It seems that the perennial anti-feminist backlash is rife these days, as one can see it most everywhere today. This backlash is always strongest when Women seem to be winning the gender war against patriarchy. As I had noted in a previous post, there have been several anti-feminist Women who have done more harm to the cause of feminism and Matriarchy than any man could ever hope to do.
But it seems a more subtle yet effective attack from another angle can also be added to this list as well. While I really do not want to give her any sort of publicity, a female conservative Catholic "scholar" by the name of Carrie Gress has apparently written a book called The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity. And this book is in dire need of a serious debunking, even more than when I debunked Mark Regnerus' own verbal defecation.
Like the concept of the Antichrist, Gress claims that there is a demonic spirit called the "Anti-Mary" that first reared its head in the late 1960s via the second-wave feminist movement. She calls it the "Anti-Mary" in that she believes it is diametrically opposed to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In fact, in Gress' view, the entire feminist movement, the pro-choice movement, birth control, the pursuit of personal happiness (for Women, that is), divorce, gay rights and gay marriage, the Goddess Movement, and the "occult" are all manifestations of that same spirit (peppered with the obligatory references to Lilith and Jezebel, of course). And according to her, there is a small group of elite Women controlling society from behind the scenes since the late 1960s that she ironically calls "The Matriarchy" (which paradoxically demeans and opposes motherhood, go figure), thus the book essentially becomes its very own parody. And she blames this so-called "Anti-Mary" (read: feminism) for essential all of modern society's ills today, and believes that Women are more miserable than ever as a result, or at least less happy now than they were in the so-called "good old days" before the 1960s. Riiiight.
In other words, she apparently wants to go back to a time of rigid and dehumanizing gender roles when Women had no real civil and human rights and were essentially treated as brood mares at best. Because that is exactly what happens when Women are denied their reproductive rights to decide when or whether to have children, and when Women's sexuality is repressed and controlled by men, the church, the state, or all of the above. While she would never say such blunt words out loud, she certainly implies them in an Orwellian fashion (where freedom is slavery and vice-versa).
Remember, even the supposedly "kinder and gentler" patriarchy of "third way" Catholic Distributism is still patriarchy, and thus cannot be redeemed. And no amount of disingenuous zero-sum thinking can turn a Big Lie into the truth, or turn enforced motherhood into liberation.
And of course anyone familiar with the Goddess Movement would almost instantly recognize the patriarchal splitting of the Great Mother archetype into the Good Mother (Mary) and the Terrible Mother (Lilith/Jezebel) archetypes in Gress's writing. Which is of course, neither novel nor inspiring.
There is a lot to unpack here, a pack of lies mixed with just enough truth to confuse and misdirect the gullible, but I can assure you that while it takes a real leap of logic to actually believe such fatuous and facile arguments wholesale, her thesis will nonetheless actually resonate with numerous disaffected Women who are looking for a scapegoat for the problems of the modern world, and her words will certainly tickle the ears of anyone who does not immediately respond with rage and vomiting. Her thesis reeks of internalized misogyny, albeit in a shiny and pretty wrapper, and there seems to be no shortage of that, as so many Women seem to be socialized to be their own worst enemy even today.
Having the GALL to try to openly pit the Blessed Virgin Mary against feminism and Matriarchy and the Goddess Movement (i.e. effectively against Mother God Herself!) is nothing short of blasphemy, and ironically exposes who the real "Anti-Mary" actually is: traitorous anti-feminist Women who side (and collaborate) with the demonic patriarchy.
QED
WOW. THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE REVIEW & I AGREE WITH YOU AJAX ON EVERY POINT; ENLIGHTENING.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, Rasa :)
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