The Abolition of Women, Part I
How C.S. Lewis Predicted Today's Feminist Crises
A Guest Column by Noelle McEachran
When Taylor Swift turned thirty, an interviewer asked if she planned to have children. Offended, Swift quipped, “I really don’t think men are asked that question. So I'm not going to answer that.”
While Swift didn’t necessarily condemn childbearing, her response was an automatic one for most women today. Today’s third-wave feminists are not against having kids the same way first and second-wave feminists were (Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood famously said that the ‘feeble-minded’ should be sterilized. )
It may not get you points in certain climate-quibbling circles, but it’s okay to have kids now.
What strikes me in Swift’s reaction is her offense at the thought of childbearing. If the interviewer asked if she planned to visit the dentist any time soon because, after all, she has teeth, or get screened for breast cancer because, well... those questions wouldn’t offend anyone.
Some might say the problem is not that women can have children; it’s that childbearing is all society expects of them. But is that really what everyone expects? How many women do you know are unable to function or get a job because everyone is constantly pressuring them to have children?
Well, they would reply, there’s still a stigma—and that is what I want to pinpoint now. Most cultures throughout history regarded motherhood as an incredible, almost sacred thing. Women (assuming we can still define what they are) make people! Clearly, childbearing is not all women can do. But if suggesting that “women having kids is a good thing,” is automatically controversial, we must ask why.
If the very thought of associating women with motherhood is offensive, we are betraying a set of rigged assumptions, internalized by the narratives we’ve been swallowing. Now, and more than ever, it’s critical that we train ourselves to think instead of merely reacting.
As far as reactions go, we are hard on all stigmas but our own.
Speaking of Reactions
Taylor Swift’s interview reaction reflects a common tendency: being quick to question a traditional norm but not ever thinking about why one questions it. G.K. Chesterton pointed out the danger of this mental habit a century ago with his fence analogy. A fence in the English countryside may appear random, ugly, or unnecessary, but until you know why someone put it there, you’re in no position to knock it down.
As you well know, we live in a time when smashing down fences is morally unassailable—and learning ‘why’ comes after the fact, if at all. Take, for example, the obvious hijacking of women’s sports, and you’ll see what I mean.
In 2022, 29-year-old Ricci Tres, a trans woman, competed against thirteen-year-old girls in a skateboarding competition… and won. He insisted that he had no physical advantage just because he was a biological male and almost twenty years older than the competition.
Despite the growing, overdue pushback, those willing to point out that a fully grown male competing against thirteen-year-old girls is well, unfair, risk being slapped with ‘isms.’ Ageism, sexism, and transphobia, just for starters.
Again, stigmas.
Thinking that grown men who can’t compete against young girls face serious, unfair prejudice may be the extreme end of the spectrum—but it was once unthinkable. What was extreme ten years ago is now mainstream, and nothing is stopping this runaway train.
This puts third-wave feminists in a real conundrum.
What is it they want? Women (as women) used to roar. Now they find womanhood, as a category, offensive. Third-wave feminists are all angry about… what exactly? Why be angry and march at rallies if you’re not even a thing anymore?
Two or three generations ago, evolutionary biologists would have categorically affirmed the biological difference between men and women. They, unlike our newest Supreme Court Justice, would have considered it a neutral, proven, indisputable fact. Those assumptions remain, and yet—if you believe those who insist that biological men can get pregnant—they are meaningless.
Why?
How did we transition toward a world in which facts are BOTH the final word, while simultaneously counting for nothing?
How Did We Get Here?
While the contributing factors are countless, our current pandemonium is actually predictable. Scholar and beloved children’s author C.S. Lewis more or less predicted it decades ago.
In his 1943 book “The Abolition of Man,” Lewis critiqued certain modern educational practices that were rapidly rising in his day. While none of those practices involved, say letting biological males compete with women, the train of logic is clear enough.
Modern education, as we know it today, particularly in America, was just heating up in Lewis’ day. But what was then gaining traction is now assumed.
You might summarize these ingrained, long-normalized theories in this way: children should never be taught that any subject has any significance, meaning, or definition beyond itself.
Let me explain.
Imagine two men standing near a waterfall. One describes it as “pretty,” the other as “sublime.” Which one is correct? According to modern education, neither. The men are only describing how they feel about the waterfall. The man “appeared to making a remark about the waterfall… actually…he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings.”[1]
Those educational theorists advanced the idea that knowledge itself can be neutral. So, the only real true things a person can say about a waterfall are material observations (i.e., the water is wet), or completely subjective observations. Once we decide whether it’s an animal, vegetable, or mineral, we’re over it.
Lewis cites this as one of two fundamental changes:
“All sentences containing predictions of value are merely statements about the emotional state of the speaker."1
In other words, there is nothing objectively true about waterfalls outside of what we can observe with our senses. We can all detach our own emotions, thoughts, and opinions from the real act of learning.
This assumption gave rise to education as we know it today.
The Myth of Neutrality
This shift may seem subtle, but it has drastically shaped the landscape of education. Today’s classroom assumes a naturalistic, meaning-neutral universe of stripped-down facts. These facts can be learned apart from any worldview. A Muslim child, Christian child, Buddhist child, and atheist child can all enter the same classroom, check their values and beliefs at the door, and learn something together.
If you’ve spent any time in public education, this may not shock you. But nonetheless, the theory that you can learn a subject devoid of any values, religion, or deeper worldview thinking is a drastic departure from previous generations.
Later in the book, Lewis builds on that:
“Until modern times, all teachers, and even all men, believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive but could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence of contempt.”2
People used to believe that everything is connected and interpreted by everything else, that every stripped-down fact has a deeper significance than what first appears. In other words, we could look at a toad and definitively describe it as ugly; a flower as beautiful. Moreover, rape and murder were always, and intrinsically wrong. Kindness was good. Math, science, literature, and grammar were all connected, all part of the same system of values and truth. Without those linking connections, we come to a second fundamental change:
“All such value statements are unimportant.”3
Think about it.
If you can’t say anything of ultimate significance about a waterfall, then what you feel about waterfalls is also irrelevant. In truth, it has to be. All value judgments are private, random, subjective, and therefore meaningless. They don’t count in the real world of stripped-down facts. While there’s some good in realizing that we all make our observations with some personal bias, total postmodern subjectivity puts our very ability to say anything in a bind.
“We appear,” Lewis writes, “to be saying something very important about something: and actually, we are only saying something about our own feelings.’’4
Without predicting that answers to math problems would one day hinge on a 2nd grader’s feelings (at least in New York City), Lewis clearly saw such absurdities coming.
When these educational theories first arrived, the theorists, of course, maintained that men and women fall into two separate and distinct categories. Having lived in the post-enlightenment era of the known material world, they would have made sensory-based, biological observations demonstrating the difference between men and women. Modern education has always claimed that those are the straight facts—again, not value judgments.
How did we go from neutral “classroom facts” to this brave new world in which facts now count for nothing?
What happened along the way?
The problem is, those biological facts were never ‘neutral’ in the first place. We drifted, and then went over the falls, by going along with it. Taylor Swift, Lia Thomas, and Ketanji Jackson Brown may not know it, but they are way downstream…
Stay Tuned for Part II of II
If you enjoyed this guest column by Noelle McEachran, check out her thoughtful writing at Box Hill Talks.
And if supporting this content—that is, feeding the crocodiles—strikes your fancy, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
A like, a share, a restack, or email forward will also suffice.
Thanks for reading.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (Collier Books/ Macmillan Publishing, 1943).
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (Collier Books/ Macmillan Publishing, 1943).
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (Collier Books/ Macmillan Publishing, 1943).
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (Collier Books/ Macmillan Publishing, 1943).
Love it. Director's cut!