Why Louise Perry Thinks I'm Worse than James Damore
And why she's wrong about Andrew Tate
In her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry writes regarding ‘The Patriarchy Paradox’ (p.33-34) that,
…while I am sympathetic to James Damore, given his treatment by Google, I am not sympathetic to Knowland. Some of this claims are straightforwardly false, and he betrays a poor understanding of feminism, for instance using the term ‘radical feminism’ to mean ‘extreme feminism’ (always a giveaway)…
Given that the term ‘radical feminism’ doesn’t occur in the lecture, I’m not sure how my usage of it conveyed ‘poor understanding of feminism’. Nor does the term ‘extreme feminism’ occur. For clarity, however, a radical — from the Latin radix “root" — goes to the root. Thus the Online Etymology Dictionary explains ‘the basic sense of the word in all meanings is "pertaining or relating to a root or roots," hence "thoroughgoing, extreme.”’
So if I had used the two terms interchangeably, it would have betrayed a poor understanding, not of feminism, but of an occult, mysterious meaning of the word that Perry doesn’t specify.
Nor does she specify what claims are ‘straightforwardly false’. Her objection is that the lecture
…uses evolutionary biology to argue both that women are inherently inferior to men (not only smaller and weaker but also less creative and innovative), and that men have been uniquely victimised throughout human history, while women have been coddled.
Since there is no mention of inferiority in the lecture, Perry’s remark tells us more about her own views than it does anything else. If women are smaller and weaker than men (basic biology), this means for Perry that they are inferior. But why should this be the case? The fact that women can give birth, for example, has throughout human history meant they have been considered superior to men — too precious to lose in battle, for example, hence women have never been conscripted into frontline combat.
For Perry, however, women must be measured by a male yardstick. Thus if women are ‘less creative and innovative’ than men in terms of technology (they are: it’s not even close), they are inferior. No matter that, as Nietzsche pointed out, all male creativity is to compensate for being ‘the barren sex’. Motherhood is the supreme creative act. Ironically, it’s feminism that regards women as inferior.
She complains that pointing to biology commits ‘the naturalistic fallacy’. This is the idea, mainly associated with David Hume, that there is a fact/value distinction. For example, all human societies have been patriarchies. For Perry, that fact doesn’t mean patriarchy is good: you can’t derive an ought from an is. But as Edward Feser explains,
from the Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view, there simply is no “fact/value distinction” in the first place. More precisely, there is no such thing as a purely “factual” description of reality utterly divorced from “value,” for “value” is built into the structure of the “facts” from the start. A gap between “fact” and “value” could exist only given a mechanistic understanding of nature of the sort commonly taken for granted by modern philosophers, on which the world is devoid of any immanent essences or natural ends. No such gap, and thus no “fallacy” of inferring normative conclusions from “purely factual” premises, can exist given an Aristotelian-Thomistic essentialist and teleological conception of the world.
Being male or female isn’t merely a brute fact. It is intrinsically significant. Manhood is the potential for fatherhood. Womanhood is the potential for motherhood. That men are bigger and stronger is because they are called to protect their families. That women are more anxious and empathetic is because they are called to nurture their children. And since society is natural to man, our social structures reflect these callings. When the Western frontier was being explored, for example, not once were breastfeeding men and a female war council found.
Perry’s recent comments on Christianity and feminism regarding Andrew Tate are similarly confused. She correctly notes that ‘Andrew Tate is no Christian patriarch’. Tate is a fornicator, whereas ‘Christians demanded chastity, not only from women, but also—radically, infuriatingly—from men, too. The advent of Christianity really did constitute a sexual revolution.’ The Red Pill sphere misses this. The Old Testament patriarchs with multiple wives — a practice that Christ corrected — were all married. Even their concubines, despite lacking the full social status of their full wives, were married to them (although children sired by concubines were still shameful). The Bible puts people having sex outside marriage in the same category as sodomites.
But then she betrays a poor understanding of feminism:
Modern feminism is not an enemy of Christianity; it is its descendent. The moral ideas that form the basis of feminism are derived from Christian values that are, in historical terms, highly unusual: respect for women and the protection of the vulnerable may seem to us to be universal virtues, but they are not.
But ‘respect for women’ isn’t feminism. In fact, feminism is misogyny in that it is hostile — as we have seen — to the traditionally submissive role Christianity gives women.
Fr Rundle, when asked about women in Christianity, replied that,
Every being's true glory and honor is to keep the place assigned to him or her by God. Now God Himself differentiated between the sexes, and that difference should be manifested during our public religious acknowledgment of Him. Man was created first, and woman dependently upon man. The covering of a woman's head was to be a sign of this dependence. Both men and women are created, of course, for God; and their souls are equally precious to Him. But secondarily, women were created as the helpmates of men, so that secondarily women were created for men, rather than men for women.
There is no Christian feminism. As Pope Leo XIII wrote in ‘Arcanum’,
The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honor nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who obeys, a heaven-born love guiding both in their respective duties. For "the husband is the head of the wife; as Christ is the head of the Church. . . Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let wives be to their husbands in all things.”(Eph.5:23-24)
But although there is no Christian feminism, there is Christian respect for women. In fact, the atheist William E. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, notes that the transition from paganism to Christianity vastly improved the status of women:
absolute prohibition of sexual indulgence outside marriage
the security of wives by the prohibition of divorce
the legal rights of guardianship of children hitherto reserved to men
the inheritance of widows
And he could have gone further:
Christians introduced separate prison cells for men and women.
There was no separate baptism for men and women. All were one in Christ.
Christians did not expose baby girls at birth.
Christian honoured women who defied emperors, centurions and soldiers to witness to the Faith.
Christians were the first to educate women.
Despite his own beliefs, Lecky even acknowledges that, “whatever may be thought of its theological propriety, there can be little doubt that reverence for the Virgin Mary has done much to elevate and purify the ideal of woman and soften the manners of men.” Indeed, it gave rise to the “redeeming and ennobling features of the age of chivalry which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly destroyed.”
None of this Christian respect for women, however, is feminism. And Perry admits that ‘in many ways Christianity runs counter to the priorities of modern feminism’. But these Christian values — dependence on men, being a helpmate, no sex outside marriage, chivalry — are the antithesis of feminism.
Tellingly, the only one of these ‘priorities of modern feminism’ she mentions is abortion. Christianity’s ‘historically unusual ideas about the preciousness of unborn life,’ she says, ‘place burdens on women that are not placed on men.’ If having a child ‘burdens’ women, the implied value here is autonomy — not dependence but independence — and a rejection of the God-given meaning of female sexuality. It also assumes sex outside marriage; otherwise, a child also ‘burdens’ his father, who must provide for and lead him and his mother.
Perry notes that ‘Tate has been widely condemned as a misogynist, which of course he is,’ but her ideological blinkers blind her to the fact that Tate is also a feminist. Fornication, contraception, abortion — these were the essence of the sexual revolution. Alongside autonomous women, Tate is continuing it. And not only is the misogynist Tate a feminist. The feminist is also a misogynist.
Like Tate, all she really wants to do is get paid and get laid.