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A Society That Hates Women
Sometimes it seems there’s a kind of cosmic mind-meld going on in the world. This past week was one of those times. It started with Andrew Klavan’s final thoughts on episode 790 of his podcast and ended in the Amazon (synod) in the Church, after passing through a contentious debate about feminism between a Catholic apologist and a Catholic professor of philosophy and theology. You can’t make this stuff up.
But, while we’d like to think the society that hates women is some foreign nation of macho-men where women are covered in black baggies from head to toe (and utterly dehumanized) and aren’t permitted to drive or even leave the house without a male member of the family as escort, I’m talking about our society. Right here, in the good ole US of A, and the West more broadly.
It’s so important, I’ve transcribed Klavan’s soliloquy in its entirety:
A lot of horror movies are based on a horror of women and the changes their bodies go through. The Exorcist is about a young girl coming of age. It’s really about a girl becoming a woman and it’s kind of a horrifying thing that she becomes sexualized. The Omen is about having a baby. Rosemary’s Baby is about pregnancy. Women and the changes their bodies go through provide a certain amount of horror. And not just in the minds of men, but I think in the minds of everybody, there’s something about that can be turned to horror.
That horror — I think we’re going through a moment of sexual psychopathy. This idea that somehow it’s alright to butcher a child, to give a child hormone blockers, and basically chemically castrate little boys and things like this. Where is the science on this? Where are the longitudinal studies saying that a child who says something at nine, or ten, or fifteen is going to think the same things when he or she is twenty-five? Where is the science? How can we possibly do this? And underlying it is a terror of women. A horror of women.
You know, this idea that men… there’s a new ad company putting out ads for men’s underwear that suggests that men can have periods, so that, like, women don’t even exist. In Britain they ban ads that show women raising children because they think that somehow degrades them, that women raise children, that women make homes for things. It used to be, you know, we had this idea that women were doing something higher than men were doing. It was higher even than the pay that men got. And, yeah, there were men who took advantage of that and men who took advantage of the sacrificial nature of motherhood and the sacrificial nature of homemaking… there were men who mistreated women for that. But, the idea that it is somehow degrading to be a woman has seeped into our society. And that’s what all of this is about. It’s not about freedom, it’s not about, oh, taking care of transgender people. I have no animosity toward them whatsoever.
It’s not about any of that. It’s about a horror of women and not allowing women to be women. If you’re a man, you’re allowed to go and compete, as long as you wear a dress, man, you can go in and compete with them in sports so they have no chance of winning. Oh, yeah, women don’t — not just women have periods, not just women have babies, men do these things too! It is basically an erasure of women. An idea that the things women naturally do and the things that women naturally turn to are somehow degrading. And I just think it is absolutely psychopathological. It’s a kind of sickness that we’re going through. A kind of sexual sickness that is a side effect of the sexual liberation of people, which is not liberating at all.
While I agree with most of that, I think even Klavan gets some things wrong about how women are viewed. More on that later.
Meanwhile, our erstwhile Catholic brothers, Trent Horn and Tim Gordon, were so opposed to the ideas of feminism, you’d have thought they’d start another war of religion! Tim Gordon is writing a book (No Christian Feminism) in which his research has shown that even first-wave feminism was really about getting women out of the home and into the workplace and encouraging sexual promiscuity in both women and men. It was ultimately about the destruction of the family, which explains the Marxist/socialist vibe in feminism today. “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” — Mussolini
But, I think the nub of the argument they failed to fully articulate is the opposition to, even disgust with, the nature of women. Women want provisions and protection from a good man, to be cherished for their unique vulnerability as women. I’m generalizing, of course, but I’m also speaking from experience, having reached adulthood in the post-sexual revolution era and having once bought into the lies of feminism. Namely, that women only reach their full potential by acting more like men.
All of this eventually gets Biblical. Doesn’t everything? After all, we’re discussing created beings and, as such, the purpose, or nature of things. The nature of men and women is revealed in the punishments for Original Sin in Genesis, Chapter 3:
To the woman he said:
I will intensify your toil in childbearing;
in pain* you shall bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.
To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not eat from it,
Cursed is the ground* because of you!
In toil you shall eat its yield
all the days of your life.h
Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you,
and you shall eat the grass of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
from which you were taken;
For you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.i
What is God telling us about the nature of men and women here? That women desire to be wives and mothers, despite the suffering and sacrifice entailed. That is their end as women. And that men desire to provide and protect their families by the sweat of their brows; by labor outside the home, despite the suffering and sacrifice it involves. This is the division of labor provided in the nature of the sexes, and we’ve discovered what happens when society messes with nature: everyone is immiserated. “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” isn’t just a pithy aphorism. It’s a deep-seated truth!
Now, I have libertarian sympathies like most conservatives, so I’m not advocating women be banned from the workplace. I believe people should be permitted to make choices (other than killing innocents to solve their problems) even if they’re bad ones. I’m just advocating for a recognition of the damage our societal choices have done and are doing. Despite our history-making prosperity and previously unimagined opportunities for women, women are increasingly unhappy. And it’s no wonder. Unless they’re behaving like men by competing in the workplace and receiving recognition for their achievements, they’re disdained by society. They better not be staying home and baking cookies, as Hillary Clinton once sneered. What a waste of life!
Which brings me back to where Andrew Klavan is wrong about how women are viewed — particularly in the Catholic teaching of the Virgin Mary. Klavan disagrees with Catholic teaching about the perpetual virginity of Mary because (paraphrased) “denying her sexuality is a poor model for a good wife.” Well, now, it depends on whose spouse you believe she is, I would say. She conceived in an act of spiritual intimacy with the Holy Spirit. She is the daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son, and the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Joseph was her earthly husband-figure and is revered for the sacrifices he made on behalf of the Holy Family, including his own chastity. Klavan’s position implies that it isn’t enough for Mary to be the Mother of God and the Spouse of the Spirit, just like it isn’t enough for women generally to be mother and wife, to form the next generation and make a welcoming home for her husband. That’s precisely the message women have been getting since the widespread acceptance of contraception and abortion. It’s the lie of sexual liberation and the misunderstanding of the potential for chastity within marriage (whether Josephite or not) provided by the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit.
This is playing out in the Catholic Church under the papacy of Francis, too. In the recently concluded Amazon Synod (really a cover for heterodox German Catholics to taint Church teachings with progressivism), there was widespread agreement among the hand-picked progressive participants that what the Amazon region really needs is deaconesses (and married priests… another whole story). Message received; it’s not enough for women to lead faithful lives as wives and mothers, or to dedicate themselves to the Church as religious women. We won’t realize our full potential until we achieve the status previously reserved for men by receiving Holy Orders. Be more like men, ladies! That’s where it’s at! Up next? Priestesses. Bank on it.
None of this begins to address what has happened to men in the new normal of sexual psychopathology. Just note the lack of bass voices among young men you hear in the media. Or the disrespect manly men receive as “toxic” masculine. Or the ongoing fight for men’s right to their own children after divorce.
I don’t have much hope for a return to sexual sanity anytime soon. I just hold on to the reminder from our Catholic friend, Mate De: Jesus is in the boat. The storm may rage around us, but we just have to hold fast and keep praying for him to wake up and save us from ourselves.
Published in General
The overreaches of the trans movement might turn out to be a blessing in disguise as the feminists are slowly waking up to a few things. They’re going to erase women’s sports for one thing, if they aren’t stopped. There’s already a schism. May it grow.
Men used to put Ladies on pedestals for such feminine qualities.
Now chicks act more like Men and wonder why They’re treated like step stools.
The next post could be “A Society That Hates Men.”
Progressivism isn’t fun. I don’t know whether we will return to Christianity but Progressivism is oddly, a dead end.
If you are female you have to feel bad because you are oppressed. If you are male you have to feel bad because you are oppressing females.
If you are gay, you aren’t gay enough and you need to date transgender people even if they have the parts that you don’t fancy. Also, gays are required to be extra woke for some reason.
The same equally unpleasant dynamic applies to race and other things.
Everything is humorless and sad. Some people will go back to Christianity out of sheer desperation.
That’s right: TERFs are on the march.
I turned off the Klavan podcast right there, because I could not tolerate the silliness of his line of thinking.
That said, there is a battle between the feminists and the transactivists. I would not call it “hatred” of women.
C’mon in! We have cake. And coffee!
Well, that wasn’t the most significant part of his point — it was just a segue during Halloween week.
We’re going to disagree about the hatred. Women are hated for their natural desires as are men. Society has totally warped sexual identity. I only took the part of women because I am one and I couldn’t help notice how the week’s events came together to tell women they’re only appreciated by society (and the Church) for what they can do like men.
Obviously I don’t mean to suggest that’s your attitude or that of most conservatives/traditionalists — only that society at large is giving off that message.
Sometimes it’s possible to learn something from another person even if you don’t agree with everything he says. Klavan is a smart guy with good insights on many topics. There are a few things he’s said that don’t ring true to me but my reaction to those has never been, “That’s dumb. I’m turning this off.” Occasionally, something that appears stupid at first later causes me to change my mind.
YMMV.
Thanks, WC (and Andrew Klavan). It has been slowly becoming clear to me that that’s probably what the whole gay marriage and transgender stuff was about. Hatred of women. Hatred, resentment, envy, fear. Maybe some of it is justified as a reaction to feminism, maybe some of it is due to never overcoming the pre-adolescent fear of ….cooties, maybe some of it is mommy issues.
I’ve never made this connection. Interesting to ponder on.
Boy, you got that right…
This is a fine prayer, but I would like to suggest an alternate prayer, something to add to what you are praying for. Imagine a dry riverbed. The riverbed is filled with round smooth stones. Without the river they are just a bunch of stones. But when the water comes, it fills in the space between the stones. Imagine we are the stones, and the Holy Spirit of God is the water. Pray for His Holy Spirit to flow between us, to fill up the space between us, to bind us together.
See, I think there are two problems for us Christians right now:
We are divided. Our country is divided (many of the people we argue against politically are our brothers and sisters in Christ). Our homes are filled with conflict and bitterness (speaking for myself and for other families I am close to). Our churches are dying and blowing up. We need unity.
(My second problem is one I’m just figuring out how to articulate, bear with me)
Second, we seem to see the Truth of God as a choice among many out there. We are just one item on the menu, and we figure we better make sure we stand out, and that our entry is bold and bright and appropriately priced. We sort of think that the actions of mankind will drown us out and push us to the side. But the Truth of God is not any kind of -ism. What we believe is “the very Truth of God and not the invention of any man.” It is the only option on the menu. When the Creator of the Universe calls out to you or I, and we call back to Him, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that will stand in the way of that. And when He moves on the face of the earth, the schemes of Man are as nothing. This doesn’t mean we don’t have to take steps to work with God and His plan for us. Of course we do. It just means that if we stick close to Him, we do not have to worry about the “winds of doctrine.” Women will have their right and honored place among us, and it doesn’t matter what “they” do.
Ok, enough with the preaching…
Prayer for unity is such a good prayer even Jesus prayed it, Spin.
Problem is, everyone has their own “truth” lately. We have no moral/social consensus on the Truth. This is the self-deification I often mention — the radical individualism and mistrust of any authority other than our own plaguing us.
We are living stones — creatures with free will and (hopefully) baptized with the Holy Spirit. I often wonder how, exactly, God planned to build and maintain a church with such wayward material. This is where trust comes in. Doctrine isn’t a bad thing unless it’s false. You know where I’m heading with this.
There is a church I know of which has always taught the truth about the natures of men and women and human sexuality. It’s the Catholic church. It has consistently rejected contraception and abortion and our popes have even predicted the degradation that would come with the sexual revolution. Women are valued only insofar as they function like men. With the rejection of a living, incarnate voice of trusted authority in the Church, this is where we end up.
Someone once said – I think it was a king or something in Israel whose name starts with an S…..”There is nothing new under the sun”. The world is being deceived, including the Pope. God created male and female – to be different and complement each other, not to be the same or outdo each other. The very definition is being changed and eliminated – the devil’s fingerprints are all over this.
To convince people that God made a mistake when he created a man or a woman and they are really something else is wrong, that marriage as He created has a purpose that is being changed, that children need to have parents who understand their distinct roles and the benefits of each. That’s all being distorted. The message of Fatima was about marriage and the family – the final battle. Women can bake cookies or run a company or both – it’s ok. The healthiest families I know have a strong sense of love, commitment, and faith – not perfect – far from it. The perversions that youth are being bombarded with are distorting their sense of self – they are also cut off from reality and live their lives by learning from the Internet instead of family, faith and the community. It’s evil.
My wife liked your perspective on things. We had a two hour conversation after I showed your post to her.
Wow! That’s fantastic, Chris. I mean the two-hour conversation, not that your wife agrees with me. ;-)
Great post Western. Also I’m glad I helped you feel better. That was not my original thought. I was also in despair and someone reminded me about Jesus asleep in the boat and it gave me so much peace. Just have faith that god is in charge. But that is problem isn’t it? Too many of us don’t have faith that God is charge. How many times in the Bible does God say “don’t worry” and then we go and worry. Also we don’t like god’s laws, so we pick and choose what law we agree with and which ones we don’t. That seems to be the case with everything these days. It doesn’t work like that folks. God’s laws aren’t a la carte.
Also and I’m sorry Protestants, but you tossing the devotion (not worship!!!!) of Mary has had a detrimental effect on the view of women in our culture. She helps us understand the power of the feminine, also the trinity but that is another subject.
I remember when Andrew Klavan made that statement about Mary and I rolled my eyes. I have also heard him say that sex is one of the great consolations of life….:. Say WHAT!!!??? A consolation. That life has so much pain and suffering that god gave us sex to help us through it. This is a massive blind spot in my opinion. Maybe it’s generational, those who were raised in the thick of the sexual revolution sometimes do. I was raised in the aftermath of the sexual revolution and have seen the devastating effects it has had. Sure sex feels good but it isn’t a consolation, sex is to make babies. It feels good, but it exists to make babies. It helps bond a couple, but mainly it’s to make babies. That is the part that no one seems to want to talk about anymore.
I can’t say that I understand much of what is going on, but sometimes I laugh out loud at some of the stupidity. What else was there for me to do when I read about transgender women, i.e. men pretending to be women, being upset that straight men don’t want to “date” them?
The malevolent and arrogant stupidity surrounding gender is discouraging and I do have trouble remembering God is in charge and we don’t have the whole picture. I take mothers and fathers and the natural family as unquestioned goods and am angry at the universal dishonesty from liberals on the subject. Did they ever say “The human race is moving beyond mothers and fathers….they just don’t matter any more, and that is why we should redefine marriage to leave them out”? No, they could never risk their true argument.
But maybe it is true. I doubt it, and find the thought terrifying, but it could be the future for humanity that God has in mind.
I don’t think he changed his mind, Jojo. “Male and female he made them.” In his image and likeness. Our dignity comes from living out our created nature, not our fallen one.
Sex is a great consolation. Mr. Podkayne and I mention this frequently.
If sex wasn’t also meant as a comfort, why can people have and enjoy sex even when they are infertile?
I also think gender confusion is far more likely the work of the Devil than of God. I base that on its obvious harmful effects and the arrogant dishonesty used in its promotion. But God can change his mind or move on to the next phase and I wouldn’t know….his ways are mysterious.
There is a telos to sex and it is procreation. It’s main function is procreation, the fact that we can enjoy sex outside of a procreative function, doesn’t eliminate its ultimate point.
Eating is great and has a telos. the main function to eating is for the body to get energy for survival. Sure, we could survive with just minimal bland food, but a thanksgiving dinner is incredibly enjoyable and a blessing. However, if eating is taken from its telos of fuel for energy for the body to function, can also lead to detrimental and even horrifying effects.
The evidence is blatant, that once the concept of sex is taken from it’s main function, sexual license becomes the norm and the victims are undoubtably women and children.
also, the church teaches that the sexual act has to be between a man and a women open to life. It doesn’t mean that the only reason you have sex is to make a baby that night. But it is if a baby is made that you will be prepared to bring that baby into the world and raise them.
So if a couple is infertile it still isn’t against church teaching. Because some folks have thought they were infertile and turned out they weren’t. Like, I don’t know Abraham and Sarah.
The Devil is the great deceiver.
My pastor said once that woman has been competing for control over man since the fall.
I believe there is a proper created order of God, Man, Woman, child. Each is masculine to the one below him, not above.
Recently, a business friend (man) complained that the general manager fired the finance guy and split his duties (and money) between the two women in the office. In short order, there came an instance where confrontation was needed, and the general manager told the friend to handle it because the women were not equipped to deal with it. Contrary to tv shows, where the lady cop outruns the same age male cop and tackles and handcuffs the perp, women have a harder time exerting authority than men.
There’s a place where women are made to exert authority and that’s in the home, especially with children. And, it’s true, every female boss I’ve ever had was the worst. Sorry ladies. We make terrible men.
Actually, recently comic Chappelle took some of the matters you discuss and made them fun and funny.
Because they are. Between the continual indoctrination that oppression is all pervasive, except somehow if the individual has hormones blocked and genitals mutilated, then with that blockage and mutilation you are no longer oppressed, you are free!! there lurks more than a bit of irony to make it all a joke. (Just don’t make the mistake of laughing about it all inside a room of progressives.)