The Problem with Feminism

I know what you're thinking, "Oh goodness, another conservative blog is going to rail against feminism." That's partly true. I have a bone to pick. It is also true that the basic truth of feminism, that men and women are equals, is a truth more basic than the truth that the earth is round. My problem with feminism is a problem with particular instances of feminism, and it is a philosophical problem. I dislike feminism because it is so often Cartesian.

Rene Descartes, the French father of modern philosophy, is famous for his substance dualism. He thought that the material world, including our bodies, was one sort of substance, while our minds were another sort, an odd, ghostly thing that controls the meat bag that is our body. This sort of sentiment is exemplified by Yoda when he says "luminous beings we are, not this crude matter."

Feminism seems to take it a doctrine that we are not only luminous beings, but sexless luminous beings put into bodies, some of us with the misfortune of being put into female bodies. It says that we must use all of our technical and cultural might in order to destroy or ignore all of the "disadvantages" of those stuck in female bodies. These "disadvantages" tend to be related to female fertility. While this sort of feminism may make us all equal, it degrades femininity.

We cannot have any sort of true respect for the female if we do not respect the female body. Men and women are truly equal, but not in the sense of being the same thing unequally stuck in different things, but in the truly cosmic sense of being made in the image of God. A true respect for the feminine includes a respect for the feminine body, for the person is not a "luminous being" with a body, but a psychosomatic union of body and soul. Our bodies do not contain us, we are our bodies.