Pints With Aquinas - Women Need the Patriarchy w/ Dr. Carrie Gress

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Dr. Carrie Gress joins the show to talk about her book "The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Destroyed Us". She and Matt talk about Feminism starting with figures born in the 18th Century all the way through modern thinkers. How did Feminism cause Gender Ideology? How did Marxism and Feminism join forces? What were the motivating forces for first wave Feminists? These and many more question are answered in this episode! Show Sponsors: https://ascensionpress.com/fradd https://strive21.com/matt Go to Austria: http://franciscan.edu/austriasummer Get Carrie's Books: https://theologyofhome.com/products/the-end-of-woman https://theologyofhome.com/collections/books/products/the-anti-mary-exposed-rescuing-the-culture-from-toxic-femininity https://theologyofhome.com/collections/books  

G'day everybody, Matt Fradd here. I have some very exciting news. I would like to invite you to spend three weeks with me in a 14th century monastery in Garming, Austria, where we will study philosophy and theology together, May 20th to June 7th. Space is limited, so there is a link in the description for you to click and to sign up for this. It's $3,850 which includes room and board, plus day trips to Vienna and Salzburg, plus an optional fourth week in Rome and Assisi. The class I'm teaching is called ABBA, the call to parenthood.

Now for college students, you'll receive three credits for this class, but you don't have to be interested in the credits to come. So again, click the link in the description below, and I hope to see you in Austria, May 20th. Carrie grass. Lovely to have you on the show. Thank you.

You just freeze up and crap. All right. Well, that's it. What do I say? It is lovely to have you. Thank you. And it's lovely because I'll be honest. I, if I were a better interviewer,

I would read all of the books that my guests have just written. But I've read the majority of this one with my wife and we were just blown away. That's awesome. So yeah, thank you for writing it. Well, if it's any consolation, my husband hasn't even read all the books that I've written.

So, okay, I get it. It's true. Before we get into this book on feminism and what you've discovered, tell us a bit about yourself, kind of how you grew up, how you embraced the faith, eventually. Big picture. So I grew up in Oregon

and I had this kind of very extended conversion when I was a teenager. My father passed away actually, right after I turned 16. And so, you know, you witness something like that, you sort of start asking bigger questions. And I think more importantly, I just, I didn't have anybody to rebel against anymore,

so it wasn't fun to get in trouble and all the things that I was doing as a teenager. So, but I knew that faith was real. In fact, when he died, he'd been in a coma, and it was one of those brides had revisited moments where he hadn't communicated with any of us for a good week. And the priest came in to give him last rites and he'd made the sign of the cross.

And that was the last thing he did before he died. So, those are things that when you're 16 really speak volumes, I think. So anyway, I was on this journey and I had a grandmother who was very new agey and so I was kind of dabbling in that. And anyway, I feel like I just wasn't well catechized. And it was also like the 80s or early 90s,

kind of jungle Catholicism. There was no internet to really figure out what was true and what wasn't, you were sort of dependent on what you could find. So anyway, I finally ended up at Steubenville doing my master's degree. And it was like, how could that? How did that happen?

How did you hear of Franciscan? I think actually, I just had heard about it. There was a group of women actually that I used to pray the rosary with every week. They were like all my mom's friends and their kids were my friends. And, but I was just really searching and between them and I spent all this time in the mountains.

Our family had a house in the mountains and I was there by myself all the time. So I think God was just really speaking to me and forming me, but they were the ones that told me about Steubenville. And so I, you know, I came here for a month just to take some summer classes. I'd never heard the word apologetics before. And I think I took a course on apologetics.

And I show up, I wanted to do a master's degree in philosophy because I had studied history at the University of Oregon, and I just thought I was interested in the intellectual life. But so I get here, and remember somebody asking me like, well, who's your favorite philosopher? And of course, the answer, you know, as most people that are familiar with Steubenville knows, probably a Thomist or St. Thomas or a phenomenologist of some sort.

And I think my answer was Michel de Montaigne, who, you know, totally obscure. He wrote essays and, and, but not the right answer at all. Like who is like, nobody had any idea. So anyway, I felt, yeah, it was just an amazing thing to go from, you know, marijuana capital of the world and Eugene, Oregon to Steubenville. But yeah, it was here that I actually met people my own age that had the faith and people actually, I learned the difference about mortal sin and penial sin, I mean, those kinds of things

that I just hadn't been well catechized in. So anyway, that's really where I think the faith took a turn because I was finally getting the truth, but I was also getting the intellectual formation to sort of put all the pieces together. So anyway, that's kind of the long story of how I got into the church. But yeah, so after that, I, you know, of course vowed

I would never do another degree. And then I ended up at Catholic U and now I have a PhD in philosophy from Catholic University and eventually met my husband and we were both living in Italy at the time and we moved back to the States and five kids and finished up my doctorate and started writing books so that's kind of what's happened. And I remember you saying that when you had begun writing this book or

researching for it you weren't sure necessarily what you'd find, is that correct? Yeah so I started this book this book and I knew I wanted to write something. I wrote the book called The Anti-Maria Exposed, which came out like five years ago. What's the summation of that? So that book is really a look at how second way feminism is really an anti-Marian spirit. It's not an individual person like the antichrist. It's a spirit that has sort of captured the world. So I went all the way back to Betty Friedan

and a lot of the second waivers. And I thought, make the argument, they're not just like listing away from Christianity. They're like geometrically opposed to it. So that was what that book was. And that book did incredibly well. And in fact, it got canceled four days after Biden's That would be in my bio. I should put that in my bio. Shouldn't I cancel author? What do you mean it got canceled? Well, it was it couldn't, they wouldn't let it be sold. Meta

wouldn't sell it in Instagram or Facebook marketplace. So it was, I think because the subtitle was Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, that title violated their code of conduct or whatever they call it. I can't remember the name, the wording exactly. But the book was two years old. It's four days after Biden's inaugurated.

And it was probably the best thing that ever happened to the book. I mean, I was on the front page of Russia Times. I was, actually it was really interesting to see who covered it. Cause a lot of domestic, right? Conservative organizations covered it. And then it was all these, Hungary, Poland, Russia,

kind of the newly independent states are not so newly anymore. But in any event, it was, yeah, Russia, kind of the newly independent states are not so newly anymore. But in any event, it was great. It gave the book a whole new life. It's now been published in Spanish and Portuguese and Polish. So that was really why I started, when I really started thinking about women in particular

and what was happening with women and all the drama. But people kept saying, why don't you write a book that is either Protestant friendly or that you can just give to anyone? And that's really where the inspiration came for this. So I knew for a long time I wanted to write this book. I just didn't know exactly what was gonna be in it. I knew it had to be something that anybody,

no matter what they believed in, could pick up and still get something out of it because it wasn't coming from just a uniquely Catholic perspective. So that's where this one came from. And I had no idea. I mean, I started looking into the first wave of feminism and I thought, it'll take two days.

I can do some research on this. Maybe I'll find some nice platitudes about women in it that could be good quotes here and there, but I won't really have to do much work on that. And that's really where I ended up spending a significant amount of time, was just in all this research on the first wave, because it was what I found and what I expected to find

were so opposed to each other. So that was the fascinating part, was digging into it. And it helped that I had a degree in philosophy, so I was able to really triangulate things and figure out context and who are the outside influences. So that was incredibly beneficial. So did you sort of think you would go to first wave feminism, see it as something rather noble that went off the rails and then you were surprised? Oh, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I thought I would find. Because that's what

we keep getting told. That's the narrative. That's sort of, Oh, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I thought I would find. Because that's what I'm getting. That's the narrative that sort of, yeah, we're just assured that the first wave was good and it was, you know, a very healthy, pure kind of feminism. And then the second wave is where it was sort of blended with Marxism and chaos. And this is this has been quite a journey for me because. I like I think a lot of people who haven't studied this topic just would have thought, well, yeah, feminism, that sounds like, okay, you don't want women to be oppressed. And so now there's this thing that helps them not be oppressed. Right. So to be to be against a thing that helps women not be oppressed seems like a terrible thing.

And then I think as I maybe as the years have gone on, I started to see some like really bad fruits of feminism. And so me, like I think many others who are uneducated in this topic went, okay, so there's like this toxic feminism, right? There's this bad feminism. But reading this book, I have come to the conclusion, and if you think it's hyperbolic, I'd like to be corrected, that feminism is is evil root and branch. And to say that you're, let's say, a Catholic feminist

would be akin to saying you're a Catholic Marxist. You can't do it. And this really opened my eyes to that. Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. And that was really what I discovered. It was not my intention to uncover that. I would have loved to have made it simple on myself and just say, oh, yeah, we can have Catholic feminism

because there's this great section that hasn't been tainted by all these awful things that I discovered. But yeah, I think it's deep down in its roots. It's got some massive problems. Now, people will say, well, can't you just still say there's Catholic feminism? But I think that's a problem is it's about definitions.

We're not good about defining what we mean by feminism, kind of across the board. And so it's come to mean like, whatever you want it to mean, sort of your articulation of it, like it's just helping oppressed women, I think is sort of how most of us think about it. And then when you really start looking at

what it's meant for 200 years, I think then the onus comes to those who wanna continue using it. Like, okay, you have to say, you're a feminism that's not interested in the occult. You're a feminism that isn't interested in- So called free love. Free, yeah, free love and the destruction of the family.

And you also have to say you're a feminism that is not interested in crushing men, or being envious of men or. Why do that? Why bother? That seems like that's a lot of time. Just choose another word. So much work, yeah.

It's an oxymoron, Catholic feminism, it seems to me now is an oxymoron. As you say, people can use terms however they wish to use them, but terms mean things and they change their meaning. And you know, like the word gay has changed. You know, I guess you could say, well, I'm a gay Catholic and by that I mean I'm a joyful Catholic. But why? Right. So much work. Yeah. Yeah. Or a Catholic Nazi. Like it's just doesn't work. I mean, it feels extreme. But when you

actually look at the damage of feminism, it actually sort of dwarfs Nazism. I want to just kind of pause right now and just say like to anyone who's watching right now who is very reluctant to kind of go along with what we've just thrown at you, you know, we've given no background, you know, please don't go anywhere. Please give Carrie a hearing here because you might be surprised. I mean, as I've been thinking through this the last few days, I thought, okay, so like feminism exists because women are weaker.

If women weren't weaker, we wouldn't need a feminism, I presume. This is, I know you're a PhD and I'm unsophisticated, so I'm going to throw out some bold claims which you can nuance. But and by weaker, I mean vulnerable, more vulnerable. And by vulnerable, I don't mean a deficiency. There's a vulnerability that women ought to have, which is part of their beauty and genius. Why are you the crown of creation? You can do so many beautiful things that I can't do, you know.

It's kind of I would liken it to like children, like children are more vulnerable because of their size. And maybe there's some kind of word we can come up with some kind of. Infantism, that's not a good word, but something like that, where it's like, how could you possibly be against that? Like it's about we all know that children get abused if you say you're against the thing that seeks to liberate them from that abuse, like you're actually a horrible person. All right. So speak to that. How can how can you be against feminism when it's clear that women have suffered in a particular way?

I mean, men and women have all suffered, especially in the past, perhaps in unique ways. But but women, I think it's fair to say, are probably more trafficked than men. There's probably other examples we can give, maybe domestic abuse, I suppose. So how can you possibly be against feminism when women suffer in a particular way? No, and I think that's the big question. But what I discovered was really the answer to that question. I mean, I think feminists generally, early feminists generally, genuinely believed that women suffer tremendously. And they saw it all over the place in terms of,

you know, one, what is it? Something like one in 20 women died in childbirth. You know, just the exhaustion and food is scarce and all these things that go along with motherhood back in, we're talking 1890s, early 1800s. Those things, I think were really what motivated them and obviously good intentions. The problem becomes when the answer is not, how do we help women as women,

but how do we help make women like men? And that's the question that feminism has really asked from the very beginning is how do we make women more like men because they perceive that men had an easier life because they didn't have to deal with their own fertility. Now that's the real crux of it is the way that we've arranged society so that we've really placed

the masculine up as this idol, that our lives are much better when we don't have children, we don't need husbands, we have this career, we are control of everything, we are sort of masters of our own life. And this is that idol of the ideal woman that we've created and it's no accident that she looks a lot like a man

in what the feminists believe was the ideal. I'm thinking even when they wrote Elaine into Seinfeld, they, you know this, they intentionally wrote her as a male character. She would speak like a male, she would act like a male. Wow, I didn't know that. Obviously she's sleeping with dudes and stuff, but they wrote her like that.

Oh, that's super interesting. And I think that says a lot because it's just that easy. And even when, same actress, when she was in that movie, or that TV series, V. I never watched it, but. I just have been reading up on it because I'm looking at this pattern of how much we've been sort of brainwashed by it.

But again, that same sort of character, like she's not very, she had a daughter, but she's not very maternal. I think she divorced her husband, you know, it's just power and control and self-reliance. I think those are, those are the keys. And this understanding of the vulnerability, which you pointed out,

that was what they were trying to erase. And that was, that was what they perceived to be the problem. Like, how do we get rid of that vulnerability and put in instead something that's more attractive, more empowering, more liberating, you know, all of this kind of language that we hear so often. But it's really loaded with, you know, how do we erase our children and our, you know, our families, the nuclear family. Let's go back to the first feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft and talk, talk about her.

Where was she coming from? What do you think she may have been perceiving that was accurate? What was she trying to respond to and how did it quickly go off the rails? Yeah. So Mary Wollstonecraft is really fascinating because she's called the first feminist. Of course, the word didn't exist then. But I think a lot of people don't realize is that she's actually responding in a lot of ways to what's happening with the French Revolution.

She's responding to Edmund Burke, who's, of course, he's writing from England saying, what are you doing in France? I mean, this is a disaster of epic proportions because what you're trying to do is pull down all of the platforms that have been, kept your society healthy, you know, in the church and the military and all of these kinds of things. And he's writing and responding in many ways to Thomas Paine,

who had been a friend of his, and Thomas Paine writes a book called The Rights of Men. Well, Mary Wollstonecraft was a friend of his. She actually met her husband through him, although they didn't get together until much later. But in any event, she first writes a book called The Vindication of the Rights of Man. So you take a play off of Payne's rights of man.

And then she writes a second one called The Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And this is the book that really is sort of targeted as the feminist, the first, in the wall of feminism. And most people have read it in college. It is, it's so hard to read. It's so unfun to read. It's just this emotional like scatter shot. There's so much going on in it. And a lot of times you feel like, like, didn't I just read this? You know, she just, there's a repetition and I'm not the only one that said this, even her husband, William Godwin, said this to her,

like, why did you write it so unsystematically? And, you know, she didn't respond till much later, but she basically said, you know, because I felt the passion was important and whatnot. So anyway, the main thing that she provides, you know, the foundation for is this idea, which I think you could call, later became Smashing the Patriarchy,

is this kind of envy directed at men to get rid of any kind of hierarchy. So the church has to go, the military has to go, the monarchy has to go, anything that- The family, marriage? Yeah. And she's not that extreme. I mean, there's some things about her that are

salvageable that I think, you know, she doesn't go that far. That's the next generation. But those other things are what really like are the spark, I think, behind it. And she's a woman that, she has this horrible life. I mean, she in terms of her childhood, she had this very, I think her father was alcoholic and he was mercurial. And there's an awful story about him like hanging the family dog because he got angry. And her mother was just the super, I guess submissive is the right word,

just awful woman and had loved the first son and didn't really take care of the rest of the children. So Mary ended up taking care of them. So you can sort of see, and you know, this is the pattern that also emerges too, is that so many of these women just had this broken, broken, broken lives. And so the response is, well, if this is what broke me,

then we have to get rid of it. I mean, over and over again, that's kind of the pattern that comes out. Instead of saying, maybe we should go back to the Ten Commandments and some sort of basic principles of treating people. And that's the other thing that I think is important is, Wollstonecraft is responding in a way that she's trying, she's from, you know, the Enlightenment era, the Romantic period of that era.

So she's trying to make her arguments without the Ten Commandments, without any reference to Christian morality. She's trying to sort of grasp at sort of pagan ideals and things like that too. So anyway, yeah, I think there's a lot that Mary Wollstonecraft does. I think that, you know, again, there are some certain things that she said that were fine. I mean, she was very focused on education for women

and things like that that are obviously important. But so she's, yeah, she's that foundation piece. And as I was reading through it, I thought to myself, maybe a fella was the, quote unquote, mother of feminism, namely her, well, son-in-law, Shelley, right? Yeah, so Shelley is her son-in-law. She never met him because she died giving birth

to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. We know her from Frankenstein. Which I just wanted to like so much, but found it so boorish and emotional and mopey. That's a romantic period though. I mean, that's kind of what they were all about. Like they were rejecting. But when was Dracula written?

Because I love parts of Dracula. Oh, I don't know what Dracula was written. But yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I just found it. But wouldn't you be Mopi? I mean, Mary Shelley had a pretty miserable life. I mean, she's- Tell us about that. First, her mother.

Yeah, so her mother dies since childbirth. I mean, this awful story, like the doctor didn't wash his hands and she got an infection and she was dead within 10 days. And so Mary Godwin, her father is also a very well-known thinker who was totally against monogamy. He was all for like, how do we get rid of monogamy? He actually was influential on the work of Marx.

This is Wollstonecraft's husband. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And the fact that they even got married was pretty remarkable, but Wollstonecraft had already had a child out of wedlock and she saw how hard it was for her first child. So she thought we'll get married

and then it will be easier for all the girls to have a father just in terms of society. So anyway, so then Mary Godwin grows up, her father marries another woman, and there are some other children that the stepmother has. And then I think Godwin and his new wife had another child. So anyway, the family's rapidly growing,

but nobody's really getting along. It's kind of just a messy, messy life. Although at one point, interestingly, the Godwins hosted Aaron Burr after he shot Hamilton, which I found to be an interesting footnote. But, so he's well known. I mean, he was very much a kind of a celebrity of his day. So he attracts this young man, Percy Shelley,

who's just been thrown out of Oxford and he's married and his wife is expecting, I think, their second child. And he's fascinated because, of course, he knows Mary Wollstonecraft's work, he knows Godwin's work, and he also has this kind of wealth that is unusual to us in a certain respect because it was based on his family

and what his father's title was and what he was going to inherit once his father died. And so he could make loans based on his title and the estate and whatnot. And so this was what he was going to inherit once his father died. And so he could make loans based on his title and the estate and whatnot. And so this was what he and Shelley were sort of drawn to each other. Godwin needed money and Shelley had the money and Godwin had the ideas and Shelley dreamed of the ideas

and kind of just had this, it was very much like this rogue cad. Like he was just totally unrestrained by really anything. So he meets Mary Godwin, and they immediately fall in love and fall for each other. He convinces her to leave with him. He leaves his wife, the two of them run off, along with her stepsister, who was from the new wife.

The three of them, Claire, this is her name. I think her name was initially Jane, and she changed it to Claire because it was more exotic. So the three of them run off to France, and it's this debacle. It's supposed to be this romantic getaway, and it ends up, and they're like broke and seasick, and you know, everything awful happens to them.

So they would go back to England. Finally, Shelley's wife kills herself. And so, Shelley and Mary Godwin, they're able to marry and they have children. And then, I mean, the story just goes on and on and gets worse and worse and worse. Reading this book was kind of like, I don't know if you ever read Dostoevsky's The Devils,

you're just hit in the face with 8,000 names that you're trying to keep. That's a hard part. I know, you sort of like need a whiteboard, like this person, that person. So yeah, there's a lot of details. And I guess that's the great part about just focusing on Shelley and kind of what he did because and as I mean, really the grandfather, he's the grandfather of feminine. He's the one that came up with the idea for the ideal woman. And we've that's what's interesting.

That's what I found was interesting. So Wollstonecraft writes this work and she has some ideas. But it's really her son in law. Yeah. Who's into all sorts of rubbish like you name it. Yeah. Yeah. Spiritual spiritualism or demonic kind of occult activity. Locked himself in a tomb in a church and tried to summon something. The devil.

Like this is where feminism comes from. That's just wild. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think when we think of free love, which is such a euphemism, right? Because it's neither free nor is it loving. It's sort of like enslaved passion, I suppose. Right.

When you think of that sort of thing, you think about people wanting to tear down monogamy, unless you know something of history, which I don't know a great deal, I suppose, you would just assume that this was like a new idea, like in the 60s or something. And yeah, but no, this this goes all the way back to the beginning. All recycled. And you also have. So yeah, he's taking Wallstone crafts ideas and Godwin's ideas of free love and sort of putting them together. So while Mary Shelley is writing Frankenstein, he's writing about this woman named Cythna, who is this ideal woman, the first woman

in all of literature, I think, that didn't have a husband, didn't have children, she wasn't encumbered by all these relationships. She didn't have a relationship with the devil, I think that was her one relationship, but conveniently, I guess, for Shelley's purposes. But yeah, that's the, that's the, became the model for these later feminists at that point after that.

Right. And what's interesting too is Shelley's interpretation of Milton's Satan. Talk about that. Yeah. So he's really, you know, using Paradise Lost and reading into it. And he sees that Satan is sort of the hero, and he actually goes back and rewrites Genesis three so that Eve is no longer, you know, this weak link or tempted or anything like that. But in fact, she is actually the serpent gives her an opportunity that she is able to acquire

this special kind of knowledge because of her relationship with the serpent. So he basically takes what had been up to that point, sort of Christian orthodoxy of, you know, you've got this hierarchy of God and man and Eve is helpmate and then the creatures that they name and inverts that order. So the serpent is talking to Eve

and then Eve is lording over man and God's nowhere. Yeah, so it's just a remarkable Inversion. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean again if we if we can call Shelley the grandfather of feminism or the father of it Which is so interesting. It's kind of like a woman complains about the patriarchy while she has her Husband's last name or her father's last name. But so the beginning of this is from a man who thought that Satan was the hero. Yeah, exactly. Cool, just so we're clear. I know, yeah.

And I think that's the astounding thing. I mean, most, I would say almost no woman knows this. Like we just have bought, we've been told what feminism is like and where it's come from and how it's supposed to operate. That it's not discussed that it was actually concocted by a man. I'm not even sure if the Satanism would turn

modern women off today who are into feminism. They would probably just think, oh, good. That was very enlightened of him to realize this so soon. Yeah, but it's all, that's his legacy. I mean, that's what he created was that way. And you see, he has to go all the way back to Genesis 3 and recreate the whole story and start at the beginning. What is the patriarchy and why is it necessary?

So what is the patriarchy? And this is one of the things I wish I had put in the book as a better definition. But I think that the patriarchy is really that natural authority that God has set up for the way in which we flourish, the way in which we use our gifts best, the way in which we bring order out of chaos,

salvation out of fallenness. So yeah, I think it's, just even looking at it specifically, I think that the way that it's used in the culture, patriarchy is considered such a bad thing. When, in fact, you can really distill it down into something very simple. It's just the way in which men order bring order to society and to the family. Well, if you look at it from a religious point of view, it's the way in which God ordered his chosen people and his church.

Yeah, very simple. So what I find really interesting, right, is you have this kind of. This triangle of errors that crop up in all versions of feminism, it seems to me. You have free love. You talked about this. I'm getting this from you. Free love, a sort of occultism or spiritualism and. And a desire to to dismantle the family. Well, I guess that's free love. That's the result of free love. Yeah, it's the smashing the patriarchy, which is that that envy piece of that comes about because we're trying to get rid of all the hierarchy. Right. So the hierarchy in the state and then spiritualism is a response

to hierarchy in the church because women are the heads of many of these things. And then the free love is just the dismantling of the husband as the head of the house these things. And then the free love is just the dismantling of the husband as the head of the house. Okay. So that's why culture is such a mess when you take all those pieces together. Well, okay, I'm gonna try to play devil's advocate. I'm sure Shelley would be pleased.

He would be smiling somewhere. I'm sure. Isn't it the case that women have suffered tremendously from the hands of men? So therefore shouldn't there be some sort of movement or some sort of that liberates them from that oppression that they've received from the hands of men? I mean, you're laughing's the bigger issue is sin. The bigger issue is how, you know, when you move away from the 10 commandments, people are always going to treat each other poorly.

So you don't fix the problem by turning women into men. You fix the problem by supporting- Inviting men to be men and women to be women, right? Yeah, and supporting women as women in that vulnerability. Instead of making that a weakness, you recognize that there is actually strength in that, because we know the vulnerability of women has the capacity to call men to be better men and to do the things that men are good at and are best at. So I think that that's the fundamental breakdown is that we'll just get rid of the

problem by making women more like men is the fundamental issue. All right, so where do we go to from here? I mean, maybe the two mothers of feminism within America or do you wanna go somewhere before that? Yeah, I mean, I think in the interim, you've got France is the one that comes up with the word feminism. And you've got some other women that are involved,

Madame Blavatsky who creates theosophy, who's another major player. So Madame Blavatsky, I think that's how you say her name, she created theosophy. She's this Russian noble woman supposedly who like traveled the world and took all these different religions and sort of smushed them together into this,

you know, spiritualism and sayons, you know, you name it. And that's the religion that ended up really animating and inspiring Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a number of the women that she worked with, especially women that helped her write the book called The Women's Bible. Which was written roughly. So I want to say like 1880, maybe. I mean, I don't want to jump ahead, but I was shocked to learn that that was it that was that the book that was written on the spirit table? Oh, no, that's the the Seneca Falls. What is called, something of sentiments.

Let's see, Elizabeth and Seneca's... The Declaration of Sentiments. Thank you, the Declaration of Sentiments. Yeah, because she's basing on the Declaration of Independence. Wow. Yeah, so to fill in the gap that we just left. So Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes along, she has this idea. She sees sort of the issues of women. I mean, she's got her own issues.

Her older brother died and her father wanted a son. And so she was trying to fill that space, but couldn't do it. She had an overbearing mother. I mean, there's all these details that I go into in the book. But she's very, she's also in New York at this time when the second great awakening is going on

and there's all these, there's seances and mediums happening kind of all over and there's this new way in which the women in particular are communicating with the spirits and it's through this knocking on these particular tables. And so they're called spirit tables because that's where they would operate for and they would conjure up the spirits and the spirits would give them answers. This is wild. These women are thought to be saints in secular America. Yeah, no, her spirit table is actually in the Smithsonian too. Yeah, same table. And do they comment on what it is? I don't think so.

Do they just call it a spirit table? It's just called a spirit table. Wild. And it's phenomenal too, because the other thing that happens is they take men completely out of the picture with the spiritual world. They don't need a pastor anymore. They don't, you know, they can get all the answers that they need from the knocking on the table, which.

Which sounds legitimate. Very legitimate. Doesn't it? No, I mean it. What I mean is it sounds like a legitimate supernatural experience. Oh, I mean it what I mean is it sounds like a legitimate supernatural experience Oh, I think absolutely was and it was it took over the country you know, it's like wildfire because

You have to remember, you know civil war just happened So you have all these dead men and you also have you know, too As I was doing this research like so many dead children just dying from cholera and malaria You know to burke you name it just like that They were there one day and they were gone the next day from these diseases. And so you have just this trail of brokenness between all these deaths. And so people were really anxious, like, what did he say?

You know, they wanna know what happened to their loved one who died on the battlefield or, you know, all of that. And so it was just that, you know, that opportunity, right? That really, I think, led people to to trust in it. And, you know, we know that it's obviously not coming from God. But I think it was a very legitimate. Yeah. You know, spiritual. And this is the thing, right.

If you have a Christian worldview, as we do, you know, Thomas Aquinas in the Contra Gentiles, I think, talks about people believing in many gods and these many gods with demons. That's who they were. And so we have the heroes of American feminism communing with demons. Yeah. And not even hiding it, not even... No. And Katie Stant was very much a... She was raised Calvinist and she abandoned that. She was very active in anti-Christian kinds of work. She had kind of a real antipathy towards it.

And that comes through in her book, The Woman's Bible, where it's sort of like, if you read it, you can still get it today. If you read it, it sort of feels like you're angry teenager sort of commenting on, you know, how women are treated and in the Old Testament and there on and it's just, and when you read it, do you get the sense that yes, she's right? She has some points or no, no, it's and in fact, between that and another scandal that happened, she actually got thrown out of her own organization because she was just so toxic. And, you know, I think think the other part of her work was, of course, Susan B. Anthony.

And Susan B. Anthony was very much just a mouthpiece for Katie Stanton. Katie Stanton was busy home with her children, and Susan B. Anthony wasn't married and didn't have children. And so she was the one that could go out and travel. And she was very involved. I mean, she actually, at at one point said something effective.

You know, I wish the demons would come speak through me or the spirits would come speak through me because she had a hard time public speaking sometimes. So yeah, so it's very much part of that their culture. It is spirit. Here's what you write your spiritualism spread like wildfire estimates have ranged from 2 million adherents before the Civil War to close to seven million after Judd and here's a quote from a reporter from the New York Times judging from its rapid extension and widespread effects It seems to be the new what does that word mean Mahama? Mahomet? Okay. Is that what that means? Yeah of the social Antichrist overrunning the world. Yeah. My goodness. And then this, I don't know what this quote was from,

but I found it really interesting. Feminism is the infidelity to male supremacy, which officially began as an organized movement at Seneca Falls, New York, 1848. Spiritualism, the direct communication with the spirit world, which profoundly subverted organized religion, began with the Fox family, wrappings, gosh, that would be terrifying in 1848. And free love is the infidelity to the primary social institution, the family. So it's like an unholy Trinity of sorts that overthrows the order of the world.

Because I think the etymology of hierarchy means holy order, doesn't it? I know that Anna, you can look that up if you don't mind. I know. Yeah. And the opposite of up. You don't mind. I know. Yeah. And the opposite of hierarchy, hierarchy isn't peace. It's anarchy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. So that's our founding mothers. Founding mothers.

And what was and so this is and so what about these two women, Anthony and Katie Stanton. Are they practicing so-called free love and that sort of? No, I don't. I think Katie Stanton, I had the impression, was monogamous and probably not very happy in her marriage. And Susan B. Anthony never married. That's actually one of the interesting things.

She, her biographer spent. Four days burning her papers, so there's a lot of content that things. Her biographer spent four days burning her papers. So there's a lot of content that we don't have about her anymore, which is also kind of a weird thing to do, like what was being hidden. And there's some intimations that she might've been a lesbian.

I mean, it's sort of one of those things to not read between the lines. And I didn't put it in the book because I didn't feel like I had it substantiated sufficiently. Good for you, but there's Yeah, they're good for you in the sense that you don't overstate your case and get something wrong and be discredited Hierarchy comes from high roast meaning supernatural or holy and Arcos meaning role ruler. Sorry

So feminism. Yeah, so it starts an ecclesiastical Sorry. Yeah. So feminism. Yeah. So it starts in a crazy order. Yeah. It starts in a crazy article and was extended to governmental because we use similar words like Diaconos for like how Caesar is referred to as Diaconos in Romans, that kind of thing. So that's how it expanded to meaning in more in secular world. Thanks. All right. The 60s or am I moving too quick? I would only just flag that, you know, the dramatic communist revolution in what's happening,

much of it coming from Thomas Paine again, he's sort of considered the first socialist and you've got all these real changes happening on the world stage in terms of the role that communism is playing and the way in which if you look at the Soviet socialist revolution, you can see what happens to women in that. They go to work, their children are being taken care of by somebody else and abortion is, you can get as many as you want. And what you just said about Marxism and its effects is what we live in America.

Women go to work, someone looks after their kids and abortion. So we've all been made Marxists because of Betty Friedan and others who were actually very involved blending communism and feminism together. You just switched the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. So you have the oppressor and the oppressed. Same thing with the BLM movement, right?

It's Marxist through and through. We would never have gotten to woke culture if it was not for feminism. It was feminism that was like the first, like how do we tweak this and make this effective? Break that apart for me. Slow it down and help me see that. So feminism is the one that was the first time

it's no longer about classes, it's about men and women. Man's the oppressor, the woman's the victim. And that then translated through feminism. You've got all these women like Angela Davis and others who then say, well, let's apply that to race. Let's apply that to sex. And in terms of the gay, lesbian, that whole movement, they took on the same, they copied that actually.

So if feminism hadn't been so successful, if we hadn't adopted it so well and allowed women to be considered victims all the time, men considered to be oppressors all the time, we would never- And men fending over themselves to apologize continually to no avail. Yeah, what does that sound like?

So anyway, I mean, that's what we've created. It's the model through which BLM and the rest have just found so much success and very little pushback. And you talk about the brilliant strategy of certain feminists in their propaganda to go to the emotions around the intellect. Tell us how they did that. So this is where Betty Friedan comes in,

who Betty Friedan was very much a, you know, she always claimed to be this, just a housewife and she wasn't really interested in women's issues until the 50s. And I have it upon this book that was written by someone that actually knew her quite well. And he saw her teaching at some place and was like, that woman is using Saul Alinsky's tactics with her students. Like how does she know that? And he was really like captivated by it because he said, this is a woman that became popular

around the time of McCarthy. She's clearly a communist. How did she hide it and still be successful? Like he wanted to expose it because he thought people would be more impressed with her, that she was such a successful hider of communism and escaped the net of McCarthyism. So he goes back and he actually told her he was going to write this book about her.

And she said, you know, I won't give you access to any of my private papers if you try to access anything without my permission, I'll sue you. That kind of was her response. And he was already in so deep that he just kept going and so convicted that it was such an important book to write. So I found that book and it was just amazing to see all these references to all the work that she was very much engaged in with the Communist Party,

especially this group called the Congress for American Women, which was set up by Bella Dodd actually. I don't know if you know Bella Dodd, but she was a communist that had a big conversion at the hands of Archbishop Sheen. Yeah. And so she's the lawyer that set up the Congress for American Women and the language that she uses, one of the things that she says was we were trying to control the power of purchase that women had. So they were trying to rein in communism, or

capitalism rather, by like telling women don't buy stuff kind of thing was that that was one of the things their goals stated goals of the Congress for American women. So Congress for American women ends up being disbanded because it was by the House Committee of Un-American Activities because it was so obviously Soviet propaganda. Anyway, for Dan knows all of this and she's trying, she's a very much an adherent of Marx and Engels and Engels in particular because he's, he's, she has a quote, I think it's from him, not Marx, but she has this quote about how a woman

would not, women are not gonna be free until they're doing productive work. They had already decided that the communists in America had already decided that raising children wasn't productive. So you had to get women out of the home. But she and Simone de Beauvoir said, well, if you give women the choice, they would never leave home. And so Simone de Beauvoir is like, hold my beer,

let me show you. So she's got this degree in psychology. So the whole book, The Feminine Mystique, which sold 3 million copies in the first few years. That is amazing. She's using without Amazon, right? Yeah, exactly. So you can tell how huge it was. She just hits this nerve of first of all, Simone Beauvoir is just a beautiful name. I know. It's amazing how beautiful the name is for such a demon. Yeah, no, that was too much. And then, effeminate mystique. Like, what a lovely, it's also lovely and French sounding.

Yeah. And exciting, isn't it? Yeah. And that, so that's the initial part is just sort of the trappings of it. But in it, she uses both that women are victims. Like she talks about how she interviews these other women that she went to college with, and they're all very unhappy at home, which certainly understandable.

I mean, these are the women that went, they went to college and never, they didn't do anything to learn how to raise children. I mean, there's so many of us that experience that now. Like I know when I was first home with my kids, like, I don't really know how to cook and all of that. I mean, there's a big learning curve, but she like pinpoints that. I mean, these are the wealthiest women in all of human history at this stage.

And there she calls the home, the comfortable concentration camp. That's how she wraps it up. Yeah. I mean, that name, how did she get away with that? The comfortable concentration camp. I mean, talk about overstating your case. I mean, the wealthiest women. You know how you have a husband who loves you and provides for you and you raise these beautiful children

and look like you and are the offspring of your life? That's kind of like a concentration camp. It's just like, in fact, it's just more comfortable. Yeah, that's what, so that appeals to that heart of a woman in the sense that like, yeah, I'm a victim here. Like this is bad. I've got to change this. I'm gonna be like men.

So that's the first thing. Tell us a bit more about this Simone Sheila, cause I keep hearing her name, but I don't know much about her. Simone de Beauvoir. She didn't write that book. She didn't make that comparison? No, no.

So this is Betty Friedan who's doing all this. So Simone de Beauvoir is a French philosopher. She was actually gonna consider being a Catholic nun when she grew up, she grew up in France. And she ends up falling in love with Jean-Paul Sartre. They're the existentialists. And so her big contribution is that, she's the one, she has that quote that says something like,

a woman isn't made a woman, she must become one, or something like that, that idea. So it's this idea of becoming something that is I think what really captured the imagination of people. And so that's the foundation through which the trans community comes from. That's the foundation through which the trans community comes comes from. That's the justification of it is because she and Jean-Paul Sartre in existentialism, we're really focused on this idea of how do you be authentic to your real self?

How do you reinvent yourself? You know, all of that. That's those are the ideas there. So here's a quote from you from her in 1975, the more strident Simone de Beauvoir in an interview with Friedan took this argument a step further, quote, No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice. Wow. Should not have that choice. Screw you, Simone. Precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. Yeah. And again, you can hear sort of the dripping of production. Our freedom is in

being able to produce something. And that is the slavery. It reminds me of that line from- One is not born a woman, but rather she becomes one. Thank you. Thank you. That reminds me of that line from Hillary Clinton. Didn't she say something? Didn't she kind of disparage housewives at some point saying something like, I'm not going to go home and make cookies or something like that?

Yeah. It would have been really good if she did, I think. It would have been a much better idea. Maybe she should go make some more cookies, Hillary. What else do we need? I want to know something more about Simone de Beauvoir. So when people bring her up, I can sound smart. What else? Tell us a bit more about her life. I mean, she-

So, well, the one thing that very few people know about her is that she and Kate Millett were actually very involved in getting the Ayatollah, the revolution in Iran. And what we're experiencing today is partially because of them. They were in Paris with him planning and plotting the revolution in Iran. And they had convinced him, so they thought, that it was going to be this glorious woman's revolution, that he was going to make Iran the first sort of paradise for the unencumbered woman

and the ideal woman. So Kate Millett was there first when the revolution's happening. I Kate Millett was there first when the revolution's happening. I think she lasted for like six days before they deported her. And Simone de Beauvoir shows up. And I think she's there for like two days.

I mean, not a long time. But of course, I mean, he was just completely playing with them, you know. He had no intention of making this some sort of women's revolution. It was absolutely all about power and control. And, you know, this is why they were quickly deported out of the country. But yeah, it's, it's amazing to see sort of just the echoes and the ramifications

that these women have had on a, on a national scale that, you know, we know so little about their international scale, I should say. This was wild to me in the late 1960s, somewhere in the West Green Witch Village section of New York City at Lila Carp's apartment. Twelve women led by Kate Millett sat around a large table and repeated this chant. So when you say repeat, because I'm going to read it, when you say repeated this chant, was it something because it's quite long. Was it memorized? It was. I don't know if it was memorized, say repeated this chant, was it something because it's quite long. Was it memorized?

It was. I don't know if it was memorized, but I mean, it was like a litany of sorts. I mean, it was just something that they. It's like a demonic litany. Listen to it. Listen to this. To make revolution. What kind of revolution?

The cultural revolution. And how do we make culture revolution? By destroying the American family. How do we destroy the American family? By destroying the American patriarch. And how do we destroy the American family? By destroying the American patriarch. And how do we destroy the American patriarch? By taking away his power. How do we do that?

By destroying monogamy. How can we destroy monogamy? By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion, and homosexuality. Dear Lord. And this millet Sheila was thought of as the high priestess of feminism. The female marks was her other title. So, yeah, so Mallory Millet is Kate Millet's sister.

Mallory Millet is still living. She and Kate grew up in Minnesota and both were sort of on the same, somewhat radical tracks. But Kate Millett ended up, I mean, she was just a genius, but she was very much a radical feminist. She was studied under Wilhelm Reich, who was the, he wrote the book, The Sexual Revolution. She was this kind of new left or Marxist mouthpiece. She wrote the book, Sexual Politics, and she was on the cover of Time magazine.

And she ended up, I think she was married, or I know she was married. And then she ended up coming out as a lesbian and had all this mental illness, was in and out of mental institutions, with schizophrenia, all kinds of things. She was just kind of a hot mess. But her driving goal was really just all of that.

She just wanted to destroy, she wanted this revolution to happen. And she was a firm believer that women needed to be as tough as men. And she saw that toughness in abortion. She thought Vietnam was going on and they would see people dying from, especially innocent people, and say, well, women need to be that tough

and kill their own children. And she was just a diabolical, well, women need to be that tough and kill their own children. And she was just a diabolical, awful, awful woman. And so Mallory at some point had this big conversion and became Catholic. And it was really interesting actually because I had read some of Mallory's content. This was years and years ago because I cover Kate Millett in my book, The Anti-Marx Post as well,

probably a bit more thoroughly. But so Mallory had written all this stuff and I thought I need to know more about this. Kate Millett in my book, The Anti-Mare Exposed as well, probably a bit more thoroughly. So Mallory had written all this stuff and I thought I need to know more about this. So I reached out to her one night. I'd been putting off reading this for months. And finally I wrote to her one night after reading her stuff at like one in the morning.

The next morning I wake up and she was like, you have no idea, I think this is a real answer to prayer. She said that she had just been the whole day, while I'm thinking I need to read her stuff, she's just in this depths of despair thinking, I will never get the message out. How do I get the message out that this woman has destroyed our culture?

How do I like somewhat bring some reparation to what she's done? And so then she gets this email from me. And it was great because we talked on the phone and it turned out that she was going to mass that morning with the priest that celebrated my wedding. So we have this great connection and our good friend, Father Vincent Lopez.

So anyway, it was just this amazing connection. But yeah, so Mallory has been really instrumental in helping, providing me a lot of the research on Kate and Kate's involvement in the movement, just, you know, even things like the way that we treat mental illness in the United States. I mean, much of that was from Kate's influence, the fact that people are on the streets in California. You know, this is a lot of her, because she was a big advocate for not having people institutionalized just let's let them out and so that yeah

She just that the women's studies programs that we have in the United States So many things she was involved in just this incredible Destruction that we you know, so few of us know who she is aside from Mallory's work or my books She just kind of flew under the radar and she really, because she was so mentally ill, I think people just stopped promoting her. You know, unless you live through that period, you wouldn't really recognize her as this incredible influence in the feminist movement.

Right. Now I know we've already talked about this, but this spiritualism occultism stuff never lets up. It just keeps getting more intense. If it can get more intense than surely summoning Satan and seeing him as the hero. Yeah. I got to tell you guys about my new favorite app. It's called Ascension and it's by Ascension Press. This is the number one Bible study app, in my opinion. And you can go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. Go there. And so that way they know that we sent you

it is absolutely fantastic it has the entire bible there very well laid out the whole bible is read to you by father mike schmidt such as sections of the bible it has the catechism there it's cross-referenced absolutely beautifully it's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is just download it and check it out for yourself. It even has over 1600 frequently asked questions about scripture. So if you go to Genesis 1, you might have a question about evolution. Well, there's a drop down right there. You can read an article that'll help you understand it. I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth, my jaw was just, it was dropped. It was absolutely amazing.

It's had tens of thousands of five-star reviews. Again, go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. It also has all of their amazing Bible studies. So I remember back in the day, I had a big DVD case of Jeff Kavan's Bible studies. Well, it's all there on the app. So go download it right now. Please go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. I've heard people say and I think there's some merit to it that there's a sense in which atheism is religious because it's this belief system. You could say it's a lack of a belief system, but it does believe something about the afterlife, about objective morality, often how we should live in that sort of thing. But if it's if it's not appropriate to call

atheism religion, I think the more I've read that it is appropriate to call feminism a religion, especially with all this involvement with tarot cards and spiritualism and all this sort of stuff. I was talking to my wife last night about this, you know, when she was young, she would say that it would just come in the mail. She'd have 17 magazine, Cosmo magazine, all of this, as I now see it, religious propaganda that's no less religious than a Jack Chick tract or something. Well, and I think cult is probably a better word for it because you're not really allowed to question it.

You have to just keep absorbing it, and if you don't absorb it, then there's something wrong with you. This is really the genius of the left, is that they have not only defined their position, but they've defined what their opposition looks like. So it's the doormat. It's that, I mean, every time there's some sort of

abortion ruling, who's there? The red bonnets and the red robes. I mean, this is how they've made it look like. The Stepford wife, like who who has any kind of pushback against it must be a fanatic. Yeah. Or crazy or part of a cult or fertility cult or whatever. But in fact, the reality is, is they're the cult because they have made it such an enclosed system.

They've been so effective in the propaganda all across the board. You know, if you look at fashion, politics, Hollywood, daytime television, you know, all of these things, book publishing and academia, it's the exact same message that's, you know, it's on this loop, just, they just keep repeating it over and over again, and you can't really get out of it. And that, you know, I think is what makes it,

gives it those cultish aspects. Right, I like that. I hadn't ever thought of that before. I've never really understood what the word cult mean to me. It just seemed like a slur about a group you don't like, you know, but I like that idea. I think that is an integral part of being in a cult and not being able to question it. Yeah. What's also interesting to me is how feminism just keeps morphing in a sense, and really it seems like it's seamless.

And of course, if you were to go and tell Mary Wolfen, that you are a woman who in fact has a penis, she would suggest that you seek medical attention. Yeah, absolutely and I think the Barbie movie was like the perfect example of that because Tell me about that because I never watched it. Well, I went to it with my daughters because I had to write a review. It's like research. It was so painful.

Why? It wasn't funny. You know, it was just, it's supposed to be a comedy and there's like one laugh line. Of course, Ken delivers it and you know, but it just, I just, it wasn't engaging, but you know, the whole folk, there's not one man in the movie who's necessary or useful or good.

They're all just kind of bumbling idiots. And the whole overriding message is that there's order when women are in charge. I mean, that's fundamentally what it was about. But what's amazing is the packaging because Barbie was really like a very anti-feminist kind of idea. You know, people, a lot of feminists you hear like wouldn't let their daughters play with Barbie

because she's this bombshell. You know, like we don't want promoting that kind of femininity or whatever. You know, it's perceived as a male standard of beauty. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So now to sort of kind of bring her about and make her this icon of feminism is amazing. And, you know, I think some of it is because they're realizing that a lot of the feminists are aging. If you look, most of them are over 60.

So they needed to bring in a new audience. So how do you do that? Well, with pink, pretty clothes, there's a few very tender moments. So those emotional appeals sort of make us unguarded. And that's just, they were very effective with it. But I think they're trying to just sort of get us, make us unguarded. And that's just, you know, they were very effective with it. But I think they're trying to just sort of groom the next generation and sort of morph it into something that feels more

applicable to young women. And even the protagonists in the film, you know, the real humans are a mother who's sort of my age and then her teenage daughter who are, you know, loggerheads with each other. And, you know, who can't relate to that when you have teenage children? So, and how they sort of come together through their Barbie experience or whatever. So anyway, it's amazing how much, how deeply, you know, it's just thoroughly propaganda. Mason Hickman Thinking it through on the spot, I suppose I would say what feminism has been to women pornography has been for men porn has emasculated men and feminism has defeminized women and you know it's it's easy to say look at a man and and and. Just berate him for why he looks at pornography and of course pornography is shameful and would not be engaged in but when you begin that, oh, someone showed this to him when he was eight, and then he was on a steady diet of it, and you start to have

compassion for the man. I'm so sorry. Like, I'm so sorry you were raised in this kind of society. So too with women. It seems to me that this book that you've written is an act of compassion for women and will help men marry women who might be beginning to heal from this. Yeah.

And I think that's a great way to articulate it because there's so much bitterness towards women and then when you start realizing like we didn't choose this actively. This has been crammed down our throats since we were very little girls. I mean, you know, I remember being in the first grade and being, you know, told how I should be competing with the boys. And that was just sort of this recurrent theme that throughout our lives, this sense of like, I'm ambitious and I'm doing all that, you know, checking all the boxes

that 17 tells me I'm supposed to be doing and, you know, on and on. And I think that's, it really is a process. So many of us, you know, even when you start to realize it, it doesn't mean you get it all. You still have to sort of heal from it and figure out, like, what does it really mean to be a woman instead of just this woman who's striving to be, you know, a poor copy of a man. So yeah,

it's I think it's been really helpful for a lot of men. I keep hearing some great feedback of just like I have compassion now for women instead of like angst and frustration and total irritation. Yeah, but I wonder how a man goes about mansplaining feminism to a woman. This is why you're so necessary. And that's, and that's the problem. I mean, this is why I think this book was never written. I don't think, you know, this research has been hiding in plain sight for a long time. It's not like I was some sort of like digging things up that nobody's found before.

It was just a matter of putting them together. But I think because men, a man could not have written this book, that's probably part of what took it so long. I think also because I don't have a job that I can be canceled from. I think there's, I've had a lot of women say, well, how do you write what you write?

They're worried about tenure and their jobs and careers. And since mine isn't really dependent, if all of it goes away, I'm still very happy stay at home mom to my children. So I think I had a freedom to be able to say things that a lot of women haven't. But that's the saddest thing that we're at this stage where you can't economically be dependent upon any kind of the feminist apparatus to be able to speak about it freely. So if it's the water that women swim in, how do they recognize it? That's the, I think the best way is through suffering, through the pain that they have,

is being inflicted upon them because of feminism. I meet so many women who, one in particular I've gotten to know pretty well. She did all, checked all the boxes. She went to Ivy League undergrad, Ivy League graduate school. She had this incredible career. And suddenly her career, something fell out,

the bottom fell out of it. And what does she have? She's 50, 55 years old and she has no husband, she has no children, her parents have passed away, what's there? So I think that's, the hard part is just between women like her, but then also those who are like living the hookup culture and the body count game

and totally unsatisfied, miserable, depressed, you know, all of that. You know, we know that God has created a system that we're gonna suffer when we're not doing things in the way in which he's ordered things. And sadly, that's, you know, we know his megaphone and that's how he's reaching people. But if we're not actually offering a way for them to get out of that, then what do they have?

They just have, you know, there's no, there's nowhere to go other than more medication. And that's, you know, what motivates me a lot is just how do we help women figure out that they don't have to stay in this, you know, horrible narcissistic vicious cycle that has been created for them. Yeah, there's this ongoing theme on pines with Aquinas when we discuss a group of people who we wish would return to sanity, whether it be the trans cult or something like that. Rather than berate them and maybe berating is sometimes helpful but usually the ideology is what needs to be berated not individual suffering people but how do we give them an off ramp that's the question right I don't just want to argue with you so that you dig your heels in all the more. How do we help people be like, you know?

Yeah, well, I guess you started to answer that. But there's a question. And, you know, a lot of that actually has influenced the work that I do with Noel Mary. I know she was just on your show and our theology of home project. Because when I was researching the anti-marry exposed, I realized, you know, what has, what is, why are women so controlled by this? And the biggest piece is just culture. Things like magazines and daytime TV and home shows,

and you know, all of that that we consume, you know, on a daily basis. Women in shoulder pads at the office, being liberated, obeying their boss, but a slave if they obey their husband. That's right, with a briefcase in hand. But we are not offering anything culturally like that. You don't look around and see like,

oh, I love that alternate home show that's being offered here. I love this magazine that I can get at the check stand. That's something sort of akin to Cosmo, but isn't totally disorder. Yeah, exactly. And that was really where the idea for Theology of Home came from,

was how do we, we've published four books at this point, how do we start making, helping women see that there's another way to live? And if we had a blank check, we could certainly do a number of these things. And we've got a few of them in the works. But just to be able to provide the visuals for women to sort of see what does it look like if you're not living.

I hope that, so will these be magazines or books? So they're books. Do you have a website that people can go to see? So it's theology of home.com. I hope that these books aren't just presenting the ideal, because I would imagine if I was a woman, which I'm not, and probably can't imagine it, the last thing I need is you showing me how bloody perfect you are and how colorful your

books are and how they're all color coordinated. Okay, but this is the thing, is we have actually gotten that criticism, like your books are too beautiful. Like think about that criticism, like your books are too beautiful. Like think about that criticism, like your books are too beautiful, even though we talk and certainly in the church about how important beauty is. But would you ever say that about a women's magazine?

Like would any normal woman say that about a women's magazine? Like I'm not gonna read that magazine because it's too beautiful. But there's something very important about the aspirational. Because these magazines that present this almost unattainable standard of feminine beauty, you don't hear a lot of normal women being like, this is unhelpful.

They, for some reason, have a voracious appetite for it. And yet you have the beautiful home, and then we're very upset at you. That's right. Why is that, do you think? Well, it might be because women are working. How the hell, do you think? I mean, there's so many reasons. Well, it might be because women are working. How the hell are they supposed to do that? Well, it's not even just that.

I mean, in our books, we've got like men who are like being good dads and looking healthy. I mean, it's not just these super staged homes that are gorgeous and totally unattainable in terms of the financial expense and whatnot. But what we're trying to show is life well lived, but without showing the mom who's just run down ragged and her kids haven't had their hair brushed in seven days,

you know, like that kind of stuff. Like nobody's gonna buy a book that looks like that. And frankly, we don't have to live our life like that. I mean, that's a bad presentation. I mean, gonna buy a book that looks like that. And frankly, we don't have to live our life like that. I mean, that's the, That's good. That's a bad presentation. I mean, that's what they want us to look like.

I see. So yeah, I think it's a combination of things, of both recognizing that women want to be inspired by things. I mean, I remember when I was at four kids, four and under, five and under, and my mother-in-law bought me a subscription to Real Simple. And that was like my 10 minutes

once a month, like everybody's napping or something, where I would just sit down and just flip through those pages. And I finally had to get rid of it because of course there were so many horrible ads in it and so much that I didn't like in it that I just wanted to get rid of. But there's something about that

that the feminine soul just loves, like taking it in and sort of thinking about being in a different place or about traveling or a different time of their life, or maybe something they can do in their home to change things. And we're not providing anything like that, I think, in terms of an alternative.

And that's really what's, I think, motivated us. And it's been pretty amazing to see that, despite the fact that we haven't had huge advertising budget, that these little books just have sold like hotcakes and have become kind of the go-to gift for weddings and bridal showers and baby showers and that kind of thing. Because I think women are really hungry

for something that feeds them. It's not just the visuals, it's really rich content too. So how do we feed them on all these levels in a way that's compelling instead of just kind of embarrassing or disappointing? Now, it seems to me that if you're going to want to claim that feminism is evil fruit and a root and branch. I'm going to want you to say something about the fruit that's that's that goes against. fruit that's that's that's goes against. The kind of wisdom of the day like I'm going to need to hear you tell me something like women should be at home with their children they shouldn't be working or I need you to say something like of course women should submit to their husbands or.

Yeah women to kick up the ass I mean you got these men's conferences and the men are yelling at each other to like suck it up You gotta take your family to heaven. Yeah, you got a women's conferences and you hear hey ladies You're not understood now I haven't been to a lot of women's conferences So maybe I'm wrong and you can tell me if I'm just like that But it seems to me that if I'm gonna challenge you a little here If you're gonna sit here and and say well, I'm totally against feminism How it arose and where we and yet not have any unpopular opinion as to how men and women should structure their lives. And I'm going to find that problematic, I think. As you should. Yeah, I think that the real key is just recognizing motherhood.

This is the one thing that feminism has tried to erase from us. And, you know, you get into trouble if you just say that because there are so many women that will say, well, I don't have children. You're still called to motherhood. What does motherhood mean? You know, it's psychological, well, I don't have children. You're still called to motherhood. What does motherhood mean? It's psychological, it's biological, it's spiritual. All women are called to mother others. We're all called to provide shelter, protection,

nourishment, and a kind of mentoring that helps people become who God meant them to be. So that can happen in the workplace, that can happen, you know, I mean, it's as we have to be very practical too, because it's not the case that, you know, all of a sudden, like, I've left feminism, so I'm gonna have this ideal life of, you know, husband and 2.3 children or whatever, you know, I mean, it doesn't work that way. feminism has influenced you in an isolated sense that you can now reverse course. It's a structure of sin. Everybody. So like how do you tell women in a society where many of them feel like if I don't work, we cannot make, you don't understand. How do you then demand that you stop working?

Now to me, that doesn't seem to be enough. Like I think you can acknowledge that and say, well, you know, exceptions make bad law. You can still say, well, yeah, fair enough, but you should be working towards this. Well, and I guess that's where the practical reality comes into it too. You know, I, when my husband, or sorry, my father passed away, like, what did my mom have to do?

She had to go back to work. I mean, she had helped him with his business and gratefully she had done enough with him over the years that she was able to take it over and we were able to have an income. So our lives are not pristine and tidy and fit into these categories because there was absolutely no way she was not going to be a working mom at that point. So I think that that's the reality. But there are women that would love to be married and love to have children and for

various reasons, many of which have nothing to do with them, like you said, the structure of sin, they still have this desire. So rather than say, oh, well, you should just keep working the way that the feminists have told you, why don't we start helping you think about yourself in terms of a mother, helping those around you and start mentoring people.

So whether or not you actually do have children, A, it's gonna be a lot easier if you do have children because you've already sort of started that mindset of thinking, how do I care for others? That happens. B, you get out of your own narcissism and you start thinking about others, which is always going to be beneficial in this feminist world. And C, if you end up not ever getting married, you have this incredible

vocation of pouring yourself out on to others, which God can do, you know, manifold, beautiful and glorious things with. So I think the most practical step is really sort of reorienting our minds to understand motherhood instead of kind of this career minded, you know, and making this sort of false binary like has to be one or the other too. I mean, I think this is a big mistake because women have incredibly different stages of their life too. I know when my children are at home, you know,

I can only imagine what I'll do, but women also have different vocations. You know, this isn't something I would have chosen for myself to come here to talk to you today. I mean, this isn't, you know, I would love to just be a full-time stay at home mom and there are just exigencies of the culture that, you know, we have to you today. I mean, this isn't, um, you know, I would love to just be a full time stay at home mom. And they're just exigencies of the culture that, you know, we have to deal with, but also that God asks us to do because of the world in which we live.

So I think I like what you're saying, cause you're kind of giving a general answer to a general problem, right? So if the, if the general problem of feminism is to eradicate you of your femininity, motherhood in particular, then the answer is going to be to reorient the woman to the goodness of motherhood. Fair enough. So then do you take issue? Cause it seems to be like, gosh, back up a sec. We live in a day and age, right? Where, well, let's just, let's just pick on anyone. Like the, the,

the politicians, the movie stars, the musicians, right? They don't know what men are. They don't know what women are. They don't know what sex is. Could mean any kind of sexual act, right? They don't know what marriage is. This is bizarre. Like, think about that.

That's not, I don't think that's hyperbole. You don't know what men, women, marriage and sex is. And now good luck. I mean, it seems to me that you would obviously have this desire to return to something. But do you think that when people start imposing certain demands, like women should under, it should almost never be the case that women work outside the home or something like that. Do you think that you see what they're doing and maybe they've got a point,

but it's too rigid or too unhelpful to the complexities of modern people? I don't know. I mean, I think it's a good question, but yeah, I think it's, again, it feels like there's so many different seasons, there's so many different vocations, there's so many different dynamics in terms of,

just even a couple and what they bring to marriage in terms of their gifts and all of that. So yeah, I would be really reticent to just say, it has to be this way, but do I think that it's objectively better that women should be home with their children because of the benefits that their children receive? I think that's unequivocal.

We know what the research looks like. Does that extend through their whole life? Not necessarily. But I think especially in those early years, it's really important. So anyway, I don't know. I think we make it too much of a binary answer. Like women either have to work or they have to stay home.

And I don't think that's helpful to anyone because again, life isn't tidy and we just have to do the best that we can. And this is also where active discernment I think is so important and spiritual maturity is so important because it's through those pieces that you're going to hear God's voice

and him tell us what it is that he wants us to do from day to day, minute to minute, instead of thrashing about trying to make, you know, things fit into tidy holes that may not actually work with people's situations. Well, I want to ask about the submission thing, because it seems to me that feminism has influenced the way men talk about that infamous line in Ephesians, where is it five? Right? So what you often hear in popular Catholic circles, it's not that it's wrong. It's just, again,

it feels like a man bending over backwards to apologize for being a man, right? It'll go something like this. You know, women should submit to their husbands. Okay, but like, let's look at the etymology of submit. It means to put yourself under the mission of, and what is the mission of the husband? To die. So what you have to do, dear sweet, beautiful woman who clearly couldn't handle any tough talk, is allow your husband to die for you. That's all that means.

And I'm just thinking, that's bullshit. That's gotta be bullshit. I mean, yes, there's a part, there's a sense in which that's true. The husband has to give himself over to his wife and love her like that. But this removal of any part on the woman to evacuate Paul's words seems to me to be whatever it whatever whatever wives and I know we there's this the sense of mutual submission.

I'm aware of that. But clearly there's an emphasis on the woman submitting right. Whatever whatever Paul meant by wives submit to your husbands, he can't have meant wives don't submit to your husbands. And so I just wanna know what that is. You know, when I read, I'll wrap up with this, when I read John Chrysostom, I don't know if you've read his homily on this, it is absolutely outstanding. Couple of things he'll say,

he'll say, and it's very much a document that kicks men in the backside, cause he'll say, all right,, and it's very much a document that kicks men in the backside, because he'll say, all right, what does it mean for a woman to submit? Well, she should not seek to be the head of the house and she should not stubbornly contradict her husband. And that's it. He leaves it at that. And then he says, all these wonderful bits of advice to men. He'll say, but you say to me, she mocks me. She doesn't listen to me. What then? And he says, do your duty, love her. And there's these other lines where he says, never call your wife by her name alone, but always with a term of affection, like my sweet one, my dear one.

Or if you ever want to correct her or argue with her, like do so gently, you know. Okay. So what I'm looking at is I'm looking at like a father of the church. When did he live in the three hundreds or something? His advice in a day and age where we knew what men, women, marriage and sex was versus Catholic personalities like me, I guess, who are living in a very confusing time. And I'm like, okay, if I have to go with one, I really, I really just even if it goes against my inclination, I really want to go with him.

Yeah, go. Yeah, I mean, I think we're living in the era of women not submitting. And part of it is because again, the indoctrination of like, if you submit to your husband, you're a slave and you're being abused and you're in this comfortable concentration camp, you know, all of this, these ideas that have filled us. So it's almost this, this completely reactionary reaction where we're not even like logically thinking about this. And I think this is a key, key piece is reason's gone.

We have to use largely emotions because of the fact, and this is again, why I think visuals are so important, and this kind of therapeutic language, because we don't know how to think about things and think about like, okay, maybe there's, it's either submit, which women here as, I will be a slave. The dual mat.

Right? Or it's, I will be the controlling force in this marriage. I will take over. And so it's, again, the mind loves that binary and we don't, it's very hard for us to be subtle. This is why Duns Godas was mocked because he was so subtle. People don't like subtlety.

They don't want them at all. They don't want Aristotle's mean. They want one extreme into the other because that's how, especially in sin, we go from, you know, when we get mad, they're like, fine, I will do it, or fine, I will never do it. You know, it's not, there's not kind of a balanced response.

So I think this is what we're up against is sort of this, you know, a lot of women will hear, especially in Catholic circles, sort of men who feel like they have to say it, but they say it in a way where you're like, oh, if I had to be submissive to that guy, like this would be a nightmare. Like there's nothing compelling about it

versus what is it, the John Chrysostom kind of man, like maybe that's what we need to help men understand, is that kind of tenderness and the duty and that crafting of the rich relationship that needs to happen so that there's actually trust and honesty and all those bonds are there instead of just this whip, sounds like a whip to us, or just these extremes.

So yeah, I think it's really challenging, but I think that there's a lot of way to navigate it and more bringing out the works of Chris System and others, I think could be incredibly helpful in terms of having a conversation about it instead of saying it has to be this way or this way. And the richness of relationship. I think we agree.

And certainly even those verses could make me wince if I think about an immature man raised on porn, a little wimpy dude who marries a woman who now demands that his wife not only submit to him in everything he says but even sexually because of the marital debt. Submission and the marital debt are both real things. That's appealing, right? I mean that man that you've just painted and that's I think what so many of us think of., well, it's, yeah. I mean, that man that you've just painted, and that's, I think, what so many of us think of.

And that's the fear, yeah. Yeah. And so maybe is it that, is it that the submission makes sense in light of the love and the love makes sense in light of the submission? Like would we all do better if the man focused on loving his wife like Christ and the woman? So instead of the woman, instead of the man focusing on how this woman's not submitting, if he were to put first things first and love her and then the woman put first thing first and concerned perhaps.

Yeah. And submit to him. Instead of everybody sort of digging their heels in and say, you must do this for me. Yeah. It just feels like there's gonna be more clarity here And I cannot believe that this onslaught of feminism hasn't muddied the waters here that we still need to figure something out And maybe that's where we're at It's kind of like today where we're all trying to reclaim tradition that was robbed from us You know in Catholic circles, and it looks a bit awkward at times

You know people dress a little awkwardly with their pocket watches and things and good for them And and like I love it like people want tradition again, right? And it's kind of look awkward until it doesn't anymore. Is it something like that? Maybe with male and female relationships where it's like we've just been nuked and now we're just both trying to figure out what it means to. We don't really have good role models either. I mean, again, what who are we seeing? We're seeing, you know, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake

and the abortion that they had, because he didn't wanna be a father when they were dating. Just this kind of awfulness everywhere around us. Also this kind of immaturity, spiritual immaturity. I mean, people, so many people getting married and not having the kind of spiritual maturity that they ought to have. And so we don't have good role models of it.

We don't even have, you know, now that I know so many generations obviously are dying out, we don't even have examples of people that were lived before these, the feminism exploded. So I think that's another interesting aspect of it is we just don't have any real role modeling. And that's a beauty of being around large families or being around communities, especially churches and things like that, where you can see actually what it looks like to be

an ordered family and sort of figure out, ask the wife, like, how do you make this work and vice versa. And I think it's got a lot of things like's things like humor and humility can, can and should go a long way too, instead of this, you know, sort of bizarre envy that, that women are constantly promoting of like, I want to be just like you, but I want you to be like me, sort of the schizophrenic relationship that we have with men as well. So, and that happens within the marriage too. So yeah, I think it's figuring out ways to to to model this for people so that they

can start seeing it in real time instead of just making an intellectual study. Can can help a lot, too. I wonder, do you think that men and women are wired differently in this in this sense? When a man goes to a man's conference, he kind of enjoys the direct language. Like you need to be doing better than you're doing, that kind of stuff. Maybe I'm wrong because I don't go to a lot of women's talks, although I have heard them, but I don't get that sense where women are strongly kind of challenging women to be better wives and better mothers.

And I would think that if a woman was on stage saying like, you really need to be doing better than you're doing, that there would be a good portion of women who would be deeply offended by that. I think it might be a lot of other women who are grateful, but yeah. I think that's a good question. I think that women are very are hired, wired very differently. And this is probably one of the reasons why Catholic feminism has lasted as long as it has as a concept, because I think women like to be part of a tribe. They like to feel included. They like to feel included.

They like to feel accepted. And you can see this idea of the sisterhood of feminism. It's just this sort of faux family that they've created to make up for the family that they've just unlaunched themselves from through the ideology. So I think there's a lot to be said for women feeling supported.

So I don't think the hard talk is necessarily going to go well. I think that what, what I've seen with women is that when you give them a new way to think about things and healthy ordered, you know, you invite them to see things differently, that they will respond, you know, remarkably because of the fact that they're like, Oh, I get it now. Like that, you, I can't unsee it now. Like you just suggested so I don't know that you know the the drill sergeant that's right it's gonna work. I think it's just got to be sort of a different yeah I like that it's kind of like what your book does it you're almost saying like ladies like it doesn't have to be this way here's how it became this way it could be different.

Yeah doesn't this different sound like a good thing to aim at. Yeah no I think I think that, I think that's right. How do we, how do we make our way out of this then? Like, how do we? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's. And if, if you agree with me that women, just like men, right, we suffer in particular unique ways, right? Like the objectification of the woman's body through something extreme, like sex trafficking or something, right? Like the objectification of the woman's body through something extreme like sex trafficking or something. Right. Okay. So it feels like, well, there should be something. It feels like we should be doing something in particular to help women. Yeah.

Do we not call that feminism then? What do we call it? No, we don't call it feminism. So what do we do? No, I think, I mean, well, that's the thing, I haven't come up with a word yet. Someone actually just suggested a few weeks ago, like, you need to come up with that word. I was like, well, I've been working on it, it hasn't come to me yet. But no, I mean, I don't think it's, maybe that's part of the problem is we're so busy

thinking about people as individuals instead of really recognizing the importance of the family. I mean, what I would back up and say though, is we first have to recognize just how bad it is and how deeply this indoctrination has affected us. And, you know, if you look at, I've tried to give people a sense of scale when you look at the abortion numbers.

We have, the Guttmacher Institute says there was something like 74 million abortions last year. Well Well 64 million people died from everything else combined in the world So we have like roughly somewhere between five and ten million more abortions in the world each year Then people died everything else combined These are astounding staggering numbers, especially if you compare them to like casualties from Hitler from Stalin. I mean, there's just dwarfs Everything and I think it's gonna I think it'll be a long time before people really realize how deadly The ideology was because we're so wrapped up in it. We're so used to it We're sorry, you know, we've we've come to see abortion as a requirement so the women can become like men that that whole goal

a requirement so that women can become like men, that whole goal. So I think it's just an inversion of that. How do we step back from it and stop, you know, it's basic things like stop making the patriarchy bad, stop saying the future is female, stop thinking that women have to be like men, stop feeling like all women have to be believed, all these kinds of things that are in the ether right now, if we just suggest that we stop doing them in our families, that's when you see real change. And I don't necessarily have a lot of hope that it will change without massive international conflict

and who knows how God will bring things about. But I think that we see these pockets of families that are trying to live real family life of husbands and wives, trying to live that vocation in that complimentary, beautiful way, and really build something. I think those are important things to do instead of just this constant. Tearing and trying that we've been living with and focusing on that idea of.

Getting back to the family and that's really where strength is is when we're ordered in that way instead of as individuals. If you like my analogy before about what porn is done to men it feels like in a way feminism is done to women and. analogy before about what porn has done to men it feels like in a way feminism has done to women and I know as a man who met a beautiful woman got married to her and then you start to realize how deep the lies went. You didn't know that before because you weren't in that sort of territory and now that you are you go oh there's a lot to unlearn here you know and there's a lot to unlearn here, you know, and there's a lot to relearn. Is this a journey that you personally have made, either through becoming a committed Catholic or through this research?

We're like, okay, like I need to unlearn things that seem second nature to me in my relationship to my husband or children. Yeah. Well, several things. The first thing was really just that, you know, I became obviously Catholic, but that doesn't mean I didn't still have wounds from all of this. And I had this funny experience

when I was working in Washington, DC. I was in a think tank. I was getting a PhD at Catholic University. I was sort of doing all these things that would look great on a resume. And I had this series of boyfriends that they all, we broke up and they married a kindergarten teacher. And I just thought, like,

what do the kindergarten teachers have? You know, like what's missing? A doctoral student. Exactly, I'm very smart. You know, yeah, what have they got? And I start, you know, at one point I heard my boss talking to another man whom I respected a lot, and he said something about how sweet this woman was.

And I thought, I don't even know what that means. What does he mean by that? I always just thought of his sort of derogatory term. Like she was sweet. Like naive or sheepish. Yeah, exactly. And so I just started to really think it like sweet and kindergarten teacher, like sort of just started, I started thinking about. Like what does that mean? And obviously praying about it and just feeling like I needed to be open to this

this idea for all kinds of reasons and so I started paying attention like how I treated people and how I spoke to people and how I dressed and you know and And it's interesting because if you start looking at like poetry and music like there's nothing in there about the naggy woman in a pantsuit. That's not poetry. That just doesn't, it's not what men are writing about, what they love about women. It is kindness and sweetness and compassion and thoughtfulness and selflessness.

And so anyway, I was thinking about this and really kind of focused on just different aspects of my life for a while. And then actually one summer day, I was walking through the Metro at DC and this man came up to me and said, are you a kindergarten teacher? No way.

He did. And why did he ask that? I don't know. Because you were sweet obviously. I'm sure it was because I was so sweet. Well, I had also been sort of focused on changing the way that I dressed and all of that. So I think I had just sort of shifted myself

in such a way that I didn't have that sort of harsh like boss girl temperament or aura anymore, parents, I don't know what the right word is. But something had fundamentally changed and I was kinder and nicer. And I think this is one of the things that motherhood definitely has done, because you learn very quickly that if you're going to nag either your husband or your children,

it's going to take like seven times longer to do something, to get them to do something than if you ask. You will be listened to, yeah. Right. And if you ask nicely or kindly or in a clever or funny way, it's those very practical things that I think women need to learn again. We need to sort of flush out the negative. But yeah, no, I have a lot of practical trial and error for sure in terms of just seeing how do you love people in a way that they need to be loved. And a lot of that has to do with figuring out the barriers that we

sort of bring to a relationship because of all this indoctrination. Now we've kind of circled around this, so the answer might seem obvious to people now, but I'll ask it anyway. How did feminism lead to not knowing what a woman is? So yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it goes back to Simone de Beauvoir and her idea of reinventing ourselves. And so if you can reinvent yourself, then you can make yourself into anything on the one hand. But also, if you are trying to be like a man, then you fundamentally are detaching yourself from your feminine attributes and those things that sort of are,

one might say, have previously sort of been inborn and inculcated, you know, they've been nurtured in women. And so when you get rid of, you know, you tear all of that out of a woman, then of course, and you take out motherhood, then what's left, you know, that's why, this is why we don't know what a woman is, because we haven't been able to actually talk about motherhood. We haven't been able to talk about ourselves in relationship to our husbands and children. All those things have been stripped from us. So I think that's where we're really at

and just sort of left grasping it, trying to explain something that we've torn out on a cultural level. What a watershed moment, Matt Walsh's documentary. Oh my goodness. It was amazing. I mean, that is, it is really amazing. Yeah, that one-

People are gonna be talking about that for generations. Socratic question. I mean, that's the exciting thing, because I think, especially given that he's a man asking that question, because up until that question from him, men, I think, felt like they couldn't do anything. They couldn't contribute anything. They couldn't contribute anything.

They couldn't talk about this issue. And I think that just shows the power of questions. In fact, in one of my books, I talk about how many questions Jesus asks. I think in the Gospel of Matthew, it's almost every chapter. And not just questions that he asked, but almost all of his answers aren't answering the

question that was asked of him. He sounds like he's responding to something else often, you know. Yeah. And I think that that's an incredible way in which men can also communicate with their wives. I mean, just asking questions. And it doesn't always mean that they'll get an answer that they like. Women don't always know what they think until the question is asked. And then they realize like, Oh wait, I guess I never really thought about that. Or, yeah, I mean, it's very human for us to be asked a question and then maybe go back to it and think, well, maybe I didn't answer that the way that I should, or I think about this differently. So anyway, I think that's an important tool for us to keep in mind when we're, we are dealing with this issue as well.

Maybe it'd be important too, to talk about the gentleness that husbands and wives should show each other as we outgrow these lies. We kind of gradually outgrow them and we're trying to learn how to be the best man, the best woman. Yeah. Well, and I think that's the beauty of the vulnerability that comes with childbirth, being pregnant and having a child and then postpartum. All of that requires an incredible amount

of tenderness on all kinds of levels, both obviously from the husband, but then from the mother when she's dealing with her baby and just realizing what an important piece that is to human nature and the family unit and all of that. So yeah, I think gentleness is important. Tenderness. I think humor is also incredibly important, just sort of diffusing situations that feel like, you know, intensity or tenseness can arise. I think humor can go a long way to. I'm going to tell the story. I don't know. You thinking about it?

I won't say the names. It's got nothing to do with us. Don't worry We have dear friends They're both lovely. They were like a model really of what the beautiful Christian marriage should look like But when they'll get into these heated Conversations is heated arguments the man I Feel they probably shouldn't even say this You can edit that if it's too bad. I think I know what's coming. The man will pull down the back part of his pants

while they're in the heated part of the conversation and at some point turn around and bare his big fat hairy ugly ass and she'll just burst out laughing. That would do it. That would definitely do it. Please never do that again. Oh my goodness, that is really funny.

But yeah. Now it's obvious where people can get your book. I suppose there's this little shop online called Amazon, but the end of woman, how smashing the patriarchy has destroyed us. Where can people get it? They can get it at Amazon. They can get it at Regnery Publishing.

And they should probably get a few copies, I would say. Several. Several. It's a good gift for Christmas and for all the indoctrinated women in your life. Give it to the women in your life and just say you look like you need this. You might need this. I love it. No, I think that's been the fun thing. Men really like this book too, I think. I mean, hopefully you're not just pretending

to like it, but yeah, I've gotten a lot of great feedback from men just feeling like this is helpful. But yeah, Theology of Home, if people want a signed copy, then get one at theologyofhome.com as well. All right. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive21.com slash Matt. You go there right now. Or if you text STRIVE to 66866, we'll send you the link. It's 100% free and it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography. Usually men know that porn is wrong, they don't need me or you to convince them that it's wrong. What they need is a battle plan to get out and so I've distilled all that I've learned over the last 15 or so years

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Slash Matt or as I say text text strive to six to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. All right, so we've got some questions from our local supporters. Please feel free to keep them pithy if you want, since we have 48 questions and we'll see how much we can get through. Are you kidding? Seriously? Yeah. All right.

Is it a problem? No. That's great. I'm so excited. I'm glad that I just had a glass of wine. Let's do this. What were the original goals of the feminist movement and have they been achieved or eclipsed? Have any legitimate grievances that helped spawn feminism been addressed? Or is it simply a self perpetuating movement? Now, what a great question from Nate W.

I think we're going to cover that. Next question from Deborah. Why do feminists allow themselves to get their energy from anger at and hatred of men instead of focusing on how to make the lives of women better? How did job equality become girls rule boys drool t-shirts and belittling of men? Now, I know we've addressed all of this. All these questions are things we've probably addressed, but feel free if you want to take another swipe at any of them. What was the first part again?

Yeah, how come it seems that feminists get their energy from hatred rather than making women's lives better? Because that's an incredible engine and because it's fed over and over and over all day long. And I think the women's wages just ties into it completely. I mean, this actually you can see the women's wages question feels like it goes back to just the original Marxism of women are oppressed and this is class warfare. And anyway, so yeah, it's this question that keeps coming up that fuels that anger, even though we know through social sciences that it actually

doesn't really work out that way if you start comparing oranges to apples. So anyway, yeah, I think it's just effective and that's why women, you know, it's effective to stir women up and make them angry and they just keep running with it. Cable Cunningham says, how has feminism altered the way in which men and women select partners? Yeah, I think it's altered. Wow. There's a lot there, but in many respects, because it's all becomes about pleasure, really, and convenience and fun and, you know, a lifestyle instead of self-realization. Yeah, all of that. I think that changes a lot about how we look at a future partner and a future life together with somebody. I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday. It was Brian Holdsworth. I said how,

you know, like before in Steubenville, it's a beautiful place because you have these families who are just so joyful and they don't sit around with their families watching sitcoms at night, though I would suspect 20 years ago, I couldn't have imagined not wanting to do that. But here we have parties and men drink beer together and women encourage each other and kids climb trees and hit each other affectionately or not with sticks, you know? But the point is it's like it's sometimes it's hard to imagine another way things could be. And same thing with this beautiful town. I mean, all of my friends' wives are just beautiful women. Like they're just, you know, they're all,

they're wretched like I'm wretched and like we're all wretched. I mean, they all have their issues, but they're just beautiful, soft, funny, intelligent, who love being moms and it's just, it's great. Well, and I think that's a key of modeling and being in a rich culture where people can sort of pick that up, that it can be like that, you know, people don't see that.

So it's a matter of reimagining. But maybe if you're in some kind of liberal university somewhere, you couldn't possibly imagine women being joyful with their children or wanting to stay home and wanting to like cook for their husband and seeing this as a delightful thing. You have bonfires and bourbon and all those kinds of great things. Yeah. Yes. No, you've never seen it. You don't know it exists.

Luke says, how much of the role of a woman in worship and all those kinds of great things. Yeah. Yes. No, you've never seen it. You don't know what this is. Luke says, how much of the role of a woman in worship and the family is a product of the culture and the time period? I don't really understand that question. Is he talking about women within the context of a household? I mean, I would- Well, if he's asking about worship,

I think that, you know, I mean, we've got this big discussion going on about women being deacons and that kind of thing, that, that sort of role. But I'm not sure. I don't, I'm not sure it's clear. An encouragement to men who are watching is to just, I mean, if this is in fact what they were asking is to take the lead in your family and to lead your family in prayer, you know? Yeah.

I'm sure your wife would be grateful. It goes a long way. And, you know, I will say actually to the previous question, sorry, I just remembered this. When I was a graduate student, I kind of got adopted by this family that was this huge sprawling family, many of whom are connected,

most of whom went here to Franciscan. And it was really amazing because I actually saw what family life was like. I actually met teenage boys and I was like, I'm not afraid of having teenage boys now. Because you know, I just always had this horrible impression of what teenagers was like. I actually met teenage boys and I was like, I'm not afraid of having teenage boys now. Because, you know, I just always had this horrible impression of what teenagers were like, and especially boys. And so to actually see a family dynamic is, you know, goes so far and reshaping your impression of what family life can be like. I'm kind of blessed. I mean, all of our parents just like ourselves have issues and sins and right whatever

But I'm kind of really blessed like I love my mom and dad and they they kind of modeled it quite well for me You know, my dad was just he always spoke well of my mom. No, that's the other thing Yeah, Chris system says he says whenever you speak about her to your children or your friends You always speak well of her. Yeah, he's always just like yeah just randomly he would say, she's a bloody good woman, your mother. I'm like, she's fine, I guess, whatever. That's awesome. Yeah. And same thing with my mom.

And my father did the same thing. If I ever criticized my dad, my mom would not allow it. Yeah, no, I think that's an important thing that sort of adoration and appreciation for the other goes a long way. Makes you sort of rise to the occasion instead of like get into that. It's also fun to be on a team against our children sometimes too.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You'll understand in three years or four years. Yeah. It's no pressure. It's like no it's us like sometimes it's like we love our children but they're eating us alive. We got this. Like we need a tag team. We need to get out like we need to we need to win this battle. A fun battle. Benjamin Slattery says, how do I talk about it with my friend or relative whose identity whose identity is to be a feminist because they define it as men and women being equal while they don't know or ignore the kind of demonic history? All right. So I guess how do you just give them my book and just say, read this

and give them my book and say, what do you think about this book? Ask the question instead of imposing. Did you come up with the title and subtitle? You know, I came up with a subtitle first. It's really good how smashing the patriarchy has destroyed us. That was the first part. And so then it was like working backwards. We had to figure out the title.

But yeah, William says, is there a connection between feminism and the Protestant rejection of authority? It seems like a good chunk of the Protestant arguments against the church's authority are very similar to those used by feminist egalitarians to explain why they shouldn't have to submit to their husbands or traditional biblical roles. Yeah, I think there is. I mean, it goes back to that what we were talking about about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and that idea of the spiritual being, you know, the woman no longer needing a mediator because she's got her table that makes noises. So yeah, I mean, obviously not

everybody sees things that way and is using seances for information. But yeah, I think there's this, this breakdown of authority when you, when you get rid of the church's authority, then it's going to have a ripple effect in the whole hierarchy. I'm really grateful for this next question from our local supporter, Carly Blue. It's helpful. She says, okay, I certainly wouldn't want to be living in Afghanistan under Taliban views of women's rights or in many Muslim countries.

Does that make me a feminist? Some women don't marry or have children for various reasons. Does that make them feminists? So I appreciate the... I appreciate where she's coming from. Yeah, no, I don't think that makes you a feminist. I think feminism has some pretty strict confines and, you know, wanting to promote women. There's nothing wrong with that.

We just need a different word. Like, maybe you can help me come up with a new word. Thursday, you have good ideas. How about like Christian womanhood? Like, why do we even have to have a new word? How about we just... I mean, I think even just saying Catholic works because of course it covers so much the bases

given that Catholicism is the best thing for women. There's too many words. We don't need another word, I don't think. What about just feminine genius? No, I think it's just, I think feminine genius has been overused and it's kind of, it can be kind of patronizing. I just need to be understood. No, you don't know. I just have to be a genius.

Yeah. Yeah. There's less feminine, more genius. Right. Right. Nickleff says, Oh, what critique might you offer to Catholic feminists who try to square Catholic thought with feminist language or to Catholic to use or define the word patriarchy in a negative light? Yeah, I think we definitely covered this. I mean, I think it comes back to definition what you mean by something and just things that are incompatible.

Like I'm a Catholic Muslim or I'm a Catholic Marxist or whatever. Like these just things, they're oil and water and it's just not effective in trying to blend them. When somebody says- Unless you're being very specific. Somebody asks here about the different waves of feminism rather than getting you to enumerate them. How might you respond to somebody who says, sure, there's some crazy stuff going on right

now, but no need to impugn feminism wholesale. Read the book. Okay. You really took me seriously when I'm like, just quick answers and find the book, chapter one. That's right, no, the whole thing. And I will say, you know, there's a whole, there was one book that I relied on significantly.

It was, it's called Satanic Feminism. I mean, it's totally under the radar book. I had heard about it after I wrote my book, The Anti-Mary. And it's a dissertation of a Swedish scholar. It was published by Oxford University Press. So kind of impeachable scholarship, the whole first chapter. Like if you're not academic,

you would never get through this book because the whole first chapter is about the methodology and just riddled with footnotes. But so when I started reading this book, I thought this man was sort of sympathetic to my position. Like he was critiquing the amount of Satanism involved in feminism. And slowly as I'm reading footnotes

and like the dedication of the book, like I finally realized like, no, this guy's actually for satanic feminism. Like this is something that he's encouraging. And anyway, that was an interesting thing to discover just how deep the research is and how much is actually out there and available connecting feminism and and Satanism throughout that especially the first wave. of a positive effect feminism has had on culture that can, in any substantial way, offset the incalculable damage the parasitic philosophy has had on the human family? Well, I mean, I think it's like anything you start to appreciate what's real and authentic when it's destroyed and damaged. You know, people didn't really notice how important the family was when the family is healthy.

So maybe it's through that via negativa. Now that we've seen just how much womanhood has been destroyed, we can now start. Thank you feminism. I'm gonna go back and be monogamous. Exactly. What's interesting is these red-pilled men who are talking about marriage being for whatever,

out of date. It feels like male feminists. It feels like a similar problem. It feels like men wanting to throw off the shackles of responsibility. Wouldn't I wonder what? Well, it feels hard because if you're marrying a feminist woman, I mean, those are shackles that most of us don't wanna live under, is an angry, bitter, narcissistic woman. So you can imagine how that feels sort of healthy. So if this is what marriage is, then men saying, no, thank you.

Yeah, and that's by and large, I think, what people think of marriage because that's what has been modeled to us. So getting rid of that probably feels like something healthy, even though it's totally disordered in its own way. And we're also seeing this, you know, women need men like a fish needs a bicycle in the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs coming out.

Sorry, it's like a, isn't it Hispanic woman with a bunch? All right, so this is coming out, and I think she said, like, this is not gonna be one of those movies where the man Saves the woman right right This bleeds over into everything like men are kind of nervous to offer a woman who clearly cannot lift that bag Over her head to the baggage rack help in case she'll snap at them, you know Yeah

Yeah, but it seems to me that if you're not, if you, if you're, if you're really quite offended by men fighting for you, then you're, you're, you're, you're, there's a vacuum there. And the only men that will be fighting are those you're not going to want to fight, you know, these men who are going to be maybe wanting to exploit you, wanting to use you. Yeah. It seems to me that if a street is safe, it's because of men. If a city is built, yeah, it's built first. And if a city is safe, if a country is safe, it's because of men. If a city is safe. Our street is built. Yeah, it's built first. And if a city is safe, if a country is safe, it's because of its men. But what do you make of this new kind of movement

within fairy tales where we're not going to need a man to save us? Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of like what I said about the Barbie movie. I think it's just new ways to indoctrinate us and make us think that this is, you know, the patriarchy is so bad and disordered and ruining our lives.

Um, so yeah, I think these are new grasps at getting a younger generation to buy into it. Paul the hood says, why do men support feminism? I was in New York City. I saw a dude wearing a shirt saying the future is female. Right. I mean, like a Prince Harry, he's a big feminist. Um, bless Harry.

Yeah, that's an example of a, I mean, I think that's what big feminist. God bless Harry. Yeah, that's an example of a. I mean, I think that's what marriage is. No, thank you. Yeah. I think it's because. They're trying to love the women, they love the best that they can, but it's just also broken that. They're trying to be supportive, but they don't know how to really be supportive.

Yeah. How do I describe my disdain for how women's health is practically unknown without sounding like a feminist? For example, I went into the ER unable to keep food or water down for four days and they told me you're pregnant and sent me home with a popsicle. Turns out I was dying. This is not an uncommon experience. Thoughts from Emily. Thank you, Emily.

Yeah, I think this is really interesting. I mean, the, uh, I've been fascinated because I had morning sickness with all of my children and various degrees. And it's like, why? Seriously, we can't figure out how to deal with morning sickness. Like this has been going on forever. We can't, we haven't figured out how to deal with it.. Like this has been going on forever. We haven't figured out how to deal with it. And I know at one point there were some pills that I bought and they were like $60 a bottle.

And I had them for my fourth pregnancy and I went to get them for my fifth pregnancy. And they were like, no, actually it was just vitamin B. They're not selling them anymore. Just go get one of the vitamin Bs. Cause that was one was in the, but yeah, I think there really is, that's an interesting one. Middle smearage is another one that a lot of women suffer

from and that's never, there's no good explanations about why or how, why that happens every month a woman has pain when she ovulates. That's never been explained well or there's no real treatment for it. So I don't know. I think it's really interesting that these are neglected. What does Mary, asks Mia Tiwana, what does Mary reveal about womanhood and the dignity

of woman? Since Mary plays a big role in salvation, does Mary bring anything new to the table when it comes to the theological understanding of women in the New Covenant? I think that's a huge question. I answered that quite a bit in my book, The Anti-Married Exposed, because the first half of the book is just all this awful stuff about these anti-married women, and the second half of the book I actually go into kind of these three attributes of our lady, in which she kind of embodies regular women. And it was really interesting because I wrote this book, sent it to the publisher, and then I think a week later, I went on a trip with my daughters, and we watched the Hallmark Channel.

I'd never watched the Hallmark Channel. But I just cracked up because the three things I list in the book are we see this through Mary. Women want to do something that's good. That's good within God's will, of course. We want to be beautiful while doing it. What's the third thing? I can't think of it offhand.

But I watched the Hallmark Channel and that's the recipe for the Hallmark Channel. It's sort of this, and we want to be in rich relationships with people. And this is the recipe. It's always of this, and we want to be in rich relationships with people. And this is the recipe. It's always a woman, she goes back to her hometown, she meets her high school boyfriend while she's also rescuing the library

or some kind of thing like that. And she's looking beautiful while she's doing it. Women want to be beautiful, I guess that's the third thing. Good, beautiful, and rich relationships. So in any event, I think it you know, it was funny for me. It was sort of humiliating in a certain way, like, oh my goodness, I just described the model of the Hallmark Channel.

But reflexively, it was also easy to see, like, why is Hallmark, you know, until I went, why were they so popular? And it was because they were feeding all these desires of the woman's soul. And so anyway, I think there's something important about recognizing those aspects, because so often, I think there's something important about recognizing those aspects because so often we feel like Mary's just untouchable and she's so

removed from us and she's unrelatable or she's just a statue. And so I think that there was something important realizing just how much of a woman she really is. Well, speaking about how propaganda bypasses the intellect and hits the emotions and may end up leading us to believe all sorts of irrational things. Entertainment, chick flicks, can say a lot about the desires of a woman's heart. And I've noticed this in chick flicks, alright? There's always a woman and there's something wrong with her. She's either nerdy or just socially inept or not that attractive or something.

Right. And a man comes along and he sees something in her that calls that beauty forth. And there's always a beautiful woman who he forgoes. There's always an actually cheerleader, beautiful kind of woman that he's not that interested in. Right. He perceives the beauty beneath whatever the externals. Don't you think? Like, can you think of a chick flick that doesn't involve that?

We have to define chick flick. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, what was that? What was that movie with Heath Ledger? Ten Things I Hate About You? Like, that would be an example, right? You've got this. You know, yeah.

Is that one? Oh, yeah, that one's fun. Yeah, like what I mean, you can talk about that model. But like, there's a reason you love it. There's a reason we love the things that. Yeah. This congeniality. Is that one? Oh yeah, that one's fun. Yeah, like what? I mean, in that. You can talk about that in your interview, but like there's a reason you love it. There's a reason we love the things that we love. And it's interesting that decades of propaganda

can't eradicate that from us. Yeah. Like a man wants to fight for a woman and save her and keep her. Yeah. He wants to do that. Right, right. And you would think that that would be so tired

that women wouldn't want that kind of film, you know, like the Barbie film, but instead they're just keep gobbling up the woman that has the man that's fighting for her. So yeah, it's a great point. Alyssa asks, what is your advice for couples who both need to work outside the home to support their family? Yeah, I mean, this is, it's just that balance. It's you've got to figure out how to make sure that your family is covered. There's a lot of things, you know, I think this is the challenge that my husband and I have very frequently is in terms of, you know, do we hire a nanny?

Which also isn't a great option for us either. So it's a matter of is someone always home? How do we cover all the bases? How do we know that our children are always loved and listened to and connected to? And obviously when you have a lot of children, you can't do any of that perfectly ever. But yeah, I think it's just a matter of trying to figure out how do you balance that in a way that's still, there's a healthy family culture and that you're the locus of the family instead of it being outsourced

to other people. I already mentioned, you know, that obviously these structures of sin make it such that it can be unreasonable to tell someone you shouldn't be working outside the home. Okay, so I want to acknowledge that. But I'm also curious as to why you might not say, all right, well, like work towards it. Yeah, oh no, absolutely. Maybe you're being selfish. I'm not saying this woman is selfish, you understand?

But I mean, why isn't that ever part of the answer where it's like move to a poorer town, buy a poorer house, sell one of your cars? Yeah, again, I'm not attacking this person individually, right? But I'm just saying I feel like

once the caveats have been said, it feels like at that point we could say something a little more direct. Well, and I think that's even that the hard part about, you know, spending so much money on education and getting into all kinds of debt.

Like that's just going to, you know that there's going to be fallout from that if you are carrying around an incredible amount of debt and all of those things. So I think you're really challenging, but yeah, I think that ought to be a goal. I mean, I know that's one of my goals has been like, how do we get rid of my husband's day job? And we would love for it to happen tomorrow and it hasn't happened yet, but you

know we're still striving towards that specific goal so that we can spend a lot more time together as a family. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the other trap I guess I could see people falling into as they respond to the feminist movement. It's like well the woman should be at home with the kids. It's like well okay sure but should the man be like on a plane every week flying around the entire country? Or maybe he should be home too.

Right. Well, and in my husband's case, he's got a long commute. So, you know, three hours. No, but I mean, I think that that's an important piece is like, how do we get rid of this three hour commute that you have every day such that then if you had a local job, you know, so yeah, I think there's all kinds of pieces that have to be worked out on an individual level. Sam Garrett says, How do we protect our wives and daughters from the world's lies about gender, vocation and sexuality? When it is the very air we breathe in this society, I want to raise God fearing faithful children. But it's a daunting task between society's powerful lies and my own wicked heart. Quick answer.

Take your kids out of school, homeschool them, move into a Catholic bubble, set up shop there. Catholic bubbles are good. It's what we used to call culture. You know, it's not this insular cultish thing. It's just living in lives in common, right? Do that. And then like break your TV and read beautiful things to your children. And then, you know, I'm not saying become a Luddite, you know,

play a video game with your kids, watch a movie with your kids. It's got to be this like rare occasion thing and then take them to church like we do. And my daughters hold everybody's baby in the church continually. There's a start. What do you think? I think you said it all. But I don't think that I don't think we can be content with that, finding a bubble, because a lot of us can't go to the bubble. I think we also have to start taking, as Catholics especially, we have to start taking culture

very seriously beyond our local family efforts. I think that, you know, things like great TV and good magazines and, you know, all of that could just be huge. And we haven't done that yet. Let me nuance what I just said there because by bubble I don't mean seclude yourself off from the rest of the world and they can go to hell. But what I mean is to evangelize to do beautiful things like the work you're doing and I hope that I'm doing and then but then to retreat to a place where men and women encourage each other to love Jesus Christ you know. Right there's order and rest and restoration. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk about the tension between speaking out against feminism and being a woman with a public platform? Like, what has this been like for you? You said you had men

be like, thank you. But I mean, do you get a lot of negative feedback from? Oh, yeah. I mean, over the years, I mean mean, gratefully I have a very, by now, I have a very thick skin. Also years ago, my husband said, you are not allowed to read comments. And so that I've submitted to that. And it's been great and super healthy because you can get so caught up in that, you know. I mean, I know that there are times

like I'll get personal emails. People reach me through an email and I will just stew on something like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And here's what, you know, like, but you can't respond to that like that. And that just sort of chews you up. So yeah, I think it's, it can be incredibly frustrating. It also can be incredibly satisfying. You know, I've heard there are people who've read my books and have left the lesbian lifestyle. Another woman stopped working at Planned Parenthood because she realized where all the, she realized where all the drama was happening

and she's now getting a master's degree in theology. I mean, it's just incredible stories. And I think those are the kinds of things that obviously keep you going. But here's a good question from Teddles. I hope that's his name, because it's fabulous. How will we know when feminism as a movement has completed its goal, run its course?

We're all in hell, I suppose we'd know that. No, but that is like, what's the goal? What is it you'd like exactly? Like, I know you keep saying you're a feminist. They wanna get rid of gender entirely. So we're at that place where it's, I mean, this is why we're seeing sort of in-fighting and the ideology right now

between the JK Rowlings who are feminists versus those, the feminists who between the JK Rowlings who are feminists versus those feminists who want the trans movement. So that's the, I think that's the tipping point. This is really kind of like the critical moment of like, which way are we going to go? What are we going to keep embracing? And will we finally say like, this is insane and stop or will we just say, okay, you can be a woman if you want to.

And if Simone de Beauvoir, BBB Boushka, how do you say her name? Simone de Beauvoir. That's way better. If she's right, that we can kind of, what, reinvent ourselves, then why does it have to stop at gender? Why not? I think we should be different races and species and objects. Why not objects? We're already seeing that.

Didn't you say there was a kitty litter box and all these, like, I just want to beat her father. Yeah. Okay. What's the best argument for and against the right for women to vote? One might be that no one should vote and we should live in a monarchy.

What else? Yeah, I mean, this is such a hard thing. I don't feel like I've done a really great amount of research on this. I think that there's still a lot to be said. In a certain respect, we don't hear enough about why women shouldn't be allowed to vote. I mean, it feels like it's sort of this foreground conclusion

that's always a good thing. And I recently actually went to a, my daughter and I toured this gorgeous home in Richmond, and the woman, the docent was telling us, you know, the woman of the house was very against the suffrage movement and it was interesting to hear like, well, why? Why was this very powerful woman against it?

And you know, sometimes it's just that realization like, because families should vote as families instead of as individuals. And when you see the trajectory of like, how do we promote individualism and this ideal woman detached from men and self-reliance, then maybe it's not that good of a thing. So anyway, I have not.

Yes, if we cut the votes in half and then the head of the household votes on behalf of the family, it seems like a good idea. And that's what used to happen. So in any event, I don't know, I haven't researched it enough to feel like I have a good answer about it one way or another. I love that answer.

I think that we can at least look at that and be critical of it. Yeah. But I know I love the humility of the answer, right? Because we can know some things without having to claim that we know everything. And you've shown us a lot in this book, but just to show us the kind of evil roots of feminism and it's a negative effect on the culture isn't to say that I now know how to put everything back together precisely nor do you need to really. It's not my job. Yeah, that can be somebody else's. Well, God bless you. You're lovely and I've so enjoyed your book and I got to quote my wife here as we wrap

up because I woke up the other night. It's like three in the morning. My wife and I were reading the book and I said, Oh yeah, I'll do that after the stream, I think. And I said, I've just got this line about feminism that came to me and mine was quite clunky, but she had this lovely line and we'll end on this and maybe you can give us your thoughts. She just said, and half asleep, mind you,

femininity is the antidote to feminism. Please don't say that sounds like bull crap because I've,rap because I think of that. No, I think it really is. And that's being more like a woman and less like a man is perfect. Thanks so much. Thank you.