At its core, Feminism is identical to Marxism, and this has always been the case. While Classical Marxism dwelled on the power dynamics of social class, Feminism does the same with regards to gender. Feminists apply the lens of Critical Theory into the dynamics between men and women to advocate policies that seek to “liberate” women from that which they perceive stems from patriarchy.
This is not the equivalent of declaring that men and women should be treated with equal dignity, as they are both image bearers of God. God created Male and Female with distinct characteristics and assigned roles which were affected by the fall. Instead, Feminism initially promoted egalitarianism, which conveys the idea that men and women are interchangeable, or otherwise the same. For anatomical reasons, the untruth to this ideology is self-evident. Only women can bear children. In fact, childrearing is the most feminine thing a woman can do. Going beyond advocating basic egalitarianism, feminists argue that the disparities between men and women along with “traditional gender roles” were a construct of the patriarchal power structure. This dynamic occurs even within the family. The complimentary, or better yet patriarchal structure would suggest that men and women raise children together with men at the head of the household and as the primary breadwinner, but feminism injects the men versus women power dynamic, thereby pitting wives against their husbands as the natural result of this ideology.
A Brief History
Early feminist icon Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of the Woman’s Bible, repeatedly blamed the church and bible for the oppression of women. She also had this to say:
The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro’s skin and the woman’s sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.
With this statement, Stanton was comparing the state of women in the 1800’s to that of slaves in the South. Notice how a free white woman is comparing her social status to that of a black man under slavery. How many other Marxists movements have tried to or continue to articulate this dynamic? The Rainbow Jihad has essentially supplanted blacks as the Civil Rights Movement, decrying sexual behavior as the new race. Black Lives Matter contends that blacks are still in slavery to this day, or otherwise feeling the effects—neither of which is true. For more information, Thomas Sowell’s Discrimination and Disparities articulates well the reasons behind various societal disparities.
Ironically (or not), women like Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would actually oppose the 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution due to its gendered language. The movement to abolish of slavery was wrought with impure motives, and several prominent feminists were no exception in their opposition to two necessary amendments that extended American ideas, as expressed in the Bill of Rights, unto the states and to all races. At its early roots, feminism was not about the advancement of society, but the elevation of self. To them, the abolition of slavery was a conduit to advance early Feminism.
In the early twentieth century, Feminism would evolve along with its peer liberal ideologies. It is important to understand that the next generation was following the logical rabbit hole of their predecessors’ ideology. Freudian thought would also arise, teaching that man is no more than his basic desires, including that of sex. In Feminism, women are deemed sexually repressed and therefore must be sexually “liberated.”
Such leaders in this next generation would include Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. It is no hidden secret that Sanger was a eugenicist that targeted the black community with abortion, something still ongoing today. In Texas alone, where blacks make up 12.9% of the population, black women represent 30.28% of abortions in 2021. Abortion was and remains the most defiant feminist act, as it undertakes a god complex to declare what is and is not life. At the end of the day, when a woman solicits an abortion, she is either declaring that the fetus is not a life, that her needs and situation supersedes that of another life, or that the question of life does not matter. The legalization of abortion has led to a death toll in excess of 62 million in the US alone, mirroring the worst regimes of the 20th century. Not only is the industry predatory, but it also thrives on 38.34% of these murders being from repeat clientele.
Over in France came feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex. As a young woman, she would reject her devout catholic upbringing, ditching the nunnery and disavowing her faith. She would then go on to reject marriage in favor of an open and somewhat undefined relationship with existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Simone de Beauvoir never had children and engaged in lesbian relationships with minors. Ideologically, Simone de Beauvoir would escalate the critical lens of men versus women, as evidenced in the following statement:
It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.
When Beauvoir talks of accepting the limitations, she is referring to what are considered the traditional roles of women: childrearing, homemaking etc. The idea of being a stay-at-home mom is the limitation she is discussing, as she finds it monotonous and burdensome. To Beauvoir, too many women accept their “limitations” which have historically been normative. Doubtless most women want families as it provides greater purpose than a forty-hour work. Given her background and life experience, Beauvoir is projecting her views onto other women. There is no shortage of quotes by her attributing oppression to men and slavery to women. That is who she was and how she viewed the world. However, from her one can see the next advancement in feminism:
In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.
From here the interchangeability of men and woman has advanced to justify homosexuality, as this is the natural progression of feminism. For instead of marriage being between a man and a woman, it then becomes any two (or more) people. If one removes the feeling of fear, which could be stigma or legality concerns; restraint, which could be legality (prostitution) or statutory restrictions (age of consent); or obligations, which could be marital commitment, then one is left with a consent-based morality for sex. For someone who presupposed that society viewed women as less then human (the basis for the title of her book) while also believing that “one is not born but becomes a woman,” it is no far leap that modern gender theory arises from her philosophy.
Back in America, her contemporary Betty Frieden would write the famous Feminine Mystique in which Frieden portrayed the mental anguish and misery wrought with being a housewife. Frieden equated domesticity to being incarcerated in a concentration camp and stunting the development of women. In the era where no fault divorce laws were sprouting all over America, the Feminine Mystique went on to sell millions of copies. Unbeknownst to the target audience, Frieden was not some average disaffected housewife, but was a radical communist activist, who previously wrote for UE News, a union periodical which was notorious for publishing communist propaganda to American unionized workers. According to historian Daniel Horowitz, she struggled to balance activism with other obligations whether it be familial or educational. Whereas she asserted sexism in her various terminations, Horowitz contends that these events happened during McCarthyism when organizations were cracking down on communism. Like Beauvoir, Frieden projected her discontentment onto millions of women. She would later become an abortion activist for NARAL.
Fruits of the Sexual Revolution
With the advent of the Sexual Revolution, we saw to the rise and normalization of promiscuity where many of these philosophical musings began to experience everyday application through casual sex and fornication. The simplest way to measure the merits of this movement, and its underlying ideology is through its fruit.
Promiscuity of women has directly led to the breakdown of the American family. With the rise of reliable contraception, carte blanche was given for women to engage in sexual activity without risking pregnancy, to which they did. Woman who lost their virginity at under 18 years of age are three times more likely to divorce within the first five years of marriage. For women with more than six premarital partners, they were three times likelier to be in less stable marriages. So while school systems all across America and our social media attempt to market sex to younger and younger girls, they are intrinsically setting them up for failure and misery later in life.
With No-Fault Divorce, the rate of divorce ballooned from 9.6 per 1000 couples in 1960 to a rate of 22.6 by 1980 in the immediate aftermath of the Sexual Revolution. Since then, the divorce rate has receded to 14.9 as of 2019. Women initiate around 70% of divorces in the US, which rises to 90% if they are college educated. Though there is no singular factor with divorce, as every case is different, feminism cannot be ignored, especially as college educated women initiate divorce at a higher percent. Moreover, divorce creates a cycle of poverty and divorce, as children growing up in broken homes are in turn more likely to experience it themselves later in life. Widespread divorce degraded the institution of marriage long before Obergefell as marriage was transformed into a more contractual relationship rather than a one-flesh commitment.
Societally, marriages are required to replenish the population and procreate future generations. The baby boom was the result of men coming back from war, marrying, and then fathering children. Unfortunately, this too has been in decline. Part of the reason for the decline in divorce is the decline in marriage rate. In the 80’s, between 80-85 out of 1000 single adults married in a given year. By 2020 that number had fallen to around 33 per 1000, less than half of what it was. The share of single adults has risen to 39%. Though cohabitation has doubled since the 90’s, the bulk of the decline in married status comes from unpartnered individuals. In other words, relationships are not forming into marriages at the same rate they once were. Furthermore, the average age of marriage has risen to 30.4 for men and 28.6 years for women, far above their historic averages according to the US Census. Though the 50’s and 60’s represented a drop in marital ages, which reverted to historic normal levels approximately around 1980, this is a vast overcorrection with no signs of slowing.
One proposition for the rising marital ages might be “hook up” culture, where people fool around in their 20’s before settling down with the “right” partner. “Hook up” culture is really only a thing for about a quarter of online daters while about half are looking for a long-term relationship. Instead of online dating improving the formation of relationships, it has done little to reverse the trend of singleness while shifting the balance of power entirely in the favor of women. In economic terms, there are more guys chasing after fewer women, much like inflation, and women get to decide which prospects they converse with. In fact, 61% of men report receiving too few messages while 71% of women report receiving too many. Giving women complete control in a system where they rate 80% of men as unattractive, as opposed to a standard distribution for men, bodes poorly for the relationship formation in a society. This competitive ecosystem is pricing out a growing segment of the population who no longer see marriage as either desirable or attainable.
In being fruitful and multiplying, our society has declined in that since the 60’s as part of a larger global trend. The average mother in 1960 bore 3.65 children but now that same mother only gives birth to a stabilized 1.8 children. Of those born out of wedlock, the number was under 10% for the US in 1964 but hovers around 40% presently. This is in part due to the lack of shotgun weddings, but at the same time it cannot be discounted that the cycle of poor decision-making stemming from promiscuity and divorce has driven this trend. Even with widespread birth control and abortion, which is tragically used as birth control, this trend has increased in recent decades.
From the increased promiscuity to the decreased fertility, society has seen a drastic moral decline in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, which was undergirded by feminism. From dating to marriage to childbearing, the family structure has been utterly broken at every step, and these trends are not merely reflective in America, but the entire world.
Ideology Not Economics
The natural objection would be to claim that industrialization and economic development have led to much of the decline in birth rate. It cannot be ignored that there are multiple contributing factors, as these are global trends, but 1950’s was a robust period of America’s economic growth, as it featured the rise of the middle class, low inflation, and low unemployment, while the decade ended with peak fertility. The 1960’s was an ideological convergence for the western world, as Marxism began its footholds in many of society’s institutions through Second Wave Feminism, the Civil Rights Movement, and within academia, while technological innovations like the pill and consumerism flourished in society. Moreover, governments began employing welfare programs, including America’s “Great Society.”
Israel has one of the highest fertility rates in the world while ranking 22nd in GDP per Capita, placing it ahead of France and the UK. Economic strength does not inherently come at the expense of fertility. The presence of Orthodox Jews in Israel is paired with higher fertility and economic strength, so fertility is more ideologically than economically driven in much of the developed world. In America, Utah has the lowest out of wedlock births, and including Mormons, that is a very religious state. Moreover, Utah and “Flyover Country” generally rank higher geographically on fertility while the more secular New England states dominate the bottom of the charts. With some exceptions, “Red States” are generally better at procreating than “Blue States” as the more religious Deep South has higher rates than the secular New England or the Pacific Coast.
This comes down to ideology, not economics. For decades, our society promulgated the egalitarian notion of man and woman’s interchangeability. Society has encouraged promiscuity while stigmatizing the notion of stay-at-home moms. Our education system promotes the career driven women as the standard, pushing every student in America to have a college experience so they can succeed in life. Hollywood increasingly attempts to sell female heroes as equally capable or even superior to their male counterparts, even on a physiological level. Rather than embrace feminine qualities and maternal instincts of Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor, Hollywood increasingly portrays women as all powerful, flawless Mary Sue’s like Rey. Even the more villainous females like Cruella, Malevolence, or Daenerys Targaryen are portrayed as tragic and sympathetic. This is without discussing proto-feminist characters like Jane Eyre whereby the male character must be reduced in order for the female to achieve superiority (or equality).
The androgenization of women and effeminization of men has blurred the lines between male and female, which is the natural outcome of the Modern Gender Theory that the Second Wave Feminists propagated. Transgenderism represents the next wave of this ideology as the older generations indoctrinate or groom their wicked ideology within future generations. This is why 20.8% of Gen Z identifies as part of the rainbow. Millennials were 10.5%, then Gen X at 4.2%, Boomers at 2.6% and Traditionalists at .8%. There is a clear trickle-down effect demonstrated by the Gallup data where subsequent generations were more drawn into the homosexual and transgender lifestyle than their predecessors. This behavior is not natural but learned. One might say nurture over nature, yet we are supposed to believe it is the latter.
Instead of protecting or even dignifying the value of women in society, the fruit of feminism is the erasure of what it means to be a woman—a rejection of femininity. That is why the modern feminist often dress themselves contrary to their feminine features while vehemently promoting abortion. That is why degrading oneself sexually is empowerment. That is why it is mostly feminists celebrating the caricature of womanhood by males who wear dresses. Deconstructing the patriarchy opens the gateway wide for a host of depravities to follow.
Conclusion
There is no simplistic solution for the problems caused by Feminism’s permeation in America. Instead of a “Great Society,” we should reconfigure our tax code to support stable family growth rather than perpetuate poverty. America First policies that counter globalism and mass immigration would support economic growth which has potentially priced out the idea of marriage and children for many people. While it might be a cope, there has been a dramatic rise in housing that has not been matched with an equal rise in wages and GDP growth since the recession. This cannot be overlooked as a contributing factor to societal decay as people cling to ideologies like communism which offers solutions, albeit poorly thought out, in response to problems, perceived or legitimate, being ignored or perpetuated by the current system. Bringing quality jobs back to America would provide opportunities for American workers while improving their financial stability. This financial stability would support stronger families.
The school systems are the battleground, as we must counter Critical Race Theory and its adjacent Feminism offshoots at every level. One can improve the economic circumstances, but unless they prevent the indoctrination of future generations, then their efforts will be stopgaps. This comes down to parents being involved at the ground level of what their children are learning and exposed to, both in school and online.
As for the Church, biblical masculinity and femininity should be discipled by the local churches. The idea of being a light unto the world can be lived out without vocally sharing the gospel, as the world should not be allowed to ignore the strong family structures found within The Body of Christ. Supporting families and cultivating relationships should be at the forefront of intra-church fellowship and ministry. Christians should be leading the way in rejecting the dangers of Feminism from the pulpit and in their lifestyles—on the streets and in the sheets.
