The answer is now so simple for me I could write a sentence or a book. Such things can be stated extremely simply - but then people have a thousand and one objections requiring lots of words.
The answer to everything is rebellion and pride. The essence of the Fall, the sin of Lucifer. We will not obey, obedience is the dirty word of our time. Thus, fear of “oppression”, talking about “freedom”, “emancipation”, “rights”, etc. Our rights are eternal damnation. We should want the Bleeding Mercy, as Lewis put it in “The Great Divorce”.
Feminism is all about that rebellion and pride. If it is anything beyond ending specific instances of actual oppression, it is feminism, and it is of the devil. Anything that is about simple justice is not feminism. Anything that is about lifting up women over men in any sense of power or authority, as opposed to stopping a man from beating, hurting or violating a woman, (which is righteous anger at evil, not feminism), is that spirit that seeks to cast away obedience, assert the independence that is of this world, an independence from God as well as man. We don’t want to commit obedience.
All of the talk casting men and women as competitors or enemies, rather than as beings who must cooperate and help each other, both to survive as best we can in this world, and to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, is feminism. The antidote to pride is humility, and the antidote to rebellion is obedience. And we don’t want to hear that, or more accurately, to be humble and obedient. Christ was crucified for a reason, even if it was a devilish reason.
As to the rest, Chesterton helped me see a lot of the modern nonsense for the nonsense it is. Many are no longer capable of reading him, which is a pity, and our fault, not his. But this excerpt seems highly relevant:
“As it is, the modern clerk or secretary exhausts herself to put one thing straight in the ledger and then goes home to put everything straight in the house.
This condition (described by some as emancipated) is at least the reverse of my ideal. I would give woman, not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. And with that we come to the last point of all; the point at which we can perceive the needs of women, like the rights of men, stopped and falsified by something which it is the object of this book to expose.
The Feminist (which means, I think, one who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics) has heard my loose monologue, bursting all the time with one pent-up protest. At this point he will break out and say, "But what are we to do? There is modern commerce and its clerks; there is the modern family with its unmarried daughters; specialism is expected everywhere; female thrift and conscientiousness are demanded and supplied. What does it matter whether we should in the abstract prefer the old human and housekeeping woman; we might prefer the Garden of Eden. But since women have trades they ought to have trades unions. Since women work in factories, they ought to vote on factory-acts. If they are unmarried they must be commercial; if they are commercial they must be political. We must have new rules for a new world-- even if it be not a better one." I said to a Feminist once: "The question is not whether women are good enough for votes: it is whether votes are good enough for women." He only answered: "Ah, you go and say that to the women chain-makers on Cradley Heath."
Now this is the attitude which I attack. It is the huge heresy of Precedent. It is the view that because we have got into a mess we must grow messier to suit it; that because we have taken a wrong turn some time ago we must go forward and not backwards; that because we have lost our way we must lose our map also; and because we have missed our ideal, we must forget it. "There are numbers of excellent people who do not think votes unfeminine; and there may be enthusiasts for our beautiful modern industry who do not think factories unfeminine. But if these things are unfeminine it is no answer to say that they fit into each other. I am not satisfied with the statement that my daughter must have unwomanly powers because she has unwomanly wrongs. Industrial soot and political printer's ink are two blacks which do not make a white. Most of the Feminists would probably agree with me that womanhood is under shameful tyranny in the shops and mills. But I want to destroy the tyranny. They want to destroy womanhood. That is the only difference.
Whether we can recover the clear vision of woman as a tower with many windows, the fixed eternal feminine from which her sons, the specialists, go forth; whether we can preserve the tradition of a central thing which is even more human than democracy and even more practical than politics; whether, in word, it is possible to re-establish the family, freed from the filthy cynicism and cruelty of the commercial epoch, I shall discuss in the last section of this book. But meanwhile do not talk to me about the poor chain-makers on Cradley Heath. I know all about them and what they are doing. They are engaged in a very wide-spread and flourishing industry of the present age. They are making chains.”
“What’s Wrong With the World”
