Revelation & Revolt

A list of quotes from anti-feminists, from the women, themselves.

“The head of each family was its sole link to the outside world and its spokesman in the state. The family’s leader within each home was the wife and mother. To endow that wife and mother with the franchise, therefore, would dissolve society into a heterogeneous mass of separate persons, whose individual rather than family interests would thenceforth receive political representation. For this reason, the vote would not be merely a quantitative addition to all the other rights women had acquired in the preceding two generations. The franchise was not just another new right to add to higher education, equal guardianship of children, and ownership of one’s own earnings in the march of women toward full equality with men. Suffrage meant a qualitative change in the social and familial role of women, antis believed, and the demand for it consequently met with more determined resistance than did women’s struggles for other rights.”

– Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement

“It is much to be deplored that the trend of some modern young women is more towards the commercial life in which her success is doubtful, rather than toward the home-keeping, child-bearing, social, religious, and philanthropic life for which she was physically and mentally designed. These latter duties women faithfully and successfully perform as their natural function, and through them they may rise to the greatest distinction. Femininity should be cherished by the woman whom circumstance or necessity drives into the wage-earning world, and she can cherish it by retaining her hold on social, religious, and charitable interests; but she cannot hope to do so if she attends political meetings, serves on political committees, canvasses districts for votes, watches at the polls, serves on juries, and debates political questions or records and promises of political candidates. We have seen the loss of femininity produced by the constant campaigning for suffrage.”

–Edith Melvin, A Business Woman’s View of Suffragism

With Christianity there came into the world a new example and a new thought. To woman’s whole nature appealed that life of self-sacrifice, of love, and of willing service that has created a new Heaven and a new earth. From the foot of the Cross there arose and went out into the world a womanhood that did not demand, or claim, or threaten, or arrogate; a womanhood renouncing, yielding, loving, and, therefore, conquering. For twenty centuries that has been the law of woman’s life. It is sneered at and rejected today by the clamorous, but it has made of woman what we now find her. You see it in your mothers, your daughters, your wives. Do you wish to have that ideal changed? Woman has become to man not only a companion, but an inspiration. Out of the crucible of the centuries has come what we not only love but adore; before which, in certain hours, we bow with a reverence that links us unconsciously with the Divine. It is Christian civilization that is in the balance.

– Mrs. Thomas Allen, Woman Suffrage vs. Womanliness

…So, in claiming for women the right to take a part in the man’s half of life, the suffragists, I think, lose sight of what the woman’s half is. In urging that they must have a hand in law-making and government and public life generally, they do not see that woman’s peculiar work is pretty independent of laws and of government, is rather in private life. For it is just where the law cannot reach that woman is supreme. It is just in the finer, more personal and intimate relationships of life, which government cannot include, that woman finds her work waiting for her, which she alone can do—what Octavia Hill calls “the out-of-sight, silent work

—Mrs. Horace Davis, The True Function of the Normal Woman

…the women who rebel against the idea that home is the place for woman are largely those who misunderstand the duties of home, who think only of the drudgery, and forget to think of the happiness that comes with watching our families develop under our care. Although the mother must do all the work in the average family, it is not from these homes where in most cases the women are happily busy with their home duties that most of the agitation about abandoning the home comes, but from among those people who have too much leisure on their hands, and who, unfortunately, do not find sufficiently exciting the duties of training good citizens. Whatever our work in life, whatever our occupation, we cannot rid ourselves of drudgery. Is there not more deadening, unvarying monotony for the business woman, the shop girl, the factory hand, than for the woman in the home who is her own mistress and can in some degree regulate and vary her work to suit her own pleasure? It is only because such work is new and untried by them that many women think it preferable to home duties; but the fact that so many girls in industry marry young to get away from this uncongenial work proves that when tried it is not found either so exciting or so interesting as these advocates of woman in industry and out of the home imagine.

–Mrs. Charles Burton Gulick, The Imperative Demand Upon Women in the Home

“To choose the work in which she finds the most pleasure”—there is the real individualistic note, sounded so often by the radical suffragists. It is struck still more clearly when to the reporter’s question: “What about the argument that the wife with a business career is apt to deprive her husband of the joys of fatherhood?” Mrs. Dorr replies: “No one but the individual woman herself has any right to decide whether or not she shall have children. That is a question which she alone is entitled to settle…”

–Lily Rice Foxcroft, Suffrage A Step Toward Feminism

Its advocacy of equal industrial rights, its determined attempts to obliterate all differences between the sexes in matters of education and employment, and its frantic setting up of the standards of independence between men and women, in place of that mutual dependence upon each other which is the only possible status in the marriage relation, and the corner stone of the home, all distinctly identify it with its Communistic source.

– Caroline Fairfield Corbin

At a meeting of the Woman’s Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs. Stanton said: “I have often said to men of the present day that the next generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we have for half a century. The organization of labor all over the country are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor, with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have scenes of the Revolution of France acted over again in this republic.”

– Helen Kendrick Johnson, Woman and the Republic

The 19th Amendment was first introduced into Congress in 1878. Prior to its passage, some western territories and states had already granted women suffrage. The 19th Amendment passed both houses of Congress 41 years later in 1919. Organized opposition arose in 1911, but by then it was too late.

Our forefathers were chiefly opposed to women taking a public role, and women who would govern the community through public speeches and other tools of public influence such as the vote. They understood that men are supposed to protect women by preventing them from exercising civic authority. Women respond strongly to shame and peer pressure, performing acts of depravity and perversion in attempts to garner the approval of their radical friends. They are more vulnerable and easily mislead, as shown by Eve, and are easily tricked by malign actors who would lead them astray.

Our forefathers believed that women should not speak in public in such a way as to teach, or lead, the community. That role was reserved by God and by nature to adult men. Scripture speaks clearly to this issue:

To the woman he said…“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you,”

Genesis 3:16

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

1 Timothy 2:11-15

God’s laws are not arbitrary. The most fundamental law is eternal law, or that law by which God governs creation as a whole. God is Supreme Reason and Goodness itself, and His providence looks to the common good. Moreover, God’s law is not is not so much about doing good as it is about being good, and being good is about satisfying our natural desire for communion with God (Krom, 2020.)

By going against God’s will, women cleave themselves from God, damning them to an eternity of Hell fire. Suffrage cleaves them from God because suffrage granted to women is neither good for them nor good for the community. God’s laws are not confined to the Church or marriage, but refer to the fundamental natures of men and women, personified in Adam and Eve. These scriptural truths were why women did not have the franchise for centuries. The Church Fathers further clarify:

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good.

Saint Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian, 13th century: Quaestiones super de animalibus XV q. 11

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.

Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, 13th century: Summa Theologica I q. 92 a. 1

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack.

Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225): De Cultu Feminarum (On the Apparel of Women), Chapter 1

Women are driven towards evil through their vulnerability, as men are driven towards reason. A just and reasonable society does not give a defective and misbegotten woman power over his society. Doing so is equal to giving power to the diabolical one. Our great-grandfathers knew this, as did their fathers, and the fathers before them.

At the turn of century, industrialists saw opportunity in taking women away from their families, exploiting them through labor and manipulating them into desiring the vote. Industrialists invented “feminism,” a tool of rich corporations to separate women from their children and destroy the family, in order to make more money off of their labor. It was no longer economically efficient to have women at home. Catholic teachings see this as exploitation. The economic order of society exists to fulfill the needs and wants of the families within it, thus the new economic order is understood as sinful. Women, however, believe they are working towards their happiness. This is a lie, straight from the chief liar, himself.

Satan, the father of lies, acted through these industrialists. Satan works through weak-minded men and women, possessing their souls and turning them to lust after what they would not find fulfilling. Women, uniquely vulnerable to Satan’s lies, were tricked into defying their husbands, and upending the natural hierarchy. Pious woman who submit themselves to God, their husbands, and their fathers, were beguiled by into believing they will not find fulfillment in their vocation as a mother, or in submission to Christ. Bewitched and tormented, they railed against the very structures that protected and nourished them.

They did not know that the voice whispering in their ears was that of Satan’s. Satan's whispers are always lies.

Women do not find fulfillment in voting, the workplace, or in “independence” from motherhood. Feminism and woman’s liberation makes women miserable. Women today are profoundly unhappy. Their unhappiness has been steadily increasing for the last 4 decades. A quarter of all women use some sort of mental health medication, and a quarter of women age 45 or older uses antidepressants. Women use antidepressants 2.5 times more than men and this number is rising rapidly.

Today, we can see that women’s suffrage has perverted our politics beyond anything our fathers would have imagined. Women vote disproportionately in favor of liberal, progressive, pro-sodomite, and anti-Christian policies. At first, the difference was hard to perceive, but as divorce rates rose, more women were saddled with the costs of raising children. Those divorced women sought legal guarantees to some potion of this expected income through alimony, and through government sureties. Women are more risk-averse than men, and typically choose to use the government to provide insurance for their choices. Giving women the right to vote increased the size of the government. Of the twenty-nine states that gave women the right to vote before the 19th amendment to the constitution was approved in 1920. In states where women had been voting longer, the government was larger. Growth in female voter turnout is positively associated with the expansion of government.

Women are empathetic souls, and it is this very nurturing vulnerability that Satan uses to work his Evil. Altruism and risk-aversion, when removed from the family and placed in politics, turns pathological when left unchecked. Our gentle, more gullible halves are taken advantage of by political charlatans and Satan into voting against their own interests, and the interests of their families.

Feminism has lied to women. The myth that women desire independence from motherhood is predicated on a structure of lies and half-lies from industrialists, indoctrinating the public mind over the last century. These Satanic changes and distortions have become commonly accepted dogma among institutions, saturating our culture. The original truth was buried many decades ago, and today’s feminists are desperate to keep it a secret. Feminism is based on a lie, and the only way to promote feminism is to veil the reality of it. Men and women of God cannot transact with the fruits of feminism’s ideas without becoming subsumed by it. Interacting positively with anything feminists say which promotes the categories or beliefs of feminism is thus sinful.

Renounce Satan. Repeal the 19th, and return to God’s fold.

In the United States, freedom is exalted unconditionally, and many individuals believe that governmental authority should exist solely for the restraint of evil, not for the promotion of the common good. Personal freedoms are held sacrosanct, and any inconvenience or disruption of that freedom is seen as strictly negative. In this light, no economic activity is seen as more moral than any other, as all depends upon man's will and through it, the assertion of his freedom of choice. It is decided that each person is the sole judge for himself of what a good life demands. This line of political thought dominates both the Left and the Right, which sharply sequesters American political thought from Catholic social teachings.

In our modern day, few Catholics are able to articulate Catholic apologetics on natural law, which is the basis of moral Catholic social teachings. For the uninitiated, when Catholics talk about the natural law, they are not referring to English-language meaning of the word “natural,” which calls to mind the workings of plants and animals. They instead mean the law of man's moral reason, which requires no supernatural aid to understand. “Natural” refers to the numerous actions which are instinctive to man to find good, and which lead man to greater health, and finally union with his Creator. What is not natural is anything which would cleave man from God, or which would hinder him from fulfilling his purpose. From natural law, we derive the unalienable duties we owe ourselves, and our fellow man.

1. Duties come before rights

Consider a man alone in the wilderness, Ask yourself, is it reasonable to describe him as a being who has rights? Scholars of the Church teach that a man as this has no rights, but duties, because a man alone can only imagine himself alone with his duties. A man has rights among other men, but not by himself. Therefore, duties come before rights, which are subordinate to them. These duties are “nothing else than the rational creature's participation in the eternal law,” (Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. xciv).

2. The eternal law is rooted in human dignity

The truth of Catholicism is ecstasy, as it answers the yearning in the heart of every man: we are not meant for this world. We are God's children, and our souls belong in God's kingdom. The home-sickness and suffering felt through our lives is the direct result of separation from God. It is the destiny of man to submit his life to God to rejoin Him in the Eternal City. The fact that every human being possesses this eternal destiny bestows dignity on every human. This truth is paid out in respect to our fellows, through following our instincts of conscience and foresight. This respect is a fundamental part of Catholic social justice teaching, which has been co-opted and perverted by leftists and so-called “Social Justice” warriors.

Consider the example of the ancient Egyptian, who believed that no soul could justify himself after his death unless he could say: “I have never let anyone suffer from hunger.” Each man knows in his heart what is right and wrong, as God stamped this knowledge on our very souls with our creation. In every culture, it is understood that to grow fat while the man next to you dies of starvation is immoral. It is understood that it is good for a man to preserve his own life, but not to be selfish. From there, it can be reasoned that it is wrong to kill. Likewise, it is understood that a man has a duty to have and rear children, so it is good for children to obey their parents, and for the family unit to be undisturbed by jealousy and lust. Common sense alone would reveal then the duty of always seeking the truth, which we then extend to others by avoiding lies, and is inscribed in the commandment against “bearing false witness.”

Actions which are unnatural in man are unworthy of his human dignity, inhibiting an essential aspect of his human nature. Disorders such as these are called sin, and cleave man from God.

As an example, it is a mistake to presume that the natural desire for food is good, for hunger only points to the good, which is nourishment. Food, as well, is not terminally good, for too much food can result in obesity, an illness. It is good to maintain life, as through life we experience God's creation and grow in faith. To deny life is to despair, and reject God.

The mere pursuit of good health, however, does not lead to God. It is like sexuality. If we believe sexuality is fundamentally good, then we will all go mad in pursuit of sexuality. In short, all must terminate in God, or else risk becoming a perversion of everything that is good.

3. Duties belong only to humans, not collectives

In the United States, companies and organizations are endowed with many of the rights of natural persons, though are not punished as such. As companies lack an eternal destiny, they ought not to be bound by the duties and rights afforded to men. Collectives exist to serve the family; men do not exist to serve collectives. Rightfully removing these rights and duties would naturally inhibit their growth in a manner which would prevent the formation of monopolies, and encourage capitalistic competition.

4. Other applications of natural law

Armed with apologetics, the modern Catholic can apply this knowledge to social issues of the time. The questions of abortion, contraception, feminism, and homosexuality are all adequately addressed through the ordinary application of simple natural law, as murder, disordered attachment to unlimited lust, and the upending of natural hierarchies are easily distinguishable from all that is good and natural.

5. Eternal Separation from God

The discussion of the fires and torments of Hell has become taboo in modern society. It offends feelings, being of something that is naturally revolting and terrifying, and impelling reflection on the state of one's soul. Hell is not only the fire-pits, but an eternal separation from God. Those damned to Hell will lack in any equanimity, and will remain cursed with their vices, unable to sate them for an eternity. Even with the specter of a terrible fate looming near, many Catholics are hesitant to even suggest they believe in Hell. Unfortunately for those of us driven by our vices, (which is almost all of us,) the danger of Hell is real and eternal. From the saints and Church mystics, we have learned that most people don't go to Heaven. The majority of souls are lost to Hell.

With so many souls lost to eternal torment, it calls to court the exaltation of freedom and demands a reckoning. At the heart of the promotion of the common good is the preservation of man's eternal soul, for how could anything else be more good? A healthy life, a moral life, is a life leading to Heaven.

We live in a time of fractured discourse, lacking the shared premises, definitions, and faith by which to engage profitably in discussion with individuals. We share no language. The result is suspicion, accusations, and division. The American people are proliferating a wide range of ideological archipelagos, often ones with no intellectual roots. A language and mission, The language and mission shared by the Universal Church, based in the solid reasoning of natural law, will be a unifying force in the battle ahead.

If Obergefell v. Hodges has taught Catholics something, it's that Protestant Biblicalism is not enough to conserve traditional values. The debate on homosexual unions included no mention of Natural Law, possibly due to few outside the devout and Church scholars ever hearing of it. The Catholic view of reality is not widely known, which is a shame, as the Catholic view is eternal and encompassing. It grapples with and answers many of the paradoxes of human life, and through it we have a fertile garden for healthy human exploration and art.

In our modern day, Catholics use the totem of religious freedom to protect their practices, but this totem is not enough to preserve us. Religious freedom in the United States presupposes the ability of the government to regulate religious freedom, and even override it. With the current virus shutdowns, this presupposition has resolved into certainty, as houses of worship have been shut down on government orders. Aside from that, religious freedom puts us on the level of every other interest group in United States politics. The One Holy and Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, instituted by Christ, has been relegated to having the same standing as wiccanism and the church of the flying spaghetti monster.

The state of the Church itself is partially to blame, as an unbearable amount of doctrinal confusion and outright heresy has come to characterize the Church since the Second Vatican Council. Priests and Bishops preach heresy with no fear of rebuke from ecclesial authority. Also to blame is the state of the Catholic laity. Few primarily identify as Catholics, preferring instead to label themselves as primarily conservative, and as part of a larger conservative movement. They draw their ideas from that movement, even when those ideas contradict Catholic social teaching, as they often do. The goals of conservatives and the goals of the Catholic are not the same. True Catholicism demands the conversion, not only of individuals, but of the culture.

Religious freedom wasn't enough to preserve worship during this pandemic, and it won't be enough to save us, going forward. During the 1930s, many speakers attempted to alert the public outside Germany to the rising threat of Hitler. Few listened, giving Hitler almost 10 years to build an army. It took the declaration of war for people to take it seriously. This pattern of people ignoring dire warnings has been repeated many times throughout history, in everything from Communism to this very pandemic. While the situation with Catholics in the United States is not on the same scale, there is currently a propaganda war being waged on the Christian Right, of which Catholics are a part.

Between popular politicians and widely publicized books, the message from the media is clear: Christians are dangerous. The propagandists would have you believe that the perils of devout Catholicism is a bigger threat to the United States than Islamic terrorism. Before you discount the impact books and politicians, realize that books can be a lightning rod to change popular opinion. Now Harvard experts are proposing the end of homeschooling, because they think parents shouldn't have the right to impose their beliefs on their children. To them, your children are the property of the state, on loan to you.

As the range of socially acceptable beliefs moves, the Catholic faith, and Christianity as a whole will become socially unacceptable. Faith, they'll say, is for the gullible, rednecks, and an excuse for bigotry. The claim of bigotry gives fervent anti-Christians the excuse to de facto ban Christianity on the grounds that the faith itself is a public harm. This virus is the perfect example.

Radicals and technologists never let a crisis go to waste. The virus has prompted the government to infringe on the rights of millions of people, proposing new social programs to track the movements and associations of citizens. In some states, it's now a crime to visit your friend's house. It's a crime to go to Mass. It's a crime to go outside and take a walk. Drones are flying over cities, buzzing out warnings to people walking too close to one another. Countries are producing apps which will be used to track the movements of their citizens. In some countries, they're making it a crime not to have your phone on you and charged. People are going along with it because they're terrified.

After this virus is over, we can only expect religious freedoms to be further curtailed. Catholics need to have a unified response and vision to this expanding threat. That vision is not one shared by many, since so few Catholics these days know our apologetics or dogma. So my advice to young Catholics is this: during this quarantine, strengthen your faith. We need to take on a primarily Catholic identity, and read Catholic books to get a deeper understanding of our own faith.

I suggest starting with G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy.