I am one of the men she is writing about. Found Freya through Chris Williamson. Message noted loud and clear. Very good. Will do my best to implement this and focus more on stories/feelings. Again, excellent.
A great piece about the sterility of data that is, funnily enough, supported by data.
In 2007, a team of researchers — Deborah Small, Paul Slovic, and George Loewenstein — conducted a series of experiments on what moves people more: stories or statistics. The researchers gave each of the participants money to donate and presented them with two charity campaigns: one based on famine statistics in Africa and one based on the experience of a single starving girl named Rokia. Naturally, the participants donated much more to the girl than to the thousands of abstract entities, even though every one of them would've been suffering just as much.
I’ve known this for years, and yet I still instinctively fire off studies and statistics to convince people (as I did just now…)
This bias toward “facts over feelings” is also true of most male writers I know. When we’re told we should be more in tune with people's feelings, we instinctively retort that feelings can’t be trusted as well as hard data can. And this is often true. But I suspect it’s sometimes just another story we tell ourselves, in order to protect *our* feelings.
See, many of us men are emotionally inarticulate and tone-deaf, particularly with regards to women’s feelings. We find emotions disturbingly murky and mercurial — far beyond our comfort zone — so we take refuge in the calmness and concreteness of data, even when it’s not persuasive (or even rational!) to do so.
I don’t regard myself as a conservative, but I am an Ass-Burger, and ever since the left started cancelling people for not being able to “read the room”, I and many other Ass-Burgers who can’t read the room, most famously Elon, have become more sympathetic to conservatism, making the movement even more culturally autistic than it was before.
But the thing with this new, based, “facts don’t care about your feelings” conservatism is that it’s not actually emotionless; it just caters to emotions that men (and Ass-Burgers) feel comfortable with, like pride and outrage, while eschewing more “feminine” ones like grief and melancholy.
This is why I’m glad you’re offering a fresh approach. If rationality means anything, then it means succeeding, and that requires sympathy — the ability to understand what people are feeling, even if we can’t feel it ourselves. This is something I and many others need to improve at, and I’ll take your eloquent essay as a useful reminder.
It’s funny, I was just thinking about the conversation we had the other day when you commented this. I think what made it work so well was that we came at it from different angles, but were essentially saying the same things. You shared studies about the benefits of social interaction; I told stories about my neighbour. You explained, philosophically, how too much freedom can enslave us; I talked about how anxious and overwhelmed many young women feel today. Someone described it as a “duet”.
I’m definitely not an expert, or an intellectual like you are, but I do think there’s a place for feelings. As Paul Kingsnorth said to me once: “I’m starting to sound like a grumpy old man, but perhaps we need more grumpy old men, and women, to put things right again.” And maybe we need sensitive young women too, who can feel things changing, who notice what it’s doing to people, to children, to families, to the fabric of things.
Of course we need both - both men and women, progressives and conservatives, feelings and facts. And I think we need more conversations like the one we had, where two people can talk in slightly different languages, the language of feelings and the language of studies and statistics, but with respect for each other, and for the truth. That's how I think we get to the bottom of things
I think there needs to be boundaries in both directions, a separation of the personal and political that is ignored by both left and right.
On the left, there was (still is?) several years where an ideological subset of emotional people (primarily women? IDK) were given free reign to get their coworkers fired any time they were in a mood, like the Queen of Hearts. The power to make their personal emotions into someone else's problem.
On the right, there are obtuse people (primarily men) who think they can hector young women into marriages and children with general statistics and theories that have nothing to do with their individual life history and circumstances. I don't even call these obtuse people “logical,” because if they were truly logical they would realize — instead of putting the burden on the women — that it takes two to start a nuclear family, and furthermore, it is traditionally the man’s job to propose marriage!
I don't understand your point on right. If problem is that they don't respect separation of personal and political then it's not your business if marriages happen or not. And burden is put on women because today women control dating market and they don't want to get married
The issue is that *some* people on the right consider women unilaterally responsible for the decline in marriage rates or older average age of first marriages.
On one hand, from what I've heard, men have always outnumbered women on dating apps. (Part of this is some women, for safety and other reasons, prefer to be introduced by a trusted person in their life or getting to know someone gradually through work or church or school, rather than going online to find someone.)
On the other hand, once a couple has been dating for a while, the man is often more hesitant to commit, so it evens out in terms of who is the "gatekeeper" of marriage rates and how old couples are when they get married.
*some* people on the right remember 3rd wave feminism when naked women were screaming about being sluts. The point is not that women are only one's responsible for that (although definitely more than men because now many men struggle to date even) but that majority of women support those social changes, they see it as progress and good thing.
I'm a retired engineer so data is very important to me but I recognise that it tells only part of the story of our lives.
I am particularly taken with your comment -
"But the thing with this new, based, “facts don’t care about your feelings” conservatism is that it’s not actually emotionless; it just caters to emotions that men (and Ass-Burgers) feel comfortable with, like pride and outrage, while eschewing more “feminine” ones like grief and melancholy."
I agree entirely. As a conservative man who is very likely to express his sadness, I find that many people can't emotionally read even this one person, let alone a roomful!
I, too, feel more than a little tone deaf regarding feelings, am still struggling through Grade 1 primer on “reading the room” and I’m a little old lady!
I’m afraid I don’t really understand how you are helping yourself and your fellow young women by seeming to focus on the pain and victimhood of what you perceive as your predicament. I hope, as an articulate woman and good writer with many followers you will start to share the solutions that you and they personally can take, as blaming society or others doesn’t solve things. I look forward to reading them.
To solve a problem one has to identify it. None of the dynamics mention in this essay would have occurred to me if I hadn't read it, and I'm sure that's true for other readers. And I don't think it's written from a "victimhood" perspective.
Perhaps you could offer some suggestions on how the problems identified here might be addressed.
It’s true that no one holds a gun to your head to do these things but to say these are all “your direct actions” suggests a kind of naive individualism that is at odds with your first paragraph. “Everyone” acknowledges there are problems but it’s the culture. In theory you can opt out, but doing so is to make the isolation worse.
We need a counterculture. However, as Freya points out, the church has not yet been up to that task. In many ways, it has rather actively conformed itself to the prevailing culture.
You still can separate yourself from Culture, the dominant forces at play outside of your control like the marketisation of relationships, these are concrete and valid things to point out, not victimisation, but a reality check, human beings struggle to be human in these environments. Sure you can go and live in the woods, that's an option, it doesn't make you a hypocrite or a victim to choose to point out what's wrong. It's bloody helpful!
Phil I see your point that doing whining won't change anything. But I'd argue asking for help and compassion is different from playing the victim.
I have read through all the comments you've posted on this article to date, and I think you are guilty of the opposite flaw in your argument. It's the "Just do it because you should know already" flaw. Or perhaps the "This information is commonly known by people in my life and therefore everyone should know it" flaw.
At the same time, you dumped the entirety of the responsibility for the hookup vs marriage issue in women's laps. You said men like it but women don't, so women have to change it. Isn't that eschewing responsibility? If I'm hurting someone, it should be their responsibility to communicate with me and my responsibility to stop. If a young women is never taught how to communicate assertively about her romantic wants/expectations by a parent, authority figure, or someone she admires, she won't know how to do it.
To give an example that may be more familiar to you, I'll liken this to events that were going on when you were young. I don't know what country you grew up in, so I'm just picking something I know about and that made headlines at the time.
As you are 66, you were alive during the crack and AIDS epidemics of the 80s in the US. Didn't your generation know that crack and unprotected sex were bad? How come they "played the victim" until government authorities and charities got involved to spread awareness and find solutions? Dealers like making money off drugs. Horny people like sex even if they have communicable diseases. Dealers and sexually active people won't stop something that is good for them, so it's the responsibility of those who are hurt to stop them. And whining to authorities is just victim culture.
To answer my own questions, of course they knew better. But if you grow up around it or people are promoting it to you (the way a horny young man might promote sex to a young wome) as cool, fun, "no big deal," and something that everyone is doing, it's understandable that you may engage in a behavior some part of you knows is hurting you.
I believe she made very valid statements here. Personally, I read this article as acknowledgement, not victimisation. 'Young women need refuge, not ridicule' is exactly the point to be made. Mockery is not a sustainable way to capture the attention of women whose faith in authority has only been in decline, least of all, to capture the sort of attention that is conducive to help them find the direction they lack, and instead having them turned to defensive ways in response. Which is precisely why the other side has been so successful in reaching young women: they do actually try and reach them. What they lack in good and beneficial conclusions and advice, they make up for in their understanding and compassionate ways. I believe there is a lack of balance in the way these subjects are being approached, otherwise, why are you failing to reach us?
Well said! I think that young people need compassionate guidance. The liberals have been leaning into the compassion, but the guidance isn't offering a real solution. Conservatives have been completely without compassion (even mocking women going through deep pain because they themselves never make those choices), so their dismissive guidance isn't helpful either.
Helen, many women *don’t* communicate how they are feeling. The right constantly harasses women who have had to work, and had to make a go of it, and had to be stoic, and had to be successful, whether they wanted to be or not.
Do you know I’ve been turned down for jobs because I refused to wear pants? Most women just wear the pants, and then in the next breath they’re criticized for wearing them.
Most of us would have liked to be married, but so long as we’re not, we have to at least pretend to be motivated. Freya is speaking for the women who don’t speak, and who in many ways can’t because if their boss finds out they’re on the hunt for a husband, they’ll be replaced by someone more ambitious than them
Not all women are leftists. I was a Republican in early 2000s California precisely because I wanted a traditional life; and yet I’ve spent the last 20 years being criticized for either being a sober prude, or lately, not being married (as if I control the level of commitphobia of men my age…) I absolutely am a victim; I didn’t even start drinking until after I was dateraped AT 33. Maybe try not punishing the women who did try to do the right things… I even stayed back and helped pay the bills when my dad got cancer. I’m really tired of being blamed for the 3rd wave feminism I did not promote, and in many ways have spent my life working against
It's not personal but general view. Most modern young women are leftists and support those things so creating narrative that today women turn left because of those stuff when they support them is ridiculous
I didn't feel like reading the thread, but I did want to say, Freya, that I agree with this comment in the sense that we want to hear your ideas for solutions. Often, a solution isn't possible, as the world truly only degrades as a result of the Fall in the Beginning. Even though we can't obliterate problems, we can make progress, or at least progress bubbles.
I think you have the situation backwards. It is almost like when you ask a communist why communism failed and they say, "There wasn't enough collectivism and unionization," when those are precisely the reasons why communism fails.
Christians have gone out of their way to try to pander to women and it hasn't worked in large part because women cannot respect men who are not stronger than them, which includes having a will that won't buckle and crumble under the need to please a woman.
When feminism proper infiltrated the Christian church, it came by way of the general theological liberalism which made a religion of progressive causes while rejecting Jesus as anything other than an exemplar of progressivism (i.e. the virgin-born sinless Son of God). The conservative churches TRIED to stay conservative on theological issues and the gender issues but what they came up with was essentially a way to say, "Conservative gender roles are good for women, male strength is to serve women," and to propose a minimum viable gender role situation where outside of women not being elders it was functionally egalitarian.
In a context where women were not led by strong men they perceived any feeble attempts to lead as weak, manipulative, and abusive, and so it creates a self-reinforcing spiral of women feeling unseen and unheard when people are going out of their way to try to pander to them in an unwanted fashion. Its the HR meme about sexual harassment where the Alpha guy sexually harasses a woman and she likes it and the loser does the same thing and she calls human resources.
Women are generally happiest when they have a single "safe man" who leads them who they respect and trust (like a father or husband) who is able to translate the things that are happening around them into the woman's world. This sounds patronizing but a lot of women genuinely want this and don't want to have to worry about everything around them.
A religious conference is, essentially, made for men so that they can think through the important issues and mediate them to the realms of their own domain, which includes their families. The Bible itself has this in mind when Paul says of women, "Let them be silent in the churches and if they have any questions to ask their husbands at home." He could have said to ask the pastor after service. He knew that women genuinely need a personalized message from their safe man. Their safe man also protects them from things like Tinder culture.
I am genuinely interested in the female perspective, especially with things you mention like therapy culture. Don't hear me saying it is all a woman problem. I'm saying that more pandering to women's emotions is not the answer. We need both a different breed of men and of women.
You’re just illustrating her point tho. You took the message she gave, and then gave an intellectual response. She repeatedly brings up pain and you ignore that to focus on the logic. I’m not disagreeing entirely with your message because we need more strong men and good women, and the happiest relationships I’ve seen the man is the leader, but if you ask a lot of women even the idea of what Paul said would drive them away. I think she’s saying we need to address the pain while uplifting women not pointing the finger and saying that we need to translate the world for them, they can’t ask questions in church, etc.
This reply is "It's not about the nail" sketch in action. "Stop trying to fix it I just want you to listen and acknowledge my pain."
The problem is that this post is trying to demonstrate cause and effect and prescribe solutions. Either you can have an acknowledgement of pain and listening with no attempt to fix, or you can try to deal honestly with the problems and fix them.
When men offer general sympathy to women they are not related to, its usually a warning sign - unchecked emotional intimacy. Or else flattery/simping. If I don't express, "Oh Freya I am so sorry for what you are going through," it does not mean that I don't have sympathy for someone in pain, but its also not appropriate for me to be offering emotionally intimate connections with random women.
My reply with analysis is with the pain of people like Freya in mind, in balance with the general needs of Western society. We can't fix the problems without addressing their real causes. All of the sources of her pain are downstream from Feminism. No fault divorce was made possible by feminist activism, as well as the cultural environment that made it acceptable. Tinder sexuality is made possible by birth control - another aspect of feminist activism. This doesn't make the pain illegitimate and it doesn't blame all women for feminism itself when many of them didn't ask for it either. It does mean we need to deal with these root causes.
The problem is that the definition of "normal" has shifted so much so fast that the types of realistic solutions to our problems are not what people are ready to hear. Patriarchy is the scary word for the time when women didn't have this type of pain. The time when women were silent in churches was the time they were not confused and put off by their religion.
Women are solipsistic and genuinely have trouble considering ideas completely abstracted away from how it makes them feel. This isn't necessarily a defect in women, but it is one reason why women traditionally were not invited to be leaders, problem solvers, etc. because this depends on them being able to put their personal feelings aside and act on behalf of what they represent. Notice in this reply, you mention that women's feelings are a priority over pointing the finger and saying they cannot ask questions in church. In other words, prioritizing feelings over the word of God.
The right response for a woman when she is hurting is often, "Don't worry about it, I will handle it," from her safe man. It accepts that she has feelings but also doesn't let those feelings rule. It accepts her nature being weaker but rather than it being a point of shame, its a point of beauty, like a delicate flower or a porcelain vase. She doesn't need to be on the battlefield.
As a woman I don’t recognize myself in any way, shape, or form in the “women” you described at length. I hardly know any women like the “women” you describe. Your generalizations are completely wild. They’re your own views of women and nothing more.
Oh and I’m well adjusted, happily married, successful, and not an emotional pus guided by feelings TYVM. God bless.
I didn't describe women at length. I only referenced them in my first sentence and my second to last paragraph and the point I made was that women make decisions based on how it makes them feel personally.
Your reply was basically, "That's not how I feel personally and I don't know other women like that," presented in an offended tone.
It's funny because people know women are like this. There is no sense in denying it. Its really illustrating my point in that you're responding to my point about women being emotional and solipsistic by taking personal offense and responding accordingly - exactly the thing I am saying prevents these problems from being solved.
You're not dealing with the content of my argument because you're led by how you personally feel about me from having said this.
Yea, but the issue that I remember this article being about is messaging to women who think just as you described, “have trouble considering ideas completely abstracted away from how it makes them feel”. I’m not subbed so I can’t read the whole article, but again it’s about reaching them first, then convincing them of right wing ideas. You took what I said and put it in terms of the ‘don’t try to fix my problems just listen’ thing but I think the point of Freya’s article, and what I tried to convey in my comment, was you can’t lead with the intellectual and expect emotional people to listen. They have to trust that you have their interest at heart. For the women who have a hard time disconnecting their emotions, that is how you open the door, by addressing those emotions. I wish we could just talk intelligently and ignore emotional responses, but it’s not rational to think that’s the best way to approach every individual person.
Sort of but I think that’s because the left uses more emotional messaging. I think the whole point of the article is the right adopting more messaging that reaches the same people that the left messages to, not completely catering to them. Like for abortion while the left focuses on horror stories the right could focus on good outcomes like babies who would have been aborted, but weren’t, and grew up to do great things.
There is something to be said about adopting the strategies and frame of an opposition that is diabolical. The left uses emotional messaging detached from truth. Which results in really really heavy disortions. But distortions which appeal to a disordered appetite. It is unjust to ask the right to cater to a disordered appetite.
Even if the right will add a pathos flavour to their messaging, it won't still be as spicy as that of the left since they must do it in moderation and in mix with the truth. And the truth is bitter still. The problem is a malformed appetite. And a malformed appetite can only be corrected through reason and the intellect when it is well positioned to apprehend the truth of being.
This is a hard task. And arguing from feelings is not the answer. Roger Scruton was the best of conservatives; he was warm and deeply feeling. Hardly could he outdo the left.
Engaging the mentally ill on their own ground makes you mentally ill over time. It was only through recovery from the attempts to help such people that my life changed for the better. Instead, I employ boundaries.
People are responsible for helping themselves. I can't blame others for my issues and vice versa. If people are not ready for this message of rationality, then maybe it's just not time for them, and it may never actually be time.
Funny you automatically interpreted my comment as me "taking personal offense". That's your feeling, dude. You're projecting your feelings onto me. I commented to set the record straight.
You wrote two posts going on and on about how women should be. That woman is something that you want to exist. The whole persona of this helpless weak flower is such a caricature. It's a card board. I don't know any human being like that, woman or man. I for one cannot relate. At. All.
I don't know what some skits with views prove. Views can mean anything whether it's shown by algorithm or someone casually clicking on something. If that's your go to source of "facts", I can't take it seriously. 115k subscribers in the scheme of things is nothing. It means it's a draw for people just like you. We all live in echo chambers now.
Believe whatever you want. So don't believe me. What is it to me? The world moves on the way it does. Men with your views aren't helping your "cause", you're driving the wedge bigger and confirming the opinions of the "feminists" you hate so much.
>I don’t recognize myself in any way, shape, or form in the “women”
Unnecessary use of scare quotes.
> you described at length.
I described in one sentences, and one paragraph in a 7 paragraph response. You perceived it to be at length because it had more emotional impact than the rest of the comment.
> Your generalizations are completely wild.
Emotional description of a pretty common view, at least on the internet when women are discussed in right wing circles.
> Oh and I’m well adjusted, happily married, successful, and not an emotional pus
Defending yourself from things I never accused you of failing at.
>TYVM
Thank you very much. Classic sign of offense taken. Similar to "bless your heart."
I'm not aligned with what the other guy said, but the reason people go left is because feminism and the like tell them that anything they like or want to do is justified. Every vice is empowering with a feminist sticker on it. Christianity is the only creed that encourages virtue even when it feels bad and rejects vice even when it feels good. People who desire virtue and love in their personal lives and relationships will not be leftist.
And last thing...we are told that young women these days are strong independent boss women, taking over the world and no longer need men. So it all seems to be a contradiction against "women are hurting".
This article is likely discussing people in their 30s who bought into the feminist dream, only to realize not every makes it to the top and only to end up with dissapointment and regret. The intensity, fidelity, and confidence in the dream they bought into, all whilst making your life as a man hell in your 20s, makes it very difficult to have the emotional capacity to have sympathy for the same people responsible for moral decay. Somone who lived their lives sleeping around, drinking their lives to ruin, and pursuing a career as an end in itself or an end to buy designer clothing ought to deal with the consequences on their own actions. The traditional movement should focus on children, not adult women who have the freedom to choose.
I saw some of your other comments and there's much to takeaway from things you said about your generation's experience. Freya writes about GenZ (she is one) and I believe she's talking about GenZ gals.
What you said here boils down to one thing, with which I agree. At some point, the good intention of giving support became over correction, and morphed even further into empty trajectory. Participation trophies were the beginning. We're at the final stage where affirmations have become detached from reality.
Everything about modern feminism is wrong and I can go on about that too. But IMO modern feminism, for all its problems, has become a scapegoat when the results we're seeing today is a perfect storm of many current societal problems of equal and maybe even more dire weight. Because at the end of the day, how many people actually listen to feminists, ever? It is true that some of their ideologies have taken hold as part of the wider DEI and critical theory thinking that's been hoisted upon us. But nothing turns people off more than feminists. They don't have as much power as people are blaming them for. It might have been cool for 5 mins during #MeToo but the backlash has been fierce and nothing really came out of that except now Hollywood has intimacy directors.
Women living real life are not making decisions on day to day basis because of feminism or girl boss or its predecessor the snarky kick-ass heroine. Just like people of whatever kind living a real life are not making day-to-day and life decisions because of ideologies be it race or sexual orientation or even religion and what have you (exception for some with mental illnesses who can't think straight). We all make life decisions based on the people we're dealing with in our own life and unique circumstances. The series of actions and reactions arising from it all is what makes us. If we have good experiences, those serve to form our opinions one way. If we have bad experiences, we form our opinions differently. We then look to bigger societal narratives to reinforce our already formed opinions. There are some downstream effects from ideologies, sure, like schools teaching certain things. But the tech revolution with internet and social media probably has done a much bigger number on all of us than any ideology. The tech platforms greatly changed how we experience interactions with people. I honestly didn't realize how many men out there right now, in the USA, think women shouldn't have the right to vote. Without the internet as existed today, I would've thought all men even the most conservative ones had gotten past THAT. At least I'm not young and have a bigger frame of reference. But if a 16 yo girl keeps seeing men saying that (or things said by those like my friend who I was bickering with), what else are they supposed to think?
1st feminism completely changed understanding of reality in West at least 2 to 3 times.
2nd #Metoo succeeded, man's sexuality became demonized to ridiculous degree. One prove of that is that gen z men when asked why they don't approach women 50% said that would it make them creeps
3rd ideology and worldview quite obviously influences people's decisions
My main problem with article is that women pushed for no fault divorce and normalized hook up culture running on their "slut marches" in 2000s and now we get to know that they turn even more leftwing because society is more left-wing?
I agree with what you've said here and understand your perspective. I support Freya because I appreciate what she is doing and believe in her work. And thanks for sharing the article. Women I have dated have shared similar perspectives, but speaking of emotions, I and I assume many other conservative men, are frustrated by the behaviors we see before us. We are highly scandalized by this. We fundamentally see that women's behaviors are more downstream from institutions than that of men, in general. Men instinctively know not to trust government and know how power works, that the powers of the world are not your friend. We see that women are captive to the culture and easily influenced--so, of course, the solution is to either sanctify the state or limit voting rights. In our eyes, we see women rebelling against virtue and whatsoever is good in favor of low culture.
To steel man, the general sentiment of the men's perspectives in here, we don't understand why women are easily influenced, and we have a hard time being sympathetic to this because they are the most fierce in promoting and spreading the broken culture. At least in my generation, we perceive the culprits of moral decay are older millennial, Gen X, and especially boomer men.
What we are witnessing is the liquidation of the liberal project, that is, rebellion against the spiritual reality and belief in the supernatural--to be more explicit, all of these problems are derivative of Protestantism, which lack spirituality and a mystical life. Rebellion begets rebellion. What spiritual foundation is there a person in modern life today?
Reality is not intelligible without the spiritual / mystical life. To me, this is what Gen Z women are missing, this is what society is missing. I agree that raw facts and charts and data do not convey the fullness of true, love does. And how know true love without God, who is spirit? Once you come to believe in the power of prayer, divine miracles, that demons exist--you come to know the truth path you must take. The fundamental issue is secularism, and who spreads and promotes secularism the most if not women?
Andrew Tate is rebuked, the only fans women are praised. See the issue?
(Sorry for any typos or incoherence: I wrote this while at work)
You can’t reason with people like this. He has as a premise the idea that women are not rational adults and his entire worldview is filtered through that lens. Any protestation that you do not think in the way that he portrays women to think, that you don’t actually want to be patronized to and ignored and controlled by “strong men,” can be dismissed as you being too irrational and emotional to understand your own mind. Apparently, you’re just not being controlled enough. Your disagreeing at all in anything but a robotic monotone is a sign of your supposed irrationality. It’s a self-sealing argument.
I will say that the only reason I am a Christian today is because of what he describes as “pandering to women” by Christian groups, in my case Catholicism. Particularly the perspectives of people like Fr. Mike Schmitz and the late and great Pope St. John Paul II. If I only saw perspectives on women like that of the commenter above, I would be long gone. I invite you to check out the text Mulieris Dignitatem if you need a dose of fresh air, it’s pretty much the only Christian take on women written by a man that I find entirely unobjectionable.
I'm a Protestant but I love Fr Mike Schmitz's podcast! His Bible in a Year also got me through the Book cover to cover. I sent him a Christmas present the year I finished that podcast to thank him.
I've been a member of different Protestant churches throughout my adult life as I moved around a lot. The pastors at my churches have always treated women and men as equals. In the Gospel, Jesus clearly elevated women above men, and the women were mostly portrayed positively while the men were shown to be somewhat slow and bumbling with flaws. When I encounter the jerkface theobros (termed by Kaeley Triller Harms and Brian F Marks in her Substack) in the wild like our friend here, I just see them ruining Christianity. So you're righ, there's no reasoning with these people.
A lot of it comes from lack of real-world experience with women. By his own admission, his views on women are formed by online conservative internet discussions and internet skits. When you interact more with the opposite sex, you realize that men and women are more similar than they are different and the differences are largely benign. But when you’re trapped in your little internet bubble, the opposite sex is a completely different species. That comes out as women being these fragile wilting toddlers or men being evil rapists.
You’re talking about women and their multitude of weaknesses and problems as you perceive but then go on to say you aren’t accusing me, a woman, of anything. Logic much! 🤣
“TYVM” is taking offense??? That’s a new one. Ok boomer if you say so. You’re hearing tones in your head made up by how you want to hear it. Your views are so biased and you can’t even see it.
Everything you say is trite textbook sexism and I say this as one who don’t even agree with feminism today.
This conversation was a boring me as everything you regurgitate is same old same old and I’ve heard it all before so I’m going to leave it right here. There’s no point in carrying on anyway as the only thing you and I can agree on is to agree to disagree.
But just so you know, as I’m sure it feels good to you to state your righteous opinions 😀, the more you talk this way the more you’re convincing younger women that the side opposite you is correct. Keep at it! Works for me.
You'd think it would be obvious that statistics and graphs wouldn't penetrate the hearts of young women, but so many conservatives continue to use this (and guilt, and ridicule) as their primary means of changing minds. They are failing miserably, and pushing so many girls further left.
It reminds me of what Tim Keller said about the gospel: "Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it."
That is well said, but which one is it--are women having a hard time and would appreciate friendship, community and love or are they strong independent women who are taking over the world, don't need men and overcoming adversity? Schrödinger's woman. From what I can see, women living their best lives and are happy, especially the ones on only fans who are constantly telling us how stunning and brave they are on social media.
Very well written, Freya! Thanks for the moving essay! Escaping the matrix isn’t easy for anyone and we all need one another. May we support one another with honesty and open hearts!
Freya, you continue to impress me with your voice and passion. I wish there was more I could do. I try to speak up about how becoming a mother made the sacred more true and beautiful… how important feeling and sensing are, becoming more emotionally attuned and living a more whole and complete life, which includes pain and sadness. Maybe we need our own conference? Sending you love and gratitude. Keep it up.
but the Gospel can also be understood and accepted by logic and reason. It depends on who you are preaching it too. You have to know your audience. Emotional? Logical? Both? Intelligent or ignorant? Big picture or self absorbed?
Absolutely, Juliana; but as CS Lewis experienced, he could logically conclude the Bible was true, and Jesus the Messiah, but it was the being ‘Surprised By Joy’ which really did it.
Freya, thank you so much for this. What you say is true - the question is... what do we do about it? I write as a wife and mother, as a conservative, as a Christian, as a therapist. I have been in the room with the girls you describe for thousands of hours. I have listened; I have explained that they are intrinsically valuable; that they are worth far more than the way they are being treated; that they can say no. We talk, we laugh sometimes. I'm often asked how long I've been married - and when I say nearly 30 years, I might as well be speaking a foreign language. They leave the counselling room and life resumes. These are girls for whom a 'stepdad' can be someone their mum met in the pub last Friday; some don't know how many siblings they have. They are wary and wounded, with no time or space to heal. Most emotional distress (a term I prefer to mental illness - it's more about broken hearts than broken brains) arises through experiences, environment and relationships. For a lot of young girls, all three areas of life are dysfunctional and they see no way out. It is our generation which has utterly failed them, including the church - but we desperately need to find some way back and fast. It doesn't have to be like this
This really illustrates the fundamental problem here, and not in the way you think. This is an article about how 'the right' need to improve their messaging to young women. Why? So that young women receive the proper guidance, and therefore don't make as many mistakes.
The fundamental problem is that everyone has conveniently forgotten that women have agency. This article is a great example of the ubiquitous redirect of responsibility. Men or 'the right' don't make choices for young women, young women make their own choices. Women know right from wrong. Women know smart from stupid. Don't they? If they don't, they shouldn't be making their own choices. Personally, I think women would make better choices if we could all stop pretending they don't make their own choices.
As a non-Christian, non-conservative I enjoy reading your articles. They're insightful, well written, and I think capture the spirit of the age for women even from a right leaning perspective.
Additionally, as a non-Christian, non-conservative I enjoy perusing the comment sections to see men dismissing your argument, comparing women to sharks, arguing that thoughts are just too hard for women's brains, and classic misogyny. Literally exemplifying your opening sentence. Keep it up boys, that'll get the ladies coming to Church.
This is interesting. I am glad you wrote it. I think you might be on to something we should be discussing. I will admit that I am struggling with the premise given all we are dealing with today in gender relations, but I think this is a useful approach to start the needed dialog.
The basic problem I have with the premise, although I agree that there is this conflict, is the soft scold of males to step forward to change their behavior in accommodation of the hurt/pain that females are dealing with.
On one hand, I agree that males should shoulder the largest burden here. There is a long tradition of males needed to figure out how to navigate the minefield of female stronger emotions, while caring and protecting. But the landscape has changed due to the feminist movement "empowering" women who now directly compete with men for social and economic dominance. This new gender competition, really unprecedented within human history, has grown quite hostile, and I think that is because of the feminist movement.
It seems what you are advocating for, and I think what much of the woke/DEI movement has been about, is a special accommodation of men, the same men that have been statistically in socioeconomic decline while being pummeled with #MeToo attacks and claims that they are racist and misogynist brutes.
While I agree that females are hurting, I don't think this approach in scolding/shaming men (who trend conservative while females trend liberal) to be more sensitive to and accommodating of the negative emotions of females is the correct remedy to the problem.
Females have become angry, hostile and mean. Males have two acceptable choices; they can allow themselves to be abused by all those emotionally disordered aggressive females, or they can do their best to ignore having any relationship with them and protect themselves by only associating with those that don't attack them.
I think females are hurting because they are lonely. And they are lonely because of their bad behavior. And their loneliness makes them even angrier and more hostile toward men, and thus their bad behavior increases. It is a cycle of broken gender relations.
The culprit is the feminists. The top malcontents of the "female power" armies that have taken over the education system and many other institutions and keep brainwashing females to rage and attack to get what they want.
I see it clearly. It comes through my social media feeds. It infects not only young females, but my old school mates in their 60s. It is a constant drumbeat of promoted hate against any and all that oppose the female political power demand. It is also the Democrat party apparatus. The well-funded activist industry that is dominated by educated feminists.
I don't think shaming men into being more caring in this sea of manufactured hostility against them is a workable approach. It isn't until females themselves fight the radical feminists to stop vulnerable narcissist power grab program that we will see a repair of our broken gender relations.
The war is between family and state. Family led by a strong man will fail in a powerful state. When the man struggles against the state and falls short, the mother and children will turn to the state, strengthening the state. The man struggles to fulfill his promises to his family, the state lies to broken families. Women, being naturally dependent, are more susceptible to falling for the state lies. It is an ancient fundamental clash between man’s responsible love, and the lies and manipulations of slave societies.
CPS perfectly exposes this conundrum. They come into struggling families, promise support, then sell children into what amounts to slavery.
The right hasn't forgotten feeling. Not by a single order of magnitude. The right is simply fed-up with decades of bad behavior from those who let their feelings be their absolute guide, who've held too much influence and who've been leading whole cultures into trouble. The angry parent or teacher or other authority figure - who has now snatched up an unruly and destructive toddler to park them in the corner - has not forgotten feeling. They have subjugated it in order to fix what the toddler has broken, or to fix the toddler's behavior, or both. The toddler, of course, will carry on as though he is being murdered, but it's the usual drama. This too shall pass, and he'll be just fine.
It's simple social physics: the pendulum - which swung so far liberal - is now swinging back. It's going to be ugly for a while until that pendulum can settle again into that middle zone. Feminism is being pushed back by equally ugly and unhealthy things like "Andrew Tate-ism", Redpill pop psychology, MGTOW, etc., and many professing Christians are being drawn after them because they themselves have felt for so long voiceless to argue against the worst excesses of the girlboss mind and the dereliction of the woman's "first estate" (there's a dangerous idea, right there). In fact, much of the conservative and Christians' rhetoric has been the necessary effort to articulate and nail down in clear language what we've never HAD to articulate and nail down before: What a woman is, what a man is, what a marriage is, what is virtuous, what is good and right in gender roles, etc. Remember that the very nature of human nature has been under assault for thirty years or more. Men and women are no longer men and women, but pinned locales on a spectrum. I could go on and on.
The feels are important, yes. The heart is important, yes. But we're a bit early to start warning or complaining about forgetting how to feel. We've been choked with feelings. And now we're learning how to get a grip on them again. We haven't forgotten how to feel. We've just gone numb for a bit until we can get things back on track. If the conservative is the mind and the liberal is the heart (not a perfect metaphor), then the mind will hear the heart again when it's ready to. But for now, the heart needs to sit in the corner until we can fix so much of what it's broken.
I agree…the balance has been way off…feelings have overruled intellect way too much. And it has infected the church. Nothing sickens me more than to sit in a Bible study and hear someone say, ‘Well, I think the verse means this. I feel this is what he’s trying to say’. The resulting distorted theologies become so divergent from the early church as to be almost unrecognizable. These almost always distract from the real message of the Bible.
Freya, you say 'The people the message is supposedly for aren’t even in the room.'
This is one of the biggest problems - polarisation and echo-chambering.
Hardly anyone follows people they don't agree with.
The men you are writing about won't read this.
The girls won't hear or read the words of those men.
I haven't yet worked out how to solve this, but I think this is one of the problems we must solve before our world falls apart completely.
It doesn't just affect your audience, the girls.
It affects us all.
I am one of the men she is writing about. Found Freya through Chris Williamson. Message noted loud and clear. Very good. Will do my best to implement this and focus more on stories/feelings. Again, excellent.
That's really encouraging to hear actually :) I also found her work through Modern Wisdom
We need to break the algorithm. It’s imprisoning minds into silos with destructive feedback loops.
When it comes to the gender war and blaming the other side, I know this from personal experience, and it was hard to break out of.
A great piece about the sterility of data that is, funnily enough, supported by data.
In 2007, a team of researchers — Deborah Small, Paul Slovic, and George Loewenstein — conducted a series of experiments on what moves people more: stories or statistics. The researchers gave each of the participants money to donate and presented them with two charity campaigns: one based on famine statistics in Africa and one based on the experience of a single starving girl named Rokia. Naturally, the participants donated much more to the girl than to the thousands of abstract entities, even though every one of them would've been suffering just as much.
I’ve known this for years, and yet I still instinctively fire off studies and statistics to convince people (as I did just now…)
This bias toward “facts over feelings” is also true of most male writers I know. When we’re told we should be more in tune with people's feelings, we instinctively retort that feelings can’t be trusted as well as hard data can. And this is often true. But I suspect it’s sometimes just another story we tell ourselves, in order to protect *our* feelings.
See, many of us men are emotionally inarticulate and tone-deaf, particularly with regards to women’s feelings. We find emotions disturbingly murky and mercurial — far beyond our comfort zone — so we take refuge in the calmness and concreteness of data, even when it’s not persuasive (or even rational!) to do so.
I don’t regard myself as a conservative, but I am an Ass-Burger, and ever since the left started cancelling people for not being able to “read the room”, I and many other Ass-Burgers who can’t read the room, most famously Elon, have become more sympathetic to conservatism, making the movement even more culturally autistic than it was before.
But the thing with this new, based, “facts don’t care about your feelings” conservatism is that it’s not actually emotionless; it just caters to emotions that men (and Ass-Burgers) feel comfortable with, like pride and outrage, while eschewing more “feminine” ones like grief and melancholy.
This is why I’m glad you’re offering a fresh approach. If rationality means anything, then it means succeeding, and that requires sympathy — the ability to understand what people are feeling, even if we can’t feel it ourselves. This is something I and many others need to improve at, and I’ll take your eloquent essay as a useful reminder.
It’s funny, I was just thinking about the conversation we had the other day when you commented this. I think what made it work so well was that we came at it from different angles, but were essentially saying the same things. You shared studies about the benefits of social interaction; I told stories about my neighbour. You explained, philosophically, how too much freedom can enslave us; I talked about how anxious and overwhelmed many young women feel today. Someone described it as a “duet”.
I’m definitely not an expert, or an intellectual like you are, but I do think there’s a place for feelings. As Paul Kingsnorth said to me once: “I’m starting to sound like a grumpy old man, but perhaps we need more grumpy old men, and women, to put things right again.” And maybe we need sensitive young women too, who can feel things changing, who notice what it’s doing to people, to children, to families, to the fabric of things.
Of course we need both - both men and women, progressives and conservatives, feelings and facts. And I think we need more conversations like the one we had, where two people can talk in slightly different languages, the language of feelings and the language of studies and statistics, but with respect for each other, and for the truth. That's how I think we get to the bottom of things
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
I think there needs to be boundaries in both directions, a separation of the personal and political that is ignored by both left and right.
On the left, there was (still is?) several years where an ideological subset of emotional people (primarily women? IDK) were given free reign to get their coworkers fired any time they were in a mood, like the Queen of Hearts. The power to make their personal emotions into someone else's problem.
On the right, there are obtuse people (primarily men) who think they can hector young women into marriages and children with general statistics and theories that have nothing to do with their individual life history and circumstances. I don't even call these obtuse people “logical,” because if they were truly logical they would realize — instead of putting the burden on the women — that it takes two to start a nuclear family, and furthermore, it is traditionally the man’s job to propose marriage!
I don't understand your point on right. If problem is that they don't respect separation of personal and political then it's not your business if marriages happen or not. And burden is put on women because today women control dating market and they don't want to get married
The issue is that *some* people on the right consider women unilaterally responsible for the decline in marriage rates or older average age of first marriages.
On one hand, from what I've heard, men have always outnumbered women on dating apps. (Part of this is some women, for safety and other reasons, prefer to be introduced by a trusted person in their life or getting to know someone gradually through work or church or school, rather than going online to find someone.)
On the other hand, once a couple has been dating for a while, the man is often more hesitant to commit, so it evens out in terms of who is the "gatekeeper" of marriage rates and how old couples are when they get married.
*some* people on the right remember 3rd wave feminism when naked women were screaming about being sluts. The point is not that women are only one's responsible for that (although definitely more than men because now many men struggle to date even) but that majority of women support those social changes, they see it as progress and good thing.
I'm a retired engineer so data is very important to me but I recognise that it tells only part of the story of our lives.
I am particularly taken with your comment -
"But the thing with this new, based, “facts don’t care about your feelings” conservatism is that it’s not actually emotionless; it just caters to emotions that men (and Ass-Burgers) feel comfortable with, like pride and outrage, while eschewing more “feminine” ones like grief and melancholy."
I agree entirely. As a conservative man who is very likely to express his sadness, I find that many people can't emotionally read even this one person, let alone a roomful!
Gurwinder:
I, too, feel more than a little tone deaf regarding feelings, am still struggling through Grade 1 primer on “reading the room” and I’m a little old lady!
I’m afraid I don’t really understand how you are helping yourself and your fellow young women by seeming to focus on the pain and victimhood of what you perceive as your predicament. I hope, as an articulate woman and good writer with many followers you will start to share the solutions that you and they personally can take, as blaming society or others doesn’t solve things. I look forward to reading them.
To solve a problem one has to identify it. None of the dynamics mention in this essay would have occurred to me if I hadn't read it, and I'm sure that's true for other readers. And I don't think it's written from a "victimhood" perspective.
Perhaps you could offer some suggestions on how the problems identified here might be addressed.
It’s true that no one holds a gun to your head to do these things but to say these are all “your direct actions” suggests a kind of naive individualism that is at odds with your first paragraph. “Everyone” acknowledges there are problems but it’s the culture. In theory you can opt out, but doing so is to make the isolation worse.
We need a counterculture. However, as Freya points out, the church has not yet been up to that task. In many ways, it has rather actively conformed itself to the prevailing culture.
Women, were especially leftist women were fighting for normalizing this culture so shaping narrative as they're victims of it is quite ridiculous
You still can separate yourself from Culture, the dominant forces at play outside of your control like the marketisation of relationships, these are concrete and valid things to point out, not victimisation, but a reality check, human beings struggle to be human in these environments. Sure you can go and live in the woods, that's an option, it doesn't make you a hypocrite or a victim to choose to point out what's wrong. It's bloody helpful!
Can't*
Phil I see your point that doing whining won't change anything. But I'd argue asking for help and compassion is different from playing the victim.
I have read through all the comments you've posted on this article to date, and I think you are guilty of the opposite flaw in your argument. It's the "Just do it because you should know already" flaw. Or perhaps the "This information is commonly known by people in my life and therefore everyone should know it" flaw.
At the same time, you dumped the entirety of the responsibility for the hookup vs marriage issue in women's laps. You said men like it but women don't, so women have to change it. Isn't that eschewing responsibility? If I'm hurting someone, it should be their responsibility to communicate with me and my responsibility to stop. If a young women is never taught how to communicate assertively about her romantic wants/expectations by a parent, authority figure, or someone she admires, she won't know how to do it.
To give an example that may be more familiar to you, I'll liken this to events that were going on when you were young. I don't know what country you grew up in, so I'm just picking something I know about and that made headlines at the time.
As you are 66, you were alive during the crack and AIDS epidemics of the 80s in the US. Didn't your generation know that crack and unprotected sex were bad? How come they "played the victim" until government authorities and charities got involved to spread awareness and find solutions? Dealers like making money off drugs. Horny people like sex even if they have communicable diseases. Dealers and sexually active people won't stop something that is good for them, so it's the responsibility of those who are hurt to stop them. And whining to authorities is just victim culture.
To answer my own questions, of course they knew better. But if you grow up around it or people are promoting it to you (the way a horny young man might promote sex to a young wome) as cool, fun, "no big deal," and something that everyone is doing, it's understandable that you may engage in a behavior some part of you knows is hurting you.
I believe she made very valid statements here. Personally, I read this article as acknowledgement, not victimisation. 'Young women need refuge, not ridicule' is exactly the point to be made. Mockery is not a sustainable way to capture the attention of women whose faith in authority has only been in decline, least of all, to capture the sort of attention that is conducive to help them find the direction they lack, and instead having them turned to defensive ways in response. Which is precisely why the other side has been so successful in reaching young women: they do actually try and reach them. What they lack in good and beneficial conclusions and advice, they make up for in their understanding and compassionate ways. I believe there is a lack of balance in the way these subjects are being approached, otherwise, why are you failing to reach us?
Well said! I think that young people need compassionate guidance. The liberals have been leaning into the compassion, but the guidance isn't offering a real solution. Conservatives have been completely without compassion (even mocking women going through deep pain because they themselves never make those choices), so their dismissive guidance isn't helpful either.
Helen, many women *don’t* communicate how they are feeling. The right constantly harasses women who have had to work, and had to make a go of it, and had to be stoic, and had to be successful, whether they wanted to be or not.
Do you know I’ve been turned down for jobs because I refused to wear pants? Most women just wear the pants, and then in the next breath they’re criticized for wearing them.
Most of us would have liked to be married, but so long as we’re not, we have to at least pretend to be motivated. Freya is speaking for the women who don’t speak, and who in many ways can’t because if their boss finds out they’re on the hunt for a husband, they’ll be replaced by someone more ambitious than them
Most younger women are leftist so they literally fight for this
Not all women are leftists. I was a Republican in early 2000s California precisely because I wanted a traditional life; and yet I’ve spent the last 20 years being criticized for either being a sober prude, or lately, not being married (as if I control the level of commitphobia of men my age…) I absolutely am a victim; I didn’t even start drinking until after I was dateraped AT 33. Maybe try not punishing the women who did try to do the right things… I even stayed back and helped pay the bills when my dad got cancer. I’m really tired of being blamed for the 3rd wave feminism I did not promote, and in many ways have spent my life working against
It's not personal but general view. Most modern young women are leftists and support those things so creating narrative that today women turn left because of those stuff when they support them is ridiculous
I didn't feel like reading the thread, but I did want to say, Freya, that I agree with this comment in the sense that we want to hear your ideas for solutions. Often, a solution isn't possible, as the world truly only degrades as a result of the Fall in the Beginning. Even though we can't obliterate problems, we can make progress, or at least progress bubbles.
She’s not writing to the girls though she’s writing to conservatives and the religious she described in her article
I think you have the situation backwards. It is almost like when you ask a communist why communism failed and they say, "There wasn't enough collectivism and unionization," when those are precisely the reasons why communism fails.
Christians have gone out of their way to try to pander to women and it hasn't worked in large part because women cannot respect men who are not stronger than them, which includes having a will that won't buckle and crumble under the need to please a woman.
When feminism proper infiltrated the Christian church, it came by way of the general theological liberalism which made a religion of progressive causes while rejecting Jesus as anything other than an exemplar of progressivism (i.e. the virgin-born sinless Son of God). The conservative churches TRIED to stay conservative on theological issues and the gender issues but what they came up with was essentially a way to say, "Conservative gender roles are good for women, male strength is to serve women," and to propose a minimum viable gender role situation where outside of women not being elders it was functionally egalitarian.
In a context where women were not led by strong men they perceived any feeble attempts to lead as weak, manipulative, and abusive, and so it creates a self-reinforcing spiral of women feeling unseen and unheard when people are going out of their way to try to pander to them in an unwanted fashion. Its the HR meme about sexual harassment where the Alpha guy sexually harasses a woman and she likes it and the loser does the same thing and she calls human resources.
Women are generally happiest when they have a single "safe man" who leads them who they respect and trust (like a father or husband) who is able to translate the things that are happening around them into the woman's world. This sounds patronizing but a lot of women genuinely want this and don't want to have to worry about everything around them.
A religious conference is, essentially, made for men so that they can think through the important issues and mediate them to the realms of their own domain, which includes their families. The Bible itself has this in mind when Paul says of women, "Let them be silent in the churches and if they have any questions to ask their husbands at home." He could have said to ask the pastor after service. He knew that women genuinely need a personalized message from their safe man. Their safe man also protects them from things like Tinder culture.
I am genuinely interested in the female perspective, especially with things you mention like therapy culture. Don't hear me saying it is all a woman problem. I'm saying that more pandering to women's emotions is not the answer. We need both a different breed of men and of women.
You’re just illustrating her point tho. You took the message she gave, and then gave an intellectual response. She repeatedly brings up pain and you ignore that to focus on the logic. I’m not disagreeing entirely with your message because we need more strong men and good women, and the happiest relationships I’ve seen the man is the leader, but if you ask a lot of women even the idea of what Paul said would drive them away. I think she’s saying we need to address the pain while uplifting women not pointing the finger and saying that we need to translate the world for them, they can’t ask questions in church, etc.
This reply is "It's not about the nail" sketch in action. "Stop trying to fix it I just want you to listen and acknowledge my pain."
The problem is that this post is trying to demonstrate cause and effect and prescribe solutions. Either you can have an acknowledgement of pain and listening with no attempt to fix, or you can try to deal honestly with the problems and fix them.
When men offer general sympathy to women they are not related to, its usually a warning sign - unchecked emotional intimacy. Or else flattery/simping. If I don't express, "Oh Freya I am so sorry for what you are going through," it does not mean that I don't have sympathy for someone in pain, but its also not appropriate for me to be offering emotionally intimate connections with random women.
My reply with analysis is with the pain of people like Freya in mind, in balance with the general needs of Western society. We can't fix the problems without addressing their real causes. All of the sources of her pain are downstream from Feminism. No fault divorce was made possible by feminist activism, as well as the cultural environment that made it acceptable. Tinder sexuality is made possible by birth control - another aspect of feminist activism. This doesn't make the pain illegitimate and it doesn't blame all women for feminism itself when many of them didn't ask for it either. It does mean we need to deal with these root causes.
The problem is that the definition of "normal" has shifted so much so fast that the types of realistic solutions to our problems are not what people are ready to hear. Patriarchy is the scary word for the time when women didn't have this type of pain. The time when women were silent in churches was the time they were not confused and put off by their religion.
Women are solipsistic and genuinely have trouble considering ideas completely abstracted away from how it makes them feel. This isn't necessarily a defect in women, but it is one reason why women traditionally were not invited to be leaders, problem solvers, etc. because this depends on them being able to put their personal feelings aside and act on behalf of what they represent. Notice in this reply, you mention that women's feelings are a priority over pointing the finger and saying they cannot ask questions in church. In other words, prioritizing feelings over the word of God.
The right response for a woman when she is hurting is often, "Don't worry about it, I will handle it," from her safe man. It accepts that she has feelings but also doesn't let those feelings rule. It accepts her nature being weaker but rather than it being a point of shame, its a point of beauty, like a delicate flower or a porcelain vase. She doesn't need to be on the battlefield.
As a woman I don’t recognize myself in any way, shape, or form in the “women” you described at length. I hardly know any women like the “women” you describe. Your generalizations are completely wild. They’re your own views of women and nothing more.
Oh and I’m well adjusted, happily married, successful, and not an emotional pus guided by feelings TYVM. God bless.
I didn't describe women at length. I only referenced them in my first sentence and my second to last paragraph and the point I made was that women make decisions based on how it makes them feel personally.
Your reply was basically, "That's not how I feel personally and I don't know other women like that," presented in an offended tone.
The skit I referenced got 27M views and its producer has 115k subscribers despite stopping making videos 9 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
It's funny because people know women are like this. There is no sense in denying it. Its really illustrating my point in that you're responding to my point about women being emotional and solipsistic by taking personal offense and responding accordingly - exactly the thing I am saying prevents these problems from being solved.
You're not dealing with the content of my argument because you're led by how you personally feel about me from having said this.
Did you recognize yourself at all in this line?
“Women are solipsistic and genuinely have trouble considering ideas completely abstracted away from how it makes them feel.”
Yea, but the issue that I remember this article being about is messaging to women who think just as you described, “have trouble considering ideas completely abstracted away from how it makes them feel”. I’m not subbed so I can’t read the whole article, but again it’s about reaching them first, then convincing them of right wing ideas. You took what I said and put it in terms of the ‘don’t try to fix my problems just listen’ thing but I think the point of Freya’s article, and what I tried to convey in my comment, was you can’t lead with the intellectual and expect emotional people to listen. They have to trust that you have their interest at heart. For the women who have a hard time disconnecting their emotions, that is how you open the door, by addressing those emotions. I wish we could just talk intelligently and ignore emotional responses, but it’s not rational to think that’s the best way to approach every individual person.
Isn't feeling and feeling lead us to our current situation?
Sort of but I think that’s because the left uses more emotional messaging. I think the whole point of the article is the right adopting more messaging that reaches the same people that the left messages to, not completely catering to them. Like for abortion while the left focuses on horror stories the right could focus on good outcomes like babies who would have been aborted, but weren’t, and grew up to do great things.
There is something to be said about adopting the strategies and frame of an opposition that is diabolical. The left uses emotional messaging detached from truth. Which results in really really heavy disortions. But distortions which appeal to a disordered appetite. It is unjust to ask the right to cater to a disordered appetite.
Even if the right will add a pathos flavour to their messaging, it won't still be as spicy as that of the left since they must do it in moderation and in mix with the truth. And the truth is bitter still. The problem is a malformed appetite. And a malformed appetite can only be corrected through reason and the intellect when it is well positioned to apprehend the truth of being.
This is a hard task. And arguing from feelings is not the answer. Roger Scruton was the best of conservatives; he was warm and deeply feeling. Hardly could he outdo the left.
Engaging the mentally ill on their own ground makes you mentally ill over time. It was only through recovery from the attempts to help such people that my life changed for the better. Instead, I employ boundaries.
People are responsible for helping themselves. I can't blame others for my issues and vice versa. If people are not ready for this message of rationality, then maybe it's just not time for them, and it may never actually be time.
Funny you automatically interpreted my comment as me "taking personal offense". That's your feeling, dude. You're projecting your feelings onto me. I commented to set the record straight.
You wrote two posts going on and on about how women should be. That woman is something that you want to exist. The whole persona of this helpless weak flower is such a caricature. It's a card board. I don't know any human being like that, woman or man. I for one cannot relate. At. All.
I don't know what some skits with views prove. Views can mean anything whether it's shown by algorithm or someone casually clicking on something. If that's your go to source of "facts", I can't take it seriously. 115k subscribers in the scheme of things is nothing. It means it's a draw for people just like you. We all live in echo chambers now.
Believe whatever you want. So don't believe me. What is it to me? The world moves on the way it does. Men with your views aren't helping your "cause", you're driving the wedge bigger and confirming the opinions of the "feminists" you hate so much.
Evidence of offense taken:
>I don’t recognize myself in any way, shape, or form in the “women”
Unnecessary use of scare quotes.
> you described at length.
I described in one sentences, and one paragraph in a 7 paragraph response. You perceived it to be at length because it had more emotional impact than the rest of the comment.
> Your generalizations are completely wild.
Emotional description of a pretty common view, at least on the internet when women are discussed in right wing circles.
> Oh and I’m well adjusted, happily married, successful, and not an emotional pus
Defending yourself from things I never accused you of failing at.
>TYVM
Thank you very much. Classic sign of offense taken. Similar to "bless your heart."
I'm not aligned with what the other guy said, but the reason people go left is because feminism and the like tell them that anything they like or want to do is justified. Every vice is empowering with a feminist sticker on it. Christianity is the only creed that encourages virtue even when it feels bad and rejects vice even when it feels good. People who desire virtue and love in their personal lives and relationships will not be leftist.
And last thing...we are told that young women these days are strong independent boss women, taking over the world and no longer need men. So it all seems to be a contradiction against "women are hurting".
This article is likely discussing people in their 30s who bought into the feminist dream, only to realize not every makes it to the top and only to end up with dissapointment and regret. The intensity, fidelity, and confidence in the dream they bought into, all whilst making your life as a man hell in your 20s, makes it very difficult to have the emotional capacity to have sympathy for the same people responsible for moral decay. Somone who lived their lives sleeping around, drinking their lives to ruin, and pursuing a career as an end in itself or an end to buy designer clothing ought to deal with the consequences on their own actions. The traditional movement should focus on children, not adult women who have the freedom to choose.
I saw some of your other comments and there's much to takeaway from things you said about your generation's experience. Freya writes about GenZ (she is one) and I believe she's talking about GenZ gals.
What you said here boils down to one thing, with which I agree. At some point, the good intention of giving support became over correction, and morphed even further into empty trajectory. Participation trophies were the beginning. We're at the final stage where affirmations have become detached from reality.
Everything about modern feminism is wrong and I can go on about that too. But IMO modern feminism, for all its problems, has become a scapegoat when the results we're seeing today is a perfect storm of many current societal problems of equal and maybe even more dire weight. Because at the end of the day, how many people actually listen to feminists, ever? It is true that some of their ideologies have taken hold as part of the wider DEI and critical theory thinking that's been hoisted upon us. But nothing turns people off more than feminists. They don't have as much power as people are blaming them for. It might have been cool for 5 mins during #MeToo but the backlash has been fierce and nothing really came out of that except now Hollywood has intimacy directors.
Women living real life are not making decisions on day to day basis because of feminism or girl boss or its predecessor the snarky kick-ass heroine. Just like people of whatever kind living a real life are not making day-to-day and life decisions because of ideologies be it race or sexual orientation or even religion and what have you (exception for some with mental illnesses who can't think straight). We all make life decisions based on the people we're dealing with in our own life and unique circumstances. The series of actions and reactions arising from it all is what makes us. If we have good experiences, those serve to form our opinions one way. If we have bad experiences, we form our opinions differently. We then look to bigger societal narratives to reinforce our already formed opinions. There are some downstream effects from ideologies, sure, like schools teaching certain things. But the tech revolution with internet and social media probably has done a much bigger number on all of us than any ideology. The tech platforms greatly changed how we experience interactions with people. I honestly didn't realize how many men out there right now, in the USA, think women shouldn't have the right to vote. Without the internet as existed today, I would've thought all men even the most conservative ones had gotten past THAT. At least I'm not young and have a bigger frame of reference. But if a 16 yo girl keeps seeing men saying that (or things said by those like my friend who I was bickering with), what else are they supposed to think?
To some of your other points, this article might add another shade and might interest you: https://news.fairforall.org/p/the-dangerous-ssri-experiment-on-949
1st feminism completely changed understanding of reality in West at least 2 to 3 times.
2nd #Metoo succeeded, man's sexuality became demonized to ridiculous degree. One prove of that is that gen z men when asked why they don't approach women 50% said that would it make them creeps
3rd ideology and worldview quite obviously influences people's decisions
My main problem with article is that women pushed for no fault divorce and normalized hook up culture running on their "slut marches" in 2000s and now we get to know that they turn even more leftwing because society is more left-wing?
I agree with what you've said here and understand your perspective. I support Freya because I appreciate what she is doing and believe in her work. And thanks for sharing the article. Women I have dated have shared similar perspectives, but speaking of emotions, I and I assume many other conservative men, are frustrated by the behaviors we see before us. We are highly scandalized by this. We fundamentally see that women's behaviors are more downstream from institutions than that of men, in general. Men instinctively know not to trust government and know how power works, that the powers of the world are not your friend. We see that women are captive to the culture and easily influenced--so, of course, the solution is to either sanctify the state or limit voting rights. In our eyes, we see women rebelling against virtue and whatsoever is good in favor of low culture.
To steel man, the general sentiment of the men's perspectives in here, we don't understand why women are easily influenced, and we have a hard time being sympathetic to this because they are the most fierce in promoting and spreading the broken culture. At least in my generation, we perceive the culprits of moral decay are older millennial, Gen X, and especially boomer men.
What we are witnessing is the liquidation of the liberal project, that is, rebellion against the spiritual reality and belief in the supernatural--to be more explicit, all of these problems are derivative of Protestantism, which lack spirituality and a mystical life. Rebellion begets rebellion. What spiritual foundation is there a person in modern life today?
Reality is not intelligible without the spiritual / mystical life. To me, this is what Gen Z women are missing, this is what society is missing. I agree that raw facts and charts and data do not convey the fullness of true, love does. And how know true love without God, who is spirit? Once you come to believe in the power of prayer, divine miracles, that demons exist--you come to know the truth path you must take. The fundamental issue is secularism, and who spreads and promotes secularism the most if not women?
Andrew Tate is rebuked, the only fans women are praised. See the issue?
(Sorry for any typos or incoherence: I wrote this while at work)
You can’t reason with people like this. He has as a premise the idea that women are not rational adults and his entire worldview is filtered through that lens. Any protestation that you do not think in the way that he portrays women to think, that you don’t actually want to be patronized to and ignored and controlled by “strong men,” can be dismissed as you being too irrational and emotional to understand your own mind. Apparently, you’re just not being controlled enough. Your disagreeing at all in anything but a robotic monotone is a sign of your supposed irrationality. It’s a self-sealing argument.
I will say that the only reason I am a Christian today is because of what he describes as “pandering to women” by Christian groups, in my case Catholicism. Particularly the perspectives of people like Fr. Mike Schmitz and the late and great Pope St. John Paul II. If I only saw perspectives on women like that of the commenter above, I would be long gone. I invite you to check out the text Mulieris Dignitatem if you need a dose of fresh air, it’s pretty much the only Christian take on women written by a man that I find entirely unobjectionable.
I'm a Protestant but I love Fr Mike Schmitz's podcast! His Bible in a Year also got me through the Book cover to cover. I sent him a Christmas present the year I finished that podcast to thank him.
I've been a member of different Protestant churches throughout my adult life as I moved around a lot. The pastors at my churches have always treated women and men as equals. In the Gospel, Jesus clearly elevated women above men, and the women were mostly portrayed positively while the men were shown to be somewhat slow and bumbling with flaws. When I encounter the jerkface theobros (termed by Kaeley Triller Harms and Brian F Marks in her Substack) in the wild like our friend here, I just see them ruining Christianity. So you're righ, there's no reasoning with these people.
A lot of it comes from lack of real-world experience with women. By his own admission, his views on women are formed by online conservative internet discussions and internet skits. When you interact more with the opposite sex, you realize that men and women are more similar than they are different and the differences are largely benign. But when you’re trapped in your little internet bubble, the opposite sex is a completely different species. That comes out as women being these fragile wilting toddlers or men being evil rapists.
You’re talking about women and their multitude of weaknesses and problems as you perceive but then go on to say you aren’t accusing me, a woman, of anything. Logic much! 🤣
“TYVM” is taking offense??? That’s a new one. Ok boomer if you say so. You’re hearing tones in your head made up by how you want to hear it. Your views are so biased and you can’t even see it.
Everything you say is trite textbook sexism and I say this as one who don’t even agree with feminism today.
This conversation was a boring me as everything you regurgitate is same old same old and I’ve heard it all before so I’m going to leave it right here. There’s no point in carrying on anyway as the only thing you and I can agree on is to agree to disagree.
But just so you know, as I’m sure it feels good to you to state your righteous opinions 😀, the more you talk this way the more you’re convincing younger women that the side opposite you is correct. Keep at it! Works for me.
You'd think it would be obvious that statistics and graphs wouldn't penetrate the hearts of young women, but so many conservatives continue to use this (and guilt, and ridicule) as their primary means of changing minds. They are failing miserably, and pushing so many girls further left.
It reminds me of what Tim Keller said about the gospel: "Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it."
Love me a good Tim Keller quote
That is well said, but which one is it--are women having a hard time and would appreciate friendship, community and love or are they strong independent women who are taking over the world, don't need men and overcoming adversity? Schrödinger's woman. From what I can see, women living their best lives and are happy, especially the ones on only fans who are constantly telling us how stunning and brave they are on social media.
Very well written, Freya! Thanks for the moving essay! Escaping the matrix isn’t easy for anyone and we all need one another. May we support one another with honesty and open hearts!
Freya, you continue to impress me with your voice and passion. I wish there was more I could do. I try to speak up about how becoming a mother made the sacred more true and beautiful… how important feeling and sensing are, becoming more emotionally attuned and living a more whole and complete life, which includes pain and sadness. Maybe we need our own conference? Sending you love and gratitude. Keep it up.
I agree. Love will bring them home, not logic, reason or duty.
Which is the entire point of the Gospel
but the Gospel can also be understood and accepted by logic and reason. It depends on who you are preaching it too. You have to know your audience. Emotional? Logical? Both? Intelligent or ignorant? Big picture or self absorbed?
Absolutely, Juliana; but as CS Lewis experienced, he could logically conclude the Bible was true, and Jesus the Messiah, but it was the being ‘Surprised By Joy’ which really did it.
Freya, thank you so much for this. What you say is true - the question is... what do we do about it? I write as a wife and mother, as a conservative, as a Christian, as a therapist. I have been in the room with the girls you describe for thousands of hours. I have listened; I have explained that they are intrinsically valuable; that they are worth far more than the way they are being treated; that they can say no. We talk, we laugh sometimes. I'm often asked how long I've been married - and when I say nearly 30 years, I might as well be speaking a foreign language. They leave the counselling room and life resumes. These are girls for whom a 'stepdad' can be someone their mum met in the pub last Friday; some don't know how many siblings they have. They are wary and wounded, with no time or space to heal. Most emotional distress (a term I prefer to mental illness - it's more about broken hearts than broken brains) arises through experiences, environment and relationships. For a lot of young girls, all three areas of life are dysfunctional and they see no way out. It is our generation which has utterly failed them, including the church - but we desperately need to find some way back and fast. It doesn't have to be like this
This really illustrates the fundamental problem here, and not in the way you think. This is an article about how 'the right' need to improve their messaging to young women. Why? So that young women receive the proper guidance, and therefore don't make as many mistakes.
The fundamental problem is that everyone has conveniently forgotten that women have agency. This article is a great example of the ubiquitous redirect of responsibility. Men or 'the right' don't make choices for young women, young women make their own choices. Women know right from wrong. Women know smart from stupid. Don't they? If they don't, they shouldn't be making their own choices. Personally, I think women would make better choices if we could all stop pretending they don't make their own choices.
This is an incredible essay. Thank you for writing this. I hope it is read widely and in a spirit of feeling rather than analyzing.
As a non-Christian, non-conservative I enjoy reading your articles. They're insightful, well written, and I think capture the spirit of the age for women even from a right leaning perspective.
Additionally, as a non-Christian, non-conservative I enjoy perusing the comment sections to see men dismissing your argument, comparing women to sharks, arguing that thoughts are just too hard for women's brains, and classic misogyny. Literally exemplifying your opening sentence. Keep it up boys, that'll get the ladies coming to Church.
And I just commented to myself how surprised I was at the number of men replying who had such empathy for women.
This is interesting. I am glad you wrote it. I think you might be on to something we should be discussing. I will admit that I am struggling with the premise given all we are dealing with today in gender relations, but I think this is a useful approach to start the needed dialog.
The basic problem I have with the premise, although I agree that there is this conflict, is the soft scold of males to step forward to change their behavior in accommodation of the hurt/pain that females are dealing with.
On one hand, I agree that males should shoulder the largest burden here. There is a long tradition of males needed to figure out how to navigate the minefield of female stronger emotions, while caring and protecting. But the landscape has changed due to the feminist movement "empowering" women who now directly compete with men for social and economic dominance. This new gender competition, really unprecedented within human history, has grown quite hostile, and I think that is because of the feminist movement.
It seems what you are advocating for, and I think what much of the woke/DEI movement has been about, is a special accommodation of men, the same men that have been statistically in socioeconomic decline while being pummeled with #MeToo attacks and claims that they are racist and misogynist brutes.
While I agree that females are hurting, I don't think this approach in scolding/shaming men (who trend conservative while females trend liberal) to be more sensitive to and accommodating of the negative emotions of females is the correct remedy to the problem.
Females have become angry, hostile and mean. Males have two acceptable choices; they can allow themselves to be abused by all those emotionally disordered aggressive females, or they can do their best to ignore having any relationship with them and protect themselves by only associating with those that don't attack them.
I think females are hurting because they are lonely. And they are lonely because of their bad behavior. And their loneliness makes them even angrier and more hostile toward men, and thus their bad behavior increases. It is a cycle of broken gender relations.
The culprit is the feminists. The top malcontents of the "female power" armies that have taken over the education system and many other institutions and keep brainwashing females to rage and attack to get what they want.
I see it clearly. It comes through my social media feeds. It infects not only young females, but my old school mates in their 60s. It is a constant drumbeat of promoted hate against any and all that oppose the female political power demand. It is also the Democrat party apparatus. The well-funded activist industry that is dominated by educated feminists.
I don't think shaming men into being more caring in this sea of manufactured hostility against them is a workable approach. It isn't until females themselves fight the radical feminists to stop vulnerable narcissist power grab program that we will see a repair of our broken gender relations.
The war is between family and state. Family led by a strong man will fail in a powerful state. When the man struggles against the state and falls short, the mother and children will turn to the state, strengthening the state. The man struggles to fulfill his promises to his family, the state lies to broken families. Women, being naturally dependent, are more susceptible to falling for the state lies. It is an ancient fundamental clash between man’s responsible love, and the lies and manipulations of slave societies.
CPS perfectly exposes this conundrum. They come into struggling families, promise support, then sell children into what amounts to slavery.
Brutal !
The right hasn't forgotten feeling. Not by a single order of magnitude. The right is simply fed-up with decades of bad behavior from those who let their feelings be their absolute guide, who've held too much influence and who've been leading whole cultures into trouble. The angry parent or teacher or other authority figure - who has now snatched up an unruly and destructive toddler to park them in the corner - has not forgotten feeling. They have subjugated it in order to fix what the toddler has broken, or to fix the toddler's behavior, or both. The toddler, of course, will carry on as though he is being murdered, but it's the usual drama. This too shall pass, and he'll be just fine.
It's simple social physics: the pendulum - which swung so far liberal - is now swinging back. It's going to be ugly for a while until that pendulum can settle again into that middle zone. Feminism is being pushed back by equally ugly and unhealthy things like "Andrew Tate-ism", Redpill pop psychology, MGTOW, etc., and many professing Christians are being drawn after them because they themselves have felt for so long voiceless to argue against the worst excesses of the girlboss mind and the dereliction of the woman's "first estate" (there's a dangerous idea, right there). In fact, much of the conservative and Christians' rhetoric has been the necessary effort to articulate and nail down in clear language what we've never HAD to articulate and nail down before: What a woman is, what a man is, what a marriage is, what is virtuous, what is good and right in gender roles, etc. Remember that the very nature of human nature has been under assault for thirty years or more. Men and women are no longer men and women, but pinned locales on a spectrum. I could go on and on.
The feels are important, yes. The heart is important, yes. But we're a bit early to start warning or complaining about forgetting how to feel. We've been choked with feelings. And now we're learning how to get a grip on them again. We haven't forgotten how to feel. We've just gone numb for a bit until we can get things back on track. If the conservative is the mind and the liberal is the heart (not a perfect metaphor), then the mind will hear the heart again when it's ready to. But for now, the heart needs to sit in the corner until we can fix so much of what it's broken.
I agree…the balance has been way off…feelings have overruled intellect way too much. And it has infected the church. Nothing sickens me more than to sit in a Bible study and hear someone say, ‘Well, I think the verse means this. I feel this is what he’s trying to say’. The resulting distorted theologies become so divergent from the early church as to be almost unrecognizable. These almost always distract from the real message of the Bible.
I agree with most, not with pendulum tho because there's no objective "middle" and center obviously shifts
I think women need to take responsibility for their own lives instead of blaming conservatives, men, or external causes.