Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold,
Managing editor at The Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever
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I would love to hear from you today. I am
so excited to welcome to the show, Doctor Carrie Gress.
Carrie is a wife, a homeschooling mother of five. She's
a senior contributor to the Federalist, and she is the
founder and editor of Theology of Home and she's the
author of ten books, most recently Something Wicked, Why Feminism
Can't be Fused with Christianity. It is such a good read,
and I feel at this point compelled to offer a
trigger warning for our conversation because it's such a hot topic.
Carrie and I dive into the origins of feminism and
why first wave feminism is actually just as destructive as
the subsequent waves, as well as what feminism even is
and how it's harmed Christian marriages, and how women who
are Christians but have been seduced by feminism can get
out of the feminism cult and reclaim a biblical worldview
of womanhood. That and so much more, without further ado,
please welcome to the show, Carrie Gress. Carrie Gress, it
is so great to have you on the Kylie Cast.
Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I have been chopping at the bit to talk to
you about this book ever since I heard about it,
and then after reading about it even more so. It's
such an important topic and I just can't wait for
more people to read it. And to learn about it.
So why don't before we dive into the themes of
the book, why don't you just tell listeners a little
bit about yourself and how you came to write this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I am a mother five, I have a PhD
in philosophy. And when I was doing that PhD, I
said out loud to God that I would never.
Speaker 2: Write on women's issues.
Speaker 3: And here we are eleven books in and I think
most of them have been related to women's issues.
Speaker 1: So you should never do that.
Speaker 2: No, don't do it. It always backfires. The same thing happened.
Speaker 3: Actually when I met my husband. I met him and
thought the poor woman that has to marry this guy,
and ended up marrying him. So God has a great
sense of humor. But in any event, Yeah, so I
about ten years ago I wrote my first book, kind
of just really starting to scrutinize feminism.
Speaker 2: And that book came out in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: It was called The Anti Mary Exposed, Rescuing the Culture
from Toxic Femininity. And you know, really, at that point,
nobody was talking about this about feminism as an issue,
and so it was kind of an outlier. And you know,
but the book did well, and I had all these
people say, can you write a book that would be
more secular friendly or Protestant friendly, And you know, it
was totally up for that because I thought that the
themes were very universal and were not specific just to Catholics.
And so I then wrote another book called The End
of Woman, and that came out with Regnery in twenty
twenty three, and that.
Speaker 2: Was was great.
Speaker 3: It's sort of it did well, and it was just
kind of a philosophical walk through, you know, the foundations
of feminism and how we got from feminism to the
trans movement and kind of.
Speaker 2: All the pieces in between.
Speaker 3: And then finally I realized, you know, I haven't like
put the nail on the coffin yet, haven't made it
clear that feminism and Christianity really are from totally different DNA.
They have different, you know, roots entirely, and we just
as Christians, need to stop trying to make the two
work because it's creating a lot of damage. It's creating
a lot of confusion more than anything. And I think
that Christians in general just don't know like what's good
and what's bad.
Speaker 2: And what parts we can keep and what parts we.
Speaker 3: Can't, and So that was really the goal with this
book was to just finally add a lot of clarity
and just say, look, these are two very distinct, you know,
philosophical groups. Feminism was actually set up to undermine and
to get rid of Christianity, and you know, we need
to just stop trying to make the two work together.
Speaker 1: Yes, in the book, you include so much fascinating history,
and I was especially captivated by your section on and
first wave feminism, and it kind of took me back
mentally to a big project I did in college. It
was college. It was my capstone project on the transgender revolution,
and that was before it became quite the flashpoint that
it is now. But in my research, I mean, it
took me directly back to second wave feminism. I mean
there's a direct line between Betty free Dan and you know,
Bella Abzug and their work, and Simone de Bovoir and
the trans movement and the way that they talked about,
you know, being beyond gender and not being born a
woman but becoming one and all these things. But I
think so that made sense to me, like why second
wave feminism was so evil and so subversive. But I
think subconsciously I believed the lie that first wave feminism
was okay because here are these noble goals, This was necessary,
but second wave feminism wasn't. And you know, diving especially
into that first few chapters of your book where you
really get into the nasty origins of first wave feminism,
really opened my eyes even more.
Speaker 2: To some of these some of these issues.
Speaker 1: So you can you just kind of a thirty thousand
foot view, because I think we could talk about this
for a full hour, but just kind of why the
first wave was just as bad as the second and
third wave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the first wave I bought the lie as well.
And actually, when I wrote my book The End of Woman,
I thought, Okay, I've got two days to research the
first wave. I'll just find some nice quotes and then
I'll move back to the second wave.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm still in the first wave. I
haven't been able to leave it yet.
Speaker 3: It's just there's so so much and I keep digging
and finding more, and that for this book, for something Wicked,
what really became super abundantly clear was just this the
idea of how much the first wave was really built
on disordered theological ideas. Mary Wollstonecraft actually was she had,
you know, migrated in her faith from Anglicanism to then
dissenting Christian and then onto Unitarianism, which doesn't believe in
the Trinity, it doesn't believe in Divini Christ. And she actually,
you know, makes the point that any kind of male mediator,
and she's here talking about both pastors and priests and
Jesus himself is at block or an obstacle to a
woman's potential to have a relationship or be in relationship
with God. So she makes that very clear. And then
you can see as the movement moves forward, it jumps
across the pond over back to the United States. But
all of those early first wave feminists from Lucretia Mott
and Fanny Wright's another one that that people are coming
to know Elizabeth, Katy Stanton, Susan b. Anthony, Matilda gauge
On and on, they almost all of them where both
became Unitarians. So they left you know, Calvinism and being
Baptists to anything mainline. They left for Unitarianism. And then
they also most of them also dabbled in the occult
and were very involved in what was called spiritualism, which
was you know, seances, and knocking on tables and all
kinds of things. And that actually where Elizabeth Katy stand
had the idea for the Seneca Falls Convention in the
first place, was at one of those spirit tables, which
is now in the Smithsonian here in Washington. So yeah,
it's it's pretty amazing when you start looking at it.
But the but Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
in particular that you know, their newspaper was called The Revelution,
and they very specifically were targeting Christianity and they wanted.
Speaker 2: They believed that it was a tool.
Speaker 3: Being used by men to enslave women, and they compared
women's lives to those of slaves, and you know, they're
very explicit about this, this kind of overlap, which you
know is audacious when you actually look at who these
women were and how privileged they were. You know, they're
making this effort to compare themselves to slaves before the
Civil Wars.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really amazing.
Speaker 3: So that that's kind of the the nest of it,
or you know, the essence of it. And then even
things like you know, suffrage was important, but it was
just more what was more what seemingly was more important
was this idea of transforming the understanding of womanhood into
something very masculine, trying to get women believe that they
would be happier the more they became like men, and
you know, that they had to just get rid of
the shackles of Christianity and that then they would be
liberated from it.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of the big picture.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, oh my goodness, there's so much
to unpack and what you just said. And I mean,
of course, as we've seen since then, there is no
limiting principle to becoming more like men. I mean, you know,
first it's it's unshackling yourself. Then it's you know, then
we see the introduction of the pill like way later
of course that makes women more like men, and then
abortion makes women more like men, and then oh, you
can just actually become a man. Actually you're not actually
confined to your womanhood. I mean, there is no logical endpoint.
It's so destructive. I also think it's so interesting that
so many of these first wave feminists did have religious roots,
that they did actually have some theological understanding or backing,
because it strikes me that this was almost you know,
early decons instructionism.
Speaker 2: And it's so so.
Speaker 1: Interesting because you know, all over Instagram, and maybe it's
just my algorithm or the type of people that I follow,
but it seems to me that there is a huge
overlap that then Diagram might just be mostly a circle
here of women who have bought into feminism and women
who have deconstructed from Christianity. And of course there are
still a lot of women who who claim to be
Christians and I are I think faithful Christians who don't
know that they've been deceived by feminism and would also
identify as feminists. But I think there's also a large
segment of women who do have who do have a
religious background but were maybe poorly catechised, whether they're Catholic
or Protestant, and have fallen for feminism and that feminism
has deconstructed the weak faith that they did have. And
so it's just interesting you even see this in the
first wave because really that's what happened to the architects
of feminism right now.
Speaker 3: And that was one of the things that was really
fascinating to see was just these loops that you know,
these cycles that go that we go through, and so
very explicitly. I was seeing, you know, what were happening
among Protestants in particular, kind of this engagement with the occult,
whether it's enneagrams or you know, just manifesting and various
things that you are popping up. All of those things
happened in the eighteen hundreds. And I think, you know,
the first thing we have to do in understanding this
is sort of get rid of this the sense that
we have of this very Victorian prim and proper era,
but really recognized that there was something very radical going
on during this period. And even Percy Shelley, who is
you know, it seems like a totally random person, but he's,
you know, English poet who created this woman named Sithna
that became the model for what feminism became.
Speaker 2: She's these three pieces.
Speaker 3: One of them was Contempt for Men, which came from
Shelley's mother in law, Mary Wellstonecraft.
Speaker 2: From his father in law.
Speaker 3: He got the idea of what they called free love
or the end of monogamy. His father in law, William Godwin,
thought that that he thought that marriage was a kind
of slavery, and he later went on to influence Marks significantly.
And then Shelley added his own fascination with the occult.
But he also said, you know, way back then, this
is like early eighteen hundred, said we, you know, eventually
will get rid of this construct called gender or sexuality.
I'm not exactly sure what language you use, but that
was kind of the idea, was that he saw that
this was something that we just needed to rid ourselves of.
And so it's interesting to see, you know, he's saying
this well over two hundred years ago, and now if
you look at feminism today, what is it. It's contempt
for men, it's promiscuity, and it's the occult. So not
everybody obviously is involved in all three of those things,
but you can see how once you are those things
really do enslave you into this kind of you know,
this new slavery I think of use and denigration that
we're really seeing around us now. You know, it's very
hard to uphold the ordered dignity of a person when
those pieces are really at play, and that the isolation
that comes.
Speaker 2: With them and whatnot.
Speaker 3: So yes, absolutely amazing to see the patterns, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just that those seeds were present from the
very beginning. Again, that this wasn't something that started as
an innocent thing that kind of snowballed out of control.
It's this, this was, this was the point the whole time. Yes,
and there's nothing new, nothing new under the sun here.
This is a total sidebar. But I also found it
so interesting as I was reading this first wave history,
because I took literature classes in college, specifically British literature,
and it was so funny to see that there's just
these two parallel tracks. Like I knew of a lot
of these characters, but I didn't know of them as
being so adjacent to first wave feminism. I just knew
of their writing, you know, the Shelley's and all of them,
and then seeing how they fit into Mary wollstone I
don't know how to say her name Stonecraft. It was
just very fascinating. I'm like, oh, wow, there's there's way
more to probe here than I had any idea when
I was when I was superficially studied studying these authors
in college.
Speaker 2: So fascinating. Wow, No, I think something right.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should have started here. But but how do
you define feminism? Because I know everybody has a different
idea of what it is, So do you think.
Speaker 3: It is so I think feminism what we're not talking
about is just this general idea that feminism is about
helping women. I think this has been kind of a
blob definition that feminism has trying to use and has
really stuck under the radar because of it. You know,
it's it says, well, if you don't like feminism, you
must not want to help women, or you know, it's
evaded scrutiny. And I think, very specifically looking at what's
happened with feminism and the movement and the whole trajectory,
feminism really is about creating autonomy for women, for women
as something of an idol that that's really the goal
of a woman's life is to be autonomous from career,
I mean from husbands and children, to have her own
career and sort of basically dictate the way that her
life looks, that she's sort of the one behind the
control instead of being deeply embedded in relationships and whatnot.
And then in addition to that, I have all these
other pieces and this is really where the book came from.
Kind of this idea of recognizing that feminism as this
shadow church is because I think feminism has mimics a
lot of the things that you see in Christianity. So
it has this, you know, we have an object of
worship in Christianity, which is God, and feminism has this
idol of women's autonomy. And then from there you go to,
you know, the different commandments that it's got, which are
I just discussed that the contempt for men, the promiscuity,
and the involvement, and the occult it's sacrament which is abortion.
It's got its own form of evangelization, which is certainly,
you know, broken women break other people around them, and
we see that in spades. And then it becomes much
more easy easy to become a feminist because of the
bitterness and whatnot that's sown in it. And then another
extraneous piece of it. But I think is really important
is the emotional level. Christianity has faith, hope, and love,
and feminism has contempt, rage, and envy are really the
emotions that it really is trying to promote in women.
Speaker 2: And that's certainly not by accident either.
Speaker 3: That goes back to the early eighteen nineties when the
socialists realize that women are a lot more politically active
and engaged.
Speaker 2: When they're angry. So anyway, those are.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the fabric of it, and that's what
I talk about in the book itself, or all these
different pieces that you see that kind of line up
as imitating Christianity.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is interesting that you know, this
kind of blob definition is so easy to get behind.
I think that's why so many, so many women fall
for it. Is Oh, it's just because to oppose feminism
is just to oppose womankind. If you if you believe
the modern conception of the definition of feminism, and it
is just so interesting that the feminists have not only
defined their own movement wrongly, but they've also defined what
being an anti feminist is wrongly as well. They kind
of hold all the definitions, and it's hard because the
definitions are so vague to to oppose feminism because again
it's it's such a flowery, vague definition, and yeah, hard
to oppose something that sounds so noble and so so wonderful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well then it adds on the you know you,
certain people aren't allowed to talk about it, like men
can't talk about it.
Speaker 2: Because I'm not women, and then I'm not supposed to
talk about it because I have a PhD.
Speaker 3: You know, it sort of becomes like this mommy deariest relationship,
like you've benefited from feminism, therefore we can't talk about it,
you know, which nobody would accept that when it comes
to any kind of religion, like oh, you've benefited from Christianity,
therefore you can't scrutinize it like that.
Speaker 2: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: You know, no one, no secular person, and no one
who would consider themselves a feminist, would actually allow that
to happen in that case.
Speaker 2: So why is it that somehow.
Speaker 3: It's this is protected entity, right, look behind the curtain
at what's really going on behind it and see, you know,
is this really good? And I think it's because so
much of it is really bad that it's you know,
it's worked hard to hide it from the general population.
Speaker 1: You touched on autonomy when you talked about the three
Commandments of feminism. Can you in the book you write
that autonomy is both a lie and an idol. Can
you explain what you mean by that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So autonomy is fascinating because one of the things
that you see, you know, first wave feminism, for all
of its faults, you've got all these women who are,
with the best of intention, trying to protect other women.
That the irony is, of course, that all the efforts
that they've made to try to protect women have not
actually worked. So, for example, if you look at who
Mary Wollstonecraft is trying to protect her sister and her
best friend and the relationships they were involved in, we
still see the exact same kind of abuse in women,
only it's much much worse, especially if you include human
trafficking and all the other realities, awful realities that we're
seeing today.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 3: So there's this effort at trying to sort of bubble
wrap women that if we don't have these relationships with
men or with children, and we're just really focused on
what are our own you know, career and focus, then
we're not going to be vulnerable. But of course that's
the lie, because you're still vulnerable. It just comes in
different stages. And you know, this is part of being human,
is that idea of being in relationship with others and
loving others and self gift. And you know, the tragedy is,
of course, that so many women buy into this, and
then it's not until they're you know, fifties sixties that
they realize like, okay, this lie about my fertility was
a total lie, and now I'm alone and this is
not at all what I wanted my life to look like.
So I think that's the big lie. But the thing
that's so compelling about it is, you know, this idea
of autonomy is appealing because you don't have to wait
for a man to ask you on a date, you
don't have to wait for someone to propose to you.
You know, everything is really about your own control and
power and what it is that you want, and the career,
it certainly is the goal of you know this this
elusive goal of having this incredible career and you know,
being very fulfilled by that.
Speaker 2: But I think obviously there are problems.
Speaker 3: With that as an idol, because that's never going to
satisfy you, you know, especially because it becomes we become
so insular and self gazing, and we know through Christianity
that we've become that joy really comes from self gift
and giving of ourselves to others and uniting ourselves with
God's will instead of it being all our will. So
I think that those are you know, all of these
things are problematic because it's it's it's questing after something
that's a much lower good than what it is that
we're meant to really be seeking. And sadly, of course,
our economic system is really built around this. You know,
you've got medical schools and law schools promoting the idea
of freezing eggs, and you know, women that you can
just put off motherhood until you're ready for it, and
you know, these things too, are just laden with lies
because of course women's fertility isn't a switch that can
be flipped on and off at will, but you know,
has its own path and course and you know and
levels off, you know, steeply after a certain age. So yeah,
I think that's the real issue, is just trying to
see asked this that this really is about, you know,
being seduced into an idea of what it is it's
best for us, instead of what's fundamentally really is the
best thing for women.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting that. I Okay, So I wonder if
that is why IVF specifically can be so seductive for
Christians or for people who would carry the you know,
label of pro life. But are you know, deceived into
thinking that IVF is pro life rather than what it is,
which is you know, part of big fertility. It's actually
horrible for women, it's deadly for children because you're not
fully scorning motherhood. You are just trying to have your
cake and eat it too. It's like it's like trying
to value human life, trying to value motherhood, but also
trying to live out the lie of autonomy and the
idol of autonomy of I can have my career, i
can pursue the things that I want to pursue. I'm
not shackled by my fertility. I'm not shackled by you know,
a single motherhood or stay at home, motherhood, life in
the home. But I can still hold these two things
that are kind of contradictory of motherhood and you know,
the feminist ideal simultaneously while also convincing that IVF is
a pro life and Christian position. And I hadn't thought
of that till just now, but it really seems like
maybe one way that the enemy can deceive women into
thinking that they are can be both feminists and Christians
and also pro life while supporting these practices that are
inherently neither Christian nor pro life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, I think that's an amazing point, because you just
connected a lot of really interesting dots that I hadn't
really thought about. But I think that what you've just
described is what we're seeing, especially among conservative feminists and
Catholic feminists in particular, is kind of this cake and
eat it too attitude, where it can be I can
still do all these things that I want to do
and without having to give anything up. And the reality
is is that, you know, that's that's the big problem,
is that we have been seduced and told and even
the whole culture reflects this, this idea of having it
all and being able to do it all and there's
no sacrifice at any point. But we know that, you know, order, beauty, love,
all of these things are actually built on sacrifice. And
you know, obviously this is the beauty of a woman
having many seasons of her life and you know, being
able to learn which season needs to what needs to
happen at which season, that's really important. But instead we've
prioritized kind of this goal of like the career and
still wanting to be the stay.
Speaker 2: At home mom. But it's in the end of it.
And actually I wrote a piece about this for the Federalist.
Speaker 3: Is this idea of kind of this girl math of
you can't do both the full time mom and the
full time career without something giving, and sadly what we
have seen give are the children. And I think IVF
is just another you know piece, you know, even earlier
at an earlier stage of where we are expecting children
to sort of accommodate us instead of the other way around.
So yeah, I really the way they can articulated that.
Speaker 1: The self sacrifice point is such a good a good
point too, because I think one thing that I've heard
from self described feminist Christians is just this idea of
Jesus as a liberator. And you know, of course, in
some ways we know that that is true in the
sense that he frees us from our sins, like he
liberates us in some ways. But just just sort of
going back to the basics of what we know about
the character of Christ as not somebody who liberates us
to self actualization, but rather to self denial, like he
is the epitome of self sacrifice. That's the whole point
of the gospel, is that he came to actually lay
down his life for the good of others. And just
this idea that that the feminist ideal of I can
have it all, and I can determine my destiny and
you know, I can live out my dream even if
it requires putting my family and other people around me
on the back burner. It's so anti the character of Christ.
And we can use, we can you know, co opt
feminist language and sort of try to marry it to
Jesus speak, but it just doesn't work because that's just
not who the Savior is. And so it's so important
to help get women out of these patterns of thinking
that are just really really anti biblical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think that is such a great point too.
You know, one of the books that I use for
my research was this book called Satanic Feminism. And when
I first read this book, it's it's published by Oxford
University Press, very academic.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a dissertation.
Speaker 3: And I, for whatever reason, I don't know why, I
never looked at the subtitle of the book, and I
just assumed that this guy was against feminism, because with
a name like Satanic Feminism, you would think that who
would be for that? But the subtitle of the book
is basically, how Lucifer Liberated Women. That's the subtitle of
the book. And so it's really interesting because he's of
course using it's it's really an awful book, but the
research is amazing and was incredibly helpful, especially in my
book and a Woman. But that's the amazing thing is
just this what does that word liberate mean and what's
being what is it playing out? And so if you
go back to the first wave, what they mean by
liberation is freedom from husband and Christianity.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what they mean.
Speaker 3: They don't mean, you know, that this sort of contorted
way of you know, no more sacrificing. They mean the
exact opposite of that, and that really is I think
what you're right, Christ calls us to is this life
of following him, of emptying ourselves out for others, and
that's really where we're going to find joy and happiness,
and we're going to find, you know, the beauty of
complementarity of male and female. Going back to Genesis, which
is a whole other layer of things that have been
distorted by the feminists in the first wave in particular,
is this idea of who Eve was and what she represented.
So anyway, Yeah, I think these are really important terms
that we need to, you know, understand deeply who the
person of Christ was and what it is that we're
meant to follow instead of just having this expectation.
Speaker 2: That you know, really it's an entitlement.
Speaker 3: It's a sense of entitlement that we're somehow owed things
instead of offering things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bring up Genesis, and that was one thing
that struck me. I think you bring it up multiple
times in the book about just the Satan's tactic of
going after the woman and how that worked in the
garden and how that has just continued throughout all time
that I forget how you phrase it. Maybe you can
you can articulate it better, but just the way that
you can crumble so many things by like captivating women
and catching them in the sin, and the way that
it's just destroyed everyone, not just women.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. There's
something about womanhood where men will follow what it is
that women do. We see that with Eve, and so
you better get your women right. And this is you know,
the tragedy of what feminism has done is because it has.
Speaker 2: Silenced men so broadly.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just amazing to hear the cricket see
and there's so many men, you know, I hear privately
all the time who don't like feminism, who don't want feminism,
and there are certainly a few that are speaking up,
and the voices are getting louder and stronger and more numerous,
Thanks be to God, but that for.
Speaker 2: You know, how many we're in like the sixth.
Speaker 3: Decade of this, and it's taken a very long time,
I think for that realization. And you know, we had
to get to this point where people it's just so
obvious to see what the damage is and so people
are feeling a lot more comfortable I think talking up
or speaking up about it. But absolutely I think that
Fulton Sheen had this amazing line about how you can
measure a culture by the level of its women, because
women are typically meant to be something that men aspire
to be worthy of. So when you have women who
are not aspiring to anything worthy, in fact, you know,
it's very difficult even to find what a good woman
is in the culture today. There's nothing for them to
aspire to. There's nothing for them to really have to
become better men in order to be attractive, and you know,
something that that woman feels like is worth attaching herself to.
And so I think this is one of the reasons
why we're seeing so many problems, you know, the constant
complaint there's no men out there, well, what.
Speaker 2: Are we done with women?
Speaker 3: You know, it sort of feels like, in many respects,
sort of this race to the bottom of like which
sex can behave worse instead of the opposite, which actually
has sort of this internal motivation for people to become
better built. And when you're really working with human nature
as it ought to be worked.
Speaker 1: With right well, and it's not just about character and
virtue but also about function, Like you don't need men
to be providers. When women become the providers and women
are core substitutes for it. But still it's when women
have supplanted men in function, then you also don't need
men to step up to do what they were designed
to do. And so it's just, you know, the fault
of not being able to find good men in many ways,
probably in most ways falls at the feet of women.
We really need to own up to.
Speaker 3: That well, and I think that's right in terms of
even looking at where the big change happened, and it
certainly happened in the sixties and seventies with free love,
you know, promiscuity becoming something to which women really aspire
because they thought that would make them more like men.
That's the big change that I think it took place,
and that we haven't really paid enough attention to to
really realizing the incredible amount of damage that is being.
Speaker 2: Done by that.
Speaker 3: But the amazing thing is is that women aren't generally
able to be autonomous and take care of all the
things that they want. It usually ends up being the
state that takes over the role of the man. And
that's the real tragedy because that's when you're really trapped
because we become so dependent on the state, and of
course the state then has to grow larger, and then
you've got men are who are not responsible for anyone
or anything. So yeah, it's it's amazing to see, you know,
there's no longer just sort of two people here. There's
that the state has become its own entity, such that
the phrase burerogamy is being used. You know, women are
now married to the state and not to men.
Speaker 1: That is such a good point. And it's not even
hidden anymore. I mean, this has been an explicit goal
of the government since I mean probably before Barack Obama.
But Life of Julia comes to mind of this idea
that there's this woman who is fulfilled in every way
and she doesn't have a husband, and you know, big
brother is her husband and he takes care of her
from cradle to grave, and it's, oh, it's just so damaging.
And I don't understand. I don't understand the allure, Like
why is this desirable for women? You know, because you're
not autonomous, you are not self sufficient, you're not independent,
you are still cared for by an abusive husband. Because
the state is the state will never love you back.
Speaker 3: They will never love you back as much as much
as you give to it. And I and I think
that's a really fundamental point, though, is that women's vulnerability
hasn't gone away. It's just been masked or or somehow
we've been fed something align about it that it's not true,
or somehow we don't believe that we're vulnerable even though
we're still married to the state. You know that it's
this incredible amount of confusion about it. And and then
if you look at the flip side, though, you know
what is what happens when you have men who provide
and protect and you know, understand their roles as husbands
and fathers. And it's in that space that suddenly a
woman's vulnerability is no longer you know, liability, it's actually
an asset because that's when she really is allowed to
become the person that she's meant.
Speaker 2: To be, which is a life giver.
Speaker 3: Women are meant to be life givers, whether we're biological
mothers or spiritual mothers, you know, all of these different
aspects in which.
Speaker 2: Women mother others.
Speaker 3: When you, when you are cared for and protected and loved,
then suddenly all of that can bloom in this incredibly
beautiful and fruitful way in our lives, where you know,
children are know that they're loved and can grow up
to be the children that they're meant to be instead
of you know, passed around from you know, organization organization
or person to person, and then the marriage itself obviously
becomes stronger as well. So I think that we it's
exciting to start thinking about how do we as conservatives
start creating better models of what is available to us
when we actually follow human nature and really understand the
complementarity of male and female and then the trouble gifts
that men have and then what women have, and even
that baseline idea, like when you tell the woman that
she's a mother and she understands that to a core,
even though she has no children. We see it certainly
in little girls, you know, this innate desire to mother,
and we help her do that in a way that's
ordered and not driven by her emotions or her ego
or whatnot. Only she can do amazing things no matter
where she's at, if she's in the workplace or if
she really is you know, she does have her own children,
or if she ends up you know, working in a
job that requires her to be really compassionate. Then then
she looks like a much different person and she can
really get through life in a different way instead of
always searching for something, you know, it becomes about her
becoming more of who she's meant to be, instead of
grasping at things that you are supposed to just be
pleasurable or tantalizing or you know, the next adventure, the
next wardrobe or whatnot. There's a real core and a
depth there, and I think that's what we were missing today.
And the idea of good woman is that core of
what it means to take care and love and treasure
and you know, be loyal to others.
Speaker 1: That's such an important point. I've been thinking a lot
about this idea of misplaced mothering, because this desire to
mother is inherent in women, even if we do fight
ainst our biology. But I've been thinking about it a lot.
And now that we've been talking about the state and
kind of being married to the state, it strikes me
that it's not just a one way relationship there either,
where the state becomes the husband for the woman, but
also it in many ways becomes her the object of
her mothering, where you know, we see this a lot
with progressive political activism, where women will murder their own
children in the womb, but then use their mothering instinct
to go protest for you know, children in another country
that they don't know and will never meet. And you know,
I think of you know, the lies from the media
about the five year old used as bait by ice
or whatnot, and number of women who came out of
the woodwork to mother this boy in the sense of
caring for him and you know, advocating for his rights
and all these things. It's like, these are all instincts
that are good, but they should be channeled toward your
own children. And you know, I mean then you run
into all kinds of media propaganda. I mean, there's many,
many elements of this that have nothing to do with
with feminism specif. But it just strikes me that it's
actually a circular relationship where you care for the state
cares for the woman, and then the woman will will
use her mothering instinct to to sort of facilitate more
of this from the state, and and it's just it's
so crazy. You cannot deny this biological urge to mother.
And I had a really awesome conversation last week with
Chloe Cole on the podcast she fell for the transl
as a child and and you know, was living as
a man quote unquote for a while and has detransition,
and she talks about how one of the things that
kind of brought snapped her back to reality was being
in class and learning about pregnancy and breastfeeding and it's
striking her that like, I'm never going to get to
do this, but she's wired to do this and she
wants to do this, and how powerful just that, Like
women can spend their whole lives fighting against this urge,
but it's still there, and maybe it manifests in ugly ways,
but but it doesn't go away just because you you know,
fall for abortion and and all these other anti woman,
anti life things. The urged mother is still present.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's that's really important.
Speaker 3: And you know, obviously the pet craze has been a
huge avenue through which women are still mothering. You know
now that especially now that you see dogs and strollers
and you know, it's just amazing how far it's gone.
But yeah, it is that that misplaced compassion, that idea
of the woman who works for peta but she's awarded
her own child. And you know, one of the ways
that I've started talking about it and thinking about it
specifically is just to really, you know, ask that question,
like how local is your love or the people that
you love?
Speaker 2: Can you touch them, can you see them? Can they
see your face?
Speaker 3: Because that's really where women excel and you know, are
so gifted because we're so embodied to be a sense
of home for others, certainly in a very real sense
as far as as having a child. That's you know,
a woman is the is the first home for every
human and then you know, it only extends out of
there in terms.
Speaker 2: Of the amount of time that you know, you just spend.
Speaker 3: Holding a baby, looking at a baby, holding your children,
looking at you know, being dialed into them in a
very real and rich way. And instead we've we've said, oh,
that's not really that important. You need to be involved
doing big things, you know, saving the universe or saving
the world, doing something with people that you have, you know,
you probably never even meet.
Speaker 2: So I think you're.
Speaker 3: Exactly right about that real inversion that's that's happening and
continues to happen and be sold to us as a m.
Speaker 1: Let's let's go back to the three commandments of feminism,
because one thing in the book that really struck me
that I've been kind of noodling on is how these
three commandments of feminism, which I think you said, are promiscuity, Uh,
what is it? Autonomy and the occult is that correct.
Speaker 2: Time, promiscuity can tempt from men and they call oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, And how they directly attack the Trinity, which
is especially interesting in light of the Unitarian beliefs of
the early feminist But can you can you kind of
explain how each of these commandments does directly attack the
three persons of the Trinity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this was a fascinating insight that I actually
got from my husband because he was trying to find
a quick way for me to describe all of this
because it comes up over and over and over again
and again. It comes from Percy Shelley in the early
eighteen hundreds. So yeah, when you're obviously, if you have
contempt for men, it's going to be very hard to
have a direct relationship with God the Father, because you're
not going to trust men. The second part would be promiscuity. Well,
if you're promiscuous, you're could not honoring your body, which
is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And then the
third way would be obviously the occult, which is really
a violation of the authority of Christ as King and
Savior of the world. Instead, you're really buying into something
that is supposed to be, you know, at odds with
His his power and his kingdom. So I think it's
it's fascinating to see like that those are the three things,
because they may get incredibly difficult to then re estabulate,
re establish a relationship with God because the fact that
you've gone after these very specific ways that we're embodied
souls that you know are are able to be in
relationship with the Trinity. Yeah, I think it's a it's
really it's kind of devastating when you start seeing just
how targeted Christianity has been by the feminists from in that,
you know, very the mechanics, not just the general idea,
but in the very mechanics of what it means to
believe in the Trinity.
Speaker 1: Yes, can you explain a little bit more about the
occult aspect of this, because you know, if again, if
my instagram is any indications, there are a lot of
self described feminist Christian women who are not, you know,
blatantly into this witchy occult stuff. They're just posting girl empowerment,
you know, memes and think that that their career is
more fulfilling the motherhood and then you know, by by
all accounts, it stops there.
Speaker 2: So what would you.
Speaker 1: Say to women who who maybe would self identify as
both feminists and Christians, who say, yeah, this doesn't apply
to me because I'm not I'm not into tarot cards
and I don't do palm rings and I don't dabble
in anything of the occult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean I think that you can sort
of bracken out the occult in a certain respect because
I think there are so many women that that do
believe that. And actually that was kind of one of
the things.
Speaker 2: That you know, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I've tried to tone down discussion of that certainly in
the last book, The End of Women, because I just
thought this isn't really as important as these other philosophical ideas,
the way in which we've been brainwashed. And this is
why in the End of Women Too, I talk a
lot about the communist connection and this idea of the
prioritization of work, and so I think that's actually the
bigger piece is you know, Betty frid Anne. We know
there's a ton of documentation. There's actually a book written
by her friend, David Horowitz I think is his name,
about Betty fred Anne and her connection with communism and
this idea of getting women out of the home to
do productive work, because the Communists had decided that motherhood
was not productive work. So she uses all these really
amazing psychological tactics, things like, you know, women's fear of
missing out, and you know, again the denigration of the home.
She calls it the comfortable concentration camp. So she's trying
to denigrate that to get women out into the workforce
so that to promote the Communist revolution. So I think
this is you know, the problem isn't so much for
Christians necessarily on the occult level.
Speaker 2: It is exactly what you described.
Speaker 3: It's on the work level, and this level of autonomy
and the prioritization of work over the much more important
elements of faith and family. So I think that that's
you know that so for the woman that you've just described,
that's really the key issue because in a certain respect
it's it's bought in sort of through the back door
communist principles, which are obviously not in any way congruent
with Christianity either, this idea of you know, constantly.
Speaker 2: Even that that language.
Speaker 3: Of empowerment, you know that that sort of implies that
women were not in power and gets back to that
language of victimhood or victimization, where women are automatically victims
because we're female, and men are the victimizers or the
pressure pressers because they're male, which is absolutely you know,
the language of marx that's been twisted through critical.
Speaker 2: Theory and whatnot.
Speaker 3: So I think there's a lot more going on than
people realize that it's you know that there's there.
Speaker 2: It's kind of language.
Speaker 3: It's very loaded with a lot of Communist and Marxist
concepts that that we sort of buy into at our peril,
and I think that's really what we're seeing. You know,
so many of the problems in the culture today is
because we've become very communists by focusing on work and
the denigration of the home, and we've really allowed this
to proliferate because we don't understand the importance of the home.
So I think that's hopefully that speaks a little bit
more directly to that. And you know, aside from the occult,
like even if you're not involved with occult, if you're
still involved in this language where women are victims and
therefore entitled to something and men are therefore oppressors and
not entitled to something. You know, this is where you
get into dei and all kinds of issues about merit
and the way in which we use structure society such
that the family can fundamentally flourish instead of what we're
seeing today.
Speaker 1: Right right, yeah, well, and I guess you know, even
if you're not into astrology or even if you're not
practicing any of these, you know, wu who kind of
out there things occult things, you can't get away from
the origins of feminism being rooted in the occult. And
you also, it makes me think of the garden again,
like you know, when when Adam and Eve's sin and
after the fall, you know, they're told, or Eve is told,
your desire will be for your husband and he will
rule over you. And just this like this sort of
friction between the sexes and like the way that women
try to dominate men and try to take over men's
roles and I mean that is just that's been ongoing
since the Garden, and you know, it's a sin, and
so in that way it is demonic. I mean, it's
from the enemy, it's not Christian, and so even if
not an ault, it's still demonic.
Speaker 2: I think that's such a great point too.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think that whole element really, I mean,
feminism fundamentally is based on power and control. And so
if there's a situation where a woman, you know, fundamentally
will says I will not serve. Even though we know
that God has set up the hierarchy, set up the
whole Christian order in a and respect, No, this isn't
isn't tyranny, This isn't some sort of like men have authority,
you know, every man who has authority over every woman.
You know, there there are there's After two thousand years,
we have a very beautiful understanding of what this means
and that this order that God has created and it's
and I think that that's one of the things that
gets so tiresome is just sort of the sense of like, Okay,
this is not what you know, I have to explain
over and over again what I don't mean, you know,
I don't mean that.
Speaker 2: Men are are tyrants, and you know, on and on.
Speaker 3: So I think that that's really where we have a
lot of work to do, is just in terms of
helping people understand the subtlety of it, and also the
fear that women have in terms of first of all,
recognizing that we're not meant to be just like another
mother to our husbands, that that there's a real order there.
Speaker 2: And I think that, you.
Speaker 3: Know, one of the things that I think is incredibly
attractive in men, and having been around a lot of
seminary and men who are going to be pres you
always see there's women around them, and some of it's
because they're comfortable with them, but there's also this element
of there's something very attractive about men who really want
to hear God's heart. They really are men after pursuing
with you know, making every sacrifice to really know what
God wants. And I think that that's an important thing
that we have to communicate to men and to women too.
It's just that understanding of we've got to stop fudging
this and allowing women just to take over because it's
too It's a lot easier to do that than to
fight and vice versa, that we have to start really
holding people accountable for what it is that their responsibilities
are and for women to stop taking over what men
are meant to do, and you know, vice versa, we
don't the last we need or you know, submissive men.
So I think that even you know, having for the
conversations about this can be incredibly helpful and fruitful, even
just in our daily lives with friends and you know,
Bible studies and looking at the way other people have
lived this well can be really instructive and help us
sort of fill out that moral imagination of how this
is supposed to look instead of always faulting defaulting back
into this you know, oh, she's a doormat or she's
the empowered overlord of a woman. You know, we have, right,
there's a lot more beauty and nuance in the middle
of that that that I think we need to start
looking at more carefully and with you know, a lot
more precision.
Speaker 1: I think your your most recent answer kind of gets
to this, but how do you think that feminism specifically
has harmed Christian marriages? And maybe sort of a sister
question to that is, how can husbands help their wives
not to fall into the traps of feminism, because even
women who are married can so often get sucked into
these algorithms, are sucked into group chats or you know,
wine mom called sure or whatever it is, where it's
it's the norm to gossip about your husband and it's
the norm to tell each other that you know, you
can have it all and you know, I mean, there's
so much bad messaging that comes from woman to women
and even two married women who have children. So not
only how has how has feminism harmed Christian marriages? But
also how can husbands help their wives not to be
swept into that short of telling them to you know,
encouraging them to log off and get off social media,
because I think that's a start. But how else?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's really huge.
Speaker 3: I mean I think part of that is just first
really understanding just how manipulated we are on an emotional
level and bombarded by this kind of content all the time.
Speaker 2: Being really picky about who it is that you follow,
what it is that you watch, how you spend your time.
That's one thing.
Speaker 3: Obviously filling up you know, having a regular regime of
prayer and of silence. I think those are incredibly important
and really understanding just how to kind of process your emotions,
like especially when you feel provoked and angry about something like, Okay,
what's really behind that? What who's where's that coming from?
Is that the voice of God?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Learning how to discern those are those are really important things.
And I think women, you know, we need to get
back to this place where we understand, where we become steady.
There's something so compelling about women that are steady under pressure,
or they're steady under you know, when the gossip starts,
there's there's something really powerful the woman that saysn't say anything,
you know, So that is the other piece is really
understanding female steadiness. We have the vice of We have
an attraction to the vice of both envy and and distraction,
and that means that the opposing virtue is not envy,
not comparing ourselves to others, but also being able to
sort of be peaceful in the midst of turmoil. So
I think that those are important pieces. Obviously, our husbands
can help us dramatically in terms of you know, couples
praying together, families praying together, reading the Bible together, you know,
making your life focused more around Christ. And you know,
what we know builds up culture and just having frank conversations.
You know, one of the things that I know as
a as a woman, that I've really come to value
is do people know that they can disagree with me?
And this is something that I cannot say in every
error in my life. I'm good at this, Yet I'm
still working on this a lot, because I think all
of us are really recovering feminists, and so many responses
has been so ingrained in us. But I think that's
an important thing too, is do I have the humility
to listen and to you know, let other people express
their views and take them on and change, you know, accordingly.
Speaker 2: So that's important.
Speaker 3: And then I think, more than anything though, it goes
back to that idea of what's local, loving what is local,
Loving your colleagues the best you can, being present to them,
meeting their needs, loving your children, loving your spouse, prioritizing
those needs. And you know, it's amazing how even countercultural
it is to say we should really prioritize the needs
of our husbands. And yet you know what could be
more basic, who's closer to you, you know, and even
just recognizing what happens when we love others better, they're
able to love us better, and just that the goodness
that then kind of come springs, you know, the fruitness,
that fruit that springs from that is really important too.
So anyway, I could probably keep talking about this in
terms of specifics, but I think.
Speaker 2: You know, these aren't hard things.
Speaker 3: It's just a matter of kind of unplugging from what
it is that we've grown used to and really recognizing
the way those things are manipulating us and using us
for friends that are not at all Christian.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'm sure there's a lot of overlap here,
but just a slightly different angle on kind of the
same question. And say, there's a woman listening to this
who is thinking, I'm a Christian and I would have
identified as a feminist, but I'm tracking with you. I'm
seeing that this is not this is not really compatible.
What are some concrete steps that she can take to
exit this sort of you know, because it's feminism truly
is like the water that women swim in. It it's
so pervasive it colors everything. So what are some concrete
steps women can take to sort of deprogram their minds
or retrain their minds, you know, taking every thought captive,
to obey Christ, to get away from these practices that
are inherently anti man, anti God, whatever, and to really
like get back and be informed in their womanhood by
a biblical worldview.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things I do in the book,
and of course, you know, my first suggestion is read
the read the book, but something wicked. But one of
the things I do in the book is look at
really the role of men in a positive way. I
think this is something that's been completely absent. You know,
our commercials are devaluing men, denigrating men, making them look
like it's you know, TV shows, on and on.
Speaker 2: But really to start seeing what it is.
Speaker 3: What it's a value that comes with a patriarchy and hierarchy.
And you know, one of the things that's amazing is
just to see, like the way the military functions. And
we value this in corporate America because women are in
that hierarchy, so we understand how it works. And in
the military obviously, but if you can just see the
way that men mobilizing and moving out in smaller groups,
but every person, every man in that group has an
important role to play. And I think this is one
of the best gifts that men have the women don't
always have, is that they don't toss people aside in
those dynamics because they realize everybody has something to contribute.
Speaker 2: So understanding that it's.
Speaker 3: Important understanding even the role that men play in society,
like every matriarchy that has ever existed up being ghetto
wised and losing its wealth because men and fathers are
the ones who are like they're the guardians of like
a hydraulic dam. They hold in the gifts of the
children until the children are ready to use those gifts,
like their sexuality, or they're the ones that are saying, okay,
it's time for you to leave the nest.
Speaker 2: You know you're ready. You know, especially sons showing them.
Speaker 3: You know, they were all those rights of passage that
used to happen, giving them responsibility, giving them experiences where
they could actually fail that they had to rise the
occasion to succeed in. So I think, you know, aside
from the things that I've already said about social media
and our emotions, I think the biggest thing is to
really start seeing because the patriarch is very invisible in
our culture. We don't value it until things go wrong
or until you know my own case, when we had
an addition built on our home and I was like,
it's all men.
Speaker 2: Here, but where are all the women who are putting, you know,
doing the roof.
Speaker 3: And I think they showed up when they did the
painting and then when they cleaned up, but otherwise it
was all men pouring the concrete and whatnot. So I
think that could be really worthwhile thing to do. And
you know, the other thing too, is really understand the
way in which men love women. This is something I've
never been able to do well because it requires I
could probably do it with poetry, but I think, you know,
when the way men talk about women when they don't
know that they're listening, for example, poetry or music lyrics,
you get a real sense, I think of what it
is that that men value about women. And it's usually
not because she's bossy, nagging and you know, in a
pantsuit like there's something much more tender and frail. And
there's something about the way in which women feel like
allow men to feel that they're home and they're safe
and they're cared for. You know that those are important
things I think for us to realize that instead of
sort of feeling like we need to check these boxes
of you know, our own prowess and skill set. We
need to really look at what is it that we are.
How is it the receiving others around us and being
in relationship in a healthy way with the men in
our lives. I think that's another important aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's such a good point about the music and
the poetry and just that men and women's differences is
actually what makes things work. I think the platitude, you know,
diversity of our diversity is our strength is such garbage
until it comes to until it comes from marriage, and
then I think sometimes that's exactly right. That's what makes
that's what makes things work, is that we're different. So
everybody should read carries new book Something Wicked. You can
get it on Amazon, but Carrie, I imagine there are
better places people could buy it. Where can they buy it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if people want to sign copy, you can get
it at my own website, Theology off home dot com
or the publisher Sofia Institute dot org is Sofia Institute
Press is the publisher so great?
Speaker 1: And where can people follow you? Where can they find you?
Speaker 3: Best place is Instagram or Theology ofhome dot com, and
I also have my own website, Carrie Gress dot com.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Carrie, I had such an awesome time talking to you.
Thank you for writing this book, thank you for making
time to chat with me about it. I'm so excited
for all the people who are going to buy the
book now because they will get to hear all the
great messaging as well. So thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode
of the Kylie Cast. If you haven't done so already,
please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave
us a five star review, and of course, go pick
up a copy of Carrie's new book, Something Wicked, Why
Feminism Can't be Fused with Christianity. It's such an excellent read.
It's a resource I will definitely be returning to time
and time again. I will be back next week with
more so until then, just remember the truth hurts, but
it won't kill y'all.