How Feminism Ends
Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Friday, March 22, 2024
Review of “How Feminism Ends”… “if this is the end of feminism, then it doesn’t quite feel fair. If women are finally “free,” then why is it still so hard to be female? And why, after all of our hard work, are the best parts of history still made by males?”
Ginerva Davis has a very interesting review of French writer Emmanuel Todd’s book The Lineages of the Feminine in the new issue of American Affairs. It’s titled, provocatively, “How Feminism Ends”
Todd is a self-described liberal, and supports the right of adults to change their gender and, to the extent it is now medically possible, their sex. But in the places where our current moment is excessive, or historically aberrant, Todd finds an unambiguous common thread: the presence of females.
Females control the universities where such sex-denying work is produced. Females are disproportionately concentrated in the academic fields—anthropology, biology, sociology—that have most radically changed their ideas on sex and gender (in contrast, history, a more male-dominated field, has stayed largely above the fray). A female sociologist wrote the book about how menopause is a social construct; a different female anthropologist wrote another study Todd cites which argues that females should, actually, have evolved to be taller and stronger than males. (Todd responds that “natural selection is there only to be lamented over.”)
Females increasingly control the levers of cultural power; if a topic feels “ideologically central,” then it is because females made it so. At the very least, they constitute the majority of reporters who cover health, social issues, and family policy. The “gender ideology” Todd abhors runs through numerous female-dominated professions: it is promoted by journalists, legitimized by doctors, and codified into law by a growing number of female government officials. Todd also finds that it is almost always “mothers” (i.e., female parents) who have the final say over medical treatment for their children. And so while debates about “gender-affirming” care tend to be sex-neutral—“parents” making decisions about the bodies of their “children”—much of the contemporary “transgender movement” amounts to a trend of older females helping younger ones escape their sex.
…
The result, Todd argues, is a split consciousness on the status of “women.” Males see women everywhere: women police them in HR departments, mock them in the news, and, to add insult to injury, continue to insist that they are members of a protected class.
Females, however, are still haunted by a lack of female “greatness”—the same problem posed, seventy-five years ago, by Beauvoir. They work under male bosses. Their countries are run by mostly male leaders. Males continue to define the cutting edge in technology and industry, while females play catch-up in remedial programs (“Women in tech!” “Women in business!”). And even the most liberated female must still take her pills, and count her cycle, and watch her fertility “window” while pretending that she doesn’t care. The female condition, one of constant self-monitoring and self-suppression, is now oddly similar to that of the gender-dysphoric, which is perhaps why we females are so obsessed with them (I never felt quite so understood as a female until I read the work of Andrea Long Chu, whom Todd cites as a leading chronicler of the transgender experience). It also seems designed to create a degree of self-loathing: females are constantly set up to compete at tasks at which they are slightly disadvantaged, and are promised a life which, any rational mind will quickly discover, they will never achieve. Social media aside, it is unsurprising that a growing number of women now report that they hate themselves.
Todd argues that the recent wave of Western feminist agitation that we have witnessed in the past decade (#MeToo in America, #BalanceTonPorc in France) is not the result of a massive backslide in female liberation but the opposite—external barriers to female equality are falling by the year. Women are waking up to their new condition and finding it a bit upsetting. And they are looking desperately for something, anything, else to blame—femicide in a foreign country, their still-male bosses, and even the word “woman” itself.
Because if this is the end of feminism, then it doesn’t quite feel fair. If women are finally “free,” then why is it still so hard to be female? And why, after all of our hard work, are the best parts of history still made by males?
In another recent article, Stella Tsantekidou writes on “the desperation of female neediness.”
Do you know what it’s like to be a woman who wants a relationship but can’t get one? It is incredibly common and yet hardly acknowledged.
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Why We have a 37 Page Doctrinal Statement
The doctrinal grounding of non-denominationalism is typically at the mercy of the Senior Pastor. The good news is that the median tenure of pastors has risen to six years in a recent study.[i] But even a change in pastoral leadership every six years means that a congregation will be setting a new doctrinal course at every transition. A doctrinal statement sets the long-term trajectory of a congregation’s ministry and preserves its doctrinal distinctiveness for the long run. That will create more unity and leadership coherence over the decades.
This past year, we’ve visited Evangelical Free, Southern Baptist, Assemblies of God, and Anglican churches and been blessed in each gathering. These are brothers and sisters in Christ who worship the one Triune God. While varied in style and different on theological non-essentials, it is an honor to know that we are part of God’s family: we are rescued by God-made flesh who died for our sins and is risen from the dead. We submit to the same Word of God. We are indwelt by the same Spirit.
In the world of non-denominationalism, the tendency is to scrape theology down to its bare minimum and make room in our local churches for as many in the family of Christ as possible despite our theological differences. The spirit behind this reductionism is admirable: to not create unnecessary division. Why can’t we join together as a church in unity despite our minor disagreements?
New Life is swimming against that current. In a day and age many church’s doctrinal statements could be printed on written out on a napkin; we have a 37-page doctrinal statement.
I discovered New Life’s doctrinal statement when I began considering whether God might be calling apply to serve on staff. I was pretty surprised. I was also grateful. I’m even more grateful for the doctrinal statement today. Here are 7 reasons why:
1) Because Doctrine Matters
At its best, doctrine helps us understand God and ourselves better. It clarifies the purpose of the church and answers questions we have about all sorts of matters: from salvation to sovereignty to sexuality. The question isn’t whether or not the church has answers to those issues, it is how biblical, clear, and unified those answers are.
2) It is Transparent
Have you ever had people leave your church after your pastor preached a sermon on a controversial topic? A doctrinal statement doesn’t mean that will never happen, but it helps.
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Childhood Abuse and Humiliations . . . But Christ’s Healing and Redemption
I sometimes wonder if such experiences didn’t play a major role in my seeking something or someone in life that accepted me warts and all, loved me, and gave purpose to my individual life. I’m here to say I believe such experiences prodded me to find such a one, such a person. I met that person not for the first time—as I was already acquainted with him—but when I was 19 years old and received him into my life, heart, and spirit. That Person was Jesus Christ who became my Lord and Savior.
A question recently posted on Facebook asked if you remember your most humiliating experience as a child. It took me by surprise how fast two experiences came to mind. Both took place in elementary school coming at the hands of adults—a teacher and principal. Memories came to the fore; pain was felt immediately. Those experiences weren’t forgotten but rather had scarred me and followed me through life. They accounted for some of my most prominent and constant insecurities.
The first took place in third grade. Coming from a poor family situation, I did not receive allowance money as other children received. I did not have the freedom to buy candy or gum. One day, a student who was friendly with me offered me a stick of gum. I took it and unwrapped, it sticking it in my mouth. The teacher espied me chewing gum and came to me, made me stand up, she walked me to the front of the class and made me stand there for what seemed an interminable amount of time with the gum on my nose. I was humiliated. When the class ended, I went to the restroom to remove the gum that had hardened on my nose.
The second experience occurred in sixth grade. We were in the auditorium. Some boys grabbed the stage velvet curtains and leaped off the stage to the floor crying out like Tarzan’s hoarse bark, flying through the air on a jungle vine. As a tomboy, I felt I could do whatever they were capable of doing. I grabbed the curtain, cried out like Tarzan and leaped to the floor. The principal came and caught us. She scolded us and went on to say to me in front of all the students, “. . . but you, a girl! I can’t believe you did it too.” The curtain had torn. We were all told our parents would have to pay for the repair. I cringed that I would have to report this to my parents who struggled financially. I went to my class, sat in the back of the room and silently cried in humiliation. I was eleven years old
Such experiences as a child lastingly impacted that child—in fact, any child. The first experience is recognizable today as abusive action by a teacher against a child who normally never had gum or candy at school. To stand in front of the class with gum on one’s nose until the end of class was abusive humiliation. I later recognized how deeply it scarred me causing almost a self-hatred and sense of rejection.
The second experience represented a childish prank of a child doing something foolish to prove herself. The principal’s rebuke was valid, but the action of singling out one child due to her gender put her in a more vulnerable position. Later as I stood waiting on a corner to cross the street, my brother in an upper grade came behind me and said: “I heard what you did. Boy! Are you ever going to get it when you get home”! I trembled crossing the street fearing what was in store for me. My mother scolded me and said, “Wait until your father comes home.” I did not receive a spanking but rather a strong rebuke and “How could you do that?” Both parents discouraged my tomboy ways, as they wanted their daughter to be all-girl. We waited with dread for how much the bill would be to repair the curtain. When it came, my parents paid it immediately. Since I didn’t receive an allowance, I couldn’t pay them back.
Why am I sharing this story? It’s because children are very fragile emotionally and mentally. Discipline can cross a line that goes beyond correction to permanently scarring them. Back then, educators probably didn’t study child psychology. Some children who experience abuse become abusers. Others become dysfunctional. All experience brokenness to some extent. Those scars remain hidden or latent, but they do remain; and to think more than seventy years later they still cause pain reveals how powerful they are in a child’s life.
A second reason for sharing this story is a reminder to me and, I hope to others, to never forget children are fragile and vulnerable. Discipline with love, sensitivity, and limits. It’s not just actions that matter, but words also matter.
Lastly—but not least—remember and give thanks to God who can enable us to be healed even if scars remain and to forgive those who either abused or humiliated us at any time in life, not just as children.
I sometimes wonder if such experiences didn’t play a major role in my seeking something or someone in life that accepted me warts and all, loved me, and gave purpose to my individual life. I’m here to say I believe such experiences prodded me to find such a one, such a person. I met that person not for the first time—as I was already acquainted with him—but when I was 19 years old and received him into my life, heart, and spirit. That Person was Jesus Christ who became my Lord and Savior, who brought pardon and redemption, who brought real purpose and even confidence to my life, and has steadfastly been faithful to me despite moments of unfaithfulness to Him. I didn’t seek Him; He sought me. As the African American Spiritual articulately reveals, “He never failed me yet.” I am nothing more than a debtor to God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa. -
Problem Gambling
Gambling is thus idolatrous and immoral, but it is also simply foolish. The essence of gambling is its unpredictability and to invest resources in totally unpredictable events is irrational. Averages can be predicted but individual events cannot. One gambling win does not affect the probability of the next wager. The “gamblers fallacy” is that, if they are winning, they will continue to win and, if they are losing, their luck is about to turn. This is utter delusion.
Problem Gambling Awareness Month was observed in March with several items in our local media. This is an opportunity to consider what problem gambling is and how to prevent and recover from it.
A working definition of gambling is essential: gambling is putting resources at risk of loss for gain with no significant knowledge of or control over the outcome. Some consider gambling essentially immoral, others consider it only immoral if it is abused in some way and still others consider it simply foolish due to the sometimes catastrophic outcomes.
For the Christian, all questions of morality are answered by applying the moral law to an issue. The moral law is rooted in creation and valid as long as the creation endures. These creation ordinances are classically summarized in the ten commandments.
First, there are aspects of idolatry that are inherent in gambling. Lady Luck is another god, greed is an idol, and throwing the dice while calling on God for His blessing is taking His Name in vain. We take His Name in vain when we expect Him to bless us when we are not obeying a command and therefore have no promise of His blessing. “Throw the dice, God will make you win!” is eerily similar to the Devil’s command to Jesus, “Throw yourself from the Temple, God will preserve your life.”
Second, there are aspects of immorality inherent in gambling. God’s command is to earn wages not make wagers. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.” “If you will not work, you will not eat.” God also commands prudent investment where you do have significant knowledge and control over the outcome. See the parable of the talents. Work to earn a wage and then make your money work for you. God also commands us to make money “the old-fashioned way”; that is, inherit it. Parents are commanded to save and invest for themselves and their children, to build wealth across the generations so that they can be a blessing to many in many ways. Finally, tithes and alms are to be given from wages, not wagers. Offerings and gifts are to be given from accumulated wealth, not accumulated winnings.
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