Tag Archives: Feminism

The Roots of Feminism

Anthropology, Bible, Fatherhood, marriage, Mary, Scripture, Theology of the Body, , ,

Whenever we want to understand the cause of human behavior, it is usually instructive to return to the “beginning.”  The divinely inspired words of Genesis 2 gives us a valuable glimpse of human psychology.  In this regard, the roots of modern day feminism are no different.  The reverberations from the Fall were felt not only in relation to God, but man and woman also experienced a rupture in their relationship with one another.  Rather than living in domestic bliss, man and woman are destined for conflict.  With the entrance of fig leaves, complementarity is threatened by competition as man rejects his role of protector and instead is met with the temptation to rule over woman (c.f. Gn 3:16).

Competition and Complementarity

It is important to add that while the Fall left man and woman with relational myopia, it did not doom their relationship.  It is strained, but not irreparably so.  The path to reconciliation, at least according to Our Lord, passes through “the beginning” (c.f. Mt 19:4).  Man and woman were made to live in harmony.  But this harmony was (and still is) contingent upon harmony with God.  In fact, it was meant to be a sign of it.    This helps us to grasp why we say they were cursed.  It was not because hell hath no fury like a God that has been scorned, but because God refuses to give up on mankind.  His cursing of man and woman and their relationship is meant to awaken within them an innate sense that reality is not quite what it seems.

The lie hidden within the serpent’s temptation was that God was withholding something from Adam and Eve.  Up to this point, man’s fundamental stance was one of receptivity.  They saw everything as a gift from the God Who desired nothing more than to father them.  But with satanic sophistry, the woman is tempted to change her stance to one of appropriation rather than receptivity.  Rather than receiving a gift, she is tempted to seize it.

This tension between receptivity and appropriation helps us to understand why it was woman who was tempted by the serpent.  Femininity, properly understand, was meant to be a sign of mankind’s receptivity of the gift.  In fact this receptivity is stamped into her body.  Eve, in seizing the apple, rejects not only God but her femininity.  By attacking the woman Satan is able to distort both man and woman’s signpost for their relationship to God.  Woman is now cursed to experience the consequences of the new paradigm.  She will become an object of appropriation as man no longer views her as a gift but instead as something to be seized and controlled.

With the threat of appropriation always looming over woman, she is keenly aware that something is fundamentally wrong.  She experiences desire for man, yet that desire is often met by a lust for domination.  This experience then also carries with it a temptation for her. The desire and the lust are precisely because of her femininity.  The temptation then is to reject her femininity.  Thus we find the genesis of modern feminism in Genesis.

Grasping Masculinity

This helps to explain why ersatz feminists, rather than embracing all those things associated with authentic femininity, attempt to grasp masculinity.  And because they are grasping they grasp a counterfeit version of it.  They set fake masculinity on a pedestal and then try to imitate it by taking a pill that enables them to indulge all their desire for man (even though the Pill actually robs them of that desire) and lord it over everyone they meet.  They come to loathe their own and other’s femininity and hate any man who portrays authentic masculinity, mostly because they cannot seize it on their own.

The curse may haunt the woman, but it does not have the final say.  The path out is by embracing her femininity.  Eve may have set the tone, but the New Eve gives the escape route.  Mary is the archetype of femininity.  She is totally receptive—“be it done to me according to Thy word” (Lk 1:38).  She is the archetype not just because she is the perfect wife and mother, but because she is the perfect disciple of her Son.   She is the model of receptivity, praising “the Almighty Who has done great things for me.”

The tug of the curse cannot be overcome by trying harder—that too is the appropriated masculinity revealing itself.  Instead the solution is to submit to Christ Who offers the grace to embrace her true femininity.  The true feminist is one who demands of men around them that they be authentically men.  She knows that masculinity is not something she can grasp but must come as a gift from a man who is able to give it.

Adam fell in not guarding Eve’s femininity.  The New Adam, because He “handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish empowers men to guard the femininity of woman” (Eph 5:25-27), restores man’s masculinity and empowers him to guard the femininity of woman.  Rather than seeing her as a threat to his own masculinity, he gifts himself to her.

Many of today’s feminists trace their ideological roots back to the 1960s.  If they were to dig further then they would find they extend back much further.  Failing to see this, they apply false solutions only exacerbating the problem.  Instead they should submit themselves and their femininity to Christ, the only One Who can fulfill their deepest desire.

The NFP Lifestyle

Bioethics, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of Life, , ,

In recent years there have been a number of sociological studies linking marital happiness/success with methods of birth regulation.   Most of them show positive differences between those couples who practice NFP and those who use other methods of birth control, although not always to the degree that NFP Catholics like to advertise.  This is mostly due to the fact that couples practicing NFP fall into two categories—those who do so with a contraceptive mentality and those who live an NFP lifestyle.  It is the latter group which would likely show a significantly higher marital satisfaction.

I called it a “lifestyle” because it is about so much more than just family planning.  NFP reinforces the one flesh union of marriage even when the couple is not engaged in the marital embrace.  At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I will mention that, unlike woman, man’s fertility is non-cyclical.  He is fertile all the time.  This means that the burden of self-mastery often falls upon him.  In fact one could say self-mastery is at the heart of being a man.  The man, as he finds stamped into his body, is made to make a gift of himself.  But to give oneself away, you must first own yourself, that is, have total self-mastery.  Your yes only means something when you are free to say no.  Without this requisite self-mastery comes the constant temptation to “lord it over the woman” (c.f. Gen 3:16).  When you do not have control over yourself, you will attempt to control other people, especially those that are close to you.

The Burden of Fertility

While man does not experience his fertility as a burden per se, the woman does.  This doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing, only that it carries with it “labor” even if that labor is joyfully and willfully endured.  She is the one who, ultimately, must bear the consequences of fertility.  Family planning and birth control often fall upon her.  As proof of this, despite all the nasty side effects, a woman is willing to take a birth control pill.  This is also the arena in which NFP can facilitate a true one flesh union by enabling the man to help carry the load of her fertility with her.

The most obvious time of her cycle is during menstruation.  The man experiences his constant fertility as a burden so as to be united bodily with his wife during a particularly painful period of time.  The burden of fertility that she is feeling can also be felt, albeit in a different way, in his body too.  He literally is practicing compassion, that is suffering with.  When borne with love and patience he is making a bodily gift of himself to his wife.

Most men already do this, although perhaps in not such a deliberate way.  But for those men who practice NFP and have experienced the “disappointment” of the arrival of an early period, this can enable them to see how the one flesh giving might continue.  Likewise, when for “just reasons” the couple is using NFP to avoid pregnancy the man puts aside the drive of his constant fertility so as to share in and through his body her fertility.  This is where real manhood, that is manhood founded upon self-mastery, is particularly felt because he feels an increase in the burden of his fertility because of the inviting presence of her pheromones signaling her fertility.  Even in abstaining from the marital embrace the couple is experiencing a type of one-flesh union when they join their wills together in postponing pregnancy.

NFP’s Effect on Family Life

An NFP lifestyle also makes for a happier home life in general in the relationship between the parents and children.  Schooled in self-mastery by NFP the parents are better able to love their children in a disinterested fashion.  As John Paul II, in a defense of Humanae Vitae once said:

“[parents that are contracepting] cannot sacrifice their egoism to the good of their spouse, will likewise lack generosity, patience, serenity and calm assurance in their relations with their children.  They will love their children to the degree to which their children bring them joy—that is selfishly and not for their own sakes; they will cajole them and teach them self-indulgence and self-love.  Instead of the peace given by self-mastery, unrest will reign in the family, because the state of tension created by a truncated sexual act surrounded by precautions, an act that is to be an unreserved gift of self, must in the long term be communicated to the children.  It seems that the increasing prevalence of anxiety and even certain neuroses results in large part from contraceptive practices.”

For the better part of the last half-century, the teaching Church has been (at best) silent promoting her teachings on birth control.  It is time that the rest of the Church step out into the void and preach the freedom that comes from ditching contraception.  The one flesh union within marriage is a daily lived experience.