The Anti-Mary Exposed Read online

  Our world has become an orphanage, which is what happens when we get rid of the cross and “the Woman who stood by it.”31

  ____________________

  1Chesler, Politically Incorrect, introduction.

  2Chesler, Politically Incorrect, loc. 141.

  3Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood (Ballentine Books, 1988), 60.

  4Chesler, Politically Incorrect, loc. 87.

  5Ibid.

  6Ibid., loc. 448.

  7Ibid., loc. 482.

  8Parul Sehgal and Neil Genzlinger, “Kate Millett, Groundbreaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82,” The New York Times, September 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/obituaries/kate-millett-influential-feminist-writer-is-dead-at-82.html.

  9Chesler, Politically Incorrect, loc. 2939.

  10Mallory Millett, personal conversion with the author, spring 2018.

  11Ibid.

  12Millett, “Marxist Feminist’s Ruined Lives.”

  13Ibid.

  14Millett, personal conversation.

  15Ibid.

  16Ibid.

  17Ibid.

  18Ibid.

  19Sehgal and Genzlinger, “Kate Millet, Groundbreaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82.”

  20Hillary Frey, “Mother Courage. (Review),” The Nation, July 23, 2001, The Nation Institute.

  21Sue Ellen Browder, phone conversation, August 14, 2018.

  22Browder, Subverted, 35.

  23Ibid., 38.

  24Ibid., 37.

  25Ibid., 39.

  26Ibid., 40.

  27Ibid., 40.

  28Sue Ellen Browder, “Magazines Like Teen Vogue Hard Sell Abortion to Fill the Pockets of Big Companies,” The Federalist, February 28, 2017, http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/28/magazines-like-teen-vogue-hard-sell-abortion-fill-pockets-big-companies/.

  29Chesler, Politically Incorrect, loc. 2129.

  30George MacDonald, Lilith: A Romance, Kindle Edition.

  31Fr. George Rutler, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 68.

  CHAPTER 6

  The New Matriarchy:

  Fashionable Dictators

  “I think that testosterone is a rare poison.”

  —Germaine Greer

  It’s no secret that women tend to look to other women for ideas. We applaud this in the multi-billion-dollar fashion industry and entrust most of our wardrobe and fashion choices to whatever is trending. In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, fashion mogul Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) breaks in her idealistic new assistant Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who dreams of doing something more important than matching skirts with sweaters. When Miranda catches Andy smirking at serious chatter over denim skirts, Miranda unloads: “See that droopy sweater you’re wearing? That blue was on a dress Cameron Diaz wore on the cover of Runway—shredded chiffon by James Holt. The same blue quickly appeared in eight other designers’ collections and eventually made its way to the secondary designers, the department store labels, and then to some lovely Gap Outlet, where you no doubt found it. That color is worth millions of dollars and many jobs.”1

  We women appreciate that others work hard to provide us new selections every season. What we may not realize, however, is that the marketplace of ideas works like the fashion industry. Instead of elite designers, the political and social elite—the matriarchy who are beholden to anti-Marian ideas—provide the parameters about what we think. Instead of skirt lengths and eye-shadow hues, they suggest intellectual trends that we scarcely know are being dictated to us through every possible avenue, from women’s magazines to popular daytime television and, especially, mainstream media.

  What is not well-known is that these layers of influence have also bled into the world of ideas through the media and cultural celebrities, such as Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, and Maureen Dowd. Ideas pitched by these elite women trickle down into the daily lives of millions of women across the country and around the world through programs such as Rachel Maddow or The View, and then into sitcoms, such as Lena Dunham’s Girls. Notions like women can only be free if they are able to abort their children, gender is a fluid thing (unless one wants to become heterosexual), masculinity is toxic, or women must become the same as men all started with elite women and are piped into our lives like elevator music.

  This shrill female chorus has its hands in every cultural pot. Look at New York, the heart of big media, which largely controls the news narrative. Most smaller news sources rely upon the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the major television networks. New York also has the fashion industry, which has blurred the lines between clothing us and scolding us about how we are to think on any given topic. Pouty and emaciated women say more with their aloof sophistication when coupled with a political idea than any series of books ever could.

  These ideas have also been chiseled into public policy in Washington, DC, where there are plenty of politicians beholden to Planned Parenthood. The Washington Post also holds significant national and international sway. In politics and media alike, there are a lot of platitudes and impassioned cries to fight for all women, just so long as we are talking about the right women (and not those waiting to be born). Comments like former secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s that “there’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help each other” are subtle ways of virtue signaling how all women should think, or more importantly, vote. Meanwhile, female politicians and lobbyists, aided by journalists and celebrities, hold the strings of most every political issue by their votes, rulings, and lobbying for political causes, often offering access to campaign cash, or the promise of political pork for their districts. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse and law professor Helen Alvaré have both chronicled the sad role that public policy and legislation have played in perpetuating the myths of the sexual revolution by giving sexual activity and preferences legal priority over the needs of children and families.2

  Skipping over “flyover” country, we move to Hollywood and the music industry, which work hand-in-hand to further the message that sexual license of any stripe is fun, liberating, and free of consequences. Some of Hollywood’s underbelly has recently been revealed, showing (a) that some men are benefiting immensely from the matriarchal narrative (Harvey Weinstein was a huge Planned Parenthood donor), and (b) that the myth of sisterhood among liberal women extends only so far when male bosses are calling the shots. It seems there were plenty of women who were aware of what was going on behind closed hotel doors but said nothing until their reputations were at stake.

  And then there is the matriarchy’s publishing arm—Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, People, Vogue, and so on—that reach women at the checkout stand. These magazines have become toxic blends of celebrity worship, virtue signaling about politics, the occult, and old-fashioned gossip. Though appearing benign and frivolous, magazines no longer have a line between editorial content and advertising. The two spoons full of sugar in their savvy and seductive images have helped women swallow even the most unsavory of ideas. As Myrna Blyth explains, using storytelling and carefully selected headlines, magazines have capitalized upon the idea that women are victims. Women who are victims are much more likely to keep purchasing content that underscores their victimhood while also offering suggestions on how to resolve it. It started with “Dear Abby” but has proliferated into a monstrous monopoly of begetting victimhood to every woman, no matter what her circumstances, simply because she is a woman.

  Universities, with a few notable exceptions, are also doing the bulk of the heavy lifting to promote the matriarchy’s vision. Women’s studies departments, many of them established by Kate Millett and her contemporaries, are awash in ideology. The intellectual poison scarcely remains there, broadly infecting other academic departments as well. Margaret, a recent graduate of Harvard, recounts several incidents at her alma mater that make it clear the professors there are willingly manipulating rhetoric to reach their own ends.3 During a small meeting with one hundred female student actvists, professors, an
d students, someone asked what the future of abortion promotion is. The honored guest, Frances Kissling, responded, “Now that there are ultrasounds, everyone knows it is a baby. We need another strategy.” No one in the audience seemed to bat an eye at the notion feminists had to figure out another way to justify killing children. Margaret also experienced professors like Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Mark Jordan, who advocate for selling the public on extreme ideas with the hope that it normalizes the less extreme, such as gay marriage and pederasty. They believe that truth is a spectrum and their goal is to pull people closer to their cause by pushing the boundaries beyond it.

  So why do women fall into the trap of following this line of thinking? Partially because women have been hardwired to consider what other women think and how they act and then to mimic it. It is part of our set of survival skills. More significantly, the matriarchy acts as a kind of gatekeeper, preventing different voices from being heard in the public square. And finally, because it is so ubiquitous, most women assume that this is the right route to happiness; surely all these experts must be right about relationships, culture, human sexuality, and careers. But never addressed is the disconnect between what the matriarchy presents and what actually brings happiness. We don’t hear about the broken woman after an abortion, the career woman who wishes she had more children (or any children at all), the extensive physical damage caused by the pill, or the children devastated by divorce. And yet, this is the wreckage left behind by the culture the matriarchy has produced. On the other side of the coin, we also don’t hear about peaceful and joy-filled religious sisters who have given their lives for Christ, or very contented mothers of big families who wouldn’t trade their “jobs” for the world.

  Nevertheless, because of its sense of sisterhood and commitment to “girl power,” feminism is the badge carried by nearly every modern-day woman who considers herself liberated, self-determining, and independent. Feminism has effectively made itself fashionable and painted its enemies as awkward, tired, and out of touch zombies, like Stepford Wives—so much so that few American women today can articulate any sort of alternative to the trendy positions repeated in political slogans on The View or in Cosmo.

  Women have been duped into thinking that this is the only way that modern women can think.

  Newspeak

  Like the fashion industry, fashionable ideas start with influencers, such as a statement by Hillary, Alyssa Milano, Tina Fey, or Chelsea Handler, followed by a well-placed message in Girls, then picked up by pundits on MSNBC, and finally trickling down to emotional appeals on The View or in Cosmo, and so on. Like Andy’s blue sweater, thousands of people helped craft and perpetuate these messages. These are the ideas presented as acceptable for public consumption. The influence is so subtle yet so pervasive that even having a discussion on this topic can be difficult because we live under the impression that we are free thinkers; the irony is that thinkers are generally not free when they think just like everybody else.

  So what are the current thought trends? The current crop of “acceptable” tenets include:

  •Women are always victims.

  •Men and masculinity must change.

  •Others must provide women unrestricted access to contraception and abortion.

  •Women will only be equal when they are considered exactly the same as men and, therefore, must be granted special safeguards from and privileges over men (again, we never said it was logical).

  •Society must accept gender neutrality and fluidity (unless it flows back to heterosexuality).

  •Men have nothing to say about abortion since they don’t have a uterus (unless they are transgender—then they can say whatever they want as long as it is in favor of abortion).

  •And the newest one: Let’s share our lady-parts! Grab your pink hat or your vagina dress.

  These basic ideas have become the very air of public discourse. When any are violated, matriarchs are quick to remind everyone that women are victims and throw a collective tantrum. And whenever an elite woman is honored for being brave and courageous, she is almost without fail doing so within the comfortable boundaries set by the matriarchy.

  Women who espouse these ideas are presented as savvy, sophisticated, important, well-spoken, right thinking, free thinkers. On the other hand, women who oppose these ideas are branded as frumpy, fundamentalist, wrong-thinking, unhip, and kowtowers to the backward way things have always been.

  Lest you think it an exaggeration, consider well-known women who don’t ascribe to the matriarchy. There are about five that might come to mind, none of whom the media treats well. Discussion is hermetically-sealed so no one notices that there might be another way to think, which is how Academy Award winning actress Natalie Portman only recently discovered, much to her surprise, that there is actually a case against abortion. Woman who operate outside these parameters are labeled “problematic” or non-women. The sisterhood only extends to like-minded women (read: abortion supporters), and women who fall outside of the groupthink are really somehow not women. As we saw in the last chapter, women can be psychotic, schizophrenic, addicts, lesbians, or anything else under the sun, but virgins, contented mothers, and pro-lifers are no longer considered women. These non-women are immediately assailed with ad hominem attacks and words put in their mouths, suggesting that women should be doormats or slaves, even if this isn’t at all what they say or think. There is no happy medium of thought or leaving the safe intellectual confines of the matriarchy. Kate Millett once said, “Many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against; no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning.” The non-woman’s problem is that she can’t even see the reality of her plight. “Real” women, however, see their plight and in order to show just how liberated they are from it, they “shout their abortion.” A new website touting this freedom features articles on the topic entitled “My Abortion Was Gentle, Irreverent, and Empowering,” “Best Decision of My Life,” “Abortion Is Mercy,” and “Thank God for Abortion.”

  Again, there is a pattern here that goes beyond just women behaving badly. It is tied closely to Marxist thought. Ryzard Legutko, commenting on the ideological connections between the Soviet proletariat and feminism, outlines the parallels of what happens when the old communal bonds, such as the family and the Church, have been tossed aside. Something must fill the gap: “The feminist ideology, for example, proclaimed that women are united by a special feeling of togetherness and solidarity, which they, unsurprisingly, called a bond of sisterhood. It does not require much perceptiveness to see that the women thus defined were a close equivalent of Marx’s proletariat. Like the proletariat, the women-sisters were believed to form an international or rather transnational political group whose primary reason of being is empowerment of their entire sex and liberation of all possible chains imposed on them by history and by men.”4

  Just like the proletariat, the generic word women, Legutko explains, “is an abstract concept that does not denote any actual existing community, but only an imagined collective made an object of political worship among feminist organizations and their allies.”5 He continues:

  But the paradox is that this feminist woman, being a figment of political imagination, is considered by feminists to be a proper woman, a woman in a strict sense, the truest woman, just as for the communists the Marxist proletariat was the truest representative of the working class. By the same token a real woman living in a real society, like a real worker living in a real society, is politically not to be trusted because she deviates too much from the political model. In fact, a non-feminist woman is not a woman at all, just as a noncommunist worker is not really a proletarian.6

  The non-woman, therefore, must be denied a voice so that she cannot do damage to the ideological bulwark holding up the effort.

  More than Feminism

  One of the strangleholds that feminism has had upon women is the impression it offers that women could do nothing before its arrival and that
it is the only movement that has been of assistance to women—both of which are patently false. Kate O’Beirne writes, “Long before NOW held its first organizational meeting, there were female role models who exemplified initiative, intelligence, and independence.” She adds, “America’s first large network of professional women was Catholic nuns. In the 1900s, they built and ran the country’s largest private school and hospital systems. These women were nurses, teachers—and CEOs.”7

  Assisting others, living in deep charity for those in need, caring for the poor, the sick, the aged, are gifts brought to the world through Christianity. Because charity isn’t a tenant of other faiths, charitable and educational institutes haven’t arisen with them. Rarely do we see Islamic hospitals or Buddhist adoption agencies. They might exist in the singular, but they are not the specific fruit of these religions. Hospitals, universities, grammar and high schools, these were part and parcel of the Catholic ethos and carried out on a large scale by female religious, who handled them with grace and professionalism.

  Contrast this with the abortion industry that has been caught red-handed lying about offering mammograms to clients (they have no mammogram machines) and selling fetal parts to outside vendors for large financial kickbacks and without the permission of the mothers.

  No Room for Logic and Truth

  The pervasiveness of the matriarchy’s narrative keeps us from looking deeper into the underpinnings of its arguments, so much so that most don’t recognize they are largely divorced from logic, science, and basic common sense. Here is where the fingerprints of the goddess movement and its adherence to intuition, emotion, and invention are most on display. Truly, the empress has no clothes, but we have spent decades commenting on her fine raiment, color, and style so that almost no one dares comment on her intellectual nudity.