Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E57: Is there GOOD Feminism? With Erika Bachiochi

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E57: Is there GOOD Feminism? With Erika Bachiochi · The Lila Rose Show

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There are some who say, well the whole feminism work was just to
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divide marriages to create a wedge between men and women, and
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your argument seems to be different from that though.
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Yeah, I know. That's right.
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There's these two competing strains of early feminists. 1 is
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this strain as pursuit of individuality.
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This other strain, this Wilster crafty and state understands
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liberty and rights and equality entirely differently.
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It views men and women as deeply interdependent.
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And that's a strain that was lost, but one that I think
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really has the capacity to be kind of reclaimed.
0:33
Hey guys, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
0:35
I hope everybody had a great week and I was just doing having
0:38
a great day wherever you are. Today on the podcast, we're
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going to be exploring more women's rights, feminism, and
0:46
really that dynamic between men and women in politics and
0:49
culture because we've talked about this on the podcast
0:52
recently a few different times, had some really fascinating
0:54
conversations. Recently.
0:56
We talked with Carrie Grass about her book, The End of
0:58
Woman, and her sort of view of feminism as being about occult,
1:02
the free love and radical competition and
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individualization from men. We're going to have on today the
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Scott Legal scholar and Catholic mom of seven.
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She's also an amazing writer, a prolific researcher of women's
1:15
rights and feminism to talk about her view of the history of
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the women's rights movement. Because the reality is many
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Christians today, you know, and non Christians today, we agree
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that well, things are chaotic with abortion and with obviously
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the sexual revolution and gender ideology that yes, men and women
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have shared equal dignity and shared standing before God in
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terms of their shared dignity and that they need to
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collaborate with each other. The family is the most important
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institution, but that we do share civil and human rights.
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And I think that is a pretty mainstream view among many, I
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would say conservatives, many Christians and non Christians.
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And so you don't necessarily have to identify as a feminist
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to have the view that yes, of course women have rights.
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They have the same rights as that men have.
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But where did this all go wrong? It went wrong when feminism went
2:10
wrong and the sexual revolution happened and we started
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competing with each other and we started to demand sexual license
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and, you know, killing preborn children, all of this.
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So the big. Question that I have today for
2:23
Erica and she wrote a book called the Rights of women
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reclaiming a lost Vision. And she talks about how the
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actually early women's rights folks, let's not even use the
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name feminist right now. We're very Christian.
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We're very, you could say, conservative.
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We're very for family values. They just wanted to ensure that
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they could protect themselves and their children if there was
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an abuse of marriage happening. They wanted to encourage men to
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virtue and not just be seen as sort of a plaything or just, you
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know. Put on a pedestal by society and
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not have responsibilities in society they wanted to be able
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to argue against slavery and argue for virtuous behavior in
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society and have a. Role in in working.
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Towards that, so things that most people today, you know,
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even people with a lot of conservative, you could call
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them values would completely agree with.
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So we're going to talk about. How did it go wrong?
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Where did it go right? It's a really fascinating
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conversation if you're into history and especially the
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history of. Thought.
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This is a conversation you're not going to want to miss with
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Erica Bacciachi. Before we get into it, I want to
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4:09
Excited to have Erica join on the podcast.
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Thanks, Lila. It's great to be with you.
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Awesome. Well, let's start with your
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background. Tell us a little bit about your
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professional background. Sure.
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So I have a master's in theology and a law degree, and I've spent
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the last, I guess, 20 years working at sort of the
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intersection of constitutional law, women's rights, and
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political theory, but certainly from within sort of a Catholic
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social teaching perspective. As a Catholic, I've edited a
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couple books before. My recent book 1 is called The
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Cost of Choice about sort of from encounter books many
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decades ago looking at the impact of abortion on women from
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a women's perspective. It's a collection with a great
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deal of wonderful women, Marianne Glendon, Elizabeth Fox
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Genovese, others. And then I wrote, collected a
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collection of essays called Women, Sex in the Church, a Case
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for Catholic Teaching where we sort of look at how pro woman
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Catholic teaching is, including teachings on abortion,
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contraception and all that. And then my most recent book is
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called The Rights of Women, Reclaiming a Lost Vision, and
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that's out from Notre Dame Press two years ago.
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Awesome. Well, you've done some
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incredible work and your last book you just referenced is
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fantastic and I think your work too has been groundbreaking and
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re understood, providing a new interpretation, I would say, of
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feminism and how we got here in terms of the relationships
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between men and women with the technological changes that were
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so dramatic. We discussed this on the podcast
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with Nancy Pearcy recently and really the emergence from the
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family farm and into the cities and into industrial world.
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Tell us a little bit about how you see.
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Let's just start. This is very broad space.
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How you see the last two centuries, not just in terms of
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political theory and political movements, but really deeply
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impacting the family and male, female relationships because of
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technological changes. Yeah, that's a great place to
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start because I think, you know, there are many of us now who are
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really coming to see that feminism is really comes out of
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early. Feminism especially comes out of
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technological shifts due to industrialization, liberalism,
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the rise of capitalism. And So what you saw for most of
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human history is men and women working together on farms and
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family shops, working with great collaboration, interdependence,
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really, there was no time to sort of dispute gender roles,
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anything like that, because subsistence just required sort
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of a deep sort of embodied existence.
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And one that was, you know, really the, the kind of ebbs and
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flows around family life and the needs of, of children.
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Certainly the work that women did was mainly in the home with
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children, you know, pregnant at the breast, things like that,
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under foot, but doing really important productive work in the
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family home, in the, in the homestead.
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And then with men tend to be outside with their, you know,
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with their boys doing work that required their greater strength,
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musculature and that and that sort of thing.
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And So what happens with the rise of industrialization and
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then liberalism. SO2 sort of separate things.
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One is, you know, technological and the other is really sort of
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theoretical, right? You have the the rise of of, you
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know, machines sort of taking the labor from the home and
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putting it into factories. And so, you know, there's great
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good that comes out of industrialization, but it also
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has really important impact on the family and how, you know,
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how the the subsistence that was interdependent in the agrarian,
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you know, homestead is shifted for when men leave the homestead
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to go out and earn wages. And so there's a way in which,
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you know, obviously through scripture, through
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understandings of of, I mean, from Aristotle onward, there's
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sort of an understanding that, you know, man is the head of the
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household, etcetera. But because of this
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interdependence, there's not really, you know, men are just
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as dependent upon women as women are upon men.
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And so there's not really any complaint about that kind of,
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say, you could say legal subordination of women, but as
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men leave the household and they start to collect wages, the
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family itself starts to become dependent on those wages.
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And so women become really, really dependent upon male
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earning. And so there's like a tilt,
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there's like a new deep asymmetry, economic asymmetry,
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you could say. So when you lived with a
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virtuous man, your husband was virtuous and he came home and he
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was tired from working out in the, you know, factories and you
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were there and you're tired from raising your children, then all
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is well, right? But when men were sort of called
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by, you know, alcohol and all the sort of temptations of of
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the cities, the growing cities and also the temptations of
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prostitution and all of that, I think partly because of how hard
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the labor was. There's a way in which vicious
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men made those kind of sexually asymmetries between men and
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women far, far worse. And so that's when you start to
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see the rise of women. The very first thing women do in
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the in the 19th century is ask for, to kind of to make demands
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for joint property ownership. They basically say, look, we're
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doing all this work in the home. And so we really ought to, just
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as you know, men and women, married men and women have today
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jointly own the home. It shouldn't just be the man's
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to own, but the woman is kind of his sort of servant in
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understanding of coverture, the common law status of of married
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women. A quick question about that
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because it's the interesting point where, you know, today
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even some, you know, conservatives would say, well,
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you know, if you're married, I, I, I don't know that they're
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directly come, come out against property rights for women.
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But there's this sort of poo pooping of what the feminists
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did in order in securing, you know, property rights and
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securing the right to vote. And there's a sense of what it
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wasn't really, you know, there were more bad outcomes than
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good. Again, these are not all
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conservative, but these are some.
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There's some and some, I would say influential ones, you know,
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who are very opposed to even early feminism.
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And was that desire to Co own the property, was part of it a
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protective measure? Because in cases of abuse or
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addiction where their spouse is not trustworthy, they didn't
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want to be left out high and dry.
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If they needed to separate for the protection of themselves or
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their children, and they wanted to be able to still secure some
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of their own property for their own subsistence, Was that part
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of that driving that that request or that demand?
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Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, there's a way in which,
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again, if you're if you have sort of a a friendship in your
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in your marriage and there's a great deal of love and support
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and you're married to a virtuous man, none of this is really much
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of an issue at all, right? The issue comes when you're, you
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know, that you have sort of no marital rights in all sorts of
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different ways. You have no marital rights to
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resist sexual activity from your husband.
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And so they're sort of the forcing of sex upon women that
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and, you know, obviously there's, you know, in that way
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they talk about like a forced motherhood, very different from
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how today's feminists talk about forced motherhood.
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And so they're asking at that point also for something like
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voluntary motherhood, by which they mean the right to engage in
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that act, which might make me a mother.
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Why? Because they understood
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themselves. All of those 19th century
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feminists and then going all the way back to Wilson Craft
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understood mothers, those who are pregnant to have duties of
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care to their children. And so they took those duties
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very seriously. The other thing is that they
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wanted custody, right? So if their husband was abusive,
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if their husband was a drunk, was, you know, using his wages
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on prostitutes or or, you know, all sorts of other kind of
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infidelities, there was no way for a woman to care for her
12:45
children. And yet if she tried to divorce
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him, then he would have custody of the children.
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So when separation, you know, when she would separate him, she
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was still considered his wife and so had no capacity to
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contract for, say, a job to work, even if those wages would
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be really menial. So I mean, she's kind of stuck
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in this hard place. And so women start to recognize
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look like for own sake, for the sake of our children, for the
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sake of really men to man up and and be virtually just
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themselves, we have to hold them to higher standards.
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And the law wasn't wasn't doing that.
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So law. Yeah, sorry.
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No, no, it's really, it's really interesting.
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I think it's such an important point because I think we take
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for granted the protections that exist today and as women.
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And you know, and I, I say this with the all the tremendous
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caveat of I hate modern feminism, you know, in terms of
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what it advocates for. And I do want it.
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We're going to get to that because it's incredibly
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important. You know, there's a billions,
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literally billions of abortions globally over the last two
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decades. And I do think that not, I
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wouldn't blame just feminist ideology, current feminist
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ideologies for that. I think a lot of that sexual
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revolutionaries, but we're going to get to that.
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But I think it's an important point because, you know, there
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are excesses, there are abuses. These things are real.
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They're not, they're not some fantasy that people come up with
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as an excuse for divorce. This is a real thing.
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And they does require at times, you know, this is this would be
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the reason for divorce, for step, for legal separation.
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Now, in the Catholic tradition, you, you may do a legal
14:17
separation of divorce and then you do not remarry if it was a
14:20
valid marriage. And that's, you know, a very
14:23
challenging situation, but it's a real one.
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But we're not talking about remarriage here.
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We're talking about separation for the safety of 1's children
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and oneself. And in the case of these early
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feminists, there was no recourse.
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Is that right, Erica? There's no recourse for the
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woman who has the adulterous, abusive husband if she separates
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from him. She has, she's lost her custody.
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And then she couldn't, She literally couldn't get a job to
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support herself. That's right.
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And any and and I mean, remember any property she brings into the
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marriage to at that point is considered his because the idea
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of marriage at that point is both scripturally, but also from
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this common law doctrine of covertures that the man covers
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over the wife. And so they become one.
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Now, of course, that's very lovely and I consider my husband
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and I-1 right. But the problem is, is when a
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woman is like civilly dead, as they say in the language of
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Seneca Falls, she loses all of her property that she's even
15:14
brought into the marriage. So when you're a wealthy woman,
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you know, and your husband and your father's kind of bartered
15:19
you off to like the highest donor or whoever's the highest
15:22
bidder or whoever would make that good marriage, then what
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what what wealthy fathers did at that point is they always put
15:28
their property in trust so that if something should go wrong
15:32
with this marriage, that that that that woman in that marriage
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was capable of accessing the property.
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So of course, these women rights advocates are saying, well,
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that's not fair, that only wealthy dads can do that.
15:42
What about all these women who come into marriage and you know,
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they have some bit of some personal of land, some some of
15:48
their own like sort of belongings and those all go into
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the hands of the of the husband Again, great.
15:54
Fine, if you have a collaborative marriage and you
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have a virtuous husband, but that's just not the case.
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I mean the law, it is the case for all women, right?
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And so, you know, the law has to protect those women.
16:05
I mean, the same with say voting is that the voting is actually
16:08
like really far into the into the early women's rights
16:12
movement. It's not one of the first asks,
16:14
even though we do see it several times in Seneca Falls.
16:16
And that's that's we'll talk about Elizabeth K Stand, but
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she's pushing for that. That's something that wasn't
16:21
really seen as important at first because of this I
16:25
understanding of vicarious representation.
16:27
So just as in a republican form of government, you have
16:30
representatives representing, you know, the, the, the voters
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in this understanding you had men, the head of the household
16:38
represent the families. But when you see men go off
16:41
because of industrialization, because of this rise of
16:43
liberalism where, you know, the individual male, you know,
16:48
homeowner is the one who has all the rights, it becomes difficult
16:51
when, you know, he's not representing the woman or the
16:55
family and he's, you know, kind of taking his own self-interest
16:58
at heart. And that was when voting becomes
17:01
something more important. Just to Fast forward, voting
17:04
does not come about through actually Stanton and all the
17:07
people the 1970s feminists hold up as these great suffragists.
17:10
It actually comes about through conservative women.
17:13
So it's through Francis Willard especially, who's the president
17:16
of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who is working
17:20
across the country in states trying to get women to have
17:24
vote, be able to vote in states. She says the commandments are
17:27
voted up and down, up or down in every election.
17:30
And she calls the vote the home protection ballot.
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Why? Because she sees the problem
17:35
with intemperance among men. And she wants women to vote, be
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able to vote for the goods of, of protecting the home and the
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family and children against sort of the intemperate or kind of
17:45
drunkenness of men, Not all men and obviously, but there are
17:48
some men who, you know, have to be protected against.
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for 20% off your order. And the temperance, particularly
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the role of the temperance movement in sort of the women's
18:44
suffrage work that was being done was temperance of.
18:49
I mean today we have drunkenness in our society.
18:51
It does exist. You know, I think there's
18:53
probably more awareness today, I would argue.
18:56
I mean, from a young age we're told alcohol could be harmful
18:59
and alcohol, you know, the negative effects of alcohol.
19:02
However, we do have a drunk initiation.
19:04
So there is alcoholism today. Were there unique alcoholism
19:08
problems to the early 20th century that they were
19:10
addressing, or was it more that it was just unaddressed and
19:13
they're trying to create some sort of a movement to stop it?
19:18
Yeah, I mean, certainly unaddressed, but also if you, if
19:20
you take like, you know, alcoholism or drinking too much
19:25
with a man who has superior strength to a woman who also has
19:28
rights to take her body whenever he wants, you know, within
19:31
marriage, you, you know, get into a lot of trouble, right.
19:34
So if a woman can't resist her husband isn't, doesn't have sort
19:37
of legal authority to resist her husband and he's drunk, you
19:41
know, and she has, I mean, she believes very strongly, as all
19:45
the women's rights advocates did, as women just did, that she
19:48
owes duties of care to the child she's nurturing within her body.
19:51
Then it becomes like this situation where she is now
19:54
having, you know, numbers of children that she's having a
19:57
hard time supporting because, you know, as, as these women
20:00
would say that basically out of the lust of her husband when he
20:04
was drunk would take his wife and then she there be pregnant
20:07
again. And so there wasn't like this
20:08
sort of, you know, understanding, especially if
20:11
women weren't understood to kind of have equal dignity and and
20:14
that a marriage of friendship the way so many of us would
20:16
understand our marriages today, right?
20:18
It's a. It's if there's a, if there's an
20:19
understanding of subordination. That comes out of especially, I
20:23
think, very false understandings of Scripture where, you know,
20:26
men just sort of are able to Lord it over their husbands
20:29
rather than sorry, over their wives, rather than sort of love
20:32
them with affection. That becomes very, very
20:34
dangerous. And I think that that's what
20:35
they were fighting against. So there's a Christian teaching,
20:38
of course, that we are to, you know, in a sense there is a
20:41
possession of each other's bodies as spouses and that we
20:45
are to be available to our spouse sexually.
20:48
I mean that that's a Christian teaching.
20:51
Explain that though, in this context, because if there is a
20:53
demand for sex from one spouse, and especially if there's
20:57
drunkenness involved and then the other spouse, there is a
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important health condition or concern about being able to care
21:03
for the children or something. How does Christian theology
21:08
impact that? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
21:11
chastity is at the core, it's a, it's considered a virtue.
21:14
That's been it. That's very important.
21:17
Why? Because of the fact that sexual
21:21
activity can, you know, result in a child, and that child needs
21:25
a mom and dad to take care of it, right?
21:27
And so I think it's the generosity that spouses ought to
21:31
always show to their, you know, to the other spouse as much as
21:34
they can, right? But then always recognizing that
21:37
in that act, a new child could be born.
21:39
And so there has to be a sort of responsibility around it.
21:41
Are we ready to undertake this responsibility as parents?
21:45
You know, and so I think that that the the chastity, what we
21:48
can also understand is sexual integrity is really important
21:51
for the health of the marriage, right?
21:52
It's not, I feel sexual desire right now.
21:56
Therefore, you know, regardless of what, you know, sort of
21:59
principle or reason tells me about our certain our
22:02
circumstances right now, you know, you owe it to me to have
22:04
sex with you. And that's just not a proper
22:07
understanding of chastity within marriage today.
22:10
What's also interesting here is the whole role of law is to
22:14
basically hold back the the negative excesses of human
22:17
behavior. You know, we since the fall, we
22:19
sin, we make mistakes, we're wounded by original sin.
22:22
And so rule of law is to curb bad behavior.
22:25
That's the whole point. And the idea of, you know, these
22:29
women trying to have laws in place that ultimately curb bad
22:34
behavior in marriage and in the family unit in order to protect
22:39
the most vulnerable members of that unit, It seems to be common
22:43
sense. But if it's taken out of that
22:44
context and thinking in terms of curbing bad behavior and instead
22:47
it's shown as a threat somehow to marriage.
22:50
Because I think today there are some maybe conservatives or anti
22:53
feminists who say, well, the whole feminism work was just to
22:57
divide marriages to to create a wedge between men and women.
23:00
And your argument seems to be different from that though.
23:05
Yeah, I know that's right. I mean, I think, you know, law
23:07
also in my understanding of the law is that it's, it's
23:09
educative, informative, right? And so it helps us to understand
23:13
what the good is. And so to sort of aim for the
23:16
good, not as our parents do, but as sort of in terms of like what
23:19
the common good as a whole is. So I mean, here's I, I think
23:23
it's helpful to sort of put some quotes on here that are helpful.
23:25
So at Seneca Falls, there's an understanding, you know, a call
23:29
upon men to sort of come to a higher level of kind of sexual
23:34
integrity. And for those listening really
23:36
quick, Erica, explain it. Just give us the quick context
23:39
on Seneca Falls, yeah? Yeah, yeah.
23:40
So sorry. So Seneca Falls is the first
23:43
women's rights convention in 1848, brought together by
23:47
Lucretia Mott, who we don't hear about a lot, but I really want
23:50
to talk about her as well as as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who met
23:55
in 1840 at an abolitionist convention in London, which they
24:03
were kept out of because they were women.
24:05
A lot of Seneca Falls. And you can, you know, when you
24:07
start reading it, you see it is because women, these women were
24:11
abolitionists. They were very strongly against
24:13
slavery. And they were told by
24:15
conservatives of the day that they that to speak out publicly
24:19
against slavery, especially in mixed audiences of men and
24:22
women, was to be unwomanly. And so, you know, you have let
24:27
me give you some, some language. So the general, so this is in
24:31
1837. So this is after the Grimke
24:33
sisters, Sarah Grimke, a very important figure in the early
24:38
women's rights advocates who wrote a sort of treatise on the
24:42
letter called the Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, which we
24:45
can get into. She actually just
24:47
parenthetically, she exegetes the Bible, So Genesis.
24:51
And she does actually what John Paul the Second would do, you
24:53
know, hundreds of years later in that she basically says that,
24:57
you know, men and women were created equal by God.
25:00
And that the fall is telling us, sort of giving a description of
25:04
what, you know, the temptations of man would have a man, a
25:07
husband would have to alert it out over his wife, and a woman
25:09
would have to kind of be subservient in a way that wasn't
25:14
sort of putting God first anyway.
25:16
So that's Sarah Grimke, a really impressive writer.
25:19
But so anyway, so in 1837, you have the the General Association
25:23
of Congregationalist Ministers who are responding to the Grimke
25:26
sisters who are fighting, you know, very vocally for abolition
25:30
against slavery. And what they're told is that,
25:33
you know, the appropriate duties and influence of women are
25:37
clearly stated in the New Testament.
25:39
The power of woman is in her dependence, flowing from the
25:42
consciousness of that weakness which God has given you for the
25:46
her protection and which keeps her in those departments of life
25:49
that form the character of individuals and of the nation.
25:52
When she assumes the place and tone of man as a public
25:55
reformer, our care and protection of her seems
25:58
unnecessary. We put ourselves in self-defense
26:00
against her. She yields the power which God
26:02
has given her for protection and her character becomes unnatural.
26:05
So it'd be like, Lila, if someone said to you, you are
26:09
becoming manly or unnaturally, you know, masculine by speaking
26:13
out against abortion in a public setting.
26:15
And so these women were like, what are you talking about?
26:17
And there are, by the way, a couple there there, there are a
26:20
couple strange voices on the right, unfortunately, who do say
26:25
things close to that. So those voices probably have I,
26:29
I mean, I think those voices that the extreme on this I think
26:32
has always existed and at different times has been more
26:35
popularized than others. Yeah, yeah, No, I think that's
26:38
right. And so you have like, especially
26:40
someone like Lucrisha Mott, who is, you know, a Quaker, very
26:44
serious Bible believing Christian who's going also like
26:47
Grimke did to Scripture and arguing from the basis of sort
26:51
of equal dignity in the Imago day that women have a
26:55
responsibility to, you know, speak out against these things.
26:58
And then it's not going to make them, you know, manly or
27:03
something like that. She so there's let me read from
27:05
her discourse on woman. I just think this is helpful
27:08
because again, there's a way in which we sort of have this quick
27:12
we don't sort of read the text. You know, we just sort of assume
27:15
like we package everybody together to assume they all
27:18
thought the same thing. But it's really important to see
27:20
how very kind of nuanced they were in in their in their
27:25
reflection. So here's Lucretia Maude again,
27:28
Bible believing Quaker, who is a co-author of Seneca falls.
27:31
She says we would admit all the difference.
27:34
That is the difference between the sexes that are great and
27:37
beneficent creator has made in the relation of man and woman.
27:40
Nor would we seek to disturb this relation, but we deny that
27:44
the present possession position of woman is her true sphere of
27:48
usefulness. Nor will she attain to this fear
27:51
until the disabilities and disadvantages, religious, civil,
27:54
and social, which impede her progress, are removed out of the
27:57
way. These restrictions have nerviate
27:59
nerviated her mind, and paralyzed her powers.
28:02
And so you know she. She then goes on to say, Let let
28:05
her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her
28:08
sex, but let them not degenerate into a kind of effeminacy in
28:13
which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of
28:16
society, content with her outward adornings and with a
28:19
tone of flattery. So, I mean, they're really,
28:22
they, you know, they want women to stand up and be responsible
28:24
for themselves, for their children, for the good of
28:26
society and not sort of be just concerned about their
28:30
appearances or, you know, making a good marriage, mate, by kind
28:34
of acting, you know, dumb. They want them to like, you
28:37
know, be wise and strong in mind and character.
28:40
And I, and I think that that's just greatly admirable of these
28:43
women. There is a such a prevailing
28:47
narrative again among some, I will say conservatives and then
28:51
certainly in the the Red Pill and the, I mean, I'm going to
28:56
say aspects of the rad trad world.
28:59
I tried carefully here because these labels can mean different
29:02
things and there's different people that populate them, you
29:04
know, these groups. So I'll say some folks in these
29:07
groups, OK, But there's a prevailing narrative among some,
29:11
and you'll definitely find it on Twitter if you get into the sort
29:14
of these spaces that basically says women having the right to
29:20
vote, women having the right to property, women having the right
29:22
to divorce, women having the right to custody of their kids,
29:25
all of these things, right, right to work and, you know,
29:29
have contracts, things like that, independent of a male in
29:31
their life, a patriarch in their life or a husband.
29:35
They ultimately misuse those powers.
29:39
And that's why we have the cultural chaos of today.
29:45
We have abortion now with gender ideology.
29:48
We have the insanity there. We have, you know, the sexual
29:51
revolution that happened in the, you know, mid 20th century.
29:55
And those things wouldn't have happened, certainly not to the
29:59
level they've escalated, without women having this new found
30:02
political power and social standing in the late and in the
30:06
late 19th and early 20th century.
30:09
I think that's a very even among some very well-intentioned
30:12
folks. It's just a very strong
30:14
narrative that makes them see feminism bad.
30:17
What's your response to that? Yeah, yeah.
30:20
I mean, what's accompanying that?
30:22
I mean, my entire book, The Rights of Women is, is devoted
30:24
to sort of showing that there's these two competing strains of
30:29
both, you know, claims for women's rights early on, which,
30:33
you know, is anachronistic, kind of call them feminists, but we
30:35
do just shorthand call them early feminists that come
30:38
straight up. And so 1 is this strain kind of
30:41
the one that I've been mostly focusing on here, right.
30:44
It's a strain that really views men and women as deeply
30:46
interdependent, that sees, you know, care in the and the family
30:50
as really important and the work of kind of the family as as sort
30:55
of, you know, the key institution that undergirds all
30:58
other institutions. They see that work as
31:00
collaborative and they're just, you know, working to sort of
31:04
negotiate the relationship between men and women and how
31:08
sort of the law should shift as circumstances shift.
31:12
What's the circumstance? Well, industrialization is the
31:14
most obvious, right? And, and that strain I view as
31:18
as coming straight out of Mary Wollstonecraft.
31:20
Too many of these early women's rights advocates like Sarah
31:22
Grimke and Lucretia Mott, who I've just mentioned as being
31:25
deeply Christian thinkers that they're coming out of that
31:28
strain. And so we can certainly talk
31:30
about Wollstonecraft in a second.
31:31
The other strain is coming out of, I read is John Stuart Mill,
31:35
who, you know, has an idea of liberty as sort of individuality
31:41
as pursuit of individuality. And that strain goes straight to
31:44
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who actually calls herself, I mean,
31:47
she, she sees Mill, John Stuart Mill and Harriet, you know,
31:51
Taylor, who was his mistress as being sort of the, the people
31:55
she looks to for her thought. And you see that strain going
31:58
right up to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And so who wins?
32:01
Well, the Regnan philosophy, the Regnan feminism is that latter
32:06
strain. It's the Stanton, the Million
32:08
Stanton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg philosophy, and it's incredibly
32:11
libertarian. So it views rights and freedom
32:15
as kind of its own end. And so it's really for the sake
32:18
of individuality, it's for the sake of autonomy.
32:21
And it has the trouble with that strain, and that's why we're
32:23
bumping into all sorts of problems right now, is that it's
32:26
an ill founded strain. It's not based on who we
32:29
actually are as human beings and it, and it kind of has it, it
32:32
takes the individual freedom and the individual itself as being
32:36
sort of the male individual who can sort of escape, you know,
32:40
from, from the consequences of sex.
32:42
And so that's where you get abortion.
32:43
As you see, like, OK, we're going to have, you know,
32:46
equality in the, in, you know, in the, in the market.
32:49
And it's going to have to look like what men look like, which
32:52
is unencumbered, you know, free to walk away from sexual
32:56
activity and all that. And so we'll need abortion,
32:58
contraception, abortion to get there.
32:59
And so that's the strain that I follow from, again, Sanger
33:03
straight into a sorry, Stanton, straight into Sanger, and then
33:05
all the way up to Ginsburg. So this other strain, this
33:08
Wolster crafty and state understands liberty and rights
33:11
and equality entirely differently.
33:13
And So what I'm trying to do in the book is show that there's
33:15
this lost vision that we kind of took a wrong turn in, in
33:20
understanding human beings, understanding men and women
33:23
improperly. And what Wolster Craft
33:25
understood, what Lucretia Mott Grimkiel understood that the
33:29
purpose of freedom, the purpose of liberty is for carrying out
33:32
our duties virtuously. And So what you see in there,
33:36
all of you know, their thinking is a lot of talk of
33:39
responsibility, a lot of talk of virtue.
33:42
And, and, and that freedom is for this end, it's for the good
33:46
of, of, you know, the happiness of, of the whole.
33:50
And that's, and that's a strain that was lost, but one that I
33:53
think really has the capacity to come, you know, to be kind of
33:57
reclaimed. And that's what I'm trying to
33:58
do. The one thing I'll say before we
34:00
get to that, that strain that I really want to talk a lot about
34:02
is that both these strains until you get to even including
34:05
Margaret Sanger, but she's kind of questionable.
34:08
They were all against abortion. And so for your work, it's
34:11
really important that even the ones that I think are, you know,
34:15
we could talk about that are that are really headed in the
34:17
wrong direction pretty early on. Like an Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
34:20
who really, you know, has, you know, a kind of a whole, you
34:24
know, this, you know, solitude of self is her big essay where
34:28
she talks about, you know, everybody is ultimately just
34:30
alone by themselves, You know, like Robin Crusoe on an on an
34:34
island responsible for themself. I mean, that's kind of her
34:37
thing. She's all of them are against
34:40
abortion and they all understand that they have duties of care to
34:43
children. They understand them as children
34:45
when they are developing in the in their mother's womb.
34:48
And so even people like the the craziest ones, like Victoria
34:52
Woodhull, who's the most radical of the group, you know, free
34:56
love advocate, you know, all sorts of other things.
34:59
She actually had the most, the most forceful language, language
35:04
when it comes to abortion. And so let me can, if I can just
35:07
just give you what she says about abortion, because I think
35:10
it's fascinating that the the most radical of these women in
35:14
the 19th century were still against abortion.
35:17
She says it is just as much a murder to destroy life in its
35:22
embryonic condition as it is to destroy it after the fully
35:26
developed form is it attained is attained for it is the self same
35:31
life that is taken. And so I mean, that's like the
35:34
best pro-life argument there is, right.
35:36
So they got this early on. They were also accompanied by
35:39
all the earliest women doctors. There's a really great book
35:43
coming out and I hope you'll have Monica on Monica Clem
35:46
coming out of Encounter Books. It's called Pity for Evil and
35:49
it's about these women's rights advocates and female doctors in
35:54
the 19th century who are all on board with, you know, seeing
35:58
abortion as this reprehensible crime and evil that it that they
36:02
understood it to be. And so again, so even as you
36:04
have this kind of these different strains of women's
36:07
rights and understandings of the ground women's rights in the
36:10
19th century, you still have them all kind of appalled by,
36:15
by, you know, abortion and, and just the evil of, of a mother
36:19
taking the life of her own child.
36:21
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36:57
I mean, labels are so powerful. So just, you know, just put the
37:01
feminist label on both of these strains that you just explained
37:04
so well, Erica, you know, the strain of, OK, we want equal
37:07
treatment under the law and we have equal dignity to men, but
37:11
we're different and those differences are good.
37:13
And we in in. Addition to our rights have
37:14
responsibilities to each other and to children.
37:18
We're seeking virtue as a shared project.
37:20
The family is the most important institution.
37:22
You know all this beautiful truth, right?
37:24
And wanting those same rights that this other group is asking.
37:28
For, you know, the right to vote, the right to custody of
37:31
children, the right to be able to work and and, you know,
37:35
possess property. But this other group saying,
37:37
well, I want these things because it is about the
37:39
individual's power to create themselves and seek their own
37:43
destiny and tethered by other relationships or
37:46
responsibilities and how different those two groups end
37:50
up. With one group, you end up with
37:51
this beautiful Christian collaborative family who is, you
37:54
know, changing the world and building this, you know, growing
37:57
these beautiful kids. And in another group you get
37:59
these, you know, free love, sexual revolutionaries who are
38:02
off destroying society, right? But the problem is they're both
38:06
called in their, you know. 1st wave.
38:08
They're both called feminists. Yeah.
38:11
So what did we do? With this problem, Erica,
38:13
because, you know, I interviewed Carrie Grass on the podcast and,
38:16
you know, and in her interpretation, she has the
38:18
group of of feminists and basically the it's hard to
38:21
redeem feminism, you know, to her point, because of all of the
38:24
baggage. And so it's hard to even, you
38:27
know, pull. Out these these these noble
38:29
threads and these good threads that you're writing so you're
38:32
beautifully on in your book. What is the solution for how we
38:35
even talk about this today? Yeah.
38:39
So I mean, the first thing I would do, sorry to go back to
38:42
the history just briefly, because I do want to get to kind
38:44
of the tactical question of do you even use this word feminist?
38:47
Because I do think it's a tactical question for sure.
38:50
But I just want to say because this idea of free love is
38:53
important because one of the one of the premises of my book
38:56
that's really important is that, you know, this idea that we have
39:00
today that the sexual revolution and feminism are one or the
39:03
sexual revolution and women's rights, the cause of women's
39:06
rights are like knit together. And so you see that the left
39:09
certainly assumes that and the right, you know, some on the
39:12
right start sort of the further right assume that too.
39:15
And I think it's really crucial to see that nothing could be
39:18
farther from the truth in the sense that those, again, many of
39:22
the early women's rights advocates were arguing for
39:25
chastity. I mean, votes for women,
39:27
chastity for men was like 1 of their basic slogans.
39:29
But we should get into some of that more.
39:32
What I do want to do is just quote again, Sarah Grimke
39:36
because she is dealing with exactly this claim.
39:40
So it's 1855. So it's several years after, you
39:44
know, Seneca Falls where they've written this declaration of
39:46
sentiments and resolutions. They've called upon men to have
39:50
the same virtue, delicacy and refinement of behavior that's
39:54
required of women should be required of men.
39:57
And then, you know, she's basically accused or they're
39:59
accused in the New York Times of.
40:02
That, that this idea of equality of rights and I'm quoting here
40:05
leads directly and rapidly to the principles of free love
40:08
because there are people at this stage.
40:10
So I mean, I guess Stanton, one of them, Victoria Woodhull,
40:14
certainly a lot of men who are arguing that, you know, really
40:18
you should kind of be able to enter into and out of
40:20
relationships, mainly because they have problems with
40:23
marriage, with institution of marriage, because they see it as
40:26
confining, but also because of all the problems that we've
40:28
talked about with regard to women, right.
40:30
So I mean, free love, it's not like the 1970s version because
40:33
you don't have the pill at abortion mediating, you know,
40:36
your capacity to be as promiscuous as you want outside
40:39
of marriage or whatever. This is like a very kind of
40:41
confined version of free love, but it's still it's still a, you
40:44
know, anti marriage principle. And So what she what she says is
40:48
the conclusion that this, you know, this 1855 New York Times
40:52
article draws that equality of rights leads directly and
40:55
rapidly to the principles of free love, or that a claim for
40:59
women's rights nullified the very idea of marriage is
41:01
anything about more than a partnership of the will, she
41:04
says. I utterly deny.
41:06
She goes on to give this really incredible kind of speech about
41:10
lust and chastity within marriage.
41:13
It's a it's an article, not a speech.
41:14
But then she says the doctrine that human beings are to follow
41:18
their attractions, which lies at the base of that Miss called
41:22
free love system, is fraught with infinite danger.
41:26
Our great desire is to purify and exalt the marriage relation
41:30
and destroy all licentiousness. To every unhappy couple we say
41:35
bare in quiet home seclusion the heart withering consequences of
41:39
your mistake. She's basically saying you need
41:41
to stay together even if you're unhappy.
41:43
Just don't, you know, divorce Willy nilly.
41:45
She says you owe this to yourselves, to your children, to
41:48
society. And then she talks about keeping
41:50
pure from the desecration of marriage, basically lust that it
41:55
should be. She says you need love and
41:58
chastity if you cannot live this purely together and separation
42:01
becomes necessary. Let no temporary or permanent
42:04
relation be formed by either party during the life of the
42:07
other. She says in marriage is the
42:09
origin of life. In the union of the sexes exists
42:12
a creative energy which is found nowhere else.
42:15
And so she's really arguing very much strongly opposed to the to
42:19
the idea of free love. So though there were free love
42:22
advocates at that time, these early women's rights advocates
42:25
in the main were not them those ones that did go off the path
42:28
like Stanton and then what hole they get kicked out of the
42:31
women's rights movement. You know, they're especially
42:34
when Stanton writes her woman's Bible.
42:36
I mean, think about it. You've got Lucretia Mott and
42:38
Seneca Falls, the two kind of brains, sorry, Lucretia Mott and
42:43
and Sarah Grimke real. It's kind of the brains of of
42:45
the early movement and they're exegeting scripture in the way
42:49
again, that John Paul two would do much, much later.
42:53
And so they're looking for AT Scripture to see the imago day
42:56
and to see the responsibilities that men and women have
42:58
together. And then you have you know, you
43:01
know, Stanton, come along and say no, we need to rewrite the
43:03
Bible. So she's basically accepting the
43:06
claim that the conservatives are making that the Bible is
43:08
subordinating women, is saying the women are inferior and
43:10
they're saying no in the Bible is or, you know, our freedom to
43:14
be beholden to God and to have responsibilities and live
43:17
respond, you know, for virtue. So I mean, they're very upset
43:20
with her. So I guess I would just say that
43:22
it's not a, it's not a, it's a complicated history, but that
43:25
there's all these beautiful strains that run right through
43:27
the center of of the early woman's rights movement.
43:31
All right, so we'll get to tactical in a minute because we
43:34
do need to talk about Wollaston Craft because she was very in
43:38
your work and your writing and your research.
43:41
She's very important. And we talked about her on the
43:43
podcast recently in terms of she was more in line of, you know, a
43:48
precursor of what would become the free love movement.
43:51
But you have a different interpretation of
43:53
Wollstonecraft. What's your Why is Mary
43:55
Wollstonecraft important to understanding the women's rights
43:59
movement and feminism later on, and what was her position?
44:05
Yeah, it's really just completely against her thought
44:09
to see her as a precursor to free love.
44:13
So I mean, I'll give you many quotes, but just sort of some
44:16
salient ones. We've actually at the Abigail
44:19
Adams Institute, we now have a link that I hope you'll include
44:22
in the show notes, which is basically read Wilson Craft.
44:24
So you can go and read some of her thought and see it for your
44:27
herself that it's really beautiful and ennobling.
44:29
But one one thing she says is chastity, modesty, public spirit
44:33
and all the noble trainer virtues on which social virtue
44:37
and happiness are built should be understood and cultivated by
44:41
all mankind or they will be cultivated to little effect.
44:45
And so she's really pushing for men to be as responsible for
44:47
chastity impurity as much as sort of women are expected to
44:51
be. But I, I also want to kind of
44:53
get back before chastity and we can talk about why, you know,
44:56
Stanton and others, especially 1970s feminists, sort of see her
45:00
her as this free love, you know, this represent representative of
45:03
free love. But I think it's really
45:04
important to kind of get to her thought first.
45:07
So she, as I mentioned before, she's sort of in her vindication
45:10
of the rights of woman, She's really, she's showing that the
45:13
need for women to be educated and to have rights are necessary
45:18
so that they can be strong and serious and good wives and
45:22
mothers and citizens and friends.
45:25
And so freedom is not kind of an end in itself to like Willy
45:29
nilly do whatever you want, but it's for the end of virtue.
45:32
So she talks about that women and men should both rise in
45:35
excellence. I'm quoting now by the exercise
45:38
of powers implanted for that purpose to be excellent.
45:42
One of the I'll give you a couple beautiful quotes from
45:44
some of her early work, she says in her thoughts on the education
45:47
of daughters. So before she kind of enters
45:49
into the political sort of arena with some some of her arguments,
45:53
she is a pedagogue. So she starts a School for Girls
45:57
and her very first book is Thoughts on the Education of
45:59
Daughters. And she says in that book the
46:01
many wonderful things. But she says the main business
46:04
of our lives is to learn to be virtuous.
46:07
And he capital H he God who is training us for immortal bliss,
46:13
knows what best trials will contribute to make us so.
46:17
She then says in Original stories for Real Life, which is
46:21
a really beautiful book where she's telling the story of these
46:25
two children who have this governess who's teaching them
46:28
kind of how to live a virtuous life.
46:30
And one of the things the governess says, she says we are
46:34
all dependent on each other. And this dependence is wisely
46:37
ordered by our Heavenly Father to call forth many virtues, to
46:41
exercise the best affections of the human heart and fix them
46:45
into habits. She says the wiser and better
46:48
you grow, the more visible will God become.
46:51
For wisdom consists in searching him out and goodness in
46:55
endeavoring to copy his attributes.
46:58
So the final thing I'll say is there's kind of, there's been,
47:02
you know, for a long time. I mean, Wolster Craft is like
47:04
one of the most misunderstood women in history, and we'll get
47:08
to that. But one of the things she says
47:10
it's really important is that she says that, you know, women
47:13
and men. I mean, she's talking, she talks
47:14
an awful lot about mothers and fathers and how important.
47:17
And she really is kind of ennobling the work of motherhood
47:20
and fatherhood. And you can probably guess why
47:22
without reading too much, is because the work of inculcating
47:25
virtue in children she sees to be really the highest work of a
47:28
civilization because of how important virtue is for human
47:31
happiness, for societal happiness.
47:34
But she does see that of course mothers and fathers are very
47:36
different, and so should one of her lines is women, I allow,
47:40
have different duties to fulfill, but they are human
47:43
duties, and the principles which should regulate the discharge of
47:47
them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.
47:50
So she's saying because God is 1 and we are to imitate God's
47:53
goodness, that women and men are both called to the whole panoply
47:58
of human virtues. It's it's not just that men are
48:00
to be courageous and women to be are to be pure and chaste, but
48:04
men are to be pure and chaste and women are to be courageous.
48:06
And those virtues are going to look totally different in men
48:09
and women because of, you know, men and women have different
48:11
bodies. But but they are both called to
48:15
all of that and not just sort of confined into this, you know,
48:18
small set and and and so, you know, being courageous can be
48:23
very womanly as those you know, those women who are fighting
48:27
against slavery. Well, could you know?
48:29
Well saw. Well, in Christ says be perfect
48:33
as I am perfect and we are. That's a command for men and for
48:38
women and to live out the virtues in seeking God and love,
48:43
You know, for the sake of love of God and love of others, you
48:46
live them out as a woman, you live them out as a man, and you
48:48
become more masculine and more feminine.
48:51
But they are the same. Virtues and I think that's, you
48:54
know, it's a mystery, but it's a it's a beautiful one.
48:57
There is a strain and I want to go to the tactical, you know,
49:01
the solutions for how we deal with all this stuff today.
49:03
There's one more strain. Well, there's two more things I
49:06
want to ask you about. There's there's a strain today
49:09
even among some, I would say Christians.
49:12
I think it's a theological mistake that they're making.
49:14
And this is infecting some parts of, you know, I would say maybe
49:18
far right Catholics and then certainly, you know, maybe some
49:22
Protestants or evangelicals, non denominationals, some
49:26
conservatives. But anyways, it's this idea that
49:28
men and women have different natures and women you know, by
49:32
nature are more prone to certain vices and men are more prone to
49:36
certain vices and therefore they should be treated differently
49:41
even under law potential. Actually, what's your take on
49:44
that? Yeah, I think that's a, it's a
49:47
great question and it's a I'm going to try to give an answer
49:50
that I think it's, it's a sophisticated question with a
49:55
sophisticated answer. And that is that I actually
49:57
agree that men and women are prone to different vices because
50:02
our vices sort of come out of our lower appetites generally.
50:06
And so if you think about the differences between men and
50:09
women are kind of mediated not only by the fact that, as
50:13
Aristotle said, women reproduce inside themselves and men
50:16
reproduce outside of themselves, right?
50:18
Like women's bodies enable them to carry children and men's
50:22
don't, but it's also the hormones that allow that, right?
50:26
So a woman's body is organized around the capacity of children.
50:28
And so she has estrogen, lots of estrogen in her body.
50:32
And a man has lots of testosterone in his body as they
50:35
grow through puberty, right? And so because of testosterone,
50:39
I mean, what we're what we understand now, which a lot of
50:41
people had insights to before. I mean, you know, even Wolster
50:44
craft talks about men as more libidinous, more kind of has
50:48
kind of greater sexual urges and that's due to testosterone.
50:52
And so men are have greater risk taking greater kind of sexual
50:57
desire, desire to have it fulfilled, not necessarily
51:00
within commitment. And so they need really self
51:02
mastery to master those appetites to become the
51:05
gentleman who will, you know, be great fathers, engage fathers
51:08
and and and people for others. And I think in the state.
51:11
And so if you can imagine, a vicious man tends to have, you
51:17
know, highly stereotypical masculine attributes, right?
51:20
So violence, aggression, you know, rape, all those things.
51:25
The more vicious he gets, the more sort of steeped in, like, I
51:29
don't know, like a a testosterone that hasn't been,
51:32
you know, governed by reason and principle and virtue, right?
51:36
And I think you could say the same is true for women.
51:38
And this is actually something that Bolster Craft is also
51:40
battling against. And that, you know, we just
51:43
heard from Lucretia Maude, is there's a way in which women can
51:45
become so effeminate that they kind of consider themselves as
51:49
like playthings, that they're just there for dress, you know,
51:52
to look pretty, to just be sort of like, you know, objectified.
51:57
They can objectify themselves. Yeah, only fans.
52:01
Yes, exactly. And so right.
52:04
And so and also, I mean, think of the way in which this help
52:06
happens. Like women have a greater
52:08
capacity for empathy because of all this estrogen and this like
52:11
attachment, the connection, the oxy, you know, the oxytocin that
52:16
that, you know, is released during pregnancy and and and
52:21
breastfeeding and all that. So that that attachment can also
52:23
make them, I think less like less sort of adhere to the truth
52:27
sometimes where their empathy overtakes what is true.
52:30
And So what does that mean? So they think every disagreement
52:34
is like an HR problem. You know, they think, you know,
52:38
they think like in order to be kind to someone who has gender
52:42
dysphoria and really empathize with them, they should think
52:45
it's fine for them to, you know, have gender reassignment
52:48
surgery, that kind of thing, you know, so there's like a so those
52:51
kind of capacities I think are distinctive.
52:54
And so that's why I, I actually believe that single sex
52:57
education is really good for boys and girls because of neat
53:00
when they grow and, and, and master themselves and become
53:04
virtuous, they need to have those, they need to be have sort
53:07
of emotional regulation and physical regulation, you know,
53:10
respectively for boys and girls. However, all that said, I think
53:14
as a man and woman become virtuous that you don't really
53:18
know whether they're going to look, you know, they're going to
53:20
look. A woman's going to look feminine
53:22
and have feminine virtue because she's a fem, she's female.
53:25
So right. But you don't know exactly what
53:27
that's going to look like. Is she going to be, you know,
53:29
incredibly docile and quiet? Or is she going to be like Joan
53:34
of Arc? You know, it just kind of
53:36
depends on what God calls her to and what her gifts are and what
53:39
her capacities are. And same with a man.
53:41
Is he going to look like, you know, strong, like Saint
53:43
Ignatius or is he going to be Saint Francis?
53:46
You know, all of these, the whole panoply virtue or the
53:48
whole kind of planet play of Saints, I think within the
53:51
church shows that that, you know, grace and virtue is not
53:56
kind of a cookie cutter thing with regard to the sexes.
54:00
And I think that's a really beautiful thing.
54:02
And so, you know, when when a woman is trying to figure out
54:05
how to be herself and how to be deeply feminine, I think being
54:07
docile to the Holy Spirit is much more important than being
54:10
docile to some set of like stereotypical gender norms.
54:13
At least that's what I found in my life and I found to be true
54:16
in in in the great women that I know.
54:19
So like yourself, by the way, Lila.
54:22
So thank you. And so is it correct to say, you
54:24
know, we share human nature with there is a much bigger common
54:28
denominator than anything else, but is it fair to say there's
54:32
additional impact on our nature? And they, they can, you know,
54:36
it's called female, the female nature or the male nature that
54:40
provides, you know, maybe different challenges and
54:43
strengths for men versus women. Yeah, So I stay away from sort
54:49
of male and female nature just because I think it's as, as
54:54
Wilson Craft would say, it's UN philosophical in the sense that
54:57
we do have one human nature. I mean, if you're going to talk
54:59
about in sort of colloquial terms, sure.
55:01
But the problem with that is that I think it gets us too
55:03
close to Rousseau. And Rousseau is very much like
55:06
Wilson Craft's interlocutor. And he really did see women and
55:10
men as having like entirely different natures that require
55:14
different education entirely because women were made for
55:17
men's delight. And so there were only some
55:19
subset of virtues that were for women.
55:22
There were, they were sort of meant to be docile and to sort
55:26
of through their chastity and purity, tame men's virile
55:29
nature. And I just don't think that's
55:30
right at all. I think both men and women are
55:32
called to self mastery on their own.
55:35
You know, it's like men are responsible to tame themselves,
55:40
you know, through their own, you know, work of, of self mastery
55:46
of virtue, acquisition of corresponding with grace.
55:49
And same with women. And I think obviously we can
55:51
help each other as brothers and sisters by, you know, women not
55:54
dressing immodestly and things like that.
55:56
Sure. But I think it's a man's
55:58
responsibility to govern his own appetites.
56:00
It's a woman's responsibility to govern her own appetites because
56:03
you can't be virtuous for another.
56:05
And I think I think Russo is incredibly faulty in that
56:08
regard. And that's where Wilson Craft is
56:10
trying to correct him and say no, Both men and women are
56:13
rational creatures made by and responsible to God, and both
56:17
have to, on their own, live out all of the virtues.
56:20
And they're responsible to do that in order to become great
56:23
fathers, mothers, friends, citizens.
56:26
It's interesting that you can trace, you know, someone like,
56:28
you know, the social media influencer Andrew Tate who says
56:31
that, you know, men can be promiscuous, women must be
56:34
chased. You know, the woman wants to go
56:36
to the spa and that's great, buy her handbags.
56:38
But the man is concerned with, you know, making money and
56:41
protecting the family. And like he, you know, he has
56:43
that sort of extreme male female nature thing going on in his
56:47
world view. And it's directly, you know, per
56:50
what you just said, it's directly could be traced back to
56:52
or. So I don't know that he knows
56:53
that, you know, he probably doesn't know that, but it's
56:56
interesting to see how these things popping up today are not
56:59
new theories, are not new ideologies.
57:02
You can trace them back. And that's why the history is so
57:04
important. I so appreciate the historical
57:06
work you've done and combing through and understanding these
57:10
really thought leaders over the last two centuries and their
57:12
impact on today. All right, so let's end with the
57:15
practical stuff because, you know, that's where I live most
57:17
of my time. And I know that the the folks
57:20
listening are really. Interested in that because it's
57:22
like, OK. All of this may be true and
57:25
ultimately, you know, I believe it's the Christian vision of the
57:28
man and the woman and what it means to be a family and
57:31
morality and virtue. That is the answer, right?
57:34
But then we have to live in this complicated thing called
57:36
politics. And how do we operate in
57:38
politics and, and culture with these truths and these
57:42
principles that we have? So, you know, feminism, do you
57:45
call yourself a feminist? Should we call ourselves, you
57:48
know, Christians who are feminists?
57:50
Or do we completely leave that label?
57:53
Do we toss it because it has so much baggage and it has that
57:57
other, as you called it, I think a thread of, you know, kind of
58:01
free love and radical individualism, libertarianism in
58:05
it. What do we do with what we call
58:08
ourselves and show as we show up politically to make their
58:11
important decisions about where how we should live together in
58:14
society? Yeah, so I mean, I think
58:17
everybody has to kind of figure this out for themselves, you
58:19
know, if you want to leave. Yeah.
58:21
No, no, no, no. I mean, I'm going to make a
58:23
pitch for feminism, but I just think like I am not, you know, I
58:27
don't know that I, you know, if someone doesn't want to call
58:29
themselves a pro-life feminist, I'm going to be, you know,
58:31
appalled by that or something. I do think, though, in our time,
58:34
that retaining the term feminism is really important.
58:38
Why? Because of the assault on well,
58:42
first of all, because liberal feminism has fallen apart.
58:45
So like the the possible emergence of this lost vision
58:49
that I, you know, articulate in my book is very much coming.
58:53
I mean, I see it rising. I see it rising at Fair
58:56
Disputations, which is an online journal that I helped to found
59:00
where people like Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, Nina
59:03
Power, Angela Franks, Abby Favalli, Leila Brasco, where
59:07
we're all writing, right? And so we all call ourselves
59:09
feminists. Why is it because I think the
59:12
way I would say it is because of sexually and reproductive
59:15
asymmetry. There's a way in which all
59:17
feminisms are responding to that in some way.
59:20
And I think the technological sort of, you know, the response
59:25
that was the pill and abortion and kind of individuality is
59:30
really kind of come to its end. And it's really, we've seen it
59:32
come to its end in the trans movement.
59:34
I think very much so. So it's kind of bankrupt and so
59:37
out, you know, something a new feminism can emerge, just like
59:41
John Paul the 2nd called for a new feminism many decades ago.
59:44
And why do you need feminism because of this asymmetry?
59:47
Because you need women have distinctive needs and interests.
59:51
And because many, many, many of us are mothers that don't have
59:53
time to like, you know, be out there picketing and involved in
59:56
politics often like maternity and maternal and sort of the
1:00:01
needs that women have that are distinctive are not.
1:00:04
Paid as much attention to and so I think that's why you need
1:00:07
something like that. I mean we certainly need it now
1:00:09
with porn, with prostitution, with surrogacy, with sex
1:00:14
trafficking with the trans movement of, you know, men
1:00:17
trying to say that they're women.
1:00:18
All of that to me, those are distinctively those are those
1:00:21
are questions where all sorts of feminists, regardless if we
1:00:25
disagree on different kinds of questions can come together to
1:00:29
fight against those things that are erasing women that are that
1:00:33
are, you know, abusing women that are, you know, basically
1:00:37
thinking that we're obsolete in our in you know, our bodies can
1:00:39
be used by rich men. You know so I think there's all
1:00:42
sorts of ways in which we are needing to respond once more to
1:00:46
the kind of to elevate the dignity of women and and to say
1:00:52
that it's, you know, that we as having feminine bodies that have
1:00:56
again are organized around, you know, bearing children.
1:00:59
Even if we never do that, there are particular just responses to
1:01:03
that that I think all sorts of feminists can be talking about.
1:01:07
And so to my mind, it's like I'm all in the business of trying to
1:01:11
convince other feminists that abortion is one of those
1:01:14
questions. And I think I've had some
1:01:16
success there, so I'm going to keep at it.
1:01:19
Well, thank you for trying. And I, I think there is success.
1:01:22
You know, I see pro-life feminists left and right and I
1:01:26
think there's many more of them today than there were even a
1:01:29
decade or two ago. And they're not feminists in the
1:01:32
sense of, you know, man hating women are superior, you know,
1:01:35
free love. Not at all.
1:01:37
They're feminists in terms of. Let's take responsibility for
1:01:40
the beautiful capacity that we have to be mothers and we need
1:01:43
to be collaborative with men. And in order to protect those
1:01:47
things, we need to share civil rights and we need to protect
1:01:51
the civil rights for ourselves and for our children.
1:01:54
You know, part of those is at first, I mean, if you have
1:01:56
right, which is life, yeah. I mean, if you have the rise of
1:02:00
an anti feminism that is claiming that women don't need
1:02:03
rights right now and just get married and, you know, obey your
1:02:06
husband, it all will be fine like that.
1:02:09
It seems to me that you have to have a new feminism to
1:02:11
articulate a new and on better grounds, on grounds that are
1:02:15
consistent with who we are as human beings, as men and women,
1:02:18
that we, how do you, you know, negotiate living together in
1:02:21
this highly technological world now too, You know, where we are,
1:02:25
You know, it's, it's, it feels like our embodied Ness is sort
1:02:29
of drifting away and and more easily attacked because people
1:02:32
are online all the time and all that.
1:02:34
So there's so much to be said. And I would really commend kind
1:02:37
of all the work of of the women I mentioned and the work at fair
1:02:40
disputations. I would also, I don't know if I
1:02:42
mentioned it before, but in order, if you want to go and
1:02:44
read Wolster craft yourself, we're putting more stuff online
1:02:47
at the Wolster Craft project at the Abigail Adams Institute.
1:02:50
And I would just say I think she's a complicated figure, to
1:02:53
be sure. She, you know, had parts of her
1:02:58
life that were very, very difficult for her And, and, and,
1:03:02
you know, she fell into some despair.
1:03:05
But I think that there's her work itself and her thought has
1:03:08
really been recovered in the last couple of decades by all
1:03:11
sorts of different academics and theologians and political
1:03:16
theorists and all that. And it's really, I would just
1:03:17
really commend actually reading her work to to your listeners.
1:03:23
Well, and Erica, how can people find and follow your work and
1:03:26
also purchase your latest book? Yes.
1:03:29
So I am a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and
1:03:32
they kindly put all of my work up on their site.
1:03:35
So you can find me there. And then of course, you can find
1:03:38
the book at Amazon and Notre Dame Press and anywhere else I
1:03:42
guess you find. Your book Give us Give us the
1:03:44
name Again. The rights of women.
1:03:46
Reclaiming a lost vision. Wonderful, Erica.
1:03:50
Thank you. Thank you for giving us such an
1:03:52
incredible walkthrough, understanding the history here
1:03:55
and I think giving us a very positive vision for the work we
1:03:59
have at hand. Thank you, Lila, so much for
1:04:03
having me on. Thanks so much for listening to
1:04:06
this episode of the Lila Rose podcast.
1:04:07
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