Pints With Aquinas - The DARK TRUTH About Feminism! (Carrie Gress)

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Dr. Carrie Gress is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and a Scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. She holds a doctorate in philosophy and is the co-editor of the online women’s magazine, Theology of Home. Dr. Gress is a prolific author, with books including The Anti-Mary Exposed, The End of Woman, and The Marian Option. She is a frequent guest on radio and television, and her work has been translated into nine languages. Dr. Gress is also a homeschooling mother of five and resides in Virginia. Carrie's Links: https://theologyofhome.com/ The End of Woman: https://theologyofhome.com/collections/books/products/the-end-of-woman The Anti-Mary Exposed: https://theologyofhome.com/collections/books/products/the-anti-mary-exposed-rescuing-the-culture-from-toxic-femininity 🍺 Get episodes a week early, 🍺 score a free PWA beer stein, and 🍺 enjoy exclusive streams with me! Become an annual supporter at https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors: Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd 💻 Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 Store: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com/  

G'day everybody, I am thrilled to share that we are now 70% of the way to reaching our goal for the new Pints with Aquinas studio here in Florida. If you'd like to help us cross the finish line, please go to pintswithaquinas.com slash studio. As a thank you for your generosity, depending on your level of support, we'll send you some pretty cool gifts in return, such as a paracord rosary, chrism candle, a sixth month free membership on Locals, a copy of Peter Craife's excellent Summa of the Summa, and even a personal phone call from me to thank you. So thank you for your support. It really means a lot.

And again, to learn more and to donate, please go to pintswithaquinas.com slash studio. I know that there are things out there that have the word Catholic and feminism is in the name of these groups. The hard part is, is that it's kind of everywhere. It's been really accepted as just sort of the way in which womanhood needs to move forward. And again, I think it's a sort of feminist light. And I don't mean to imply that any of them are ill intended.

That's not my, it's just the ideas themselves. I think people don't really realize what they're dabbling in. 30 years now we've been trying to blend these two. Look what has happened to women in the church. What's happened to Catholic women? How many Catholic women are aborting and contracepting? It's almost the exact same as the popular culture. We gotta get a picture with you with this. Yeah. You'll tell us when we're on.

Carrie, thank you for coming back onto my show. Thank you for having me. It's fun to be back here. Yeah. Explain that. Oh, this is my flask. My husband got this for me from Christmas last year. But why don't you travel with it? I mean...

Oh, I don't. I just brought it here because I thought this is the place. If I'm going to use it... Oh, that's so funny. I could fill it up with whiskey for you. I think you should. And you could... All right.

You may be joking, but I'm just gonna go ahead and do that. This is wild, I can't believe this has happened. This has never happened before. See, that's why I brought it, because I was like, Matt, Brad is gonna do something fun with this vice. No one has ever come to the studio and given me a flask. All right, let's see, I'm gonna drop this all over the desk.

And it didn't help when you told me that the studio was gonna be cold. I was like, I've gotta bring something to stay warm. This is amazing. Yeah, there just wasn't enough time for me to get. You did it. It's a little tipple in there. So are you a big boozer?

Is that the, what's the trick? I'm not a big boozer. I'm not a big boozer. I just, you know, just like nice things. It's always good to be prepared. Actually, that's the real truth. I really like being prepared. And this is just felt like every woman needs a flask.

You just never know, especially in winter, right? I don't know. So it's got our star logo. I try not to speak for women, you know? Theology of home star logo on it. And yeah, it's really special. Thank you for filling up. You're welcome.

I hope you swing from that at some point. I will. You got it. So yeah, just to kind of recap for those who are new or maybe those who did catch our last discussion. I think about a year ago you were on the show. Yeah. Karen is your name, right? Exactly. Carrie grass. Why don't you tell people who you are? Who am I? So I am a mother of five children and I have written 10 books. The most recent book is The End of

Woman, How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us and that came out last fall so that's mainly what we were talking about last year. And the whole idea is really just you know how do we look at feminism and what it's done to the culture and how do we start helping women in a way that's actually really helpful to them and not something that is leading them astray. And I think, you know, initially I thought feminism could be salvaged. We salvaged something. Yeah. I totally thought there was something. So was it a research project you were doing? Is that how it came about? Yeah. So I, well, I wrote the book, the anti-mary exposed. And actually that book came about because Hillary Clinton was running for president.

And I was writing the book, The Marion Option. And as I'm reading, doing all this research for The Marion Option, I'm realizing she's, she's, Mary, the lady has the title of the most powerful woman in the world. And suddenly it occurred to me, what if Hillary Clinton wins? She will be the most powerful woman in the world, really. And, you know, vying Our Lady, but she's nothing like Our Lady. She's totally opposite of Our Lady. And so I just started looking at elite women and kind of seeing this pattern, like, not only is she, like, slightly different than Mary,

but she's, like, totally, you know, anti-Mary. And that's, I think, what I started researching back in the... I actually have a chapter in The Marian Option called Are We in the Age of Mary or the Anti-Mary? And that was what Tan Books was the publisher. And they said, can you write a whole book on this, just this idea? And that's really what led to the Anti-Mary Exposed. And so I only went back to the 1960s.

I thought I stopped there. I just thought, I've got a ton of research. I don't need to go back any earlier. And I'd always been told, you know, the first wave of feminism was good. So I just wasn't too concerned about it. I just thought, okay, I'm just gonna, this is really the tipping point when feminism went sideways, and that's all I need to cover.

And so then I was gonna write another book. People had said, can you write something that's for secular women or Protestant women, because obviously the Marian theme is a little bit of an obstacle for a lot of people. And so I wrote, I started writing this book, and I knew it was going to be a secular book, and it ended up, um, Regnery was going to publish it, Regnery Publishing.

And the book, you know, I just thought, I got to go back and look at First Way Feminism. I bet I'll find some nice quotes, some really lovely things, you know, edifying pieces that came from this sort of founding mothers of feminism. And when I got into it, I was just shocked, like, what is this stuff? Like, and why has nobody done a forensic analysis of this

to see what, like, what women were doing, what they were up to? And so anyway, that's really the book was about, was starting with the earliest feminist, really the grandmother of feminism, Elizabeth Cady, I'm sorry, Mary Wollstonecraft. And then moving up through the whole suffrage movement and then really even seeing the early connection with communism.

And anyway, we can certainly go into all those details a lot more, because I think we covered some of it the last time. But the more I've dug into it, even this last year, I've kept digging. Because there's so many different women that wrote, there were so many different movements, so many different things going on, and I was just, you know, dotting I's and crossing T's and making sure I really,

did I really get this right. And the deeper I go, the more remarkable it gets, and the worse it gets. And I'm also triangulating with a lot more other women who are scholars who are doing this kind of research. And their work is interlocking with mine. And there's one woman in Argentina who apparently has letters between one

of the suffrage women in England and Stalin, Joseph Stalin, and this woman, the Pankhurst mother and daughter team that are kind of given credit for suffrage in England, they used all these just vile tactics to get their way, you know, destroying businesses, burning down buildings, you know, whatever they needed to do, including even things like hunger strikes when they were put in jail. And then, of course, it's really bad press to try and feed a woman when she's on a hunger strike

in jail. So people didn't do that, so they had to let the women. I mean, it was just incredibly vile, all the things that they did. And so anyway, I think it's been, it's a story that's finally getting out. People are finally beginning to realize that the first wave was not some pristine movement

that was only focused on suffrage, but in fact had really deep and dubious tentacles that were attached to a lot of the things that ended up becoming the socialist movement and then later the communist movement and all these trends are really interlocking together and are built on those really same bad roots and principles. I think that 80% of people who watch this show are fully ready to condemn feminism. I suspect that there are some people though who have been maybe rightly aghast at some of the menosphere stuff, maybe even in the kind of atheistic menosphere sections online,

that they think okay just at a time where this like legitimately toxic masculinity, and by toxic masculinity I mean a toxic lack of masculinity. Like a man who acts like a brute and a tyrant towards women shouldn't be called masculine, actually. He might be able to be called a feminine, but not masculine. But I could see women saying, okay, at a time like this from where we're seeing the rise of the Andrew Tates, now's the time for like you who should be on our side to attack feminism. And like I told you last time, my wife and I, like we change, it's nice to have an answer

to the question, what's an opinion you've changed your mind on recently? Mm hmm. Because we all like to think we're open minded, but I'm not sure if I am. Right. But you know, my wife and I read your book and we're like, oh, we think feminism is evil, root and branch now. Mm hmm. There's, there's nuance there, of course, like why did it arise?

Yeah. You know, but why did it arise? But while that's interesting, we never would have thought that because prior to reading that book, I was conflicted about how I felt. I didn't want to just get rid of feminism altogether because I thought feminism meant the movement that helps women. And if there was a name for helping children, and you were against that ism,

you could see why people were like, why are you horrible? Why do you hate children? And here's how I've come to think of it, and I'd love you to help me. I think that, and I'll just say the atheist and the Christian, even though there's a big spectrum here, I think the atheist looks at woman, sees her vulnerabilities, and assumes it is a weakness

that needs to be rectified. The Christian sees the woman's vulnerabilities as appropriate, and therefore nothing needs to be rectified. Just like a child. Like, if you were to look at a child and go, we need to make them as strong as men. Well, they might be one day, but what do you mean? Because they're supposed to be weaker. So yes, women are weaker. If they weren't weaker, we wouldn't need feminism.

But this weakness is actually vulnerability, and that vulnerability is part of the feminine beauty and genius. Right. It's not a bad thing. Do you think that's right? Yeah. So I think there's about three different things there. The first thing I would start by saying, because I want to talk about the Manosphere stuff for sure, because I think that's hugely important. The feminism, I think, a very simple definition is,

feminism is about separating women from husbands and children so that they can be independent. And if you look back at what Mary Wallstonecraft was writing, that's one of her points was, we don't know what womanhood looks like because they've always been busy with these husbands and children.

Like that's what they've been occupied with. We don't even know what they can do. And, you know, a hundred years later, you've got this woman named Emma Goldman who says the exact same thing. You know, in the early 1910s, she was this Russian immigrant. She says the exact same thing. You know, in the early 1910s, she was this Russian immigrant. She says the exact same thing. So, and the fascinating piece

that is actually not well connected in my book because it didn't really jump out at me all that well initially, was that most the suffragette women were all also involved in the abolition movement, which obviously we know slavery was a bad thing, and I think, you know, it obviously we know slavery was a bad thing. And I think, you know, it's not in any way endorsing slavery. But what's fascinating is that they viewed the family

as a kind of slavery. The women were enslaved to their husbands. They couldn't like separate out, okay, one is a really abhorrent practice that's just gone on for so long and needs to end. The other is the basic cell of civilization and the place in which people grow and flourish. And they didn't have, you know, like we have now,

we have 50 years of seeing this, what a disaster that whole experiment has been of, you know, the methodology, the methods with which they've used to promote feminism. We just didn't know, you know, they didn't know how bad it was. They still had this belief that if we could have this all-female society would go well. You know, the woman that wrote Wonder Woman, the concept for that. She wrote a, there was a woman in the 19, really 1910s that wrote a book called Her Land that was all about this, how, you know, civilization would just be so amazing without men.

So the fundamental idea, this is the problem, is feminism is morphed, it's a shape-shifter. It can kind of take on whatever it wants. Even just the Barbie film was amazing to watch because it's just repackaged in something pink, which of course the feminism I grew up with would be, what are you talking about, Barbie and feminism? You know, these just don't go together.

So I think that's a hard part is that we've been told is something good for women. And that's all. And we don't really get the underbelly of like, actually, it's hugely anti-Christian because it's fundamentally about power and Christianity is about surrender. So those, you know, right there, you can tell these two are not going to blend well. So I think that's a really important distinction to make. And that even looking at, you know, fast forward to the 1960s, what are these women promoting?

You know, there's a book called The Sisterhood is Powerful, which became kind of like a Bible for women in feminism. It was, you know, this woman named Robin Morgan put together all these essays, and it's like this handbook for feminism. Well, and it's incredibly awful. Like it promotes the idea of killing men, certainly abortion, and all of the fertility issues are at play. This also has spells in the back of it.

It's sort of a handy thing, like if you need everyday spells in the back of them, the cult element is really alive and well. So I think if you see just how bad the movement was and what it has led to, what the fruit has been from it, it's really interesting then to go look at the Manosphere because they're mere opposites. They're still like, we will dominate you. We think we're superior.

We're gonna crush you. We're gonna humiliate you. It's kind of the same thing. So I- All are opposite. Yeah, one is women and one is men. And it's surprising that it actually took as long as it did for that kind of movement to appear.

And actually it was really funny at some point, there was a review of my book and someone actually compared me to Andrew Tate and said that what I was doing was like Andrew Tate. But it's kind of amazing if you think about it because the woman that wrote it wouldn't consider herself a radical feminist, and I probably agree on a lot of things, but for her to compare me with Andrew Tate is pretty

amazing when she's still bearing the name feminist, when we know how bad feminism has actually been. We know it's responsible for, you know, it's the engine behind abortion. We know that it's driving divorce. We also know women are not happier because of feminism, because when you try to fundamentally tell a being to do something that isn't in accord with their nature, then they're not going to be happy. So it's interesting. It's sort of like saying, okay, we don't even know what this flower

is, because it's been in this pot of soil receiving water. So we need to take it out of the soil and then we'll know what it is. That's exactly what they wanted. And that's the thread that I think you can see all the way through it, is what does our life look like without men or children? And that's the independence. That's a core nut that they're looking for.

And it's just echoing throughout. And it's got to the point too where I'm amazed, it's now a very socially acceptable answer to say, well, we're not gonna have children because we're just too selfish. You know, people have gotten to that stage where they can actually say that, I think is really striking to me

and shows just how far that idea of independence and your life is gonna be a lot better without children and all of that. So, in any event, I think that it's going to take a while for people to really start understanding that feminism hasn't been good for women. And by and large, because we've just been told our whole lives that it's good for women, you know, it just sort of goes without saying. The media has been promoting this. The women have been promoting this. You know, it's all that women really hear. And so there's a few of us. All of that empowered. So anyway, I,

I see the two as the opposite sides of the coin. And I, I think the, you know, it's really hard, especially in the church, because of the fact that women are still grasping on to this notion of feminism as something that's good. I've actually started referring to it as feminism-lite, because I think they obviously reject the occult piece.

And there's three ways that feminism is a method. And my husband actually came up with a really, a really great way to understand it, which I'd never thought about before. It always I'd always struggled with. Why are there always these three things together? It's always the occult. It's always free love.

And it's always smash the patriarchy through like since almost the very beginning. And he was helping me with a talk and he's like, there's got to be an easier way to remember this. And then he said, the reality is, is that each of those things is attacking one aspect of the Trinity. And as soon as he said that, I was like, this is why it's all three. You're attacking the patriarchy, which is the image of the Father. You're attacking the body, or the temple of the Holy Spirit with the free love aspect. And then the occult is the attack on the authority of Jesus Christ in the world. So anyway, it's a pretty tidy package when you see all those things, you know, come together over and over again throughout 200 years of a movement. They're all there. So feminist light don't ascribe to all,

obviously they're not gonna ascribe to the occult piece if they're trying to blend it with Catholicism. But they will focus a lot on the patriarchy piece. And I think that that is just always really puzzled me. Like, how do you explain the church and the pope and the papacy and the all male clergy? The patriarchs in scripture. Right, all of that. the church and the pope and the papacy and the all-male clergy. Right, all of that. I think it's just a real challenge to really come out in a way that makes sense to people and is tidy.

I think the other piece of feminism that is really a fruit of communism and socialism is just the idol that work has become. And I think that's another part of sort of feminist life is this idol of that. We really will figure out who it is that we're meant to be once we're, we're working. Scraping plaque off the teeth of strangers instead of caring for our children. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I think, you know, maybe less so today, but when I got married back in 2006, let's say I was sitting down with the priest and we were doing classes and I said, well, obviously like I need, I want you to stay home and look after our children, take care of our home and I want to provide for us.

There'd be a lot of priests that would kind of recoil. I'm not blaming priests. I'm just saying like that. It just, you can't even say something as simple and as natural as that without people recoiling I think what's difficult about your your job and what you're trying to accomplish is If you were trying to show the world that abortion was evil You could say well abortion is the intentional killing of the unborn. We shouldn't kill the unborn There's no justifying reason but what you're trying to attack is an ideology which as you say shapeshifts and morphs. So when you say feminism you don't know any

idea what people are hearing. Yeah that's exactly right. So when you sit across from, I don't know if you do this, but let's say you were to sit across from a feminist and they self-proclaim feminist, I mean how do you begin to help them critique this worldview? How do you even begin to define the worldview? Yeah, well, I think that's the big challenge is the shape shifting. The other huge challenge is just the fact that we don't have reason in the culture anymore. That, you know, as someone who spent years

getting a PhD in philosophy to then come to the realization that it doesn't matter. I think that you're actually not making an argument that anybody's really gonna be able to hear, I think is challenging. So I think the real way in which, obviously, there's my book, you can go through the whole study of it,

and it's not a sound bite, that's the other challenges. I think we're so used to trying to argue with people in sound bites. And, you know, the only thing that you really got in terms of easy sound bites are like, well, what has it done to women? Women aren't happy. The culture isn't happy. We're in this huge birth dearth, which civilizationally is a disaster.

You know, you can come at somebody with those kinds of things. But I think it usually goes back more to just getting to know the woman and what it is that she's going through. I got an amazing letter last year from a woman who had, you know, she bought into all of it. She got into drugs. She got, you know, there's all kinds of rape and abuse and things that she was going through and really tough situation. And someone gave her my book and she was trying through, and really tough situation. And someone gave her my book,

and she was trying to come back to the church. Someone gave her my book, and she was like, finally, someone sees the pain that I'm in. And it was a really remarkable response. So instead of rejecting it, she realized, this is why I'm in pain. Somebody finally is telling me, this is why you hurt so much,

because this is what civilization, this is what the elite in our culture have let happen to you over and over again and told you this was good, told you this was freedom, told you this was empowerment. And you know, she's just this miserable woman trying to have some kind of a life and, you know, put it together. We all see that. It's as clear as the nose on our faces. You see this dear woman with jeans rip beyond recognition, bright blue hair, tats like they then pin on. They just look like they wanna kill themselves.

They look brutally, awfully miserable, solipsistic, uninterested in everybody around them, you know? Then you couple that with an experience I had recently. I was in a Whole Foods and I was just eating lunch there and I saw this lovely woman in a dress looking just beautiful with like five kids around her and the kids were dressed well and she looked happy and she even had a flip phone. I'm like, oh, there's no way this woman is not a Christian or a Mormon. Like she's one of them.

She's happy. There's no way this woman is not a Christian or a Mormon. Like she's one of them. She's happy. There's no way this woman's not happy. So how is it we can like look at her and go, oh, what a poor soul. And then look at the blue hair. Now, OK, nothing intrinsically wrong with blue hair. I don't think there's anything good about it. I'm not condemning you if you've got the blue hair, but it seems to be a sign of rebellion against nature.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. To make myself look unhuman in a way, kind of rebellion against nature. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. To make myself look unhuman in a way, kind of anime-ish. Yeah. Is there something in that? Well, I think it just, all of it points to just incredible discontent, and this is really the currency that feminism has lived off of. Even from the 1890s, I found this,

we're going to start this gospel of discontent in women's hearts. And because what happens when women are discontent, they're angry, they're mad, they're active, they're activated, they're manipulatable. And this is what feminism has done over and over and over again. Should remember that line from Matt Walsh. So I got to turn this on. Remember Matt Walsh's line? Oh, not Matt Walsh? Sorry, I got to turn this off. Remember Matt Walsh's line?

Oh, not Matt Walsh. He was in that woman's parade. If you're not here for women, we ask you to leave. What is that? Do you remember? I do. Yeah, no, I think that's. So I think it comes down to when you're dealing with a woman

and the feminism issue, there's usually something broken somewhere in the story. There's something, you know, and it's not... And this is the thing, is it's self-replicating. It has its own kind of DNA in it, if you will, where you've got, you know, broken people break other people. So women get these ideas. You know, it's like the girl that goes to college and she goes to college like a normal person and then she's coming home at Christmas and she's got male pronouns. You know, I mean, there's something has happened

and the ideas have changed. And then she goes all in, whether it's the drugs, the abuse, the promiscuity, and it just keeps moving. It just keeps going. And this is the amazing thing is how much it reproduces itself. My friend, John Henry says that God will forgive, nature will not. Right? So if you've been promiscuous your whole life, and then you go into marriage, God will forgive you, but you will bear those wounds forever.

You've really damaged yourself in a way that you actually won't be able to find full restoration from. You'll be able to find a certain amount of healing, but you've got to deal with that, right? And it kind of makes me think of like how Disney started going woke and their profits started plummeting. And rather than go, oh, like this was bad, they just doubled down and just kept plummeting. And it's like that.

It's like nature keeps hitting you in the face. And the solution feminism gives you is to hit yourself in the face harder. Yeah, and keep going with that. And then hit the children that you bear. If you have children, hit them with it. And I've also done a lot of research. I've started talking to a woman named Hannah Speer, who

is a psychiatrist in Switzerland. She's actually originally from Norway. She's Jewish and just a lovely woman. And she's done all this. She's worked on these wards with women with deep anxiety, deep depression. They all are living this sort of feminism dream. And she's realized that all these women, none of them

are attached, were attached properly to a parent, to a mother. And she ends up becoming something of a surrogate for them because they just need that emotional attachment to a woman who cares for them and loves them. And so that's the other way in which it perpetuates itself because women who are become narcissistic and so focused on themselves because of this brokenness are just going to pass that down through generations.

And she said, you know, the problem too is that there's not really any way... She said there's one way to help cure them, you know, short of like having them adopted by somebody or something. And that's to find a very... a man who is very low on the neurotic scale, and for them to have children and to have kids, and for him to be solid and steady and stable, and for her to become a mother.

And she said it's really interesting, because all these things are clinically diagnosed as a mental illness. But then it goes away when they get married and have a child, you know, when they're actually loved. So it's really interesting that the very thing that women are told they should not have is actually the cure that they need is a stable man and be loved unconditionally by children and love their children too.

So it's a mess. Let's define feminism, even though as you say It's a morphous thing and yeah Feminism is the idea that or feminism is the idea that women are better off without husbands and children fundamentally There's a lot more that goes into that definition, but that's what I see what you're saying Now when you say that the man is fear is the opposite because because the manosphere is the idea that men are better off without marriage and children. Yeah.

So we'll sleep around, you know, and if we're going to get married, we're going to get married when we're like in our 50s and she can't take anything from me. Yeah. And that's interesting. It's the exact same mirror. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So one created the other. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So one created the other.

Yeah. Yeah. And once you realize just how important marriage is, I mean, the Bible begins and ends with one. Yeah. It's the fundamental building block of society. And not only is it the place from which society springs, it's the place to which society aspires. It's everything.

And that is the thing that feminism and the manosphere are against. Totally against. How demonic is that? Yeah. And I wanna be clear, when I say manosphere, I'm not talking about men who are rightly attacking feminism,

nor am I talking about women who would identify as feminist, who I would disagree with on many things, perhaps who would attack a man who wants to just sleep around without being committed. Although I'm not sure if you see many feminists doing that. But yeah, that really put a nutshell for me, I think. Yeah. And therefore it makes it really easy to then sort of figure out what the solution is, which it's that narrow, like avoid the extremes and figure out how a couple works together.

You know, it almost feels like I've started looking at this debate as like a really bad divorce going on. Like there's people on this side who are like supporting just the husband. And then there's this side that are supporting just the wife. And there's no way to like, nobody really wants to bring healing. Everybody just wants it to be further exacerbated because they have their own agenda and they actually get a lot out of it.

How could this not be? I mean, I know what you mean. Like feminism far predates the sexual revolution. All right. I know. It might go back to Eden. But the point is, I mean, how could the sexual revolution not lead to this? How could it not?

Yeah. Men hating women and children and women hating men and children. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And us all deciding we're pissed off and angry and then blaming each other for it. Yeah. Wild. Isn't that nice? Oh, we've created it. Golly. Yeah. So we absolutely have our work cut out for us. I know I was on Dennis Prager's show at one point, and he was talking about when the sexual revolution happened. And he was saying, you know, this was just... He was in college at the time, and he said,

this was just amazing, you know, the thing that men had wanted for 6,000 years finally. You could just sleep with whomever you wanted to. So it was really interesting to hear his perspective on it. But it's amazing, you know, it's that back to that nature. It's going to come around and bite you. You know, you're going to, this isn't going to happen. This isn't pain free. There's going to, you know, nature is going to win. And I think that's one of the interesting things. You know, you hear a lot about women

griping about men today. And you have to look back at the sexual revolution and say, well, who is the one that changed the most? Well, it was this free love idea that that's what changed. The women changed the most. And so I think that's how it started. And I think that's really how it's going to have to end, is getting back to this idea of women understanding

the importance of monogamy and that this has not been good for women and it hasn't been good for men and you know monogamy is really the only way out of it in terms of restoring and rebuilding because a lot of people have noticed that there seems to be at least online which I guess is a reflection of The world this increase in conservative men and leftist women. What is that? Well, actually, I want to ask you about that, because I'm kind of fascinated by it, because I, you know, Dennis Prager was like, all, you know, all in on on the sexual revolution

in terms of what he was talking about, and at that stage in his life. But you can see, you know, you've mentioned sort of this idea of men's simping to women. Is that the right word? I'd be happy to express that because I feel like whenever I do everyone misunderstands me. So to say it to a woman and you mirror it back to me would be helpful. Right.

But I think the bigger question that I'm really interested in well anyway, you explain that. I said it within the context of marriage. Okay. Yeah, right. So you begin with this idea. Happy wife, happy life is a thing that people say about immature bratty women in a way. It's like, I need to placate her so my life doesn't become hell. That's kind of what it's saying. And so when I said that men can simp for their wives, what I meant by that is they can be overly submissive and passive, whatever it takes for them to win her affection, even her physical affection.

In other words, if I rock the boat, I might not get sex. So men can, instead of being the leaders, clearly a leader is going to at times have to say tough things with great love and tenderness, of course. But if the man is weak and wants only sexual pleasure, that's his highest goal. And it's not leading his family to heaven. Right. Then he's going to bend over backwards to make her like him. Right. Do you see?

Yeah, I agree. And I think it's really interesting. And I would bracket that out between men in terms of married men. And then I also want to talk about the men that are not married to women, but that are worried that there'll be revenge or manipulation or something like that. So I want to talk about that in a second. But what's interesting about the question is the conservative young men, are they, is it porn that's given them the freedom that they no longer

have to pursue women, and so therefore, they have a kind of freedom emotionally from women that men in prior generations didn't have. Like, I mean, it's a very dark way of looking at it, but I'm curious to know, like, is that... I don't think that's the only thing going on, and it's, you know, it sounds really negative, but I think that there's got to be an element of that

if relationship building isn't really, and dating isn't really what it used to be anymore. Pinochromy is so fascinating to me. I've always been really fascinated by the concept and you know, the definition and how we interact with it and things like this. I could speak about it forever. But one thing that's for sure is that pornography, the reason we get hooked on pornography is not for the orgasm. It's the same like the man who gets hooked on gambling. It's not for the money.

Right. And you say that and that sounds silly. Like courses for the money. So he's gambling out. Right. And you go. Yeah. But if you gave him $100,000 or a million dollars, would he stop gambling?

Well, no. Right. I think so. Pornography sort of like that as well. Right. It's like it's not even really about the the climax. It's about the constant titillation, the novelty and things like this. So I don't think a man can be satisfied with it.

I think certainly he uses it and then maybe finds his real life experiences if he's fornicating full short of it, because it involves kind of embarrassment and another human being with her own paws and her own breasts. Like she's just normal, like you, wretched like you are. So yeah, I've been, I mean, I'm old. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't know what young people are going through today. So I think it might be a combination of pornography, although I do see, which is really interesting, like in this manosphere, the type that I would criticize, I see like a rejection of pornography in that as well,

which is wild. That is wild. You know, like I see this like, how embarrassing, like this is behavior that would make a chimp blush. Here you are masturbating to your laptop. Like this is not masculine. So I don't know if it's a combination of that and how are men and women interacting today?

I do think there's... I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm old, but I'm not like so... But I guess what I mean is technology has advanced so quickly in such a short span. Like I got my first, like I remember the eye touch But I guess what I mean is technology has advanced so quickly in such a short span It's hard to tell what's going on I got my first like I remember the itouch and that came out in I was about 2008 or something? iPod

No, itouch It was good an itouch. Look it up It was an itouch and it came out it was an obviously there was the iPod But then the itouch came out which was this without the phone, right? And look it up I want you to know that I'm right. I was right, you're welcome. All right, we'll split it down the middle, we were both right.

And getting him ready for marriage. Yeah, yeah, so, you know, like, I don't know, like when I, how did I meet people? Like I'm 41, I met people at parties, I met, you know. So I can't imagine what it's like where your first sexual experience is pornography And then you're also kind of look at each other on Facebook and oh god. I Don't get it Josiah did you want to weigh in on it? Do you have a mic out there?

Yeah, you're gonna come in here and weigh in The question is what's going on with young men, conservative young men. And I will say, and this actually is an important thing to talk about. Feminism is like people are done with it. Like there's one there's a few sections where it's a last holdout, but for the most part, other than like it's pretty much contained by boomer women, Gen X women, and all the younger women that I meet. I mean, especially Catholic women don't really want anything to do with it. So it's

really, it's been an interesting thing to see. So the question is like what what's going on with young men that's causing them to come go to the Manosphere? No, no. The question is why are young men becoming more conservative? Oh, that's because... It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they don't need women the way... or their relationships aren't built the way that they used to be where they're dating and they have to be more... No, I think it's actually the opposite. I think that what's happening is... So what you're saying is that it's the boomer women and the Gen Xers and like the elder millennials, women who are still hanging on to feminism and they're hanging on to

specifically and increasingly the man hating version of feminism because they need to for, um, like as, as it dies out among younger women, especially younger women, the ones they really want, the ones who aren't likely to buy into it, don't buy into it, it becomes more man hating. Um, and those women are the ones holding really want, the ones who aren't likely to buy into it, don't buy into it, it becomes more man-hating. And those women are the ones holding onto it, but those are also the women running all of the bureaucratic organizations, teaching youth in schools and in colleges and stuff. And so they become more conservative just as a reaction to being hated by the

people who are supposed to be caring for them and teaching them. So they automatically go find something else and they just find these online communities that are increasingly more conservative and increasingly conservative in more radical ways. And they get distilled down into these more extreme forms, right? Where like as the heat turns up from the outside world, the ones who are, you know, not as pure ideologically boil out. And so it's like distilling alcohol gets stronger and stronger and stronger. Nice analogy.

So that actually gives me a lot more hope because I think I was looking at a very cynical point of view. But, you know, one of the things that I've seen is just how much those women control, have controlled everything. And so it's really heartening to hear that something else is breaking in and forming opinions in a different way. I mean, it does end up being the Manosphere stuff and the more extreme political stuff that's not great, but it is better than

them being beaten down, you know. I mean, Klein to say that while a lot of the things they're buying into are not good, it is better than them hating themselves. Because if you had an entire generation, another, another, I should say, because I think the latter half of Gen X and the former half of the millennial generation largely are The men are self-hating and weak I think if you had another generation of that society would be completely doomed But I think it is better this is maybe not great But I think it's better for men to be in the Manosphere following and your take than to be weak and self-hating. So Yep

There you go. Thank you, Josiah. And it is interesting, you know, like when we were doing chastity talks back in the nineties and orts, well, not the nineties for me, but you would hear those chastity talks and they very much centered on not always, but it did kind of feel like men, come on, man, please stop. Like look at all these great women Right and even today here that was a great single women You like are they are they great? Yeah, or do they have no interior life because they've destroyed it by yeah

Binging on Netflix and doom-scrolling tick-tock like what's left in a woman after she's done that for ten years So yeah, I think the answer is both men and women typically suck years. So yeah, I think the answer is both men and women typically suck. And we should try to stop but it seems that blaming each other isn't obviously not helping at all. I think that's really one of the key things that has to come back is just the sense of we're made to be together. And you know, just the beauty of what happens when you see a couple living together with one goal

and not, you know, trying to dominate one another. And I think that's, you know, one of the things that is, with the Manosphere and feminism, the idea is that someone dominates and I think this is what women are reacting against, you know, rightfully so, because you've got historical evidence. Whenever there's sin, which means whenever there's people, there's going to be sin, and there's going to be brokenness and abuse. The problem is, is that feminism actually,

like I was saying earlier, it makes it worse. And so you end up without a sense of, I think what has happened is there's this confusion between power and purpose. So women look at men and think you have all the power without realizing actually the things that men do, which is provide, protect and procreate, it's not about power, it's about a purpose and a mission and I think

you know it goes back and we can obviously dig in more into that the idea of vulnerability but women think that those that purpose is more worthy than the purpose that women have and I think that's why there's so much confusion that's been sown is because of that conflation of power and purpose. Okay I'm asking my local supporters for questions because I forgot to do that that's been sown is because of that conflation of power and purpose. Okay. I'm asking my local supporters for questions because I forgot to do that earlier.

Oh. Yeah. And like men really want to provide strength. It's the same idea, this idea we had earlier, if you take a flower out of a pop plant to see what it is and you're surprised that it dies. Like men delight in having their strength received. Yeah. Like the man who the what when a woman lets the man put the bag over the top in the airplane, because

there's no way in hell she's able to do it. And it's embarrassing that she continues to try. You know, he's actually so gratified by that. Fair enough, if this woman's had experiences with creepy men, maybe that's why she's like, I'm good. And so I'm not folding her for that. I'm just saying that men, we just want our strength to be received. It's embarrassing how much we're made for it, even in small ways. Even in my marriage, there are times that I'll be doing something kind of, I don't know, kind of stereotypically masculine. Like I was building a deck on our back, our back property in Florida recently.

And, you know, just like using power tools and shit, you know, and like to have my wife see me and I just felt so good, you know, because that's not me really. I don't really do a lot of that kind of stuff. So to be doing that, I felt like so gratified. And so, and I'm sure it's the same with women. Like you can only say, like, I don't like children or I'm not really whatever, but I don't know. Is that right?

Yeah, no, I think it's absolutely right in the sense of just recognizing the gifts that men have, which we obviously haven't done. And what's it? What's a similar thing to women, though? Like when a man says I want to I want my strength to be received. It's absolutely if he says he doesn't, it's because he's terrified that he doesn't have what it takes. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. That's it. Men will not put themselves in situations where they will be exposed.

We hate being exposed. So what's, what is it with women? It's usually beauty. It's not always beauty, but it's usually that. And I, you know, I think that that's just a fascinating aspect is look at how much money women spend on being beautiful. It's, you know, billions of dollars, plastic surgeries. And, and you see women who are unhappy are, what are they doing? They're making themselves not beautiful. I'm sure you've seen those before and afters of the girl

when she looks normal in high school, and then she goes through. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. It is. It's absolutely heartbreaking. And that's not even transitioning on a biological level, but just the destruction that's involved in that. It's specifically attacking her beauty and her

capacity to convey that. So I think that's probably one of the main things with women. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. with women. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations and music, including my lo-fi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible

stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I have this idea that when you look at man movies and woman movies, they say so much about the heart of a man and a woman. So movies that men typically love are movies about a man who rises to the occasion and fights for either a woman or a country and is victorious despite the battle and the struggle. Here's what I know about, this is what I say about women chick flicks

Yeah, all right. Let's hear it It always the main character is always imperfect somehow. Mm-hmm She's a nerd. She doesn't she's kind of clumsy. All right. Mm-hmm. She is what every woman watching it is Mm-hmm. If there is a perfect woman in the movie, she's the bitch. Yeah, she's the enemy. The main the man in the chick flick sees past that clumsiness to her beauty. Right. And that beauty is then revealed. Yeah, that's every is that not most chick flicks in some way or, you know,

And and it's a potential is drawn out because she's loved. Yeah, no, it's I mean, that's the the Hallmark movie script is it's well, it's the girl that goes home. She's she's she's got to have some kind of a cause. And that's you know, she's like saving the library or something. But she falls in love with the laid back guy who has a vegetable stool and she's like a high New York power. Right, yeah.

She's in her power suit and all that and she doesn't really know how to relate to him in his truck and can't get into it properly. But then, yeah, that's exactly it. I think that's. Beautiful. And I think that really does point to, and I talk about this in the anti-marriage post is the desires of a woman's heart.

And the Marian aspect, I think we think of beauty in a really, in a cheap way, almost as a caricature of what it is meant to be. But that was one of the fun things about doing all the research about Our Lady was just how much people, to every apparition, she was the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Our Saint Therese of Lesault said,

she was so beautiful you would wanna die just so you could see her again. Which, you know, it's hard to imagine that kind of beauty. But her beauty isn't vanity. Her beauty is pointing to- Botox, so. Yeah, there's like Botox Mary? like that's not a thing, right? So I think that's what it points to something deeper, that a woman has a desire to be beautiful

and that, but the beauty that she needs to cultivate is interior beauty, because the interior beauty, maybe I'll think and think of women that are maybe not very physically attractive, but they've got this interior something that you're like, 100%. Yeah, that's so much more compelling. Times in my life where I've seen women in a photograph or something and didn't think they were that attractive. And then I got to know them. Oh, wow. Like I actually find you physically attractive now, which is strange because you don't even look different than the photo. It's not like you look different in person, but something came out, something beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really the tragedy. I think of what we have

lost so much of by all of it. You know, just the models that we have for womanhood are just a disaster. And this is, you know, no, I'm marrying and I have worked arduously to sort of try to help women get a real model of what womanhood is, again, in theology of home, like to just have the mental hooks so that you can imagine what does a great woman look like? Because there was a study that was done on men, like what does a good man look like?

And there was, men around the world were asked this question and there was kind of a distinction between a real man and a good man. And the good man was, I mean the real man sort of cut corners and you know just went along to get along kind of thing and the good man was one who made, who was sacrificed for people. So there was kind of still this universal thing. But if I was to ask you, well, you know, you've thought about it more than most people. But if we were to ask somebody on the street, like what's a good woman, especially a good woman, what would you know? If I asked what is a good woman, I think they would say someone who's independent. That

is a hundred percent what they say. Empowered. Yeah. Empowered. Right, all the things. Yeah. Wow. So that's what we have been groomed, literally groomed to believe about ourselves, that unless we're doing those things, we're not a good woman. There's no other category for us to work with. But what's interesting too is, in addition to beauty, there's always that compassion piece. And this is one of the ideas I I've just started

Jordan Peterson's new book I haven't gotten very deep in it at all but he talks about this idea of misplaced compassion and that that's the original really one of the original I mean he doesn't use this language but the the kernel of this sin of woman is to have misplaced compassion so if you look at all of the justice social justice warriors to have misplaced compassion. So if you look at all of the justice, social justice warriors, where's their compassion? It moves further and further away from you. It's not your child, it's not your husband.

It keeps moving out further away to people that you don't know at all. And that I think is really interesting, whereas the good woman, like, she's present, she's holding, she's well it's in her heart there in her head you know she's got real concrete people with real wounds and real sins and real flaws that she loves no matter what you know even that is it so I think that with all these causes that we support to make us

feel good, we're not connected to any of them. And that's kind of their appeal because they have no claim on me except to look virtuous. Yeah. So it used to be the ozone layer or it used to be whatever, but it's always something removed from me. Nothing I have to do or be engaged with to help solve it. I throw money at the problem or maybe I pick it or, you know, but other go to women's march, my pink hat on, you know, I mean, there's nothing. There's not a real person in front of you who's suffering that you're dealing with. You're dealing with sort of this intangible. And so anyway, I think it's just an amazing insight to start. I've never really

thought about that. Where'd you get that? Oh, Peterson, Peterson's, yeah, he's and he doesn't, I don't know how much he goes into it. I haven't gotten into the book that deep, but it was an idea I had never connected. And, you know, all this time I'm thinking about women was this misplaced compassion and how that's the real problem. If, you know, if you want to start being the good woman, you've got to start pulling it back into people

that you actually know and pour yourself into that in a real and present way instead of the abstraction. What did Peterson say about you? So Jordan Peterson liked my book. He said, actually it was, I had lunch with he and Tammy one afternoon in the summer and they read my book together. So it was great.

Wow, what an honor. Yeah, it was really fun. We had a great lunch. But yeah, he said that he thought that the work that I'm doing and Janice Fiamingo, who's a really good friend of theirs, she's one of the other women that she's, she's actually been doing this feminism stuff

for longer than I have. I just never ran across her work because it's all on YouTube and she's done videos. And she was actually a professor and very much a videos and she was actually a professor and very much a feminist and she was in the classroom and she was presenting some argument about feminism and then it suddenly dawned on her like how did the men receive this and that was a real like changing point for her it totally changed her perspective on it and she started doing all this research into the

first wave stuff so she and I have a lot of interlocking ideas and you know probably duplicate research in other areas where I've done things that she hasn't. So I need to sort of connect with her more. But anyway, so Jordan was saying that he thought that Janice and I were really doing the best. But didn't you say that there was a word he used of you that you're like, I guess that's a compliment?

Didn't you say that to me? Oh, he called me a beast. She's a beast. I think that- Thank you? Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah, I know. I was like, no, no, that wasn't that. Bloody monster. She's a bloody monster. Yeah, that's actually, that sounds more like him. You can hear him saying that, can't you? Oh yeah. I know, I wasn't really sure what to think about that.

But then, yeah, I realized that that was it was high praise. So, yeah. What are you? Who are your critics? And I imagine in the Catholic space, you have critics, right, who want to really baptize the word feminism and are very upset with you, probably that you're trying to demonize it. So what is what is could you try to steel man their arguments? Like, what are they saying? No, I think, you know, I I love the idea of of debating this. I love the idea of talking about this. I love the idea of getting my arguments stronger and finding, you know, it's poke holes in this. I just don't love it when it doesn't feel like they're really real arguments, you know.

But one of them can't, there've been a few of them, but one of the arguments was that I didn't think that women were rational, which is kind of a strange thing. Say like- I have a PhD in philosophy. I kind of think it's important. I've spent most of my adult life studying philosophy,

but yeah, it was, it yeah, that was one argument. The other stuff hinged on... Why did they say that? Well, I mean, the bigger issue is just the main argument that Catholic feminists have been making is that the first wave is good, and they've really hinged their arguments on that. And what do they think the first wave is saying? There's this desire, there's this belief that the first wave is trying to get to a feminism of care, which is really a fascinating

concept that it's really, you know, it's trying to help women who are broken. Lovely idea. But and I do want the Kamala Harris answer? Do you want a very long answer? Because I could give both, but... She'd like to give. I don't really want to do a Kamala Harris impression. Then it's a long one. Yeah. So the fundamental problem is that a feminism of care,

I think it can be effective if you sort of cherry pick ideas from women and you don't really realize, you know, from the early feminists, you don't really realize the whole context and the whole ethos in which they're making their arguments. And I think that's what's actually been going on is sort of this creating of a vision of what first wave feminism was without really understanding what it is. And the problem is, Mary Wollstonecraft is, again, back to that idea of she's trying to figure out what womanhood is. And she's using, she's basing a lot of her ideas, first of all, on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as Thomas Paine. So Wollstonecraft has this experience where she's a teacher, she's trying to help women,

and then she moves to London. And it's basically like, again, that girl who goes to college and she's got these new professors and they're giving her all these ideas and she's just filled to the brim with them. So what happens is the French Revolution breaks out and Edmund Burke, who is really considered the founder of conservatism, he basically says, this is going to be an absolute disaster. It's going to end up in major bloodshed.

And the reason why is because you're trying to get rid of tradition and faith. And nobody believes him at the time. Everybody thinks Edmund Burke, you're nuts. This is never going to be that bad. You know, they're worried it was going to spread to England. And so he was really outspoken about it. Well, Mary Wellstonecraft is actually responding to him. And there's a book written by a man named Yuval Levin

called The Great Debate. And he basically goes back to this debate between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine and says that's really where the split happens, where we've got liberalism and conservatism. This is the, like, the nut. And so, Wollstonecraft is fundamentally very much on the Thomas Paine side of things.

And, you know, they were, they knew each other, they were on some committee together. She actually goes to Paris and is part involved in, not in the killing, but she's watching the revolution. She knows where he lives, she calls him Tommy. You know, there's this one of the arguments was that they weren't connected, but they were very much connected. And so what's fascinating is that from the very beginning, feminism isn't part of the, you know, it's trying to get rid of tradition and faith. But those are the, and Burke knew this, you cannot have a culture of care without those pieces. Those are what create, that's the fabric

that creates the capacity for people to care for each other, whether it's the family or whatnot. So juxtaposed, you have these very different personalities and she ends up, you know, she's ends up having a relationship with an American. They tell the French embassy that they're married so that she doesn't get massacred in the French Revolution. She's pregnant. She moves back to England.

She tries to commit suicide a few times because that's what romantics did. That was a very popular thing to do. And she ends up getting married to this man named William Godwin Who's actually very well known? As far as being his ideas really infected marks really affected marks really influenced marks, and he was actually much better No, he was just kind of this intellectual celebrity at the time and So they get married and they have a baby while she she and she dies 10 days later and from childbirth. So this is kind of tragically her life.

Edmund Burke, meanwhile, he ends up taking in all these orphans from people who had been guillotined in Paris. He's, you know, saw that there was a need for all these children. He has had an estate. He creates an orphanage for all these children to be taken care of. Like it's just a very different, like the ways in which their lives played out.

Now I'm obviously not trying to make some sort of judgment about Mary Wollstonecraft per se, but I'm just pointing out that these are very stark differences in their approaches. And there's, I don't, do you know Ian McGillcrest, his work, the master and his emissary. Anyway, he's a Scottish Scotsman and he's just an absolute delight.

He's written that, he wrote that book, I think about 10 years ago, and it's actually really mind blowing book. But he, in that book says I think about 10 years ago, and it's actually a really mind-blowing book. But he, in that book, says, you know, the French Revolution was supposed to be just and fraternal and ordered, and it was none of those things. And this is what... It had nice language, didn't it? Fraternity, liberty. But then you've got, you know, bishops hanging from lampposts and, you know, the guillotine Yeah, just non-stop and so much death and destruction and it was just a disaster and that's what Edmund Burke saw was this is what's gonna happen because he knew when you take out faith and tradition

You all you've got left is a power vacuum or a yeah a vacuum for power to fill And so this is why he was so prescient and knew exactly a power vacuum, or a vacuum for power to fill. And so this is why he was so prescient and knew exactly what was going to happen. So all of that is a long backstory to say feminism has been, because the fact it's trying to get rid of faith and family, there's no way in which it can create

that which it wants to create because you're removing all the context through which care can actually happen where you can protect your daughters and your family and you know protect women from abuse and all of those kinds of things. It's a family that's the larger family community that is those the pieces have to be in place for that to actually happen. So it's a great concept but it just doesn't work given the threads that our feminism is built with.

It reminds me of how the new atheism, Christopher Hitchens and others would think that once we abolish religion, there will be an ascendance of reason. And now there are women with penises. Yeah. How did that happen? Terribly reasonable. Yeah. What?

Yeah. No. Men can be pregnant? Like, that happened quickly. So it's like, there's something similar there. Like, you remove the faith, and you remove the tradition. And it turns out you're left with, yeah, Babel. Yeah. Yeah, so it's this, as Ian McGraw-Crest would say, you know, there's this grasping at ideas,

but there's not enough context for the ideas. It's the difference between what something is I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

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I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. you know, back to your planted flower example. And unfortunately, this is really the pattern of liberalism really. It's just we want, we have these really great ideas, but we don't know how to achieve them because we don't understand the nature of it. So that's why things always end up so bloody and broken, such a disaster.

Didn't John Paul II talk about feminism, didn't he speak about it positively? This is a pushback I'm sure you get. No, this is a great question. So this is an amazing thing. I I had the impression that he talked about all the time. I thought it was like peppered throughout his documents. And it's actually in one place. It's in very tautest splendor.

And he uses it in kind of scare quotes, a new feminism, which, you know, you can argue either way. Like maybe he didn't mean that maybe he was just trying to sort of create a new word. I don't know. But the place he does not use it, what you would think he would use it is in Moliere's Dignitatum. Like if it's not in that document, he's not really using it. You know, this isn't his thing because it's nowhere in that document, he's not really using it. This isn't his thing because it's nowhere in that document, the word feminism.

So I think that, and that was actually one of the accusations was that I wasn't sufficiently Catholic because I wasn't going along with John Paul II on this. Interesting, so one place. You looked into this, one place. One place, yeah, I was shocked. And what was the context in which he used it, do you know? You know, I was just, I don't remember the bigger picture.

I think he was just trying to talk about how we can help women. And I don't remember exactly. Interesting. But yeah, if he's gonna use it, it's gotta be a Moliere's stigmatotum, if it's gonna be something that's really a part of his court. Now, obviously part of his core mission was to help women

and to broaden out an understanding of womanhood to help bring order to it. But yeah, the amount of energy that's been spent trying to mesh these two things together is just, it's an amazing thing to look at. So how so how do you I mean if you could sit down I know that there are things out there that have the the word Catholic and feminism is in the name of these groups Right. Have you had any conversations with these people? Yeah, I mean obviously through I'm gonna turn that heater up back and forth. Um

Just back and forth more through print. I mean, I think the other, the hard part is that it's kind of everywhere. It's been really accepted as just sort of the way in which womanhood needs to move forward. And again, I think it's a sort of feminist light thing, where they really like the idea. And I don't mean to imply that any of them are ill intended. It's not my it's just the ideas themselves. I think people don't really realize what they're dabbling in you know what they're getting in and what they're what they're trying to

actually mesh together feminism whatever they mean by that you might mean the same thing. It's just that's not what the word kind of means right. Well hasn't come to me. Is that right. Is that the main criticism. And then you're like so why use a word that's confusing at the very well. There's that and then they would say well, it's because we are trying to reach. Thank you we're trying to Reach out to women who would be put off by Catholicism Which I you know, I don't think that's actually very effective I think it's gotten to the point where people are you know Feminism is so broken and people are so tired of it that there's an appeal in something else.

But I think there is this kind of feminist light idea of women need to work. We need more government money so that we can have free childcare. We need the patriarchy is bad. You know, there's still a sense of, and actually, I mean, the real challenging part about this is, what is it, 30 years now we've been trying to blend these two. Look what has happened to women in the church.

I mean, this is my fundamental argument, is that it has just sown so much confusion because people don't know what are the things, like, and it varies from person to person, what are the things that you actually agree with in feminism and what are the things with which you disagree with radical feminists? Like there's not really a way to,

they can use all these different modifiers, but it's really not that clear to anybody on the outside, unless you really ask. And most people will not tell you, it's not like, what I mean by feminism is this. Like I've never actually seen that in, you know, in the arguments or engagements I've had with women about this. But the problem is, is that what's happened

to Catholic women, how many Catholic women are aborting and contracepting, it's almost the exact same as the popular culture. There's about one to 2% difference between secular women and Catholic women. It's been completely ineffective in terms of helping women understand true womanhood, the importance of motherhood, the reality of vulnerability, the gift of vulnerability,

and the gift of being able to serve others. So that is what I think is the real problem. It also, I think, doesn't have the capacity to really help fight for the pro-life position because it doesn't acknowledge that feminism is actually what's created the abortion issue on such a scale that we've got. And I actually, it's been really interesting

because I was told, you know, we shouldn't fight, we shouldn't talk about feminism in the open because we'll lose all of these elections if we do. This has been the argument, I think, on pro-life side by a lot of people for decades, really. And then of course you look around and you're like, well, what elections are we winning with feminism? By not attacking this, by letting this just fester

and get worse and to see what has happened after Roe with Dobbs. I mean, the big thing is we put so much energy into politics, very little energy into culture and into helping women really understand what motherhood is. And I think that these are all sort of the fruits of trying to align ourselves too much with the popular culture on the question of feminism. And that's, you know, it's hard to get out of that when this is what women have been told

in the pews and whatnot. And the people that really know this, I mean, very few men actually want to engage in this conversation, which I think all my sympathy, like I don't, I wouldn't read this stuff if I didn't have to. Like, someone is just so awful and painful. You know, it's not, this is not fun research to do about feminist issues. So given that, and then given the fact that you've, there's a lot of personalities that are really

hard to deal with, given the fact that women will say things like, you know, it's my way or the highway or we're not employing my kids out of your school or I'm not donating this year, it's not hard to see how these ideas also just fester and perishes because nobody wants to fight this on a local level too. So anyway, it's really challenging to deal with. I'd love to hear your take on how society has changed such that men and women's jobs can kind of be interchangeable because they're quite cushy. They don't require a lot of manual labor. You know, if we took like 10 of your female friends and 10 of my male friends and

we all went to some forest somewhere where we had to survive, it would be very clear that the men would, whether they felt they were up for the task or not, they would be doing the harder labor and the women wouldn't be. And it would be, there's something nice about knowing who's doing what. But now we live in a day and age where most of the jobs that most of my friends do, it's not actually hard labor. I mean, obviously the men are the ones doing that. And so it kind of confuses things, especially as it comes along with women should be going out away from their husbands, away from their children. So yeah, I guess those two things together, you've got the feminist trying to separate

the woman from husband and child. And increasingly, it's the case that the job a man can do, the woman can also do that job. Yeah, this was really apparent. We had an edition put on our home at one point and it was absolutely fascinating to watch who showed up every morning. There were no women other than when we were painting. And then after months of men traipsing through this edition, which was so fun to watch and it was awesome. And my two-year-old loved it.

Like he started sleeping with the measuring tape. I think at one point I found like three measuring tapes in his bed. Like he just thought it was amazing. Then these women came and vacuumed the new carpet and cleaned the space and it was just awesome. It was just incredible to see that. But yeah, those are the jobs that... Same thing with us. We just had our roof replaced. Yeah. And the

first day a bunch of men and a few women showed up. The men were like working their asses off, sweating up in the sun, and the women were like wandering, you know, picking things up off the ground that fell down. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. But like why are we pretending? Right. That women are as capable as doing hard labor as men are when they clearly aren't and they clearly their existence depends in many cases on men doing the things men do. Well, and you see this obviously in the military. It's been interesting. We live near Quantico and my husband actually used to work on the base with the Marine Corps for a while. And so it was just wild watching, you know, as the standards and the requirements are changed

and lessened and, you know, firemen, I think are the same way, like all of those standards are changed, which obviously begs the question, like, do you really want somebody that can't meet these standards to be next to you? You know, it's the same thing we just said about Disney. Yes, we do. We want to keep failing. We really want that. Yeah. No, I think it's really, I think it's really incredibly challenging. And that's again, why it comes back to power. Like we have to, and even this idea of, we've been telling women that they can do everything men can do, you know, with this kind of grooming women to think of themselves as men. And then we watch these TV shows where the women kick the men's ass.

Yeah, exactly. Over and over again. Never would never happen. Never happened. This is why you need pepper spray, darling. Yeah, exactly. This is not ever going to happen. Yeah.

And so but it ends up becoming this bizarre relationship where it's like, we want to be just like you, but we want you to change, you know, this sort of schizophrenic, interesting dynamic of that. That's the angst that because it becomes about power, we want to control you now, because now we're just like you. And we can do the same things. So yeah, it's really wild when you start looking at. Just from a sociological point of view, it's just interesting. Like even if you take out like eternal souls

and the fate of mankind out of it and just sit back and observe. One thing I'm observing that I'd love your take on is how there's like a reaction to feminism now in a way that always also looks kind of awkward. You've got the woman who is clearly filming herself making her pastries for the children. And maybe this is done with good intentions

and sometimes it just seems like lapping or it seems like, okay, how many hours are you spending away from your children so you can film yourself looking like a great traditional mother? No kind of mother I know or that my wife hangs out with would think to like film themselves putting, you know, and not demonizing it. I also think we have to have kind of compassion with both men and women who have been eviscerated. Like everything's

been blown up and we're all in shambles to try to say, okay, we're trying to find the way of sanity again. And sometimes it looks awkward. But what's your take on that kind of conservative mom movement on Instagram? Yeah, I think it's really interesting in the sense of I have a lot of sympathy for it because I feel like it didn't exist before. Like even women's fashions, it's amazing to be able to find long dresses now. Like for years, it was always like the mini skirt was the only thing mini dress, you know, you couldn't find clothing like that Like so it feels like the pendulum is actually like you can actually wear a long dress and not like weird You know that I think that's a really big amazing change that's happened where you're still that you actually can be stylish again

So I think that the pendulum is swinging back the other direction I think it's gonna be awkward because this is just what it is. And people see trends and they're like, I want a million followers. And so they're going to do things that they feel like are going to draw that. But I think there's also people who genuinely, that's their life, you know, like, anyway, I'm obviously not that person. I don't really even like social media. So I'm not good at social media. So it's not like something that I've thought a lot about. But I think that there's, and obviously theology of home, we're showing visually. We're trying to help people understand

what it looks like to be a normal woman again, but not in a way that feels like we're just trying to get clicks. It's a matter of how do we help women really start thinking about this deeply and in a healthy way instead of just it being sensationalized. Or, you know, the other problem is making it look like it's easy. I think that's the other piece that, you know,

there's just nothing harder than being a mother, I would say. I've written 10 books and it's much easier to write a book than it is to be a mom. And actually, I'll bring this up. One of the points that was made against my book was that I talked about motherhood. This woman thought that it was infantilizing to tell women that they should be mothers, which I think tells you everything about- Infantilizing. Infantilizing. To tell women to become mothers.

In other words- Motherhood is infantilizing, infantilizing, to tell women to become mothers. That motherhood is infantilizing. How wild? It's like the it's the polar opposite of infantilizing. Yeah. You're saying stop being an infant. Care about other people. Exactly. Get out of your own head. Yeah. And her argument was that that it's better to call. It's better for a woman to call herself a primary caregiver. That was the which is just wild too. Primary caregiver day, instead of mother's day.

Yeah, which a lot of people just live with that. I recently heard a story about a man who was gay and had, he and his husband had a baby, got a surrogate and had a baby, and he hired a primary caregiver and thought everything was gonna go well until of course the gardener's like, do you know the primary caregiver's just watching TV all day

and neglecting your daughter? I mean, what a mess. He fired her and then he was like, this is hard. I don't have a mom. Like, where do you get another private? I mean, obviously you can hire somebody but that's devastating to a child who's only been attached to one person for two years.

It is funny, like- Change it. You know, I know of people, you know, who are quote unquote married to another dude and they've got surrogates and it's so bloody sad. It's so sad. It's so bloody sad. And you feel guilty saying it, right? Because you know that there are some men and women in these relationships who have good

intentions and they love their children. But they're saying, my children do not need a mother. Yeah, that's the crazy thing. Or my children actually do not need a father. Wait, what? Right. Even in the, quote unquote, the conservative movement, you have people doing that. No, it's incredible.

And I think it just shows, really, for 50 years, we haven't said anything good about motherhood as a culture, if you look at what has been there. And so that's what, even this woman who is criticizing me for saying, you know, pointing, believing that it's infantilizing, well, where's that coming from? That's coming from, it's coming from Betty Friedan,

who's calling the home a comfortable concentration camp. It's coming from, you know, it's all this nonsense about how bad the home is. It's, you know, we're gonna find our fulfillment in work, which of course is all from Marx and the communists. So it's incredible when you start looking around and seeing, has anybody said anything? Where has it been?

And you've got women obviously like Phyllis Schlafly, and there've been movements that have touched on it, but it's not been in popular culture really at all. Motherhood. Yeah, at all. It's very much considered something to sort of get through or it's like getting your driver's license. You can do it or not.

There's no sense of this is who you are in the core, even as a child, that little girls mother their babies all the time. There's something, and I think that's also back to that idea of what a good woman looks like, that she's not smothering, she's not a devouring mother. She's anticipating the needs of other people and trying to help them and help them become who God made them to be. She's

trying to provide shelter for them emotionally, spiritually, physically, nourishment, you know, all these different dynamics that we live in the home but also are in her body. Those are elements that I think we just don't even think about because we've been, again, so focused on how do we compete with men, how do we become like men. And that's why nobody can define womanhood, because we've cut out mother aspect. But even if you're not a biological mother,

you're meant to be a spiritual mother. And this is, of course, the beauty of the church and the history of the church is these incredible saints, these incredible women that have shown us how do you mother people as a woman, even without children? Well, there's this spiritual richness. There's the educational aspect between all the schools that nuns ran.

There's the psychological element of mentoring people and helping them develop over time, you know, all of that. So I think we've made motherhood something just biological. You know, what was birthing people, instead of this is a whole dynamic of your personality that's built into your body and character and soul. You know, all these pieces are meant to fit together instead of whatever

it is that we think women are supposed to be today. We idealize youth. And so, you know, it's hard to know where's my trajectory? Like, can I be the wise old man who, you know, gives wisdom and calls forth the potential and younger men? And, and I'd love to hear about women and how they struggle with that. It would seem to me that what I look out, what's funny for me is like, you know, you go to big cities,

you don't see like the beautiful old woman. You go to like country town in Kansas and you do, you know? They got the curly gray or slightly purple hair. And they look like old women. But it feels like that's unacceptable actually to be an old woman. So I'd love to get your take on the matriarch. What does that mean? And why isn't that a threat to patriarchy?

No, that's so interesting. I'm having flashes of 16 candles. There's a grandma that's like, I'll open the donuts. You know, I mean, she can't help out in the kitchen at all. She just has her cigarette. I'll open the donuts. Okay, haven't seen that. Yeah, well, good.

You don't need to see it. But in any event, I'm fascinated by this idea because in one of my books I wrote very long time ago, I actually looked around. I was trying to find wise women because I found that I had all this resentment whenever I would go to the grocery store. Because invariably, there would be like an old woman behind me and she'd be sighing as I'm trying

to get my kids into the cart. Like, these other people are supposed to be helping me. And I didn't live near family. I didn't have close friends. It was really a time of deep isolation. And then to have the sighing and the pushback coming from people that I knew should know better, that should be able to help me, not be able to help me.

So I started looking around, like, what does it look like? Where are these women? And it was kind of amazing, because they were really hard to find. And I remember finally, in the cry room, there was a woman who had just had a baby and her mom was with her. And I watched their interchange and I watched the way the grandmother was so attentive and she was helpful and thoughtful and anticipate.

And I just went up in tears because I hadn't seen it. And I was so like, we need that. We need that kind of love that's unconditional and really gracious and thoughtful and dialed into our specific needs. And so anyway, it was really beautiful to see, like when you really see it in a woman who gets it, who knows how to serve others in a healthy, ordered,

godlike way. You know, there's something really beautiful about it. And I think there's also something really beautiful about whatever the relationship is with who her husband was, or certainly in a religious woman, just the way I'm thinking of a religious woman who ran an order who was just deep suffering, but deep wisdom in her life, and the things that she went through and she was able to accomplish with the order that she's helped found.

It's just incredible to see that. So yeah, I think that I talk about this idea of the matriarchy in a negative way in the anti-Mary exposed, because I think that's what's sort of taken over is this glorious dynam. If you had to pick somebody today, she's probably the biggest matriarch. She's in her 80s and still pushing for abortion

and meeting with Meghan Markle to talk about how they can fight for it after Roe and all of that. And there's something just not, that's not what a real matriarch does. And I think TV likes to make this caricature of, you know, that Christian woman who's trying to control everybody and manipulate everybody. And she's all about, you know, pulling the strings and whatnot.

So, yeah, I think there's I think there's a totally different reality and that doesn't get highlighted anywhere. Maybe like Brideshead Revisited, the Lady March Main, is that her name? That book keeps coming out. Everyone tells me to read it. I haven't read it. You can watch the movie. It's easier. Is it good?

It's actually quite well done. Jeremy Irons is really good in it, yeah. So yeah, I think it would be amazing if we could bring back the matriarchy in an ordered way where people had a real esteem and respect for the grandmother, great grandmother in the family and felt like they could go to her with problems because it's not your mom.

And my grandmother was like that in many respects. It was very close to her. And it was just really interesting to get her perspective on things. We didn't always agree, but it was just great to have that kind of a relationship with a woman who had seen a lot more than I had and obviously loved me and cared about my wellbeing

and whatnot. And I think those are the pieces that it feels like we're not connecting well. I have this idea, which I haven't fleshed out. You read fairy tales and traditional stories and you've got like the strong young man and the gentle young woman. But it seems to me that if they do their job right,

you end up with the gentle old man and the strong old woman. Oh, that's so interesting. Because if you've got like an angry man, a man who's still like exerting his authority when he's old, yeah, something's wrong with that. If a woman who's old and she's too submissive, it's like something's gone wrong. Yeah. I love that.

So too with the strong young woman, like I think my wife, very cleric, you know. Yeah. Oh, I love that. So too with the strong young woman. Like I think my wife, very cleric, you know. But I would say she would admit that the reason she was strong is it didn't come from a good place. It's because she was survival in a way. Yeah.

No, I think that's right. What do you think about that? I'm gonna be probably thinking about that for days. I think that's so interesting to think about because it, and it goes back to that idea of temperaments. You know, the four temperaments, the older you get, the wiser you get, they're supposed to, you're supposed to balance them out. It's not, you know, they're supposed to mellow out instead of becoming stronger. And one, you,

you, you take on all of them. So yeah, the calyric is really fascinating because that seems to be a very dominant one among women. And that's my bride. She is like dictionary definition. But you know what's interesting about her? She doesn't, she's not threatened. I don't see her that way though. That's so funny. That's what's interesting because you think caloric, you think this is someone who needs to get their way. My wife's really interesting because she really is, she's not threatened by other people and she tends not to threaten other clerics because I'll meet some women. I'm like, oh, gosh, here's a bit of a bulldozer. And they feel perfectly comfortable around my wife.

Yeah, it is very interesting. I think it's more she has this thing where I love talking about my wife and my podcast. Isn't that funny? She's not here to defend herself, but she just needs to understand why we're doing something. And I used to take that as would you get off my freaking case here? Right. Right. And it really is not that. She's like, no, I just I need to I don't understand. Like, what's this? OK.

And it took me so long to realize she just wanted to know. Yeah. Or if or if if we're in a group setting, she needs to know like kind of who's in charge and are they do they deserve to be? Right. Because if not I'm happy to I'm happy to take over. Wow. It's beautiful. She's lovely.

Yeah. Now I really love that that image so you know you can imagine very easily that older couple like the dear older man and then. He's kind of gentle and he kind of doesn't discipline the kids like the grandkids like maybe the way he should. Yeah. Right. The woman's kind of like yelling at the kids or she's kind of doesn't discipline the kids like the grandkids like maybe the way he should yeah Right the woman's kind of like yelling at the kids or she's kind of right That's the you know, they get the man with his newspaper and he's not checked out in this right imagine scenario

Like he's fully engaged, but there's a tenderness to him, right? But if he hasn't done his job, right if he hasn't submitted to life then the edge is still gonna be there There's just this piss and vinegar. That's still you know If he hasn't done his job right, if he hasn't submitted to life, then the edge is still going to be there. Then there's just this piss and vinegar still, you know? That's really interesting. Yeah. I think especially the woman side, I think of two of just, we knew this woman whom I grew up with, it was just adorable, but she had this closet that was the present closet.

One year my brother got, and we didn't know that it was there, that she had it. In fact, it may not have even existed, but it was my brother's birthday and he was like six or something. And she was like, oh, I've got something for you. And she came back in minutes and she had this wrapped present. It was like a pink piggy bank or something.

It was something that was totally not suited. A thoughtful person would not get him that. But it was just so precious, like she was ready, you know, I mean, she was a family friend. Yeah, but she was in definitely in her 70s and had tons of grandchildren and probably just always felt like I just need like a cache of wrapped gifts for whenever it's somebody's, you know, but mean. You know, but it's just that, I think it's that kind of thoughtfulness. You know, there's another grandmother I know, she was actually featured in Theology of Home 2 and she's got, well, she had nine kids and then she has like 72 grandchildren

and then now the great grandchildren are coming. But she's like, it's her, she goes to thrift stores and finds birthday gifts for everybody throughout the month. Like that's what she does is she's like, it's her, she goes to thrift stores and finds birthday gifts for everybody throughout the month. Like that's what she does is it's like figuring out like good gifts for everybody, which I just thought was so thoughtful. And you know, she's obviously retired and elderly

and you know, she's got time to do that. But it's that kind of thoughtfulness that she's still, she knows all of them well, and she can find something that's suitable for all of them well and she can find something that's suitable for all of them too. So yeah, between that and just women feeding people, especially when they're older, it's big meals I think are really special,

just creating space. How do women encourage women not to suck? Because men do it pretty bloody directly. Oh yeah, it's so hard. Grow a pair. You know, you'll have men on stages or men at churches giving men... And I'm not saying women should talk like that to women. I'm actually asking you.

I've got a couple of ideas and I want to run them by you. Yeah. You know, because if the man says like, I just don't feel like I have what's within me to like protect my family. Right. No one would be like, well, you don't have to. They'd be like, well, figure it out. Yeah.

You know? If a woman says, I just not really like tender towards kids. I don't know really how to cook. Well, freaking read a cookbook and figure it out. Like if a man doesn't know how to defend his family and feels awkward about it, it's like, do it awkwardly. That's okay, just do it. And it seems to me that women need to be told

to be womanly, whether or it. And it seems to me that women need to be told to be womanly, whether or not they find it easy. But I understand, I think, that there is something too, about you need to understand yourself as a beloved daughter, like you need to accept, there's a sense in which you have to accept yourself, there's a sense in which you've sent parts of yourself into exile, you know, like I understand that as well.

And so maybe it really is a matter of like men hear things different than women respond differently. Yet nonetheless, how should women be challenging women that directly? What does it look like? I love this point. This idea of like if we if a man's a bad man, a bad dad or something, we kind of judge him or like step up, like what's wrong with you? We don't do that with women. So I think that's a really amazing point. You know, aside from that, the theological, I think the biggest thing we don't

realize is just how much women are influenced by women around them, culture and the culture around them. And this is why it's been so devastating that Catholics have really gotten out of the culture. I might have mentioned this before, but in 1946, I think it is, Song of Bernadette won like two or three Academy Awards. Like imagine the Song of Bernadette being coming, even being made today.

But we just had a sense of how Catholicism had to be in the culture. Movies were still made. And now things are coming around, but very little has been focused on women. And I think much deep detriment, because this is how women absorb content, is through by other women, obviously influencers, that's growing,

another area that's growing. But when I was researching the anti-marry exposed, that was the thing that just came up over and over again was fashion magazines that the power that they had and Oprah Winfrey the power that she had. Because women like to be kind of brought along with something. They don't want to be told they want to see it and be attracted to it and move into that. That's beautiful. That's perfectly reasonable. Yeah. And that's, you know, this has been kind of our mindset with Theology of Home is it's the opposite of these, you know,

hard-hitting books that I'm writing that are difficult to get through. This is like, honey, like, we've got to draw women in through something that's really beautiful and compelling that speaks to them on a much deeper way that they can then start implementing incrementally in their lives in very subtle ways. And this is, it's just really challenging because it can't be done poorly. Like it's, you know, we know when women have a sense of like, oh, that's just kind of cringy, you know, when it comes to cultural stuff, it has to be done in a way that feels authentic.

And it feels like it's moving within kind of the, the spirit of the age, but taking the good parts of it. And so you can't like decorate a room and have it just be like. Totally out of style stuff, like it's just not going to work. You know, people are women are going to pick up on that. So anyway, I we've obviously at Theology of Home have been excited to see a lot of interest in our work. We also, you know, this idea of of a lifestyle,

presenting a lifestyle, people is now getting a lot of attention. I know there's at least three major publications that are adding lifestyle sections to their newspapers or their blogs or whatever. So it's going to be really interesting to see how they do it because we obviously started with nothing. I mean, we've been like a shoestring organization for a very long time. Tell people what this, I know we've circled around this,

what's theology of home and where do they find it? Theology of home is, at first I had a blog that I started because I realized that there were all these things I wanted to talk about in the Catholic faith that nobody was talking about, like an apothecary in Rome that I love that goes back to the 14th century Dominicans. There was a church in South Dakota that I saw.

I went and spoke out there and I saw this church. It was just this gem of a brand new church, a little chapel. You know, it's baptism gifts. It was all these kinds of things that I was like, nobody is talking about these things in the church. And it smells good. That's a good time. And so it just started out with that idea.

And then we realized the idea of the name, theology of home, that the home itself is meant to get, it's meant to be a foretaste of heaven. The home is meant to get us to heaven. There are elements in the home that mimic the church, but also mimic heaven, whether it's things like light, comfort, safety, nourishment, all of that.

Those are all part and parcel of the home and we can say them about our parish and then obviously heaven, these transcendentals exist. And so anyway, obviously I don't use the language of transcendentals in the book. It's a lot more fundamental, you know, it's more direct than that. But that's really where the book. It's a lot more fundamental, you know, it's more direct than that. But that's really where the book and the blog and then of

course we have a lifestyle brand. We have candles and products and sell books and things like that. So all of those things have just slowly and incrementally kind of come together over the last six or seven years and you know we're continuing to grow and sort of that choke point of like, do we scale up or what, how's this gonna look? But that I think is what people, women are really responding to is it's not just this sort of navel gazing about like women in the church.

It's a lot bigger than that. It's the things that help their tools of life and the things that we want in our homes, the ways that we can make our homes better for the people around us. And that's the great thing about the lifestyle idea in general is it's food, it's home, it's travel, it's products, all of that. What I love about what you're saying, I think it goes back to what I asked just a moment ago about how do women challenge women, how do men challenge men, how is it different?

I think it's something like this, right? The only thing, I think this is a fact, the only thing that can conquer a desire is a stronger one. So if I have a desire for pornography, what could possibly be stronger than that, you might think? Well, it's a man's desire to love properly, maybe. Not shame, that won't do it. My desire to not be shamed is not greater than my stronger to look at pornography

Something like that and I think what you're trying to do is like you're giving them a vision and you're saying there's something better Yeah, and you've been lied to and you know that there should be something more you sense it and you're right and here it is That's exactly it. Yeah, I think that out Don't you think like Like appealing to desire. Yeah. No, and this is the thing is that, you know, my, I grew up actually in a very sarcastic family. Like it was just that kind of our natural way in which we all engage with each other. And I had to really like get rid of that. And I've had to be really conscientious about not, that's not what I want. I don't want people to feel shame.

I don't want people to feel embarrassed. Right. Or, or, or feel like there's, there's, we're unapproachable and we don't care about them. Like there's, and I think that's what people sense about our brand and what it is that we're trying to offer is we want you to have a richness in your life. And you know And it's amazing. Actually, a couple months ago, I went on a retreat. My husband was out of town with my sons and my daughters who are older were home. And it was like the first time where I was really good to kind of carve out some time to just spend all day in prayer for several days. And this strangest thing happened. So I got this like barrage of emails that like, unlike I'd ever gotten any other time, things will

trickle in, but it was just this really amazing kind of response of the Holy Spirit just saying, women saying, my mom is an alcoholic and I just never learned how to take care of my home and you guys are teaching me how to do that. And there's nothing, there's just, it's subtle and it's little and it's attractive and compelling and it fits into people's daily lives in a way that's, you don't have to carve out a huge amount of time to read our blog in the morning or you know, you can pick and choose what you like. But it's that kind of stuff that we're hearing, women being encouraged in the life that they want to lead. And a lot of times it's even ways that they didn't even realize that they wanted to leave that. Another woman I know has gone

from being very lukewarm Catholic to suddenly she's not lukewarm anymore. Just these little changes where you can start absorbing the faith, I think in different ways. And that's what our products do. This is what we try to do with our writing. We have started creating these guides for different seasons. We have a beautiful one, Christmas guide, Thanksgiving guide, Advent guide.

Anyway, it's how do we help people really dig into this in a way that they're compelled by instead of... I think that's what I'm moving over to this side fully now. Like the way you approach a person in pain is with compassion. Yeah. You don't actually hit them over the head or showing them. You don't say suck it up, buttercup. In fact, the only reason a man appreciates that talk is when he believes the man saying that to him, believes he has what it takes. So it actually is a form of love. Like if you're just berating me, I hate you. But if I say to you like, yeah, you you come beside someone say, hey, you know, like,

it's not your fault. Actually, like you were you didn't like I like to think of it in regards to pornography, because that seems to be how men were in my generation, we were just like born into this world. And porn was everywhere. And it was, it's like, you didn't ask to be born into a pornified world. Like you didn't choose that. And in fact, the first time you were exposed to it, that probably wasn't something you saw it out. It was sort of thrust upon you. And you didn't really know what you saw. And you were aroused and excited and maybe scared and that all that's completely normal and right to feel. Right.

But okay, now we're here and now it's not working. What should we do? Yeah. And I think it's something similar with feminism. Hey, like to say to women, like it's not your fault. Right? Like you were born into this world where motherhood was demonized and and work was made the idol. Yeah. Yeah yeah I think that's so of course you believe that and of course you're angry and frustrated and maybe like you're older and you didn't have kids or you're kind of right to be angry but like what

do we do now yeah and so this goes back to your like here's the vision yeah something could be yeah no and I think that's kind of the amazing thing too is just encountering women who have, even women who are single and beyond childbearing years. Like, how do they rectify that? And obviously there's a whole spiritual element of that, but that doesn't, life isn't a waste. You know, there's so much, so many of the gifts

and things that they've acquired can be used in different ways. But it is really that recognition of We didn't choose to be awful women women in america didn't choose to be awful women now the choices that we make exacerbated but even that Is all coming from? the culture so how do we start offering a culture that offers a totally different vision that's People want and inspires them. So who else is doing good work in this area? Is it permeating every kind of female outreach? This, I think,

yeah, it's actually, it's really interesting. I can't think of a Catholic ministries to women that aren't talking about the beauty of motherhood and maybe. Yeah, I think I think what our our difference has been is just not being so focused, especially on the spiritual life per se, because that feels like that's where the rub has been. But there, you know, Catholic women in business are doing more of this walking purpose is as expanding more a lot.

Word on fire has just added a women's formation thing. So we'll see. Oh, that's wonderful. And they actually just added a children's cookbook, which was really great to see, because I think that's another piece of the puzzle. Sophia Press is trying to do more, do better with women's. Who are? Sophia Press. Okay.

Obviously Ignatius is doing women here and there with them. Catholic All Year is great. Catholic Vote is just adding a, they're one of the ones that's adding a lifestyle section, National Catholic Register is adding one. And our Sunday visitor, our Sunday visitors had a site called Radiant for a long time and that was very, you know,

lavender with, you know, soft-toned images and whatnot, which is nice. But I think it just felt very narrow in its scope. And they're seeming that this, what I've been told is that they're expanding out to more lifestyle, which includes recipes and stuff. And actually it's been really interesting. I've been friends with Kevin Knight,

who runs New Advent for a long time and for the longest time it was just Catholic stuff that he would post and now he'll post crazy things like things that are kind of content like I don't even know what what I've seen on there but we do kind of quirky stuff from around the world and he'll do you know things like the world's deepest ocean rift or something. I don't know we just things that we're not that don't fit neatly into the categories. So it's been fun to see that sort of broaden out. These things are absolutely compatible with our faith and they create wonder and interest.

And so why are we not doing more of this instead of just the very narrow apologetics or something? I want to ask you a question and then I want to get two questions from our local supporters. But you know, I'd love to ask your advice. What should young men look for as they date women? What kind of attributes or virtue should they try to find that let them know, okay, this is, this is a woman worth, none of us are worth anything in a way, but like this is a woman worth, and none of us are worth anything in a way, but like, this is a woman I could marry. Remember someone kind of giving advice to a woman saying,

like, see how he treats other women, like see how he treats women who have nothing to offer him. Like, how does he talk to the waitress? And I like that. What might be advice for a young man? You know, it's funny, actually, my husband and I went out to dinner last night and we normally I'm always the one that can hear the conversations going on around us.

And it's not intentional. But I know I'm like you. I hate that so much. I wish I could just focus. Can I just turn this off? Well, last night there was a couple behind us was on like a first date and and my husband could hear everything because the girl's head was right behind him. And it was so you know, just from sociological perspective,

it was so interesting because they were both, I think he was MD and she was a PA or something. I'm not really sure, but both medical backgrounds and all this chatter about that. But in the meantime, here's this woman. She's really beautiful and he was very attractive. And at one point, he says, well, what are your goals in life? And she's like, I don't really have any,

I had all these goals in school and now that school's over, I don't really know what I wanna do with my, and obviously it's a first date, so maybe she's not ready to divulge something, but it was at least an hour in and the conversation went going well and he's already said,

I'd love to have a family and whatnot, but I think it's just that recognition of motherhood, you know, in terms of that being a reality. I think that's something to to obviously look for. You know, I mean, there's obviously so many other red flags. The one of the things that I have seen so much of this year, and I think maybe it's just one of those things I'm seeing more of it because it's on my mind,

but just the narcissist piece. Is this someone who's thoughtful? Is this someone who can respond when the needs of other people around her she can help with? I think that's something very basic. And obviously narcissists can do that in a way that makes them look good, but I think it's but it is probably that kind of that same point of what is it. And this

actually is a it's Max Schuyler has this great line about how motherhood is something where it mimics the love of God because it goes from the greater, the greater reaches down to the lesser. And I think that has to be something that happens in a way that's not self-serving. If you can see that attribute, that obviously goes a long way. This sounds so cliche, but like kindness toward children. Maybe with a woman. Or even knowing what to do with them.

Yeah, exactly. You know, like she stops and she's like, you know, caring about things in my vicinity. And then a woman of depth, you know, like a, like a woman who's interesting. Yeah. And that's what was so fascinating about this date last night was I kept waiting for something interesting to come out and.

You know, the there was nothing memorable, you know, there was nothing, there was clearly no depth in this woman that it was as she was talking. I just thought, like, this is just like, gotta be exhausting to try and just carry this conversation. You can't. It's like trying to blow on a fire that has gone out and you're trying to ignite something.

That's a really good image. There's nothing there, it's just ash. Sorry, I don't mean to be too harsh on this poor woman, but I do remember having this conversation with a particular woman on an airplane once. She was sitting next to me when we got into this conversation, people don't do that anymore, because fair enough, I don't want to either.

But yeah, so what do you look forward to? Just travel and stuff, and it was just hopeless. There was nothing there. It was just I'm like, what do you love? What do you write? Nothing. It was just right brutal. And, you know, obviously, the other piece is like, can she read a book? You know, like that seems like.

How is that for a low standard? Twenty twenty four. Can she read a book? And by that, I mean, can she read a book? Like, would she actually sit through one? Does she have the right? And well, the sad thing is, though, that. I was thinking like something nonfiction, but now I'm even sort of like, maybe it just should be fiction.

You know, beautiful. She like fairy tales. Does she appreciate fairy tales? I love it. Well, I'm I was thinking more like Danielle Steele or something, you know, but I think, yeah, I think the depth is a really important piece. Yeah. No, I don't envy people right now. It's really got to be so hard. Yeah. So hard dating. G'day fellas. For over a decade, I've spoken to men around the world about the battles we face. Temptation, apathy, anger, and the struggle to find meaning. Now let me tell you, one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing

closer to Jesus Christ is Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th, but this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for men in modern times built on three ancient pillars, prayer, self-sacrifice and fraternity. We all long for something more and that something is to be found in becoming the men that God created us to be, sons of a loving father. It's time to turn away from our idols. It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage.

If you're ready to make a fresh start and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year. We start January 20, 2025. So go to exodus90.com slash Matt to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus90.com slash Matt to join tens of thousands of men from all around

the world for Exodus 90 starting Monday January 20th. Well hey everybody who's watching right now thank you so much for watching. If you would consider becoming an annual supporter of Paints with Aquinas, as you start drinking your booze, we will send you a free Pints with Aquinas beer stein. If you become an annual supporter, there it is right there. It's gorgeous. Where you'll get these interviews one week before they hit YouTube. You'll get exclusive streams from moi.

We have courses. It's a beautiful community and you'd be helping us pay the bills and helping us pay the people who help put this together and it's you know, it isn't cheap. So thank you for considering. MattFrad.locals.com. And so here are some questions from our local supporters. Now I haven't read these ahead of time, so I can't vouch for them. I don't know these people. But what did feminism get right? Asks boss man. Um, I think feminism picked up on an idea already within Catholicism that women are equal in dignity to men. And I guess the big question is what do you mean by feminism? But I pretty much would be very hard pressed to actually say

that it has gotten much right. Is it kind of like... It's like saying what did communism get? Right. You know, it's what did what did Robin D'Angelo get right? Nothing that Catholicism didn't already teach me. Yeah. Namely racism bad. Yeah. That kind of thing. No, I think that's I think that's well said. I will say, too, the other thing that's actually what's been really interesting

about the Catholic criticism, though, thing that's actually what's been really interesting about the Catholic criticism though, is that some of the Catholic feminists have been trying to present this idea of Catholic feminism as sort of a middle way between radical feminism and people like me that they call anti-feminists. But the crazy thing is, is that you wouldn't say that, it doesn't, you know, nobody says that about socialism. Like we're socialist Catholics, so we're sort of this middle way between communism and Catholicism.

So I, and that's why I like to sort of bracket it in a bigger picture. Like it's not, we're not just talking about this very narrow concept of feminism. We're talking about the male and the female mirror again of that bad divorce that's going on, where it's about power and control. And that's what feminism gets wrong,

is trying to make everything about power and control instead of love and charity. Yeah, I can see how these Catholic groups try to use feminism as a sort of shock tactic to show how kind of cool or edgy or open they are. I could imagine someone also being like, you know, that's why a church might fly the rainbow flag, wear a welcoming place. It's like, yeah, but that's not what that flag means. Like that flag means debauchery that has no right to be in civil society. So stop it. Stop using confusing language.

Don't say you're a gay Catholic. Yeah, but like that's, it's like, yeah, but words matter. But I can understand. I can definitely understand why people do that. Yeah. Yeah, I get the appeal. Right, yeah. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the appeal and if you're watching and disagree with me,

let me know below about. No, but I think there's a sense of, people want to find ways to evangelize into bill bridges. And I think that that's really important, but the way to do it is to not water down what your own message is, or to try to mix it with something that, fundamentally, like the bigger question is,

what is feminism bringing to Catholicism? Like that's the question that I want to ask. Like, what else you got that it's bringing? You know? I, that, right, exactly. Then we don't need this. Yeah. So I think that's the bigger

Thing that we have to start that's a place to start. I think what it is male brutality toward women is horrific I Know females can be brutal towards men, but it doesn't you don't see it in the same way can be brutal towards men, but you don't see it in the same way. It's not immediate. There's not like black eyes and rape when women are brutal towards men. Maybe there are.

Yeah, I think there's probably more of it. But when I like as a man, if I think of a man hurting a woman, I want to hurt him. I want to I want him to be castrated. Like I want all sorts of bad things upon him. So I think men are rightly horrified when men abuse their power to hurt women. We're horrified by it. Which I think is, you know, if you want to give men the benefit of the doubt who go in

on feminism, it's this like, yeah, okay, I'm on your side. That's what they're trying to do. And maybe they say that in a manipulative way too. I know that. But I think in the beginning, what is what is female? What is it? What is female brutality? Is it not the word manipulation or?

Oh, well, I think, you know, female manipulation is. Is that how it's used? Because it's not it's and it doesn't go away. I mean, it's very women have. It's a triangulate. It's it's actually it's character assassination. That's what women do. They try to destroy your character.

And that obviously we know is not great either. But I don't think that feminine, I mean, this is the myth is that feminism was addressing that, but that's not, it's actually perpetuated it. It's created worse problems because, you know, why don't we tell women to not be in monogamous relationships? Somehow that's Going to fix the problem because now they're hooking up with all these people and you don't care about them

Yeah, exactly like somehow right if you're lucky. Yeah, so I think that's that that's one of the The myths I think also, you know another myth is education and and work Well, all of those things are happening already, you know, partially because of the Industrial Revolution. People had money to be able to pay for not just sons to go to school, but daughters. You also have all the technology that arose at this time.

You know, the fact washing machines and dishwashers and all of those things created the room. Like I think a lot of times, like, what if I didn't have this washing machine? Like how much time would I spend washing seven people's clothes all day long? You know, just the amount of work that went into that. I know actually we had I had a friend in Poland that her children were allergic to the one kind of detergent that they could use in Poland. And so she had to boil all of her diapers so that she had clean diapers because there were no disposable diapers. But that was like an all-day thing for

this mom with two small children to do. Her husband was on a ship, see a ship captain. Anyway, it's so it's those kinds of small things that don't factor into it that I think feminism gets credit for all these things that didn't weren't actually of feminism. It was really the classic history answer. It was the rise of the middle class. And it was new technologies. And it was just a restructuring of things. Not entirely, but I think that to say that women's degrees. And this is actually another piece of pushback

that I get all the time. Like, how dare you? You have an advanced degree. How dare you be upset with feminism because you would never have gotten it without it. But again, those things were on the rise for sure. Yes, indeed. We didn't need to destroy all of our culture in order to get those things. All right. I like this stuff. Julius, I feel like I need to drink with you because I can't just let you do this on your own.

Let me I don't have a glass. That's very kind of you. You're just going to drink it straight out. I know I should have brought you one. Just drink it out of the bottle. I'll get you one. Mm. Julius asks, how do you convince feminists or even just regular women who grew up in the feminist era that believing in traditional gender roles and biblical marriage does not mean you hate women

Perhaps it's not possible because feminism doesn't allow for that view Yeah, that's the real problem with The patriarch piece and this is where you've got to go around again, but either on the emotional level or what's happening or even pointing out like why are women not happier? Why is this not working for them? And I think there's also a lot of massaging has to be done to explain what the biblical view is because the left has not only been able to determine what they want women to be, but they've also been able to determine in the public eye what biblical women look like. You know, it's a handmaid's tale. I mean, it's genius that they came up with that vision,

that model, because they show up and it's a very, it's highly effective way of communicating in one image that this is what happens when you have a biblical view. You're gonna end up in a fertility cult without any kind of a will. Like what could be more opposed to this idea of freedom and savvy women with jobs that get paid a lot and get to wear cool jewelry and clothing and you know,

all of that. So that's really where we also have work to do is this false dichotomy that we've created has to be, the truth of it, what womanhood looks like, that woman at Whole Foods has to be promoted more. If it wasn't creepy, it was, so I didn't. I would have loved to go ask her about who she is. Like, who are you? Where did you come from? Right, exactly. How did you get here?

Just walk out of a fairy tale. Yeah. John Alex Ball says, what is the most absurd example of feminism in the manosphere coming to the same conclusions, horseshoe, horseshoe theory style. I don't understand that question. Well, we mentioned it earlier, the, the, the, the sort of the polar extremes, that you know, what feminism and the menisfia that seems like it's completely opposite. Yeah.

They actually come to similar conclusions, namely, doing away with a spouse and children. Oh Yeah, they both in a way say that right? So I think that's it. Is that the answer? What is it? Teddles says what is equity in the eyes of feminism has the equality? Feminists sought to achieve evolved through the years if so how? Yeah, this is the thing is there's, again, you just put a different word in feminine feminism,

equity feminism, reactionary feminism, difference feminism, like there's all these different things that mean very different things to different people. And so again, it would be really helpful if people would be like, I'm a blah, blah, blah feminist. And by that, I mean X, Y and Z, but of course nobody wants to do that because most people aren't obsessed with definitions the way that philosophers are.

So yeah, I think that equity, feminism, that idea that women are the same as men still certainly exists and is wildly popular. And a lot of people have that kind of built into their minds, especially if you watch the media ads and things like that, you can see it pretty easily. But that's not the only one that's around. And that's, again, what makes it hard to defeat because you're dealing with all these different variables that kind of operate off of one center idea. Katie Did It says, I used to belong to a fundamentalist Protestant Christian wives group where so many

of the women were being abused by their husbands. Most of the women ended up divorced and became feminists. These women were fully anti feminism until the men in their lives abused them. Their only escape and ability to survive was in the arms of feminism. How can anti-feminist women survive without feminism when dealing with husbands or fathers who refuse to live up to God's calling for them? Well, I think feminism is an ideology. It's not a survival tactic. It's not a way. It's not a like it's not a harbor. They're obviously.

And in fact, actually, I think it just exacerbates things because what it does is says, well, see, of course, this is what men do. They're awful. They're you know, it's it doesn't recognize like these are sinful men that behave this way in a way that is not befitting of them and it's not befitting of you. And so it's not calling out what the real problem is. It's just basically like, um... It's basically just trying to turn, again, all that anger that they have from this

and sort of keep fueling that by saying, all men are like this. And so the anti-feminist position obviously has the capacity to really bring healing by, you know, especially if you're Catholic, by having resources, understanding the nature of forgiveness and sin and what real manhood ought to look like, what ordered family life ought to look like. So these are not new things.

Feminism isn't actually healing. It's just providing a place where you might feel sort of a kindred community, but it's not bringing healing. It's just bringing sort of a consolation of people that have maybe been through your experience that could be somewhat helpful, but it's not gonna get you to a place where you can be restored.

This is a good question. Catholic Viking says, Do you think there can be another wave of feminism or is the pendulum swinging back towards more traditional ideas of gender roles? If there is another wave, like what does that look like? Yeah, great question. What else could they do? Um, I think it's I think the pendulum is swinging. The one big issue is it's been fascinating to been fascinating to watch, is the women's vote,

because I've been watching this really closely. I'm kind of fascinated by just how lockstep, I mean, it's this idea of tribalism, it's this idea of fashion and fads, and what are my girlfriends doing, and so I'm gonna do the same thing that they're doing. But it feels like, and that's kind of the scary thing, is men were motivated to vote in this last election.

It's usually 10 million more women vote than men. What was it this time? I think it was less, I haven't looked at the number. But we know that the male vote counted for a lot. So anyway, I think that it feels like the pendulum is swinging, and it's swinging because people are just talking about it now. I'm amazed at how many places that will have discussions about this on conservative media.

It gets a ton more attention than it ever did. More books are being published on it. People are really talking about it. I know there's a woman named Lisa Biver. I'm going to say her name wrong because I want to pronounce it the Italian way. Biver, but she's written a book called Fight for Female. And she's, you know, New York Times bestselling author. And Lila Rose put us in touch with each other.

And it's been great. She said, you know, your book gave me the courage to write this book because she felt like she had sort of the intellectual argument to be able to make the point that we really are fighting for women. It's been a very pointed attack on women. And in some ways, it's like my anti-Mary book, but it's from a Protestant perspective

and reaching a totally different audience. So I thank her for writing a book I didn't have to write. But I think word is getting out and men in particular feeling capable of writing articles about it now, whereas you just didn't see men talking about feminism in the past. It's a good question. Titus to says. Is a burka degrading or does it help keep men chased and value women more? Interred in a feminist slash conservative take on this.

Yeah, I think it's disgusting. Yeah, I think it treats men like animals. Well, there's obviously that the only interesting take I've heard about a burka was by a woman who lived in Afghanistan. And she said the reason for the burka there was because people would kidnap women because they needed new brides and it was just a way to get women.

And so if you wore a burka, you were hiding who you were. So they didn't know if they're getting a young woman or old woman, you just had to guess if you, you know. Anyway. Yeah, exactly. I know, but yeah, I mean, this is kind of the fascinating thing is we've got these, again, back to these extremes.

You've got the burqa where the female body has to be completely enshrouded. And then on the other end, you've got women who are practically naked, all but naked in the culture on the left. And so it's this pendulum. And I think this is, you know, we have to get this right in the sense of, and we know how to get this right.

It's not these extremes where we're afraid of one or think that liberation is in its opposite. Yeah it's weird too because like you can always push um modesty quote unquote to like an absurd extreme like I think the burka is actually too flamboyant you can still see the semblance of a shape where the head and the neck meet. I don't like that. Let's do a box and then and then the box will just remind me of women and then that. Oh man. Yeah I mean women are their brother's keepers it turns out. So if you dress sexually provocative you are responsible in part for the sin of the man.

I think so. Christopher West disagrees with me here, but I think if a woman dresses like a whore and I know that sounds like I'm being aggressive for no good reason, but I actually mean it. Like if I'm driving down the road, like I was in Switzerland recently, there were whores there and you knew they were because they dressed. All right. So that's my point. If you dress like that and and and everything about how you're standing and wearing and is inviting sexual response, you know, energy, you are in part. I mean, Thomas Aquinas says this. He actually says it's a woman who does this

is like someone who digs a pit and covers it over and leads to the man's destruction. Now, let me balance it out by saying that men aren't irrational beasts and men should have custody of their eyes. And the difference between a boy and a man presumably is at least in part the man can govern his passions. He's not governed by them. So I'm not saying that if a woman is to dress provocatively, it gives the man license to lust, but it doesn't bloody help. And I think she is partly responsible for it. But correct me if you think I'm wrong. No, I think it's really interesting. I have a good friend who talks about that. I think he calls it the bikini effect or something like this, where he says, you know, when a woman is wearing a bikini,

she may think that she's communicating one thing, but there's something that she is communicating. Yeah. And I think it's... The real challenge too is that you've got to... And it goes back to, again, like, where's the dad? And like, I've been at church at times where there's a family there and the daughter, like the family brings up the gifts

and the daughter's skirt is so low that she can't actually bow to God for the gifts because she'll be exposed. But some of that just comes from, again, the Gen X boomer moms who are like, oh, she's so beautiful and doesn't she look great? Like they're sort of living through their daughters. It's also the simp dad, here we go.

Could be this, right? Who doesn't want to displease his wife. Exactly. Doesn't want to put his foot down. Right, and so I think that is another piece, cause he should be the one that's like, I'm sorry, you just look like a prostitute right now. Like this is not helping anyone.

And you know, how do we navigate this? And more importantly, if this is how you're getting your attention, then we have a real problem with this situation. You need to figure out what dignity is and how you get it and what kind of reaction you're gonna get from people. Because this is not the kind of attention that you want to be eliciting. So. I love Jason Everett's idea that we veil what demands the reverence.

We don't veil things because they're ugly. You think of a bride on her wedding day, she may be veiled. And when the husband or the groom lifts the veil, he's not like, oh, gosh. He you like, think of the blessed sacrament. Yeah, we don't just put it on the altar or in the pubes. We veil it and it's locked. And even then there's a curtain. And even then it's in like the Golden Dish thing.

Yeah, pretty sure that's the technical name. And why? It's because it's the most sacred thing on the planet, you know, and we should veil what is beautiful. And I think that language is I think, you know, because of the work of John Paul II, Christopher West and these fellows, I think it is permeating kind of Catholic culture to talk more like that. Yeah, it's come along with it. Yeah, like your body is beautiful.

Like that's why we value it. Right. And I think that is just the why it's so important for parents to sort of figure that out and, you know, for the mom to not be like, oh, she's, you know, she just looks great in it and encouraging that, not realizing anyway. And it's not obviously always generated by the mom. It's hard too, because what's available,

it's the other piece. I'm going to go out of my limb here, maybe because of the whiskey, but like most people aren't beautiful. I know I just said everyone's beautiful. But what I mean by beautiful is like that, that picturesque model, like most of us aren't right Exhibit a right I get it and um, so actually what happens is when women dress really immodestly like sometimes it's disgusting. Yeah

Or it's just like it's off-putting and it's like that no, um The body is an interesting thing. It's both beautiful and not terribly beautiful. There's a reason that married couples turn the lights down when they come together. Oh, no, no, but you know what that I'm going to say the opposite to that now. I think it's so they can see more. What I mean is, yeah, there's a mystery to the one flesh union. It's not like septic and clinical. It's, it's like, I want you, the man says, to his wife. And it's the same reason chapels should be dark. There's a mystery there that cannot be seen with the lights on. The lights actually, I'm talking out of my ass now. I don't know. I think I'm just

trying, grasping at something that I know is there. I can't get it because I'm not smart enough. But like, when you walk into a chapel, that's dark, you sense the mystery. If it had flu rose, the mystery is gone. And it's something about there's something here. But in order to see it, quote unquote, I have to have it dark. Something like that, I think in the in the one flesh union. What do you think? Good luck. Yeah, tackle that one. I love a candlelit chapel. I think that I actually wanted to get married when it was dark and we couldn't logistically pull it off

because I just think there's something, you can focus on it. So I'm gonna follow you down that road and just think about it, but I don't feel like I've thought enough to. I clearly hadn't before I started speaking. But it's my podcast and everyone has to endure it. No, but I mean there's...

Lighting is lighting too. The first point I was trying to make is like sometimes immodesty doesn't mean you look good. Yes, yeah. That's what I'm trying to say. Right, no, I think that's exactly right. Like sometimes it's quite off-putting. Super off-putting. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a woman's short should be lower than her vagina. Sometimes it's quite off putting super off putting. Yeah Yeah

Call me old-fashioned, but I think a woman short should be lower than a vagina That's what I'm trying to get a fashion As opposed to feminism see this is interesting we've already we've already addressed this cigars and roses And I'm glad we did as opposed as opposed to feminism. What is the best response to female abuse? Christianity that's the answer. That's what we just said. It's totally the answer. Cause that has the pieces through which you can actually bring care when you have a mother and father in healthy dynamic,

raising a child and obviously broader community and whatnot. That's what, that's where the protection comes from. And actually, this is one of the questions I have for you, because I was I did a podcast a few weeks ago and we were talking about someone was saying, what can fathers that the interviewer was asking me, what can fathers do? And of course, I was like for their daughters. Yeah. It's like, what about the shotgun? Like, how do we protect our daughter?

You know, anyway, but he was saying that there's a lot of men that feel shame because they know that they're engaged in pornography. And so then they feel like a hypocrite to be telling their daughters what to do. So anyway, I love to hear your thoughts on all of that. Well, pornography is wicked and it emasculates men. And if we have to drive a bloody nail through the heart of that. And this is an episode to discuss how to do that Strive 21 calm for those interested as a course I put together

It's not a silver bullet, but it might be the beginning of something But you know like a hypocrite isn't someone who doesn't live up to what they know is right. Mm-hmm like a hypocrite is somebody who Demands something of everybody else that he doesn't demand of himself. Yeah So like if if a man knows pornography is evil and is doing everything he can, let's say, or to be free of it, and then he falls occasionally, but he's teaching his son it's evil, but he's not a hypocrite. He's just a weak man or he's a sinner. That's, you know, like if priests could only preach the virtues that they

practice perfectly, they wouldn't preach at all. Right. And that's obviously a more, much more ideal situation. But he, this guy was saying that they're, they don't try to protect their daughters at all because they feel like it would be hypocritical. It's much deeper. And it's, I, I just had never thought about it. So I thought it was really interesting. So the fellas saying like, look, I can't tell them to do that

because of what I secretly engage in. Yeah. Who am I? Right, right, right. Like, yeah, you're their bloody father and you're weak and you're an idiot. But you're not so much. Hopefully you're not so much of an idiot

that you think that your sexual failings give you permission to not father your daughter the way that you should. But you might be. So what do you think fathers can do to protect their daughters? From what? From feminism and from free love. Oh, marry a good wife. Marry a good wife.

Because my wife, she's so good and she really helps the kids. She really helps the girls, you know? Mm-hmm. You know, like, even just little things, like I'm going to say the least impressive things about my wife, like even like she realizes like putting makeup on every day probably isn't a good show of a sign for my children. You know, like, um, she's also very tender towards babies and she encourages the girls to do that and naturally love babies. She's kind to them. How do I do it though?

Yeah, I think I'm okay being the do not wear that. I'm okay being that. And my wife being the kind of softer helping me understand things maybe. Also, here's something I think fathers should can, this has been interesting for me as my daughters and sons have gotten older, is to not, and I'd love your take on this as a woman, to not remove my physical affection from them as they age. You know, cause when your kid's six and you're wrestling with her, that's one thing.

When she's 15, it's like men feel awkward about this. And sometimes kind of is a little awkward for whatever. But I've really tried to make an effort to. That's really dear. Does that make sense? Like I love my daughters, my gosh, I love them. They're so funny, they're so, they're just beautiful and interesting and.

But I think that there's something important in that, the physical contact is really, there's something... I just love hugging them. Also, I'm sure this is cliche, but like affirming your children, I'm big in words of affirmation. And so I'm always like, oh my gosh, you're so pretty. But I try to be more than that.

I try to be more like, you're very funny. Like, I just like being around you. That's awesome. But then it makes it feel more authentic and helpful when you actually do say, like, maybe you shouldn't wear that or you should wear something else. Yeah. Well, since I have my children's heart,

like, my daughters, they want my approval because they love me. And so when I say something they don't want to hear, even if they get upset by it, they still feel. They're still going to respond. Maybe? I don't know. Yeah. Who knows? I don't like giving parenting advice because my kids haven't grown up yet. Yeah. And even if they do fall and crash and burn, that's not a sign we did anything wrong either. It's hard. It's hard, isn't it? Fiery advice, children are so different. The other thing too is like marriages are so different. That's what I worry about too, right?

Is we come out of this fog of what men and women are. We've got no freaking clue. The fear is that we go the other direction and we say men can only be like this and women can only be like this. And then we kind of shame men and women, but we shame the man who likes poetry or the theater and we shame the woman who likes to hunt. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really. So I think that's we've got to be really careful with that when we talk about how men and women ought to look or how marriages ought to look, because I've never met a woman like my wife and I'm Because I've never met a woman like my wife, and I'm sure she's never met a man like me. And so to look at another couple and go, we should be, you should be exactly like that. Or what do you think about that stuff?

Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. There's all kinds of just all those quirks and different experiences. And my husband and I got married when we were much older. And so there was a lot of ways it was harder because we already had habits and things that we had gotten into in our lives. But on the other hand, it was easier

because we already had lived for ourselves. We'd already, you know, we joke about how we spent our retirement when our 30s and 40s, because we were both traveling and living abroad and things like that. And now, you know, my husband may never retire because we have a four year old and he's 60, you know, I mean, it's just, it's kind of remarkable. But, um, so I think that, um, and even that, you know, it's kind of amazing. Like we have 15 down to four, five kids and we're old, you know, there's just, that's a very different dynamic than

if we're in our thirties or, and even the funny thing is just even parenting like we put our son in preschool for a while and it didn't really last he didn't like it and I was like I just can't get excited about these like this isn't I don't want to go to the farm right now like I was just this isn't what I signed up for we've not that I didn't want to spend time with him, but it was just also, there were so many other dynamics that I just didn't want to get involved in. And I've already done this four times. You know, it's just very different experience being an older mom than when I was a younger mom.

So yeah, I think that trying to keep those things and those variables in account and also but with a shared vision. I mean my husband and I both work a lot and I think we both wish we didn't spend as much time working and we were trying to mitigate some of that. But it just means all the more that we have a shared vision and goal that we want our family to understand the value of work. And, you know, this is very unique to us. I think it was something important in our parents and our families and our

parents, but it's not everybody has this ideal of like teaching their kids how to work at nine years old. So yeah, I think recognizing those differences and what the priorities are and someone told me don't compare your inside to somebody else's outside. Yeah, that's true of your life It's also true of your marriage Well, and you also see a lot of times that outside of other people isn't really what's going on in the inside That's precisely that's the precisely the point

Yeah, and I remember my spiritual father. I asked him a question about having to do with my marriage and he said he said something like father, I asked him a question about having to do with my marriage and he said, he said something like, uh, you, there's enough in your marriage to teach you this. Like, in other words, it's almost like it's its own, its own world. Like you, if you walk into a wall, you'll stop doing that. Like, yeah. Yeah. And I, I don't know. I do get a little worried sometimes that maybe men who are so allergic to feminists

maybe want to demand something of them. Like you could see a man being like, I need you to be, I'm exaggerating, okay, but I need you to be bloody sewing and you know, frigging making the breakfast from scratch. And it's like, well, that's easy for you to say, but you stream on Twitch. Like, so maybe if you were like hunting

and like we were eating all, this is my story. My mate, John Henry, who I've already mentioned, I was at his house one day and his wife and children were away, he's like, can you run that for me? He didn't know how to run his dishwasher. That is hysterical. But here's why it's okay. He kills everything they eat.

Wow. You know, like he has it, gots it, feeds his family. Yeah. Good. That's all right. But if you're going to like walk around your pajamas all day and stream on YouTube and then demand that your wife keep working like she'd like that she should exist like a creature from the 1920s, that seems. Yeah. But I don't know how many men are doing that. I'm just trying to say, what are the extremes? I think actually it's probably more of the opposite. I mean, this is the other thing that everybody encounters

is all women are recovering from feminism in one form or another. But the other one, the tough one is just the overly demanding wife in a lot of respects. Just the... And actually this is one of the things that Jordan Peterson and I were talking about, too. Somehow it works, because someone is in charge.

But there's something to be said for back to purpose, not power. The mutual submission that people make is because they're not trying to be powered. They're not trying to be one over the other. But the purpose of the man often is the responsibility that then has a responsibility to lead as a husband. And when a woman dominates, it's very difficult. In fact, years ago, I used to take communion to this woman who was dying or something,

but she was still lucid enough to tell me all the stories about how she married a lemon. I can't tell you how many times I heard about this husband that she had that was married a lemon. She married a lemon. And she'd tell me all the things that she would do, and he just ended up in the bar. And I was like, you know, I think after, you know, initially I had sympathy for her, but then the more I heard about this lemon of a husband, I was like, I'd probably be in the bar too. Like just the way that she spoke to him and, you know, talk down to him and just, you know, probably verbally abused him.

So I think there's something about, you know, Paul talking about women being submissive to their husbands isn't what women typically think it means. It's because women are incredibly capable because women can do things but it has to be we have to learn how to put that in the right ordering and again it's going to vary with couples and temperaments and personalities and life experiences and family of origin and all of that. But if we're really demanding and or crushing their spirit, there's no respect there. There's no, you know, we're constantly nagging. In fact, at one point a couple of years ago, my spiritual director was during the lockdowns

and there was something my husband needed to do and he wasn't doing it. And you know, it's just such a strange time for everybody. But we just had a baby too. So there's a lot going on. And my spiritual director said, just let him fail. And at the time I was like, that's so genius. Because-

Let him fail. Yeah, he said, let him fail. Like you don't need to keep nagging him. You need to stop asking and pestering him about this. And at the time I thought, okay, well, he owns it. Like I thought it was genius for him. And then suddenly I realized it was genius for me because it shut me up. You know, I stopped bothering him about it.

Eventually he took care of it. You know, he didn't fail. But I had to give him the space to do that. And that obviously was our own relationship and our own dynamic. I'm saying that that will work for everybody. But I think that it's those kinds of places where we have to be conscientious of, are we nagging? Are we belittling our husbands? Are we trying to dominate the relationship

or even drive the family, the way the family operates and functions without their input and judgment. And I think this is actually much worse in Europe. I was just talking again, this woman, Hannah Speer that I was talking to, she was saying, there's all these generations of men who you know, they're third or fourth generation They'd never their dads never took any responsibility

The moms are always in charge and they're all these stay-at-home dance walk Walking the prams around which it's fine. That's gonna happen on certain occasions in certain situations, but when it's like the whole city It's really wild. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but none of these men, they all saw their mom's work. They didn't, you know, they just this was their experience.

And so that's just kind of what they learned. But they don't have any kind of real responsibility, you know, for the family itself. Yeah, it is an interesting. This might be a nice gut check for the women watching, you know, because I think often women Yeah, it is an interesting, this might be a nice gut check for the women watching, you know, because I think often women ask things

of their husbands and they're like upset maybe that he wouldn't do it, but they bristle if the husband asks them. When I get home, if you could have dinner ready and make sure the kids are bathed. Right, it's again that double standard of we have these expectations of men to comply with versus, you know. it's a good thing to ask again

I just I think we have to direct these things to ourself because yeah, we've gotten nowhere by just blaming the other Yeah, yeah, and it you know dealing with if you have a personal strong personality how do you integrate that in a way where both people feel respected and ordered and cared for and loved and seen instead of like obeyed. Yeah. Well, where do people follow you? Where do they read your ruminations on feminism? Oh, goodness.

Well, theology of home is the best place. We usually always post. Theologyofhome.com? Theologyofhome.com, yeah. So I'm publishing kind of all over Washington Examiner, Federalist, American Spectator, National Catholic Register, the Catholic thing, etc, etc. But that all gets put on theologyofhome.com or carregress.com at the moment. Did you think when you started writing that this sounds like this is going to be your life's work?

Oh my goodness. I didn't even know I could write until I was in my 30s. I hated writing. I was not good at it. And then I miraculously got a job as a journalist in Italy. And a very patient teacher, editor, I'd write something and would just come back covered in red. And I just thought, what am I doing doing this? And then I had to finish my PhD. So I had to write a dissertation. And all of that work as a journalist just totally paid off

because I was able to crank that book out 300,000 words. But I mean, this work specifically of feminism. You probably had no idea. No, not only that. This is what you'd be known for. I said I would never write on women when I was in graduate school. And part of it was because I just thought I was so dry, it was so boring, it was so

unintelligible and it was so non-communicable. I couldn't tell, like I wasn't going to take these academic books on women and give them to friends or family. It was just, it felt like such an insular topic that wasn't making its way out into the culture. And so I think that's affected a lot. My writing style is very non-academic style. The Elegy of Home is very non-academic.

So no, I never thought I would be, this would be a topic I would be working on. I wanna highly recommend your book, The End of Woman, How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us, especially for those who are like, gosh, I need my wife to read this book or I need my sister or my daughter or my mother to read this book. The reason you should get this book by Cary Grass is that it comes alongside the woman with compassion and just gently shows her why feminism has been detrimental to her. That's why they should get this book.

It's non-threatening. It's not like a... Yeah. Well, thanks for the plug. Yeah. Cheers. What did you say? Thanks for the plug. Oh yeah, yeah. Absolutely. No, thank you for what you did and thank you so much for traveling. I know traveling is such a pain in the butt, so I appreciate you coming out.

No, it's great to be here. I look forward to seeing the Florida studio one of these days. Thank you. It's always awkward to end. It's like at some point right now it's ending.