thomas Paine, in case I didn't mention him already, just an incredible group of almost like a think tank group of men who were all very much um revolutionary men. Um and she was, you know, Godwin actually believed in the perfectibility of human nature through reason. Um, so reason and rationality and and godless egalitarianism were very much on the forefront of their minds. And and Wallstonecraft was right there with them. And she actually believed um they they were all became Unitarians. They first started out, or she started out as an Anglican, then became a dissenter, and then ended up taking on the idea of Unitarianism from Theodore Lindsay. And this idea really got rid of Christ. It got rid of the Trinity, it got rid of the Holy Spirit and and the Christ as Savior. And it focused on this idea of God that could be reached through rationalism, through, through ideas, through thinking. And what's amazing about it is that Wollstonecraft thought that any kind of male mediator between a woman and God was actually an obstacle to her potential, um, to her capacity to be to know God and to be even like God. Um, and so that's really where the problems start is because she's cutting out men entirely and saying they're they're an obstacle through this kind of Unitarianism, which turns on its head words like um imagodei and reason and God and virtue, all of these things mean something very different under her reading. Um so what happens is she's kind of sets off this idea, and all of these women in the 1800s then start following her. There's a woman named Fanny Wright who ends up becoming um an atheist, very deeply involved in Enlightenment ideals and rationalism. Uh, then there's the much better known names of um Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Both of whom also became Unitarians in practice, giving, offering up or you know, abandoning either mainline Protestant um religions like Calvinism or Southern Baptist. Um Susan B. Anthony actually became an atheist. There's another woman who most people don't know about, but she was very involved with those um Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stan from the beginning, and her name was um Matilda Gage. And she was actually deeply involved in witchcraft. Um and every all of these women to a certain degree were also involved in what was was called at that time spiritualism, which was kind of like seances and involved in the occult. But Gage was actually um a witch. And um when uh Elizabeth Katie Stanton went to go and um work with the temperance movement, because the temperance movement was much larger, and Katie Stanton realized if we sort of attach our women's movement to the temperance movement, then we're gonna get a lot more exposure and publicity, and you know, this will be good for the movement. Well, Mt Matilda Gage wanted nothing to do with the Christians and said as much and and ended up leaving um the the coalition that they had started and doing her own thing with witchcraft and whatnot. Um, and she ended up influencing her son-in-law, uh, uh tell, you know, teaching his her daughter her daughter and son-in-law about witchcraft and seances. Um, and he went on to write the book, The The Wizard of Oz. So you can see in the book, The Wizard of Oz, you've got the good witch, the bad witch, you've got the wizard who's supposed to represent the patriarch. Um, so these ideas were there from the very beginning, um, this kind of godless egalitarianism that was being promoted among these women, and that of course comes to greater fruition in the 1900s when um the communists and the the feminists realize that they can work together for mutual ends. Um, and that's you know, really when you see that the ideology, you know, deeply become very, very Marxist. Um so we can certainly talk about that. But yeah, the first wave, um, and it culminates in Simone de Beauvoir, who of course was, you know, wilt no wilting flower, certainly not a woman who was only, you know, concerned about the vote or some some such thing, but really was trying to turn womanhood on its head because she implicitly had this sense that the masculine was better and that the feminine um was was worse and something to be, you know, tossed aside. And that that actually was one of the most interesting pieces um of my study, though, was to see of among all these women, um, all of them had that kind of a similar parentage. They had an abusive father who either, you know, was a drunk or uh um physically abusive or um frittering away the family name and money. Um, and then they had a mother who was really trying to either um uh aggressively sort of end the abuse in in very controlling ways, or was just completely passive, like Mary Wallstonecraft's mother, who was just um, you know, really a dormat. Um and so you see this response in these women of, you know, trying to correct this, but the the correction is such that it's not actually, they haven't actually healed what it is that they're trying to correct, which is bad men. They have just tried to sort of bubble wrap women so that they're not engaged in relationships where they can be mistreated. Um so I think that's a a really fundamental piece of understanding the first wave is that the, you know, it's trying to provide this medicine to help women, but the medicine is the wrong medicine to the to the the problem. And so, you know, even today we're still see women um, you know, domestic violence and and all the things that that women in the first wave complained about have not been rectified because the only way those things can actually be rectified is through a deeper uh you know, going deeper into the Christian faith and really understanding the transformation of the human heart. Um until we do that, that's you know, all of these these mechanical efforts that have been made to change men and women have only exacerbated the problem.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Well, I I I will take you up on your offer of going deeper into the the connection with with Marxism, which people would argue was also another shadow church um in a post-Christian world. And um perhaps you could tell us how that overlap uh occurred and also um how the first wave feminists um used uh similar tactics, agitation tactics to the the communists in disrupting society and try to subvert it.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yeah, no, so this is all really incredibly interesting. And um I, you know, my book, The End of Women, I go into the communist connection a lot more than I do in in something wicked. But in um about the eight uh 1920s, the communists realized that there was this whole group of angry feminist women, and they they realized that if they could get those women on their side, then therefore they were going to be able to really use them as a second layer um for this world revolution that they were trying to um create. So they this is actually the in the 1920s. There, this is when the um International Day of Women was established, largely to to court the feminists because the feminists were involved in the occult, but they also wanted to destroy the faith and the family. So the faith and family piece matched, you know, uh word for word to what the Marxists wanted. But uh initially the Marxists thought the feminists were too bourgeois and the feminists thought the the Marxists were too militant. Um and then all of that obviously dissolved over time through different meetings and um a lot of Soviet propaganda and money and and whatnot. Um so there was actually even in the United States this organization called the Congress for American Women, which was completely funded and promoted as Soviet propaganda would talk about how ideal um living conditions were for women in the Soviet Union and whatnot. Um it ended up being shut down by the um um the US House Committee for Un-American Activities. Uh, and this was before McCarthy. So um it, you know, this wasn't some sort of um witch hunt or something. But in that group were a lot of very influential women, and one of them was Betty Fridan. And so we can see we're looking at Ferdan's work, she there's actually a book that was that was published that I used a lot of research from, written by a man who was friends with Fridan, who really wanted to sh highlight how clever Fridan had been in terms of promoting communist ideas in the West, um, but not ever setting off, you know, the the McCarthy alarms and really getting getting around that. Um and she did she refused to be engaged in the book and and her private papers are not going to be published for another nine years, I think. Um, but she very if you look at her work, she's she's using a lot of psychology and sort of manipulating women. But her main goal was this idea of trying to get women out to do productive work, um, to really promote this idea of women in production, um, that that communist ideal. Um so you can see a lot of that, and I c again I cover a lot of that in my book, The End of Woman, um, how that's promoted. But then on another level, you also have kind of the influence of the new left. You've got Wilhelm Reich and his whole idea that he wrote, you know, he's got a book he wrote in 1936 called The Sexual Revolution. And um, this is these are the some a lot of the ideas the feminists took on in the 1900s. But I think the real linchpin for feminism was taking this Marxist idea of class warfare and shifting that um through critical theory to warfare between male and female. So women automatically become these victims. Men, by default, are the victimizers, even though nobody's been victimized or been a victimizer in reality. It's just those are the categories that were sort of mapped on um to male and female because through critical theory and all of these different ideas. Um that's really what has been so successful and and I think very well hidden are the is this Marxist idea of women as victim and men as victimizers, um, which then of course opens all kinds of doors to the woke culture that we're dealing with, um, you know, real distortions in in male and female. Um and all the while, of course, um stirring up and exacerbating the emotions of women. And and this is what Fridan does masterfully, I think, in her book, The Feminine Mystique, is try to um make women feel like they're missing out. You know, you're really missing out if you're at home at in what she calls the comfortable concentration camp of of the home. Um so it's it's pretty amazing that the language that's used and the way in which this is sold to certainly American women, um, and and obviously um you know all of the West bought into it.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Well, uh as a as an anecdotal evidence of that, I I have seen it with um uh boomer women who were mothers who were were stay-at-home um people that I know who uh if they ask the question uh what did you do? And they say, Oh, I was just a mother. Uh and they they they they feel ashamed that they never got out into the workplace. And we we see it quite a lot in in British media, um even in the supposedly conservative leaning papers, which um always find a way of subverting the family in some way, like uh yeah, I was right to have cheated on my husband, or um, you know, uh getting the divorce is the best thing that ever happened to me, or uh I wish I'd never got married so young or had children, or I wish I'd done whatever. And there's all these little messages saying I could have been so much more, but now it's my time. And um it's uh it's upsetting, really, that there will be people who never really thought about um their role as a mother uh being something uh less valuable that now call into question their whole being up until that point and think they've been sold a lie and uh and then they all start, you know, right rising up in some way and be becoming resentful about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

No, and that's exactly the point is to try to make these women resentful so that then they'll become more politically active and outspoken and um you know it's more h contempt is heaped on men. Um and this is one of the things that I I found most at interesting too, is just why is it that women buy into this uh, you know, over and over. And I think so much of it has to do again with um the ideology and sort of sucking all the air out of the room. Women are very susceptible to kind of groupthink. And and we see this as a positive thing in the fashion industry, um, but we don't realize how active it is in the in the intellectual life and how much virtue signaling is happening on a daily basis by celebrities and magazines. And, you know, I even argue I think that it was magazines and daytime TV that really changed the culture more than anything because women felt very connected to, you know, people on the screen and and um and especially in the way in which it was all handled, you know, women, uh feminist women were made to be very attractive and articulate, someone like Gloria Steinem, that people wanted to, you know, saw as a model for their life. Um so it's been highly effective in terms of just influencing the way that that women think. The real tragedy, of course, is that you know, when you talk to women who didn't have children in their 50s, 60s, 70s, this is the real tragedy because then they suddenly realize, you know, the real lie was that I was going to be happy buying into these feminist ideals. And then they get to this point in their life where they think this is not what I was promised. This is not what I thought my life would look like. I'm alone. I, you know, just the incredible realization that it's very hard to go back and change those things at that stage in your life. Um, and I and I think the final point I'll make about this is that I think feminism has done an amazing job of protecting itself from scrutiny. And the way in which it does this is by saying things like, you know, you can't scrutinize feminism because you're a man. I'm not allowed to scrutinize it because I have a PhD. So somehow I've benefited from it. You know, it sort of becomes this mommy dearest, like you can't actually say anything against it if it's somehow people think you've benefited from it. Um and then, of course, there's my favorite, which is so uh is such a blanket, you know, where it just says, well, feminism is just about helping women. Um, and of course, there's no discussion about, well, what do you mean by that and has it really helped women and you know, all of those things. So I I think it's done an amazing job of protecting itself and perpetuating itself, you know, this idea of evangelizing inwardly, because um certainly broken women break other men and women, um, which is going to lead to the sense of we need more of this. Um, this is certainly what I saw and found have found among feminist leaders. Um, but it's also, again, this I this portrayal of it is something very attractive and compelling, um, because it's very easy to sort of put splashy pictures of women, you know, appearing to be flourishing, um, and contrast that with, you know, women who are overweight and frumpy and, you know, that what what happens sometimes when when we have children. So I think that's the just the amazing thing is just how much and how deeply we've bought into this without really realizing um you know how much of it is is um manipulation and and control and again an effort to make us resentful and bitter um such that we'll vote in in a certain way.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Yeah, you you you touch on several several threads there which um I've seen pop up both in our parliament and even in my comment section on the podcast. So in the comments section on my podcast I I do um semi-regular reflections on things uh in the culture, and most recently I did um uh a short monologue on abortion, the the statistic that we talked about with one in three pregnancies in Britain ending in abortion, which is unbelievable. And um one of my regular viewers came on, and she she's under a pseudonym, um, to s to say that at 21 she had an abortion, she had an abortion because of all the things she was told in the culture, and now she realizes she was told a lie and she wishes she'd never done it, and that it has been one of the most um deleterious things to have happened to society, to have to have sucked all this stuff up. Um and and the point you're making about feminism insulating itself from criticism is is, I think, true because we often talk about challenges of democracy coming from uh various uh angles, which may be may be true, whether it's Islamism, whether it's um I don't know, whether it's some forms of populism or whether it's uh or whether it's the a kind of oligarchy that is ultimately setting the agenda. But we we see it in British Parliament where, for example, we we passed a bill recently on assisted suicide, which has been called euphemistically assisted dying. And um pretty much all of the arguments that came from the chamber, and I know you referenced this in your your book, uh, Douglas Murray, he's an English writer and journalist, um, wrote an article about when do we get to talk about toxic femininity? Because all of the arguments that came in the chamber for assisted suicides that came from women were all about feelings. Um and there was all anything that led with facts or other um arguments that were out of the realm of emotion were dismissed as being uncaring. Um I I I don't know what it would take to allow a full-throated critici or or or whether we'd we're likely to see a full-throated criticism of the impact of feminism on the the democratic norms of our nations because it's clearly having one, it's been such a huge cultural transformation and yet it seems totally off limits and not something that that people seem to want or have even thought about talking about. Why why do you why do you why do you think that is, actually? Why do you think that we're unable to discuss this?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

No, I think it's a fantastic question. I think it's it's really m multilayered. The first one, of course, is that I that way in which feminism has protected itself. Uh the second one is really this the emotions becoming such an important thing because we've been so manipulated by them, we're we're not in any way aware of the fact that maybe we ought not to give them as much attention as as we think. You know, we have we've been conditioned to think that if we have big enough feelings, that we have to act on those feelings, that our feelings are always right, that our feelings are going to point us in the direction to what truth and and goodness is. And I think we can see this specifically in this um this culture where the victimhood is really a prioritization. Uh and and much of this is because the vacuum has been created because Christianity and the Judeo-Christian virtues of, you know, even the Ten Commandments is no longer a guiding principle. So people are looking for something that was going to tell them that I'm that you're still good. And so as long as you have strong emotions about something and you can you can find the the victim, um, you know, suddenly you've got your guiding principle. And, you know, this is the the real tragedy, of course, is that you you can see just how flippant that principle is based on, you know, the number of flags, your bumper stickers. You know, it's always changing, I think, publicly, um, you know, what which victim set is is, you know, the has the highest priority at the moment. Um so I I think that is really we are, you know, we have gone to this place of emotionalism. Um I'm I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Alistair McIntyre, and he talks about this idea of how we've gotten so far away from rational principles. Some of it is laid at the feet precisely of philosophy itself because of the fact that it it moved away from very solid principles and has, you know, kind of been dithering. And then, of course, you add the analytic tradition, which of course nobody understands and isn't really about searching for for wisdom. Um, you know, that that's created a set of problems. And what's filled it is this sense of of um righteous anger and indignation, and you know, that that our feelings are are really the compass for what it is that's that we ought to do. And I I think it's something very specifically um feminine too, or f female. I think it can be ordered in a in a in a correct way, but I think that when it's used um this idea of misplaced compassion, and I talk about this a lot in in something wicked, but um in a disordered way, this is really where the, you know, why we're in this the dire straits we're in right now, because there is this sense of of indignation, um, usually about people that we never meet or encounter. You know, I mean, I I think that's one of the big and important pieces of of of womanhood and motherhood in particular, is it's very difficult to to really care for people that you've never met and who are around, you know, halfway around the world from you. And I think this is where um this idea of of young women, you know, I want to go out and change the world, has really done us a disservice because it somehow projects that we can change things around the world when in fact the the biggest change we can make is is as close to our bodies as possible. Um, certainly even within even having children inside our bodies, um that's it's the local level that's really going to transform things. And that this is again part of the ideology that we've been sold that, you know, neglect the local and focus on on much bigger events. Um and we see this all over with the you know the current protests that are going on. Um you know, this desire to sort of protest things that have nothing to do with your local community and somehow think that you can correct them um, you know, just by showing up in a different state with your SUV. But um, you know, these are not these are not based on rational principles, and I I think you know, this is really the undermining of the culture at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Absolutely. But you certainly see it in institutions, whether private or public, have spent a lot of time in the corporate world and uh you you can't escape the social justice programs that um typically are led, I would say, by uh w women. Um and I suppose you make the argument in the book that as women have moved away from um family and the family unit and then into the arms of uh private employees, uh you you actually said that um it's turned women into equal objects of use. And um and because it's it has um abstracted them from their embodied reality and um the relations with the people around them, they are now, as you're saying, misdirecting compassion toward um things like the global good uh rather than the the good of uh their own local communities, their family, and all the rest of it. Um so that's the impact on society, and we talked a lot about the impact uh on on women. Let's think about the impact on on men. Uh so um what has been the impact on men's sense of purpose and protection and responsibility? How's how has feminism reshaped those relationships between men and women?

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Yeah, no, I think this is such an important question, and um, and something wicked, I spend a fair amount of time talking about this, the gifts of that men have. And I've certainly been talking about it um in my talks and speeches that I've been giving uh for the last 10 years. And it's always really amazing because I think women we we've been put on such a victimhood pedestal for so long that very few of us have actually stopped to think about like, well, how has this affected men? Because basically what we're we've tried to do is usurp all the gifts that men have into ourselves. We sort of be have tried to become this sort of genderless worker person that doesn't have specific gifts as male or female. Um and that's I think the real tragedy. I mean, I I think on a kind of more tragic, you know, humorous level, there's the um, you know, you're talking about corporate the corporate world or the government world or what have you. You know, I I think all of us have stories of men that we know who are like, okay, I've got this boss. A nightmare. I just have to stare under the radar. I'm not going to, you know, um stir up any waves. I just have to get through this until I can get a different job or boss or some, you know, something else. So I think on that level, there it's you can see really the power struggle and how this is more about power and control and not really about, you know, using the gifts that people have and try to promote them and and you know any kind of real charity or care. Um, but I think there's also this capacity that meant that, like we were saying earlier, feminism silences men. Um, they don't feel like they can they can talk about it. They feel like there's um, you know, they really want what is good for for women by and large, and they don't know how to go about getting it. So it's interesting to see how quiet men are about it typically. Um I think until recently, really, this is where the manosphere has kind of risen up. And, you know, unfortunately, there's a lot of real negatives that's coming out of it. Um, you know, bad characters who are are holding women in contempt the way that men have held um, I'm sorry, the way that women have held men in contempt for a long time. So it's almost this mirroring, you know, if you're gonna uh uh degrade us and abuse us, we're gonna do the exact same thing to you. And of course, that's not gonna bring about healing. I think there has to be, you know, we have to come back to first principles of love, charity, complementarity, what the gifts are, human nature, though those kinds of things before we can um really bring about healing. But part of understanding that is really what what are the gifts that men have? Um and this was a we you know fun thing to go look at look at and look into is just all these ways in which we don't really even, you know, we're so used to the gifts that men have in terms of order and hierarchy that we don't realize like this is uniquely masculine in a lot of respects. Not that women can't um engage in them, but they're just a different way in which society is ordered. Women are much more egalitarian, men are more hierarchical. Um, and so it it you can see, you know, organization happens quickly. I I I look a lot at the Catholic Church. Like there's a reason why there's a pope and then there's bishops and there's diocese and it's sort of spread around the whole world. It's a very effective and efficient way in which to organize things, and it's been mimicked, you know, all over all over. Women don't usually have a problem with it when they are somehow involved in it, whether, you know, corporate media or or corporate world or um the military, but somehow they have they have got issues with it when they're not um included. And um, that I think is is part and parcel of the problem too, is just understanding that men have different gifts and different graces that God has given them. One of them is this capacity um to think in in protective terms and providing terms um for women so that women then have the capacity to do what makes them vulnerable, which is having children. You know, there's very few things more vulnerable than a woman who's just had a baby or is just about ready to have a baby. Um, and being having the space to be able to do that in a healthy way is really what men have provided for all of history, um, because they can, you know, they know that there need they need to be protecting women for that. Um so in any event, I think there's a lot that can be said, a lot of discussion about what men bring. I think even with with child raising, um, it's really interesting to look at the data because when you have matriarchies, usually they end up being kind of ghettoized because women only want to hold and nurture their children. Um, certainly we can there are exceptions to that. But by and large, what we see is that children are raised in such a way that their gifts are either um squandered or never fully developed. And this is what men bring to the family life is this understanding of, okay, this is, these are my children. This child is ready to go out into the world and I need to push them out. Or this child, uh, she needs to stay closer to home. She need there's, you know, she needs protection. Um, and you can obviously inverse the the genders, but a father has a sense of this in his own children, that they need to be pushed out or protected in different ways that the mother doesn't see. You can see that particularly with um sexuality and the way in which a father will help his children um in different ways understand not to squander it and not to use it and not to um, you know, fritter away their sexuality or be or or have it abused too early. Um so in any event, I I think there's these incredible gifts that we've spent so much time, you know, beating men up and saying that the, you know, this idea of toxic masculinity without really understanding the incredible gifts that ordered masculinity brings to our lives. And um, you know, this is obviously not to say that there have been there haven't been men who have done bad things, but we also know that there have been a lot of women who have uh done bad things as well. So it's just a matter of of getting back to principles and understanding where the gifts are and how we use them properly instead of you know always vilifying anything that's that's masculine or hierarchical or somehow um excludes women.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Well, let's think about where we might go from here uh for those who are accepting of uh of what you're putting forward. So uh I suppose to summarize at least uh uh one thread of the argument within your book, um you say that it's not possible to reconcile uh the faith of Christianity, which is about humility, sacrifice and and service, with the feminist ideology, which is about power, autonomy, and control, and particularly when there's a a structural element r that relies upon abortion. So let's um take the assertion that feminism is a shadow church, it's functioned as a false religion. What would it mean for someone to leave it if they're convinced by what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Yeah. Um well, I think it's you know, some very basic elemental pieces because you it's like any kind of a cult. You have to sort of scrutinize the ways in which you've bought into it and realize, you know, how it's affected your life. I and I think um certainly for women, the big the big key is to understand our emotions and the way that it's um it's manipulated us, it's indoctrinated us. I I just had a a woman in her 80s tell me that she read my book and and she finally, after 50 years, knows what's wrong with her marriage. And she said she's what's wrong with her marriage. Like she had no idea before because she had been pushed into this ideology for so long and and realized the ways in which she was really um hampering her husband and and and and you know, the relationship couldn't really never flourish because she was always so controlling. Um so I think it's a it's I I think it's those kinds of things that we have to do this self-reflection our ourselves and see, well, what how have I bought into this? Um, because I think there are very few of us that haven't bought into it because it's so ubiquitous, it's so common, it's such a, you know, um it's just a you know, the major belief system in the West. Um but I think more than anything, the biggest thing that we can do is start, even if we're a working woman, we have no uh immediate family, we can start digging in on a on our in the local level, um, in our workplace, because you know, growing and maturing into the woman that God intended us to be, instead of getting caught in this sort of ethos of ambition and and aggressiveness, um, you know, and power and control, really getting back to this understanding of what does it actually mean to care for others, to love others, to, to serve, to, to give ourselves in this incredibly rich and beautiful way, uh, you know, Christian way of pouring ourselves out for others. Um, so I think that's one of the exciting things about um thinking about this is it doesn't require women to, you know, not work or I, you know, I'm not making any suggestions about what we do on a on a practical level. I'm I'm saying what you do on a practical level needs to be embodied with who you are. It needs to be embodied in these in this very specifically feminine and mature and ordered way. Um, and so I think that's really where the the change can happen because we can imagine, you know, even our workplaces where you're around women who are healthy and ordered, it's gonna be a much nicer place to work than where you've got a woman who feels like she's always in competition with men or she somehow has to compensate for uh, you know, the way that women have been treated in the past, or, you know, all of these different things that seem to motivate women um on an abstract scale and level. What happens if we bring that back to a very human, ordered, embodied level where we're we're really caring for those around us. And, you know, obviously not in a way where we're opening ourselves up to being manipulated by people, but in a a healthy way where we we learn to love others and and we learn to become lovable as well.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Penultimate question before I ask you the question I ask all of my guests. And perhaps something I should have brought up earlier. Uh so listeners and viewers, if they haven't figured it out already, you are Catholic, Christian, and um the arguments which uh there have been allusions to throughout this is actually the shadow church of feminism has moved away from um the most uh transformative, positively transformative religion, and um that that gives its adherence and um its uh followers the ability to um uh become better people for themselves but for others for the world. Um I suppose given that that's not the water that we swim in anymore, and so many people don't accept that, uh perhaps we could um um finish on um why it is a more positive vision or uh because I think lots of people would s see Christianity as having been the oppressor to be escaped from. Uh that that the the fundamentals of Christianity kept women down. Why is that not the case? What would you say to the people who would believe that?

SPEAKER_01 54:04

No, I think that's a great summary. Um thanks for encapsulating that so well. Um I I think the real key is to see that there actually hasn't been any religion or political movement that has been better for women than Christianity. Uh, Christianity is the the place where women understood um across the board that our dignity was equal to men, that we weren't less than. Um we were different, but we we weren't less than. Um and this is really what feminism was trying to undermine in the first wave was it was using this idea that Christianity has been a tool used by men to enslave women. And I and I think that's just patently false. And and the, you know, most people have no idea that that's really what the movement was trying to do, what it was pushing for. Um, but if we look at this understanding of Christianity as something that is um is complementary, where each has its own gifts and neither side is is a tool for use, but in fact, you know, can be worked, can be, can be used together in a common goal. Um, that suddenly is a is very revolutionary. That's going to change marriages. Instead of always being fighting one another or competing with one another, uh, suddenly people, two people are are working towards the same goal. I think that's very uh transformative as well. So um I think also you know, deep in the history of the church and in the the embodiment even of the buildings, we it we have, we call the church a she. It's a it's a mother. The knave is um is a feminine word. It's about holding, it's about nourishing. I think the church offers us these very things that we're craving and seeking for in the in the culture today. Where it's offering us a sense of home. Um so I think that that's the big piece that has been missing is um is this spiritual home, um, this physical home, the kind of care and and nurturing that we we really want and um are are looking for, and obviously have been trying to find in all these um other places, um, you know, and that that warmth of collectivism, which is clearly not warm at all, um, you know, that we that we're we're being sold over and over again of communism in just a different form. And I think that's what feminism fundamentally comes down to is it's the same offspring from the French Revolution as socialism and communism, uh just repackaged in a way that's a lot more attractive and um and you know it's been bought into deeply. So I yeah, absolutely. I think Christianity has so much richness, even the imagery of of Christ as the bridegroom and and um the church as the bride. There's th these are not constructs or social constructs, these concepts, but in fact deeply embedded in who we are as individuals, um, and certainly in the archetypes that the church has to offer us to really think deeply about them and come to understand them in a in a better and um much more ordered and much more interesting kind of way.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Well, I I won't prod you for more spoilers. I I I beseech everyone to go and read the book, and particularly for for any women who might be feeling restless, exhausted, spiritually homeless, if you want to understand more about the development of feminism, how it is we came to um believe so many of the cultural um markers that are spread across our uh our our daily lives, um then I think your book is a wonderful place to start. And um and you you capture so much in in so few pages. So uh seriously, big credit to you. I think it's a wonderful contribution to the culture. Uh but before I let you go, Carrie, uh the question that I ask all of my guests is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Perhaps it was something to do with a moral absolute, something that you didn't think was ever going to change, or maybe it was something more of more day-to-day concern. And and what was it that made you change your mind?

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Well, I mean, 100% it's been feminism. I grew up in a very um progressive style home. I was very much encouraged to to excel in sports and um academics, and um uh, you know, I didn't know how to cook to save my life. So in any event, I I think it's really been that. That's been the whole um unwittingly the arc of my life. You know, that's this is a very thing that I was told as a young girl was really what my life was gonna, you know, make my life fulfilling and now um using the very education that I was given to really see just the way it's um been undermined. And I I I think that that's been something that's been really great to just dig into and just be free of and just say, you know, a lot of these things I I I didn't love myself well when I found myself aggressive and being in arguments all the time. Um, and to really see that transformation of of self by realizing, you know, God had a totally different um vision of who it is that I could be. And, you know, I have five children now and I'm a much different woman than I ever dreamed that I would be, but I'm um obviously a lot happier and more fulfilled, um, you know, despite the fact that uh I'm making a lot of people really angry with these ideas. But uh but it's certainly been worth it. Um people's lives are changing, so it's been pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Good. Well, I can't see any pitchforks held by angry locals outside my window, so I hope that's the same across the Atlantic. That's way coming. Exactly. Exactly. Well, Harry, before I let you go, uh, where can people find you uh in the dark corners of the internet? Where can they find your work? And and what can we expect from you next?

SPEAKER_01 59:25

Um the best place to find me is at my blog, theologyofhome.com, or um at my website, carry grass.com. But um yeah, I um I'm not sure what's gonna be next. I'm I'm I'm excited about this book and promoting it, and there I it feels like there's a lot of groundwork to do. Um I I the culture has shifted a lot even from when my last book, The End of Woman, came out, and I think people are really uh opening up to this idea of transformation of um of womanhood. And so I it'll be interesting. And I don't know what I'm gonna do. So we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Well, more powerful to you. Keep fighting the good fight, and thanks again for coming on. Uh, hope we get to speak again in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

I'd love it. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Thanks, Carrie.