Originally published at National Catholic Register
Has feminism offered society a positive contribution? Or has it, as Carrie Gress says in her new book, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us, been so corrupt from its inception that it must be “slayed” as an “ideological dragon?”
Is there such a thing as “authentic feminism,” or is the tree of “feminism,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” so rotten at its core that it must be cut down completely?
Before I address those questions, let me begin by saying that the history and impact of feminism that Gress presents in her book, particularly the “second wave” of feminism that came forth in the 1960s as a push for women’s equality in the workplace and for reproductive rights, rang extremely true to my own experience.
Her account of that part of feminist history was, almost eerily, the telling of my family history. Gress accurately conveyed the story of my own mother morphing from a stay-at-home mama of 10 — a PTA president, Brownie leader, Boy Scout den mother, practicing Catholic and often daily communicant — into a political activist
