Hi, I am interested in feminism (good equal-rights feminism, not abortion/contraceptive/etc. feminism) and I want to read a book to become more informed on the historical progress and cultural implications feminism in all of its forms has had on society.
HOWEVER, I really want to read this coming from a good, solid Catholic author. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks!
I was there. At its onset. I am now 66. I can tell you what “feminism” has done for women in the world (especially in the United States).
It has removed our protection as men have been conditioned and taught and is their natural inclination. As a young woman, men always opened a door for me. Now they literally slam it in my face. Coincidence? No.
It has exposed women to all the dangers of society while removing a valuable interpretation of femininity and motherhood. Women now go to war. Women die leaving children without a mother. Yes, it’s horrible for a child to be left without a father, but this is just unacceptable.
It has convinced women that they have the “right” to control their own bodies; this means, kill their unborn children. What this has done, far from free women from “encumbrance” (nothing is uglier to me than the phrase “unencumbered” which tells men you have no children, a/k/a baggage), is to subject them to an insidious mental and emotional torment that follows them for their entire lives. Ask most women who have had an abortion (thank God I am not among those numbers). It has also killed women (the cause of death, occurring days after an abortion, is rarely stated as being the result of abortion); it has permanently rendered many women infertile or unable to carry any child to term. It is a radical political ploy intended solely to release men from all responsibility for their sexual acts and marketed, quite successfully, to a generation of women who wanted EQUALITY IN PAY and to be seen as individuals, not extensions of their fathers or husbands.
Feminism is a lie. It is a devious ploy by the enemy that has spectacularly succeeded. It has left us, women, without defense; it has not increased (substantially) our ability to earn more money or rise to positions of “power” (as if either of these things were ultimately the most important). Feminism was driven, largely (from this vantage point) by women who were not heterosexual and who had an agenda. The first terminology that comes to mind when thinking of feminism is a quote from a fictional novel: the “zipless f***” (excuse my masked profanity, it is here for a purpose).
Women are biologically intended/designed to attach themselves emotionally to any man with whom they have sexual relations. This is a proven biological effect and the result of hormones. Therefor, a great many women, thinking they were “free” of old fashioned constraints on their sexuality, got into a huge mess in their lives by becoming so attached to all the wrong men, for all the wrong reasons. Ergo a huge increase in divorce and in single parenthood.
It came to a point, during my lifetime (in my young 40s when my child was a toddler) that women (they called themselves “Single Mothers by Choice” and most likely the organization still exists) were being artificially inseminated because they could not find men who would make a commitment to marriage and a family, and they wanted children. I was a single parent (circumstances complicated) but always, every day, every year, my daughter’s father (my ex husband since he asked for a divorce) was a very important part of her life. Every child needs a father. The only reason to exclude a man from this responsibility is if he is ill, abusive, etc. and that is for the courts to decide.
You don’t need to read a book, little sister, I’ve lived through the bra burnings; I’ve been on the picket lines; I was in the front row of the National Organization for Women in a public relations position for a while. It harmed us. It harmed our species. It harmed our society. No, I don’t believe that a woman is the “charge” and “property” of her husband nor that her effort in the work place is less valuable, but that is ultimately not the goal of feminism in its infancy, although it was the lie we were told. And because we were young, and knew no better, we believed it.
No man is your master other than the Lord Jesus Christ. But men and women, although very, very different, are equal. Each sex plays an important role in the existence of the other and in the children relationships produce. One is not greater, or more powerful, or more important: we are equal, but different. And this is just as God intended.
