Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Come, please give me give me any just a little bit more. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. My name is delano squires. Im a Research Fellow here in a divorce for life, religion and family. Im extremely excited to serve as moderator for panel on reaction. Our sucks in the market so were going to talk about a lot of things about what it means to be a woman today as the meaning of sex and preferences rapidly shift each technological development. Let let me just read a really quick description to sort of set up our discussion today. So womens liberation was the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material concept of the industrial revolution. Weve now left the industrial era for the age of air, biotech and all pervasive computing. As a result, technology liberating us from natural limits, embodied differences. Although this shift benefits a small class of successful professional women, it also makes it easier to commodify womens bodies, human intimacy and free female reproductive abilities. Only an elite minority women seem to benefit from this socalled progress. So again, one of the questions that we will address today. As i said, what it means to be a woman and how advances in technology affected sex and sort of the market of the relationships between between men and women. So without further ado, because you all and come to see me, im going to introduce our panelists and ill ask them to join me on stage. I just a brief bio first is Mary Harrington, a selfdescribed reactionary feminist Mary Harrington, the author of the new book feminism progress and a contributing editor at unheard. Her work has appeared in the times of london spectator, the new statesman the daily mail, the American Mind and first things. Mary, you join us. Please. Next is erica. Erica is a fellow with epp c and a legal scholar specializing in equal protection jurisprudence. Since feminist legal theory, catholic social teaching and ethics. She is also senior fellow at the Abigail Adams institute in cambridge, massachusetts, where she founded and directs the walsh tone craft project. Her newest book, the rights of women reclaiming a lost vision, was published by Notre Dame University press in 2021. Erica, welcome to the stage. And last but certainly not least, is Arthur Milikh arthur is the executive director of the center for the american way of life, the Claremont Institute in washington, d. C. Authors writing has appeared in claremont review of books National Affairs city real clear politics, greatness and the daily signal. Arthur holds masters from the university of chicago, a b. A. From emory, and is currently working towards ph. D. In philosophy at catholic university. Arthur would you join us. All right. So im going to take my seat and were going to get our conversation. Okay. Mary, i feel so far from you. I know. I think i was supposed to sit there rather than here. But we can we can all shuffle up one, if you like, and just crack on. I dont mind. Lets crack on. Lets cracker. All right. So. So, mary, can you. Id love one to read a definition. Feminism that ive heard you give before. Its a definition have havent heard anyone else give before. You say that feminism is a doctrine. Argues that we can and should use technology to the fullest extent possible to flatten the differences between the sexes, even at the expense of unborn life. I find it to be a fascinating definition. Can you speak little bit about that definition of feminism and, the tension it creates between the feminism of freedom and the feminism care you describe in your book . Sure. The first thing i would say is just for the to be clear, that definition you just read is what i would characterize as feminism or really the ascendant of whats been traveling under sign of feminism for the best part of 50 years now. And it was actually ericas work in the rights woman reclaiming lost legacy, which made me realize that when we talk about feminism, particularly when conservatives talk about feminism, theyre missing half the story. And eric has done a phenomenal scholarly work on on on recovering what what she rightly calls a lost legacy of kind of womens advocacy for women prior to sexual revolution, which is no longer treated as feminist and its no longer read as feminism, its been effectively memory holed and untreated as it gets described as womens history. But its not. Its not feminism. And that that includes, for example, the Temperance Movement and it particularly the great body of work in the 19th century, which on advocacy for women embodied female individuals equal in dignity to two men but different you know we have we are not the sex and the end and the but that form of womens advocacy since the sexual revolution has largely and the first the first step, the first third of the book, the feminism against progress ive spent seeking to recover that invisible history that that memory hold. And to ask the question, why has it been memory hold and how is it memory hold . And the conclusion i came to is that the winners write the history books and that what happened was that one side of in fact, a two sided movement of womens advocacy had won, cleared the field and, had rewritten the history books in order to in order to render the other the other side of the other side invisible. So so this is trying trying to look back through the through the looking. Is quite difficult to do. But the the the story really begins at the beginning of the industrial era which i have argued radically. I mean, History History of tests radically transformed in family life, radically transformed everything about, peoples lives and and did so with with particular impact on women because to the industrial era, most the principal economic unit was not as it is today. It was household and within what what historians call a productive household which were largely agrarian or perhaps artisanal. You know, most most were of that nature. Men and women worked, and they may have done different tasks. But its not simply not meaningful to say that one one of one of one partner was economically productive and the other one was not because everybody was processing Raw Materials into textile for clothes. The family is no less, is no less. Work in any meaningful sense than than plowing fields in order to grow crops for the family. Its all just the work within a productive household. And then industrialization along and a great many of the of those those forms of work which were previously done by women were well drained from the home and, were now done in factories which left with a whole set of new dilemmas, which theyd previously not had to deal with. For example, balancing home and family, balancing work. Family had not just wasnt a thing. When work, family were all just the work load of the same thing. But when you were in a situation, if you want, lets say your that say you need to run a wage and suddenly thats something which happens the home. You if youre a mother you have the question what youre going to do what happens to your baby. You know if you are hand weaving at home you could do that with toddlers on the foot. If youre you cant very well take your toddler to a large factory for that heavy and dangerous machinery when it certainly is not advisable. And so, so so women. Women. And in the book, ive set out two characteristic ways that women responded to this new dilemma. One was to make a case for the values and virtues of the now private domestic sphere from which Economic Activity has been drained. And this is what ive characterized as the feminism of care. And erica writes wonderfully about this in the rights of women. The third, the great body, womens writing and womens advocacy, which on the recognition of the valorization, the recognition of the importance of care, of the importance of motherhood, of the value of family life under these industrial conditions, in which thats reframed from being just where where life happens to being a space of respite from from the Market Society which is now emerging and the and in which the moral of children, the care of children, the care of dependents and the the business of relationship remains of equal value. And this was and in a situation where women have effectively lost a great deal of Economic Agency, this mattered. If youre an agrarian housewife in the middle ages, doesnt doesnt doesnt need be very defensive about the fact that shes pulling her weight within the home but in a situation youve lost Economic Agency and didnt and you havent really gained any political in order to to compensate for that in any sense you suddenly these bourgeois housewives need to make a case for why what theyre doing Still Matters because because obviously they in their view, rightly it did still matter. And so theres this huge body of writing which is which has been, i think, dismissive leigh title by by liberal feminist historiography is the cult of domesticity is a huge body of womens writing largely from the 19th century which which seeks to, to, to give, to give shape to that and to give value to that and to make the case for that. And, and i read this straightforwardly a kind of feminism, even if the liberal feminist historiography frames it as, patriarchal propaganda. But to me, to me, it straightforwardly, its womens advocacy for for the work that women still rightly assess to be important. So this is the feminism of care but against that theres also the those women who said was still isnt enough because weve lost Economic Agency and we dont really have any Political Agency and the solution this isnt you know, youve handed us lemons, so lets make lemonade. Thats thats not good enough. And actually, we need to enter the market on the same terms as men because otherwise were never going to be equal. And so and so this, this side of the ledger i characterize as the feminism of freedom, which says that men and women, men and women should be equal and where equal rights and dignity and so on. And we should have equal to public life and we should be we should have all the opportunities. Both sexes should have access to public life and all of the opportunities and and the affordances of public life and and really made the case for women entering, the market on the same terms as men as being the proper solution to the new dilemmas delivered by the industrial era. And its my contention that that that back and forth which really characterized you see the Womens Movement from from the late 18th century and the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft up to the second wave that that that was that was definitively won the feminism freedom with the legalization of abortion. And this is a point that i owe to you, erica, and i think is off and on then. Weve been living living under a what what characterizes itself as feminism, but is really only one side of feminism. The feminism freedom. And this is this is really the feminism which the right tends to critique. And its without without really acknowledging the whole missing story of the other side of the coin. Feminism of, care. And and this is this is a form of feminism which which which is characterized by definition that you read out to open up conversation where we seek to flatten the differences of embodied, embodied human life through, through any and all technologies to the fullest extent possible in the name of individual freedom, individual desire understood as something which h not be constrained by any limits of our physical bodies. So im going to turn to you. You wrote something in recent commentary that talks about feminism and industrialization and the cleavage of work and home. So i want to read a short quote and ask you to respond to it. Although can be most grateful for the technological advance, as the industrial era wrote, the concomitant cleavage that recalls between work and home, particularly care of children and labor, is the most enduring of the period. One that has perhaps become most imposing in our time. Can you talk about that cleavage and whether theres anything to sort of shrink that gap between work and home, particularly in technologically advanced area . Thank you. Its an honor to be here. And i have to say that had Mary Harrington been the only who read my book, it would have been a enormous success. So it was funny. Reading a review she did was that she was able to encapsulate in one sentence what i belabored believably did in 400 pages. And so i just want to say that because i think its such a beautiful statement. What i think she then does in such a brilliant way in her, as she said and i think actually said this at nat con to that that our feminism did not begin but end the sexual revolution. I think that was sort of my claim again that took long time with lots of footnotes very good footnotes. So i encourage you all to buy the book. So i so appreciate marys work. I dont think that i know and ive read a lot feminist theory, feminist history. I dont think theres a more brilliant book on sort of the history and sort of theory and sort of practice of feminism. And i would really commend it to everyone. I hope it to be a classic. It seemed to have taken britain storm. I think its going to take the United States by storm as well. So going back to i think in some sense answered a lot of this idea of what happened in industrialization terms of this cleavage that happens when when work does the home. I think, you know as a as a legal theorist one of the one of the things i would just underscore is the way in which theres this great interdependence and collaboration and reciprocity in agrarian household that know women were legally subordinate men at that point in terms of the law of coverture from the common law. But theres no complaint at that point because because as she mentioned, theres just such interdependency and so only is when you know, men of industrialization leave the home and work for wages that then women become economically dependent. And when in a way they werent on those wages and puts them in a difficult position with a virtuous man, it probably would absolutely fine and was for many women but when you know the other temptations that that industrialization wrought because of the really you know horrific workplace and what the Temperance Movement was really responding to is bars and brothels and those kinds of things. So a man who was not virtuous was not holding up to his responsibilities in the family. And this is really those early womens rights advocates were arguing against, really sort of trying to make claim in terms of all sorts of different legal moves, doing Property Ownership protective legislation in the workplace and all that. So what i what i think is really a key point, and i love how mary talks about sort of that the liberal the liberal feminist vision really one. And thats why dont hear much about the rest of that theres sort of this cognitive dissonance. A lot of liberal feminists, progressive feminist today really bemoan the lack of the workplace seriously. The work of care in the home, because while they, you know, some of them have children and, you know, vast majority of women have children for, of course, our our recent, you know, younger women claiming that they dont want them anymore. But and we sort of wonder, like, where did that come from . And it seems to me quite obvious when you elevate the capacity for women to, as you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would it in her scholarship to become equal citizens on the same footing with men through right to abortion . And you claim that that right necessary for womens equality, womens citizenship, that pretty easy for all the Market Institution and including Public Institutions to sort of say great well right along with you. I mean, the way i think of it is that liberal feminism really capitulating to the to Market Forces and sort of saying, like, we dont need to really make space for or accommodate women as in but embodied beings who are the ones who are disproportionately impact by reproduction, human reproduction. And so well just, you know, sort of allow the marketplace and the workplace to stay just as it always was which is formed along sort of the unencumbered male, sort of the ideal male. And so thats why have rampant pregnancy discrimination, you know, thats why we dont see as as as many sort of accommodations for not just womens work, but really the work of the home, the work of the family that, you know, you know, americas work is is is often, you know just very profit oriented in terms of business oriented. So theres a real way in which those two things sort of ratcheted together to give us what we have is a real a real the way in which and you see this in modern feminism, i mean, up until president biden, i think this week talks about, you know, poor women cant get back into workplace and this is really hurting you gdp and the way in which all things are sort of thought about as all of us, men and women are breadwinners first and caregivers. And thats just an absurd and just also i mean, this starts with Betty Friedan really thinking about the home as on the workplace or the or the female caregiver parasitic on the male worker. Its like no, no, no, no. She got that entirely wrong. Theres something she got right. Its clearly the workplace. The markets pretty much everything we do from economics to, politics to civil organization. All parasitic on the work of the home. And so thats i think this you know we were to think about technol g not as something which could flatten difference its something that you know, for common good could bring more work back into the home. I think marys chapter on marriage really beautiful in terms of her just sort of, you know, showing the examples of, different people, different couples where theyve thought about. They sort of exited out of or not. Maybe not entirely but of sort of the rat race and see themselves working together for the the care in the formation of their children and also to kind of put food on their plate, but also do interesting work and that that collaboration is very much reminiscent of of of that sort of you know, premodern, you know, agrarian, workplace, preindustrial. So, you know, the contention, i think we both is like industrialization sort of splits home and work leads home from work. And that is there a way in which technology could be used for our good for the good of the family too maybe. You know i think that im more hopeful about this and maybe is but but is there a in which we could think about the work of the family as first and foremost and therefore all other goods being aligned with with that important formative work of the family, which i think everyone has sort of forgotten that, you know, in order to have good citizens and good workers and and loving spouses and wonderful friends, you have to have that formative work of the family. It has be honored first and foremost and supported economically, if necessary and so, so i what i hear you describe in terms of an ideal is for society to see the home a central hub of product of work social educational economic even spiritual and that would obviously be a in a different direction because i dont think thats how we see it. I think we see the home as a place where people lay their heads. I think we we lost the understanding that both men women have obligations to the home. And in many respects the only people cant leave the home are the children. So and were going to talk about you know, were going to talk. Mary, you had a phrase that i would like to to steal but i wont where you talked about trans rights and the women supporting it being a priest is of cyborg theocracy. But what are we going to come back to that . Because want to get arthur in the conversation and and particularly id like for you to speak where men find sort of situated in this conversation about feminism not that we always have to make it about, but but but specifically as it relates to two men, the home whether they domestication in some respects leads emasculation. Can you can you speak to that . Yes of course. Well, i you know, lets associate myself with some of the comments already here made nicely on stage. But one thing thats missing is that there has been im not the first person to observe this. There has been a pretty conscious bias a attempt to make out of the old man, a new man. And its proceeded based on a handful of strategies that have we should admitted more or less. The first part of it was to get rid of male spaces. So if there are more than a handful of men together and talking about politics well thats a conspiracy. And so you have to break it up there have to be women almost always in all male spaces for, you know, the tiny handful of things remaining like like fraternal orders, for example but workplaces certainly and you you notice, of course, that its always the force of law, the the force of the morality is that women ought to be in male spaces rather than women desiring, only to have their own competitive spaces. So, for example, nobody is advocating for all female physics labs. Nobody advocating for, you know, all female you know, law officers, although maybe that would be something that is competitive. And both sexes would preserve something of their own, which i think is lost in the constant interactions and see this by the behavior that men and women have when. Theyre always mixed. You see this on campuses, you see this in laboratories, etc. So this is just something we should consider and think through was the first part. Then there other parts of course, like the destruction, the kind of focused destruction, male self respect, you know, this is partly what toxic masculinity is. I mean, thats the latest iteration of it. There have been things it there will be things after it. But the underlying goal is to make it such that young, especially look at themselves and their value in terms of female judgments them. Thats one of the core things. And of course there are other things that are pursued. The therapies is the psycho form of pharmacology therapies thats all meant to. The effect that that somehow maleness is lost, is dropped our natures so that that new male whos gone through this training can be more suited for a female world. And i think that this just comes out feminism naturally and the end goal. Not that i think its going to be accomplished, but the end goal would require that that all of the world transformed this way because a feminist world cannot be safe, even if implement this kind of going away of maleness in one country, it cant really safe forever. So long as there are masculine countries that have you know armed forces that are ambitious, aggressive, all of these things. So the the the doctrine itself requires that all of the world become this way. And i just think that thats not possible. And to return more concretely, to your question about domestication, what that means is, i think erica and i briefly discussed this, think that theres obviously some role for this. On the other hand, what is being asked for very broadly nobody quite says it this way, but its from various sides is that men men should be suborned to private pleasures only that there awareness of themselves has to only through seeking out of more private calm pleasures at the cost of, you know real ambitions politics, especially politics. You know, ruling yourself rule your country. And i just think that that in the end is a thing that feminism demands. But then at the same. Then at the same time it cant relies on the specific kind of maleness that it wants to undermine you know, in establishing order Police Forces for example in the military. So it constantly has this impossible wish for full domestication and yet the reliance of maleness in other spheres serve that domestication. So so lets i want to push a little bit further in terms the flattening of gender roles and feminism trans gender. So speak ideology. As i said, mary, you say that the the highest of support for trans rights are among the most educated women people you call the priestesses the cyborg theocracy. I and you say that they do out of a sense of selfinterest. I wonder, though, whether are that selfinterest tied more to a desire not to, for lack of better term, get the j. K. Rowling treatment right. So they they see it as we were once the victims of oppression and patriarchy. And we do not want to inflict that type of force on the newest victim class. Can you speak to that in terms of what that selfinterest actually like . Is it a legitimate. We dont think that there are any sex differences. Is it we who are oppressed are now in the position being framed as the oppressors. And we dont like that the tension that that brings about. I guess i would say are complicated and we dont always understand our own motivations. Its its not at all uncommon to find yourself accidental on purpose doing something which you didnt even realize you were doing until. I seem to add on the thing i, i it is not my position. Women who advocate passionately for full gender, for transgender ideology are doing explicitly because they believe this will help them in the workplace. Its think its very much more plausible that in almost all cases theyre doing it because they sincerely believe its going to make the world a better place and that the world will made a better, better place by rendering all of us or all of our opportunities to to be who we are in the world to completely independent of our embodied. And i mean, that thats thats such a common position that i just shouldnt be constrained by any accidental features of my of my born physiology that and this is somehow an imposition on on my my scope for selfactualization. And we can make the world a better place by by trying liberate everybody from any constraints of this nature in to give everybody the fullest possible to be who they are. And if includes a male being who who she is, if if that means if that means that i have to accept as a woman who is further a woman, even if they have a fully a fully developed of dangly bits, then fine im going to do that because logically its so extensive with the rest of my position that we shouldnt constrained by any accidental features of our physiology. Im actually just responding a bit to what has been saying. I, i accept and broadly agree with your analysis, that there has been a whole sale push for some decades now to render what were previously all male spaces coed. And ive argued in one of the chapters in my book that the there are signify undercounted costs of this particularly lower down the socioeconomic scale where its not a matter of female having access to the same Networking Opportunities as men, but the very much greater body men who are never gatekeeping power and were never gatekeeping resources. They just wanted to hang out with the boys. And those and those spaces have been have been subject to the same attrition as the private members clubs of the gulf and the gulf societies and so on. And the cost of that to to men or has been been considerable in mental health, in mental, you know, psychiatric distress and in opportunities for socialization and also in the but beneficial positive mentorship, which comes from association with other admired males in real life. And ive argued that its that vacuum the vacuum that that creates the one is the one which then gets filled by figures such as andrew tate. Hmm. So, but, but what i would add or what would suggest in addition to that is that yes, the, the aspect of feminism which i call cyborg feminism or the feminism of freedom, this one which pushes for the flattening of all sex differences in the name of postsex human emancipation has been at the forefront of for that for for that inchoate and for for rendering all spaces unisex. But i would suggest as well that a an additional fact rather than saying, oh, its all the fault of feminism, i would say there are other feminisms what they would be is my first point and i set out to characterize you has some some other aspects of that. You know erica is a great advocate of a less cyborg, less post sex feminisms. There are there are more of us as well. But other feminisms are available would be my first point. And my second point would be that technology has also impacted men. And i mean just to take to take a very large and, very crude example the atom bomb renders a previous form of militarism almost almost impossible. Now you know, whereas wars would have been fought on a much smaller scale and in a much more handtohand way, the technologies of modern military warfare are are probably as great a contributor to to the loss of a kind of masculine warlike tradition as as any amount of cyborg feminism. So this is just this is not to defend this is not to disagree with your point, but too complicated, i suppose to say that that the same analysis of Technological Developments as having had an impact on women and on the on womens expected actions and political participation can also be applied to men. And i mean we can look as well at the the slow decline of industrialization that the of the west and the and the the large scale impact that has had on working class male communities where it has had it had an immense impact. And in britain, as in the United States as well, understanding the great, great swathes of the country were, previously dignified, wellpaid working class jobs have disappeared and have not been replaced by anything, anything like an equivalent dignity or pay packet. Such that men who would once have had a reasonable of supporting a family and leading a wholesome and, dignified life as a husband, a father and a provider are just simply longer there. And this is an not all but not not all of this is done to feminism. Some of this is some some some of this is very much larger social, cultural and economic changes. So this is really a yes. And. So in how terms of being just bringing this back for a moment, the priestesses of cyborg theocracy, im just told to round off round off train of thought. This is a very roundabout way of getting back to the priestesses of global cyborg theocracy. Ive suggested that these those women are still pushing for the radical flattening of of of sex, of all constraints of embodiment are really that the net beneficiaries of of deindustrialization and our transition into Digital Workplace because in a sense you can only really make it make claim with a straight face that sex is just never important. If you never if youll never confronted by all the ways in which it is important, where, for example, if you are working a factory, you would be daily confronted by the fact that being being on average physically stronger is a salient in whether or not you can do the job properly. I mean, this is there are no feminist campaigns, 5050 representation of women in collecting. Right, right. And Everybody Knows why its hard work and theres no status to be going from it. So nobody nobody cares that all men you know, ive never seen a female man, you know, nobody no, nobody says, oh, they should be been persons, you know, because, because Everybody Knows. Its just not very nice job to do. So i dont i dont get it. But but there are plenty of other occupations where you just youre just never going to be confronted by, by any of the ways that sex really does matter. And its in those in those spheres of of social life where women we even since posted deindustrialization. If you look at the statistics even as employment and for for the for the kind of manual work that was historically largely done by working class men even as these have drained away from the developed world all those those opportunity issues which have arise have risen to to replace it, which might be, for example, in health care or in government bureaucracy of very much more the kinds jobs that could be done equally by both sexes. And and these really are the these are the material interests, which are incentives, housing and and and continuing to power a sincere from their own material point from from the point of view of their own material interests, a sincere push for for for widespread acceptance. So that sex is just completely immaterial, but which then feeds down and feeds down the food chain and even into those areas where sex still does matter. Whether, for example, for example, in womens prisons. So i want to ask you a question that i think is equal parts sort of philosophical, practical, when when we start to talk about flattening, sexism in todays age, that often leads into conversation about about gender and gender ideology ideology. One id like you to address whether feminism as a as a as a political theory, as an ideology, has is sort of at its core, the ability to gatekeeping such a way that it can keep biological men out. So has has the intrusion of bile of men and women spaces is that a feature of feminism . Was it inevitable or is a bug and then id like you to speak to what effect men and womens spaces. Now do you think what effect do you think thats had on women and their sense self and their sense of of dignity. And i ask that question and particularly here in an american context, you look around, you know, some of the most accomplished and influential women in professional sports and business and media in and, you know, entertainment seem unwilling or unable to either define what a woman is or to say anything in support of women that be taken as a critique of transgenderism. So in effect, what i would like to say is that those women, those sort of apostles of of second wave feminism have finally found a group of men they can submit to. And i and i wonder i wonder what effect that has both on them as individual girls and the women who the young girls and women who come after them. Mm hmm. Well, that was provocative. Yeah, you. It is. It is astonishing to me. I would say that, especially when, you know, we havent i havent seen this as much in our country yet. I mean, this has certainly been the case in the uk where you see, you know, rallies of gender critical feminists in the uk and there are these, you know, clearly very aggressive men claiming theyre women and want to entry entrance into sort of you know women as a as a i guess category whatever that is. But then also womens spaces and sort of the cognitive dissonance to me of that is sort of astonishing in that for me if i were in situation, i would be quite afraid because of sort of the old man and the aggression coming at, you know, so i guess, i guess i would say a couple of different, different things. Im not sure about, you know, women, the feminists submitting to men and all that. But i would say that in terms of kind of getting to both of the points, especially that arthur made, but also mary, i think one of the issues here along with the complications that you introduced, is the way in which modernity has a particular view of success. That is very much based in sort of market equality and sort of consumption not the kind of capacity to consume status. These kinds of that, as mary rightly notes, her chapter, let men be, which i think is excellent. You know, its its hard to see if you if you construct sort of liberal personhood on this basis. And so many of these now sort of jobs, white collar or or, you know, whatever can be done kind of by without sort of attending to sex difference. Its hard to see. Its hard to make an argument as to why women ought not be invited into sort of that on on the sort of equal ground of of liberal personhood. And so i think really one of the key problems is that weve of missed what being human being is and the sort of view of status and market success and all that is really kind of part of the that that is a complicated feature in sort of what arthur was getting at. And so i guess i would say is that its, you know, right away, again, as who who, you know, spends lot of time reading constitutional law and i mean, i guess its nice to put sort of something concrete here. I dont know how many, you know, that that sort of big case, the vmi case thats, you know, united versus virginia, where the Virginia Military institute was, you know, coed by the supreme with Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing that opinion. And i think whats fascinating, if you go i actually spent time listening to oral argument because i wanted to go back and understand how it is that that equality was kind of or success was what is thought. It is exactly how mary presented is that even you ted olson whos arguing on behalf of virginia theyre just talking you know, these this the reason why, you know, women wanted to get in to vmi because of the status. I mean, it wasnt that vmi was just producing these citizen soldiers who would then go on and work soldiers, who would then go on, be on the frontlines of combat vmi was producing, you know, the best engineers and the best. Paul and the contact with politicians and and the entry into all of these sort of this kind of market equality and. So when ted olson is making his case hes talking about, like, education experts that this you know, this sort of male oriented competitive method that vmi has, you know, shows that, you know, graduates from here can sort of have proven their mettle. They can go out and succeed in the world. And whats fascinating to me is only justice scalia, of course, gets kind of the point of what the institution, at least at some point, maybe when vmi was litigated, certainly, i think it probably had preceded it by then. But what the point of that institution was, was, gentlemen, create men who were a particular kind of man. And i would say, you if youre if you want to think about sort of the christian sense of a new man, one who is oriented toward the good of others so, you know, you have and. So what scalia brings up in his dissent is this gentleman code. And he says, i dont know whether any of these men adhere to it. I dont know if they talked about it at all. But it was just a sense men and women are different with regard to sexual desire, with regard to aggression, with regard to all of these, embody differences. And that something that men require, just as women require, in order to be the kind of men, that as mary talks about can be good husbands, you know, good spouses, good fathers, etc. And, you know, not be aggressors, you know, simply kind of simplicity. So even those who are in Police Forces and and on frontlines of combat and all these places are men who have discipline themselves. So they are now protect of others and not predators against weak and the vulnerable. And that is a formative process that has to take place. And if forget that, if you forget that not only are we different as sexes, men and women require kind of a distinctive formation. But that formation is required of human beings at all. And thats a work that has been characterized. I mean, thats what civilization is always understood to be. These formative institutions, right of marriage, of family and sex itself. Like what sex is itself, which is great point in marys last chapter. I mean, all of these things form persons and then enable them to go on to be, you know, members of of society. But if you dont form them, if you forget that you think its just about market equality, i think its just about sort of getting your own. Then you have a situation where, you know, one the one word i would add to marys book is on the chapter, let men be. I would say let men be formed. And yes, men other should be forming. Younger men. Absolutely. But they have to be understand it to be form, not like let men be you, you know, like just kind of i have three sons and im sorry but that doesnt look good but you just right they have to conceive before, but so do women. And about sort of selfdiscipline, mastering, doing all those things for the good of others. And thats something that i think had ten olsen you know, talked about that or had vmi actually been doing that and if they were doing it, if they were just people to go out and be market equals, well, you know, the state can very good case so so in the last 5 minutes you know as one final question and then were going to go to secure a so arthur, im curious what do you believe and this is this be the same question for everyone in terms of what future looks like what im going to ask you a specific question. Well, what is the future of men look like in an era im starting to see sort of someone up, andrew tate, men like andrew tate, other selfprofessed conservative say say to men in terms of that forming, dont get married because the courts are stacked against you. If you want children, secure them through surrogacy or adoption. What does the future of men look like in an era differences between the sexes have been flattened and then. Erica merritt id also like you to comment on what that of feminism looks like to you. Yeah, sure. Well, actually, i think this question is very much related to what you just said. So you say that men should serve the good of others. Maybe so. But whos good in particular . So, you know, at vmi, theyre them to serve not just the good of others but the good of their fellow citizens and their country. And you at you know, i mean, this is, you know, such a silly thing to say. But, you know, you look at all of our you, know, superhero movies that are, you know, for consumption primarily, theyre theyre meant to serve, you know, good of humanity. And i dont think that thats, you know, a particularly good message, you know, to sacrifice yourself for all of humanity its indeterminate humanity comes in different forms. Some of it is good. Some of it is less good a country, too, but a country is a concrete thing that your heart can be to. And so and only for that reason that you know, men would literally sacrifice themselves, you know, on the battlefield. And youre right, it does take some training. But one future of men in this regard is you. Everybody has already seen these military readiness problems that men are no longer inclined to go into the military so one future of manliness more more technology to fight our wars because the war or the the old model male is disappearing their attachment to their country is also disappearing. And so this is going to be a huge problem going forward. And you know, to come back to a comment that you made earlier, mary, where you noted that, you know, Nuclear Weapons may change the dynamic. Well, maybe, but you know, natos currently fighting russia and thats a real war with real men, the ground. So these things are always going to exist, except it wont be the males that used to go to vmi that well be doing this. But youre going to have to hire out. Youre going to have have youre going to have to build up the class of scientists that will replace the males to create technologies. And then there will be and more discontentment where males seek male friendship, they totally the order that theyve been given. In some ways you described earlier that, you know, youre confront with this kind of male aggression thats not going away right. That is not a social construct. Yeah, its not. And i dont even want to i dont even want to call it just a chemical in males. Its more than a chemical. Its an awareness that males have of themselves from very early on that continues to form and it cannot simply be beaten out of them short of lobotomized them or something, you know approximating that. And the question is where that will go. So no families to serve no nation to serve. And so whatever that space is that theyll find for glory, for masculinity, for friendship, thats where its going to pop up a great deal of that is just video gaming. I believe in the moment i get the sense that a certain amount of that that goes into videos that you guys yeah but but the question is how long that can last. I dont think youre right that its lasted for some time and video games is really a modifica of sports you know watching in a whole variety of just amusements. But i dont think that thats to go on forever. Thats not the permanent of of of maybe of many men, but not all men. And, you know, its its only a handful of men that change things, know, its never a mass movement. So that stuff can can can go away and will go away at some point. So in the last 10 minutes, id like to see if we have any questions an audience we have microphones i mean look at sam over here. I dont have to run around too. What. A question on what is an ideal man and an ideal woman. According to the new feminist. Ideal woman is anything she wants to be, perhaps even including a man. And because thats freedom, you could choose your own adventure no constraint whatsoever. We are embodied men, male, female. So take an average man, an average. See a young person. I have kids. What would you say to youre the ideal virtues you should be fostering as a future man or woman of virtue. Can i take this one . Yes. And on that, if i may im going to reframe very slightly. I used to find it that scholar could come to blows as they did in centuries past over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin or that countries could literally go to war over something that seemed abstruse to me such as transubstantiation. I no longer find that ridiculous because ive seen National Politicians in my and indeed in yours refusing to define what a woman is and i would in answer to your question about what is an ideal man or an ideal woman that we are approaching a point of metaphysical conflict on the same level as the one where my country once upon a went to war over the question of transubstantiation. Because i think the answer to one answer to that question what is an ideal man or an ideal woman is whatever he or she wants to be or whoever, whatever they they are is the answer and the end. On the other side, the answer is very much more granular and probably very much more culturally and materially. And specific and conditioned and would would have to do with with normative differences in roles and to with our human nature and possibly also with reference to a broadly christian heritage, understanding that human men and women are created equal in dignity but in the image of god. And now thats thats one paradigm for what is an ideal or woman. And the other paradigm is just whatever they want to be. And i dont think its possible for those two realities to coexist in the same way. And i think its very plausible that, well, well find them increasingly sharply in conflict. I mean, indeed, you know, we literal violence on the streets over question of whether or not a male can be a woman. You know, this is already happening. And i think its going to get worse. I mean, another question i have one right here. While still in its infancy, think theres a movement called project to and i was just wondering. What do guys think are some of the beneficial of the ancient world . So for example, the hellenistic period, the ancient roman empire and do you think that we 2023 can try to model our society and model our gender norms . What can we learn from from our ancestors . Thousands of years ago . Because i think that we were much closer towards the natural order of affairs back in the ancient times that we are now. How do you think we can try to implement that in modern age . Okay, so ill that so what are the sort of beneficial ideals of the premodern period and i would say many them far better than the modern period. And actually what i do in my book is show that theres a way in which going back to many of those ideals especially the view of rights grounded in responsibilities, the view of the human person as needing virtue formation in order to reach his or her end in terms of happiness, just sort of an aristotelian understanding. I mean, all of those, i mean, in terms of, you know, the family as as a precondition for the good of the state in the polis, but also as incomplete and needing the polis. As for the to the family. You know, i in aristotle, theres so much to mine. You know, the possibility of marriage is a virtue of friendship. The, you know, the child in aristotles understanding as as as that which brings the spouses together in terms of the common good and keeps them. I mean, theres just on and on and on. I wrote a piece for first things called sex realist feminism, in which i look actually at plato and aristotle and of the errors of both. And then i think the advances are both in order to show how theyre of plato and aristotle, especially plato, but both kind of complicit in some errors at the root of these questions about women. But then they also provide a way out. And so i very always end sort of one who goes back to the premodern does those who i think understood again i mean ive mentioned many times but just sort of the way in human beings required formation that really needed formation and that we couldnt just you know as sort of, you know, beacon, descartes, hobbes, locke, etc. Thought that we sort of could, you know, that those aspirations are too lofty and that we needed to kind of be, you know, our politics and economics on sort of a lower or lower aims and that were more potentially achievable. And i think part of that is, you know, scientific technology, all of that obviously can advance sort of, you know, and and sort of improvement of state, which was what their aim. But if you missed the idea that that human beings to be formed and that there is a formation toward something right. And thats something which again the religious wars were followed. Right. So but i think its really important argument to have is like what are the kinds human beings that that we think, you know, sort of civilization requires . And i guess the last thing i would say is im kind of always hope springs eternal, i guess, in my world. But i think thats partly because i im raising many children. And so theres something about being involved. The actual formation of young and women that just one great hope. And so the question of like what is an ideal man or an ideal woman . I would say its a, its a man or woman of virtue thats in that virtues in particular. And each person. And those virtues look different in a man and a woman, but they also look different in each particular or woman. But it is the necessity of virtue of seeking moral excellence, moral and intellectual excellence that i think has to be recovered and reclaimed from that tradition. Can i just add one thing to small points. You know, there is a part of the academy that is just interested in burying the classical texts in it. You its partly the the kind narrow focus on philology that ends up killing it because you know if youre interested in grammar, punctuation and plutarch primarily youre not interested in the stories but there is this other tendency which is that you know to look at plutarch and to think oneself as some of the people he describes and then to compare oneself them as a man as a woman sometimes to is a very dangerous thing people think so thats one item but on a more kind of a smaller point theres a lot to learn in a variety of ways. But you know the western tradition originates in homer and there you have a story of love and in the odyssey and what you can learn, there are what the qualities of character are that are actually worthy of admiration and love in both a woman and in a man thats also a very painful lesson us to compare against such things. But i think one thats worthy of our pursuits that that is still as beautiful today is as the day that it was written and, you know, men and women can model themselves off the characters there as as they have for know, a very long time and only until recently was this stuff, you know, buried. So i dont. Do we have time for one more question . Okay. One more question. I think i saw your hand first. Sorry. Too much. Okay. So theres a lot of talk about how, you know, sexual revolution overtook feminism. And my question was, what is the best way to reconnect men, women with these original ideas about sexes . I mean, its often talked about how some academic institutions, you know, tend to teach that more modern version of sex and gender that were we cant define what a man man and a woman is or that theres a marketplace value. So what would you say is the best way to reconnect younger people . These ideas would be, for example, that the first way feminists talked about read marys book, what about one one intervention . Ive suggested that young women might employ to to bring the consequent reality back our differences and as well as mystery and the danger the substance is to begin by rejecting original point of entry into cyborg feminism, which is the contraceptive pill. And this is something i see a lot of young women already not all are not and by no means only from conservative or religious backgrounds. I hear from great many young women who were put on the pill at the age of 14 came off it. So maybe ten years later and realized theyd done a complete personality flip. And actually they you know, i was once said and i quote, i thought i was bipolar. But then it turned out actually it was just the psychoactive substance that id been were they doing to me and this is all and this was all to the to the purpose of rendering a woman receptive to what was what is, for the most part, loveless and sometimes extremely degrading sexual access and i struggle to see in what way thats in womens interests. And given the great many other things that, to my eye are downstream of the entry into that paradigm, it seems to me that a good place to start would be the feminine feminist movement against the pill and for rewilding sex the danger to sex for turning the intimacy and on really the consequences really to sex and a great deal follows from an unintentional reconnection of womens option womens opting intentionally to reconnect the fullness of our embodied including of our potential. We put our reproductive role well. I think that is going to have to be the last word. Thank you, mary, for that. Mary, erica arthur for a very lively and thank you all for joining us and until next time would you give me a r hello, im john reed faculty here in the Creative Writing Program and the director of the creative Creative Writing Program at the new school. The one time i was on this stage, i was a board member of the nbcc chairing a category. Its my great honor