Gloria Steinem and the Legacy of Feminism

0:00Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of Unchanging Truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Now, how is it that a movement, originally aimed at equal rights and protection for women, became a movement of men demanding access to women's private spaces and their opportunities and scholarships and sports? Eventually, the feminist movement will have to reckon with this legacy of undermining itself. The irony of males appropriating female identity in its name. The history of feminism can be described through various waves. First wave feminism was primarily aimed at advancing and ensuring equal rights, including the right to vote. Early activists were motivated by the belief that women were left vulnerable by men who did not live up to their moral responsibilities. That's why so many were also involved in the temperance movement. Because when men became alcoholics, they would abandon and abuse their families. First wave feminism, in other words, was a movement built on an essential understanding

1:03of what it means to be human. And because men and women shared an essential nature, both were equal and also morally responsible agents, including to each other. It should be no surprise, then, that so many first wave feminists were women who were pro-life, as they understood abortion to be a get out of jail-free card for men, who should be held morally responsible for their sexual behavior, and should be responsible for the children they father, and to the women they father children with. But abortion would only increase the tendency of men to misbehave sexually and to dodge the consequences of that misbehavior. Now second wave feminism is personified in many ways by the lifetimes and legacy of glorious Steinem, who died last week at age 92. In its second wave feminism stopped being a movement about moral responsibility and instead became a movement about autonomy. Women in this view should have the right to behave or misbehave and do whatever they want, just like men.

2:03Gloria Steinem was famous for saying that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. As much as anyone else, she led feminism second wave, which can be summarized kind of like men have screwed up the world, so women it's time to act like men. In other words, rather than call men to a proper measure of moral responsibility, Steinem and second wave feminism sought to free women of their moral responsibility. And so abortion became not only accepted by second wave feminism, it increasingly became the essential defining characteristic of it. Women should have the same sexual freedom, the same autonomy, the same absolution of responsibility and consequence as men. And that shift away from moral responsibility required a shift away from thinking about men and women in an essential way. Whereas first wave feminism was about equal rights, second wave feminism was about demanding and interchangeability in all social roles. And that required denying that there are any essential differences between women and

3:05men in the first place. And that untethered dignity and value from our God-given design and left it instead to loud demands for liberation. Genesis 3 describes what's often called the curse. It's where God laid out the consequences of Adam's sin, some of it being punishment, like the snake being forced to crawl on its belly. Some of it, the inevitabilities of living in a good world that had been corrupted. What God says to Eve is more of the latter than the former, that women will try to rule over men, but men in the end will always rule over women. And I'm not sure there is a better confirmation of this biblical account of the human condition than feminism's third and fourth waves working out exactly like God predicted. If feminism's second wave was co-opted by the sexual revolution, its third wave was co-opted by the oppression and victim narrative of critical theory. But in its fourth wave, having been detached from any essential understanding of what it means to be human, specifically what it means to be a human female, something the WNBA

4:10seems to struggle with as well, men trapped in their own narcissism simply appropriated female identity and then turned around and demanded access to women's spaces and women's victim status. Men taking a position or a scholarship or a championship from women or demanding the right to undress in front of them in a women's locker room or denigrating the title mother to birthing person, that could have never happened under feminism's first wave. The move to detach feminism from the moral responsibilities unique to men and women in their created design and to instead hitch feminism to sexual autonomy, including abortion, that is the most significant part of Gloria Steinem's legacy. And it created the situation, feminism finds itself in today. Having committed her life to advancing and protecting women's rights, she instead enabled the erosion of those rights. She's an example of what it means to saw off the branch or sitting on.

5:13Her vision of feminism is an example of something that's saying a gust and said about sin. In Krovatis and Say, that sin curves in on itself, and like a snake feasting on its own tail, becomes the agent of its own self-destruction. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. And before I go today, a program note to remember and commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9-11, which is Friday, we've prepared a very special bonus Breakpoint podcast. It features the commentaries of Chuck Colson from the days and weeks following those horrific attacks. The podcast is available now at the Breakpoint podcast. You can find it wherever you download podcast. And if you're a fan of the Breakpoint podcast, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And find more resources and share this commentary with others by going to Breakpoint.org. As a new school year begins, classrooms across the country are filling up again.

6:13And in those classrooms, teachers have an incredible opportunity to shape not only what students know, but how they see the world. Every day, Christian educators help students wrestle with questions about truth, purpose, identity, and what it means to live in God's world. But to teach from a Christian worldview, educators need to be formed in one themselves. That's why Colson Educator's academic affiliates brings Christian school faculty together for a 10-month experience of worldview formation, equipping them with the clarity, confidence, and courage to bring a Christian worldview into every classroom. Your gift can help more schools experience this transformative formation and help equip the teachers who will influence thousands of students. We'll be back with a quick review today at ColsonCenter.org slash September.