Church-Lady Feminism
by S. M. Hutchens
There is a popular myth among church-feminists that first-wave feminism, which only sought women’s rights, political equality with men, and domestic sobriety and order, was better and more Christian than overtly anti-male later forms, so that a woman may claim to be that kind of feminist and a Christian in the bargain. Early feminism may have been better because it did less direct and obvious damage, but it was as anti-Christian as anything that came later, for the taming of men by equalizing them had a price in the diminution of their office in the divine order, and attacked not only the faults of males but also the virtues of men—not only the brute and drunkard but also the husband and father was put down in the general reduction of the male, which was at its base an attack upon the Incarnation of God. The feral boys wandering the streets of the big cities are the legitimate offspring of the bustling, self-assured, church-lady suffragettes, who in their own day were warned about what they were doing but did it anyway.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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