How Feminist Movement Drew Ideology From the Occult

it is my pleasure today to be joined by author Carrie Gress she is author of the new book the end of woman how smashing the patriarchy has destroyed us Carrie thank you so much for being with us today to talk about your new book my pleasure it's great to be here well you are a fellow at the ethics and public policy Center you've authored 10 books you're a wife you're a mom to five kids talk a little bit about how you started researching and writing on the feminist movement what's broke your interest yeah you know it's actually funny because when I was in graduate school I swore I would never get involved in women's issues I mean I even said it out loud and um so I still kind of laugh and it's something that I'm interested in but one of the reasons why I didn't like it was I felt like I there's a lot of good content out there for women to sort of skirt around you know the radical feminist movement but so much of it was written very academically and it was not anything that I could pass on to friends or family or to people that I knew that were really struggling with their their lives and Lifestyles and um so anyway I just was one of those things that just sort of came about I just I started writing um really about the very first one of the first books that I wrote on women was about motherhood and just how much motherhood transforms us I think you know going from that experience of thinking that um you know next week it's going to get easier with my my newborn next week will be easier next week will be easier and then finally realizing like wait a minute it's just maybe it's not supposed to be easy maybe this is helping me become a better person through these trials and these all these things that are pulling me out of my own sort of narcissistic cocoon that I had created for myself so anyway it's it's just been very gradual but I um yeah feminism itself I I really didn't intend to take it on until you know in this huge way I do with this book um until I started looking into first wave feminism and I'm I'm sure you've heard so many people say you know feminism was hijacked in the second wave and so I was just expecting to sort of dig into the first wave and thought well it's just going to be all these really nice lovely things about women and um you know much pure understanding of Womanhood and I was just shocked at what I found because it was so different it was also so clear to me that what we're seeing in the second wave actually had its roots in the first wave so that's really kind of the The Arc of you know how we got to this point and I think that's one of the most surprising things that I found as I began reading your book was we hear so often this differentiation between the waves of feminism and how different they are and when you started talking about kind of this through line through all of them I was like wow that's so fascinating so I want to dive deeper into that in a moment but before we get to that I thought it'd be helpful to just first Define some terms and starting with you know feminism when we talk about the feminist movement when we say that word feminism for the purposes of our discussion what do you mean by that no I think that's a fantastic question because it's it's used almost differently by every woman I I think and um you know the one thing that seems to be kind of common is this idea of that that feminism is um your pro woman the problem is of course is that what I mean by pro-woman is going to be very different than what glorious Dinah means by Pro woman and that's where things break down um so I the definition that I work with Now is really focused on three elements that are I I think run through first wave second wave they're obviously going to be variations of this and I'll go into those three in a second they're going to be variations of it and I think it's really incumbent upon people that still call themselves feminists to Define what they mean because these three are so pernicious but um the first one is free love which is I you know the end of monogamy and really the breakdown of the the family the second one is what started out is called being called restructuring Society um it later was called smashing the patriarchy and um actually angles had something to do with that it wasn't this wasn't just some feminist item in fact a lot of these ideas could did come from men um so that's the other ones smashing the patriarch and then the third one is just the involvement of the occult um so those are the three threads that I found running you know throughout the first and the second wave and certainly we're seeing it now in the third and fourth waves of feminism um so that's what I'm I mean by feminism when when I'm using it in in this context okay that's so helpful thank you okay so let's go all the way back then to the beginning of the feminist movement yeah and I I love that you take us all the way back in the book to the 1700s and you talk about a woman named Mary wolf stonecraft um you say that she's in by many she's considered the first feminist who was she and why is she really considered the start of the feminist movement so Mary wellstonecraft was a woman that she was very much involved with a lot of the the revolutionary ideas connected with the French Revolution um she and Thomas Payne actually was one of helped her out much of his help was quiet because he didn't want to detract from his other efforts um certainly in the French Revolution and Beyond people think of him as sort of the first um a socialist actually um you know he went from writing Common Sense United States and then just kept going more and more deeper into what we would Now call leftism um and actually so she was very much influenced by him and you can see that in her work I mean he wrote a book called um a track to defend the French Revolution called the rights of man well she then wrote another piece in response to Edmund Burke actually who was writing against the French Revolution but she it was called um the Vindication of the rights of man so she's following up Thomas Paine and then she writes her kind of Magnum Opus or what people know her for the Vindication of the rights of women which followed on that so it her her work follows in many respects a lot of the intellectual threads of the French Revolution she was very much you know tally Rand was someone that she was involved with had a relationship with and and actually I think she dedicated the book to him um so she's deep into that kind of thought and but in the meantime she's also she was in Paris during the French Revolution she had a relationship with an American man she became pregnant they never married but he actually told the U.S embassy that she was his wife and so he she was actually spared from the guillotine because of her American affiliation um so she had this child daughter out of wedlock and moved back to England and then from there she ended up meeting again a man that she'd already met through Thomas Paine a man named William Godwin who was at the Forefront of the anarchist movement and the end of monogamy the free love movement he just thought marriage was this kind of slavery and he was kind of known throughout England and France and you know in more radical circles and had kind of a celebrity because of it so she marries him after they get pregnant also and they have Mary Godwin later Shelley who was wrote Frankenstein so what she set forth was really kind of this French Revolutionary you know Crush everything get rid of patriarchy get what she what I guess you would call um the hierarchy in the church and in the military and all those kinds of things and she's trying to you know kind of create this equality among men and women and so that's really that the first spark you could say that that set off the movement from there um so yeah she's a fascinating character she herself had horrible parents really incredibly awful example of what men and women should be and I think that that kind of comes through in her work as well um so yeah she's very colorful woman she died in childbirth actually with when Mary Godwin was born um so that's really the end of her story at that point and at that and after that of course the story moves on a feminism with Mary Godwin Shelley and and Mary Shelley's husband um Percy Bish Shelley the poet the well-known poet who integrated a lot of Mary's ideas so how did her ideas then go and translate into these other things the other things and and really those ways first obviously starting with the first wave of feminism um and moving along yeah well this is where I think it's really interesting because I I think very few people realize that feminism these three pieces the occult smashing the patriarchy and free love were all came together in the work of Percy Shelley um in his poetry he was trying to create what he called the women's Revolution so he's taking ideas from Godwin he's taking ideas from wall Stone craft putting him together adding his own he had this I mean this was a barbaric Man actually he was very he was involved in the occult um there's this whole string of suicides of women that he had seduced including his wife um that had committed suicide his first wife um so he's really an awful man but this what was what he saw was kind of the vision of Mary Shelley's parents which was you know this women's Revolution where there's no monog monogamy there's no this marriage you know all of these things are just erased and people just live this bucolic life um you know without any any reference to their human nature and he he concocts this actually interestingly around the same time that his wife is writing Frankenstein he's developed he develops this character named sithna who is basically the the first independent woman in all of literature she has no husbands she has no children uh the one relationship she does have is to Satan um and this woman becomes kind of the the model in the minds of of later feminists in the 1800s including Elizabeth Katie Stanton um you know as the movement is is moving forward so he's the one that kind of put his stamp on it and made it you know gave people some someone tangible to think about in these very new and radical terms I'm just so fascinated by this because I I have been in the journalism space for for quite a few years and I've interviewed so many people that that write and talk about feminism I co-host the problematic women podcast I've never heard anyone bring up the the uh occult Roots within the feminist movement how did you discover this and why why don't people talk about this yeah no I mean part of it is is it feels old and unimportant I think that's some of it you know it's 1800s who cares you know and I I think we also have this sense of the 1800s as being a very pristine time you know sort of Victorian mores and whatnot and you know I can tell you my research sort of blew all of that out of the water in terms of prostitution abortion um you know all all this unfaithfulness I mean it just was everywhere um I looked but um you know I I had already sort of started seeing pieces of it um the one there's one book that brought a lot of the elements to light uh for me when and I I discovered it several years ago and it's called satanic feminism and it's by a Swedish Professor it's published by Oxford University um press it's in English and you know it's one of those books that when I first read it I thought that he was against Satanic feminism and of course the deeper I get into the footnotes and you know references I'm beginning to realize like no he actually thinks this is a positive thing um so it was really fascinating to read because he goes through this period of feminism very first wave feminism um you know that most people don't touch and is making all of these different connections you know incredibly well researched book um so from there that that provided me with something of a guideline or you know kind of a backbone for my research but then I was able to dig into primary sources and secondary sources and start you know really piecing together the bigger picture of what all this means and you know the incredible damage it connected with all of it yeah so obviously in our conversation we're even using those terms first wave second wave third wave of feminism is that the the right way or do you think the most accurate way to talk about feminism because I think mentally we all break it down into first wave feminism good second wave gets a little questionable third wave is super radical should we be thinking about it differently yeah I think that is actually a really interesting question um I think that you know in my own mind I don't actually separate them up that way anymore partially because in the 1800s what you know the occult is playing a very active role in the 1800s um you've got the the Great Awakening in the United States you've got seances you also really see this connection people you know electricity is happening and the telegram and you know all these ways people are connecting with people in Long Distance Fashions and so something like a seance doesn't feel so crazy anymore you know they're just like these telephone poles between this life and the next this is what they thought mediums were and didn't think anything about you know having a seance and those kinds of things so that that's a fascinating part I think when you get to the 1900s that the dynamic changes significantly because then you're venturing into communism you're also venturing into the influence of Nietzsche and existentialism and you know all of these long names that I think blur people's eyes over but um but I think that it fundamentally changed because feminism started pairing itself easily um with Communism communism was worried about restructuring society and ending you know monogamy and the the nuclear family and they were atheists so there was really just one piece this occult piece this atheist and a cold piece that were different between the two movements and I think that was easily overcome by the two groups the Communists and the feminists and they realized that they had the same ends in mind and can work together um so I I think that happens and then second wave really is just this explosion of what we now know to be the woke movement you know it says these Frankfurt thinkers that really injected the ideas of the new left in the Frankfurt School into the feminist movement and you see a lot of overlap Angela Davis is is a name that comes up over and over again in fact I just read um Christopher rouvo's new book um the American cultural revolution I think it's called which is excellent but I was really interesting to see how much Angela Davis played in his trajectory and you know there's overlap of course with with feminism as well so and I think everything just Pirates out of that I don't think you have further waves from that I think it's just all a big mess of okay you know um and and answering this question I mean maybe the better way to sort of bring all these pieces together is to say the question the early feminists were asking was how do we make women more like men and if we look at it through that lens then all of a sudden sort of the last 200 years makes sense and we see you know they are trying to make us men and we see that happening biologically now and you know we can we have the technology to turn our bodies into something that appears more masculine even though it can never be done thoroughly um but yeah I think that that kind of bridges these pieces and connects them together in ways that might be difficult to see sometimes but that fundamental question I think is how you can sort of see the tweaking going on and now even the infighting between those who are for Trans and those who are against trans it's just the the ideology is really turning against itself yeah yeah right in the book The End of woman that um feminism the feminist movement their failure at its root is a misdiagnosis of what actually ails women yeah how has the feminist movement misdiagnosed what is ailing women yeah no I think that's a great question um I mean partially because we can see we can see by the fruit of it um and I'll go back to giving you an answer in a second but I want to just point out it hasn't made women happier you know we see women are more depressed suicides are higher suicide rates are higher divorce rates even things like STDs you know all of these are sort of contributing to that um but the solution that feminism has offered is really one again back to that idea of making us more like men feminine early feminists looked at the struggles that women went through and you know believe me they were obviously there were enormous and awful things that women went through you know most women were not that many steps away from destitution or prostitution or you know something horrible starving um horrible things happening to them um so something had to be done but they're their decision was to move in a way that that didn't edify or didn't help women certainly as mothers didn't help them become better mothers didn't help them with their relationships as met with men and then of course over time you gradually see this just turn into Power where feminism really becomes a question of of power and control and of course you know people can't live their lives that way in any kind of happy way when you're busy trying to be you know in control and empowerful power over things that you're not meant to be empowered of furthermore being told that your husband is your enemy and that your children are your enemy um that's really what what we've ended up with by asking that fundamental question so rather than saying how do we help women you know bear their children or deal with difficult husbands it's just to get rid of them that that's been really the solution is make us this independent woman that that Percy Shelley Drew out for us where we don't have any of these encumbering details and then we'll be really free I think that's the the message that they keep sending to us so then Carrie if if the feminist movement was not the answer to the ales of women um how could women have overcome things like you know having limited options in their career and and the right to vote without the feminist movement was the feminist movement a necessary evil yeah I and that's another great question I think especially in light of the fact that a lot of us feel like we can't question the feminist movement because you feel guilty you know I have an advanced degree and I work and you know all of those things that I obviously feel grateful for um but I think that that the reality is is that the feminist movement actually has taken more from us than it has has given us because it has just so narrowed who we are moreover I think a lot of the things that happen could have happened very easily with like a natural law kind of reasoning we didn't actually have to completely undo all of Western civilization in order to get these things and you know look at what what the cost has been I think you know especially if we look at the abortion numbers that I think that piece alone is really the most startling because feminism is so at the heart of you know breaking that bond between mother and child and allowing abortion to be something that's that's conscionable um there are actually more abortions internationally than there are deaths human deaths for any other cause um together so for like last year I think there was somewhere around between 60 and 64 million deaths internationally um the good marker Institute said there was something around 72 or 73 million abortions last year so we're actually aborting more people than are actually dying from any other thing in the in the world which you know is astronomical when you think about the ideologies of the past you know you think about Hitler you think about Stalin now you know these numbers just eviscerate anything that they had ever did on on a human scale um in terms of of death so yeah I I think that um it's another attack and a way to sort of guilt women into thinking that we need to be grateful and so therefore we can't really look behind the curtain and see what abortion has has done to us and what what the movement has done to us yeah you obviously addressed the patriarchy in the book your subtitles how smashing the patriarchy has destroyed us right now most women when they hear that term patriarchy they their mind sort of goes to the suppression of women so how did getting rid or attempting to smash the patriarchy how do you argue that that actually is a harm to women yeah um yeah again this is another hard thing I've heard so many people Define patriarchy in very very different terms um I mean there's a whole Side Story that goes with that but I think that the reality is is that what we've done is belittle men and we have made men you know we're the goal one of the stated goals especially in the 70s of feminism was to get rid of gender altogether and a highly effective way of destroying the family and the authority of of a father in the home um was really by destroying the fabric of society so Kate Millet was a big proponent of this you know we need to promote homosexuality prostitution promiscuity you know all these things that we're not you know key issues back in the 60s and now of course they're very mainstream um but along with that has come that the silencing of of men through feminism so again we see this this power play um but men have a natural set of of gifts that are are different than men and I think that that's what has what's really happened when you set half of a population against the other half of the population again this is where marks come in because men are the uh you know by default they're male they are the oppressors and by default females are the oppressed I mean that's just the terms that they've been working with um that most of us are sort of getting in The Ether and and sort of have an expectation that's how it works um by default you know they've done nothing wrong objectively but that's they are just wrong because they're men um so that that's I think the fundamental Crux is when you set when you pit you know the Sexes against each other um what's really going to happen is is again a further breaking of the family further control over Society because broken people are much harder control than intact families are um so there's a there's a whole underpinning of you know communist ideology woke ideology um critical theory that's that's running through this that I think a lot of us you know we're not familiar with it's it's um feels very foreign and you know we've also been told that uh you know masculinity is is toxic um so it's hard to sort of parse these things out and I try to make a lot of that clear in the book to just help women realize like now they're this is intentional and in this battle of the sexes is has not helped us because you know it's creating all these women who and and maybe this is one of the saddest things is just the women that I meet who have really followed through on the feminist ideology and they you know they get to their 40s 50s 60s and they think well I have a lot of money and I have a good career but I'm lonely I you know my parents have died I don't have children um you know there's this deep desire to love and be loved and you know it's too late for them to have children and what what do we do at this point when when we've realized like maybe this wasn't what I should what I really wanted maybe this was not the path I wanted um so those I think are the the really sad stories is you know obviously God has a plan for their lives but it's just harder harder to figure that out when you get to a point where you've sort of been painted into a corner by an ideology that you didn't realize was going to leave you in this situation um well you really do such a beautiful job and I so appreciate that you parse out so much of this so thoroughly in the book The End of woman and you alluded it to it just a moment ago but um I I appreciate and I find it really fascinating how you do explain how the feminist movement has led to so much as far as what we're seeing now with the push of transgenderism and um that it's it's not it's not a coincidence maybe that we are where we are uh and I I really just thought that that was fascinating that you explain no this is how we got here and it's been a long time coming yeah no it's definitely been a long time coming and I think you know one of the trends that I've been following just as an aside over the years too is just even what we're seeing with the the Pet Craze in our country we spend 700 million dollars on pet costumes each year um I mean that it's just an astounding amount of money and I you know I think it what it points to in many respects is that women have this desire to Mother someone or something um we even are seeing you know pet or plants parents now um and and I I think you know on a certain respect it's very helpful because it means it hasn't been crushed out of us you know and not we're not meant to mother just biologically we're also meant to Mother others psychologically and and spiritually which means we we nourish them we provide us a place of shelter and protection for people to grow and to the people that they're meant to be um if you're looking for a more specific definition of motherhood um but but that's one of the byproducts is if we you know you take children and grandchildren away from women then this is not going away this is something that's sort of part of the core of who we are and that's that's where we're seeing it so um yeah between pets and uh um and the trans issue and you know all of this incapacity to really even Define what a woman is all of these things have been kind of on a slow burn for a long time and we're just they've finally you know we're seeing the real fruits of them the book is the end of woman how smashing the patriarchy has destroyed us it is out and available on August 15th but it's available for pre-order now you can get it wherever books are sold but Carrie thank you so much for your time uh we could we could talk for like three hours because there's just so much that you have articulated so well in this book so I just encourage our listeners to pick up a copy um this is a fascinating read for men and women so for anyone in your life who's who's interested by this topic this is a must read Carrie thank you for your time and for being with us today thanks so much it's been great to be with you [Music]

Channel: The Daily Signal

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Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023