Originally published at National Catholic Register
MY FAVORITE STORY OF THE YEAR
The cultural battle is currently the No. 1 political issue in the Western world. This was clearly demonstrated in the recent U.S. elections, when a number of historic Democrats and ethnic minorities shifted their vote to the Republican camp for fear of seeing the political triumph of woke theories, which challenge the most universal anthropological and biological principles. Relations between men and women, their intrinsic nature and differences, are a fundamental part of these societal debates, which have dangerously polarized the West in recent years.
Radical feminism — which has spread to almost every major university in the U.S. and Europe in recent years and sees the white man and patriarchy as the origin of all women’s suffering — has greatly destabilized the institutions of family and marriage. This, in turn, has contributed to the phenomena of declining birth rates and massive atomization of youth, accelerating at the same time the process of de-Christianization in the West.
The great historian and medievalist Régine Pernoud anticipated these drifts when she wrote Women in the Times of the Cathedrals in the late ’70s, wisely recalling that nothing has been more empowering and liberating for women
