Throughout human history and for the majority of people today, especially those outside the West, the concept of men and women having beautifully different and yet complementary identities rooted in their biological make up has been uncontroversial. We have accepted and enjoyed the reality of human diversity. However, today in our confused culture there is both an increasing polarisation between the sexes which goes hand in hand with a contrary move to deny any fundamental difference between them.
Modern Western fourth-wave feminism’s aim for a total reinvention of femininity, marriage and motherhood has a twofold consequence. Worthy endeavours such as opposing female genital mutilation or sex-selective infanticide and sex trafficking are ignored in favour of widespread outrage that there is a mean meme about a female celebrity on Twitter. The other consequence is that womanhood as a biological category is being written out of Western culture.
Feminism Ignores Women
Feminism is much better at creating new slogans than at identifying actual problems. Most women are ignored by feminists. The very real difficulties of women working in low wage, dead end, menial jobs are ignored in favour of a concentration on how many High Court judges or Fortune 100 executives are women. Feminism, like all forms of liberalism, prioritises relationships that can be explained in terms of an economic transaction: it demands the provision of professional childcare but scorns the unpaid care work of stay-at-home mothers.
As well as ignoring real problems, modern feminism also equates the full equality of women with acquiring the worst traits of the most irresponsible men. A core thrust of the women’s movement today is pretty much that women’s liberation amounts to the demand that there should be no mental, physical, emotional or social complications to women having sex with anyone, without consequence. The ‘slut walks’ so popular a few years ago were about much more than protesting against rape: they were about having the freedom to be as promiscuous as possible.
Women are being written out as a distinct part of humanity, and in anti-science progressivism being a woman has become a matter not of biology but of emotion.
Women are being written out as a distinct part of humanity, and in anti-science progressivism being a woman has become a matter not of biology but of emotion. Anyone of either sex can be a woman if they claim to ‘feel’ like a woman. Any attempt even to define what a woman is, as opposed to being a man, will be met with howls of anguish and accusations of hate speech to such an extent that leading politicians refuse to attempt an answer. For the ordinary man or woman in the street to go further and attempt to clarify any distinction between womanhood and manhood and their distinct and complementary roles is beyond the pale and is a cause for immediate cancellation and exclusion from the public square.
Toxic Masculinity
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – this is an iron law of physics which is instructive for other areas of life. A distorted understanding of women is balanced by an equally distorted view of men. The most egregious example of distorted masculinity is that of Andrew Tate, the social media influencer recently arrested in Romania on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group.
Styling himself as a self-help guru, Tate has offered his mostly young male followers a recipe for making money, pulling girls and “escaping the matrix”. Tate has stated (using expletives that are removed here), that women “belong in the home”, that they “can’t drive”, and that they are “given to the man and belong to the man”. He is of the opinion that women should “shut … up, have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee”.
Tate unrepentantly flaunts his contempt for women. He has said: “You can’t slander me because I will state right now that I am absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely a misogynist, and I have … money and you can’t take that away.” He has also abandoned Christianity and converted to Islam.
Tate’s message of toxic masculinity found an all too ready and appreciative audience. In a matter of months, he went from near-obscurity to one of the most talked about people in the world. In July 2022 there were more Google searches for his name than for Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian. His Instagram following numbered 4.6 million, mainly young men searching for a role model in a culture which had rejected traditional biblical masculinity.
What modern feminism has done is play a leading role in a movement to reshape Western culture and which has created a ready client group of disaffected young men open to Tate’s message of a perverted masculinity which is truly toxic.
Reject God, Reject Harmony
Did the breakdown of social norms and the rise of modern feminism create ultra-misogynists like Andrew Tate? Of course not. Such men have always existed, and – given the nature of fallen humanity – always will. What modern feminism has done is play a leading role in a movement to reshape Western culture and which has created a ready client group of disaffected young men open to Tate’s message of a perverted masculinity which is truly toxic. Fourth-wave feminism and hyper-masculinity are as toxic to society and individual men and women as each other.
The Bible presents us with a truly radical equality between men and women (Gen 1:26,27), equal in worth yet different in nature, which if followed through enables us to live in harmony, each helping the other to be fully themselves. That this has been distorted in history does not disprove its truth and benefits; instead, it demonstrates just how difficult it is for us to do the right thing and live according to our created nature.
