"Woman" Doesn't Equal "Worse"
In honor of Holy Week, we're happy to feature Spencer Klavan's account of how Christianity fundamentally transformed the relationship between the sexes—and his warning about the bleakness of a "post-sex" future.
Fairer Disputations
After Chivalry
SPENCER KLAVAN
If women are not the shining grace of God’s creation—if that is too glib, or too embarrassing, or too unfair—then what are they? The answer offered by techno-capitalism seems to be that they are undifferentiated competitors in a pitiless market that recognizes only force and economic prowess as viable markers of status. That is not some innovation: that is the same old world that Hippolytus and Thomas lived in, where people buy children and it is assumed that everyone wants to be as male as possible.
Recently the provocateur H. Pearl Davis tweeted, “I keep trying to think of things women are better at and I can’t think of any lol.” Of course she can’t. She is among the many post-feminist, post-Christian influencers who now size up men and women by the neo-pagan standards of raw strength and wealth.
The Weekly Round-up
Fairer Disputations
This Week: Deepfake Pornography, Men in Chess, and the Wars Over Feminism
THE EDITORS
This week, we bring you Nicholas Kristof on the scandal of search engines and deepfake pornography, Carole Hooven on sex differences in chess, Nathan Schlueter on the conservative war over feminism, gender ideology in the foster care system, welfare reform for mothers, women in prison, what featured author Leah Libresco Sargeant is reading—and more!
From the Archives
Resurrecting Martin Robb's piece on the importance of embodiment in the caregiving sphere: can we speak of real differences between men and women's care?
Fairer Disputations
Men's Care: Same or Different?
MARTIN ROBB
If, as campaigners argue, gender is a social construct and there are no significant differences between men’s and women’s care, then why, one might ask, is there a need to recruit more men to work in childcare? Of course, an argument from simple equality of opportunity means that no barriers should be put in the way of men seeking to work in this field. Beyond that, what is the case for actively seeking to recruit more men? If men’s care for children is no different, in quality or kind, from that provided by women, then why shouldn’t we be happy with a daycare facility being staffed entirely by women, or for a child to be raised by two mothers? In short, do men bring anything to caring for children that is different or distinctive?
The dominant arguments for recruiting more men to work in childcare fail to provide an adequate answer to the question of what men are actually for.
A Summer Read-Along
Looking for a summer read? Join an online read-along of Featured Author & Wollstonecraft Project Director Erika Bachiochi's book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, organized by Claire Swinarski of Letters from a Catholic Feminist.
Details here.
A Debate You Won't Want to Miss
Resolved: Feminism Necessarily Undermines Family Life
With Erika Bachiochi and Scott Yenor
April 3, 2024 • Sheraton Commander Hotel • Cambridge, MA
Livestream available on ISI's Youtube Channel
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