Have I ever told you that my late maternal grandmother was friends with William F Buckley, Jr? He was also my uncle’s godfather. (Ironically, I’ve scarcely read a word he wrote.)
Like you, I’d like to call what we’re doing “Aristotelean feminism” but that may be even less evocative for most than 2026 Women’s Convention.
Thanks for this post, Rachel - really enjoyed reading your reflections and glad you thought it a success. Can’t wait to publish your remarks!
I did not know this! How fitting! (Buckley's greatest achievements really weren't *as a writer* anyway, though he wrote plenty if you've got a mind to explore it.)
"Aristotelian feminism" is my preferred description, yes, and I do explain that for people who understand it. But right, not a lot of retail value in that term. People often reply, "So, some sort of conservative feminists?" Sort of. Sure. You can call *me* a conservative feminist if you want, but I won't force it down anyone else's throat.
wonderful essay and take on the weekend. So blessed to be a part. It has given me hope for the next generation. We should be required to read and watch Willam F Buckley and Erica Bachiochi
Hi Rachel! It was great catching up with you after what, 19 years? The whole weekend felt like being surrounded by more than a hundred kindred spirits. Definitely a shot in the arm after despairing at the state of discourse on social media aka The Place Where Nuance Goes to Die.
It was nice to meet you last week. I would like to know more about this statement below. It could probably fill a book. You don’t need to write anything to satisfy my curiosity. But if you have already written something that fleshes this out (commonly held premises of this sort), I would appreciate you pointing me toward it.
“It can take real work to persuade people that they are in fact eager to see women as the morally inferior sex. (And often, by extension, wanting to conclude that marginalizing or exploiting us may therefore be somewhat acceptable.) Most people deny this, and one rarely moves the ball by flinging angry accusations, so you have to show people that the conclusion falls pretty naturally out of their own premises, then work backwards to the question of why they embraced the premises in the first place.”
Thanks, sure, I can drop in a few links that point in the general direction. Here's one responding to Carrie Gress, suggesting that her form of "complementarianism" really isn't compatible with both Aristotelianism and the moral equality of the sexes. I sometimes explain it like this. Suppose you have three things on the table: a robust gender complementarianism, an Aristotelian account of human nature, and the moral equality of the sexes. You can pick two.
Gress doesn't openly jettison (3) but she's sufficiently committed to the first two that I think that's truly the most natural way to harmonize it. Likewise, coming from the opposite direction, Tony Esolen's "No Apologies," on men. I think he would agree if asked that the sexes are morally equal, but the easiest way by far to harmonize everything else he's committed to is by rejecting that premise. Here's me on Gress' book:
As for Andrews, her Great Feminization theory creepily mirrors narratives favored by racialists and antisemites ostensibly just "noting differences" but... well...
I have not read “No Apologies.” When you refer to “everything else [Esolen] is committed to,” are those other commitments laid out in that book or his writing more broadly?
Seems like (2) and (3) are incompatible. Aristotle did not believe in the equality of the sexes, did he? I think he believed that men were more rational. I'm not endorsing that, but insisting that the moral equality of the sexes is true, meaningful, and important, while also trumpeting that you're an Aristotelian, seems like a strange combination.
I don't think so. For Aristotle that claim is contingent; he doesn't think it's improper or contrary to nature for women to be rational, only that rationality is less developed in them. We could just hold (as I do) that he was wrong about that. The defining elements of an Aristotelian account can then be consistently maintained.
Many antifeminists want to work from an anthropology that is fundamentally Aristotelian, but with a more robust and codified gender complementarity. All sorts of things that are good and excellent for men are *not* appropriate for women, in light of differences in their nature. Maybe you could hold that if women and men are really so different that they don't meaningfully share a telos. But the Aristotelian account doesn't readily bifurcate, certainly not cleanly or to anything like that extent. Likewise, if women really are just significantly inferior in their rational powers, being under the authority of more rational people (presumably men) may be their best chance at thriving all things considered. Maybe they shouldn't try to be like men because they won't succeed and will likely do harm (to themselves or others) in the attempt. That would be another sort of justification for a relatively strong separation of spheres.
In that case though, women clearly *are* the inferior sex. Again, thinking in Aristotelian terms.
So you hold that Aristotle was wrong about the lesser rationality of women? Fine; I'm certainly not inclined to endorse him about that either.
But if you're saying Aristotle was wrong, where does that leave your trilemma argument? It seems like "you need to agree with me on this or you can't be an Aristotelian" is your key argumentative move here. But you're the one who's rejecting Aristotle. He certainly wasn't a believer in equality in any sense!
I'm indebted to Aristotle in some ways, but much more to Christianity, and there's a fundamental aristocracy in Aristotle's view of human nature that I reject. I think breadwinner/homemaker specialization is 100% compatible with "moral equality" in the sense I consider cogent and important (though it's a clumsy concept I wouldn't want to rely on much in an argument). If Aristotle thinks being a philosopher or politician is morally inferior to being a loving mother who raises happy, virtuous people into adulthood, so much the worse for Aristotle.
Dear Rachel, I was wondering if you might possibly be willing to read/review my trilogy in progress set during the American Revolution (primarily the Saratoga Campaign) which also deals with Catholic recusancy in Britain and her colonies called "All Ye That Pass By." The first two books are already published, and the third is to be published next year. I am eager to get some more reviews (especially by historians such as yourself) published on it to help expand my readership, so if you might be willing, I'd be happy to send you copies.
In the interest of counterpoint, here's an excerpt from my "Moral Follies of the Information Class":
"Men and women are naturally the same and should be treated the same: this principle seems to be at the heart of feminism. Sometimes feminists think instead that women are different and superior, but the takeaway is the same: that women should have more privilege, power, and/or preeminence than they do.
"The knee-jerk questions of feminism are “if men do x, why can't women do x?” and “why should men have more of x than women have?” – asked rhetorically, of course, as if they’re self-evidently unanswerable, and expose the unrighteous power of the patriarchy. Good, cogent, tradition-friendly answers to these provocative rhetorical questions are readily available, but anyone who articulates them is treated as a moral monster socially, and may even run legal risks.
"And if men and women are treated the same, then outcomes will be the same – so the reasoning goes, often only implicitly, but in a way that's not safe to challenge or deny – so if outcomes are different, the treatment must be different and unfair, and we should figure out how, and who's to blame.
"Reasons for treating men and women differently are plentiful, and patriarchies down the ages sometimes articulated their reasons. In other cases, they didn't bother to defend what wasn't challenged, but their reasons can be roughly deduced. A good entry point to the rebuttal of feminism is simply to ask, persistently, “But who will take care of the kids?” Beyond that, sociobiology is a good argumentative resource. Of course men and women, as embodied beings, have different instincts aligned with their different reproductive functions. Evolution must have ensured that. Honest cross-cultural study will quickly confirm that gender differentiation is not an accidental feature of this or that culture, but a universal pattern. There is mild variation in how gender differentiation is expressed, but no human culture conforms to feminist norms because human instincts are programmed differently from that. Neither history nor biology gives any basis for the notion that human nature can, let alone should, be pressed into that mold.
"Breadwinner-homemaker specialization doesn't have to be the universal model, but it's economically efficient for many, and harmonious with human instincts that guide men to focus on public, women on private roles. Men and women both instinctively prefer, on average, a spousal age gap with the man being older, so husbands are generally more experienced and naturally lead. Etcetera. All of this can be acknowledged without implying that any woman should be denied any particular opportunity on account of her sex. But none of it can be acknowledged without exploding any notion that unequal outcomes imply unequal opportunities, and thus delegitimizing most feminist grievances. Even if treatment by laws and employers is the same, such reasons can explain why outcomes differ by gender, so that to deduce from a career or income stratum being disproportionately male that there was any ex ante unfairness is very invalid.
"But it's not safe to say so!...
(The cases of Larry Summers, James Damore, and Jordan Peterson are described by way of illustration)
"... In light of cases like these, one can see why Helen Andrews finds that the modern professional workplace has been quietly but profoundly reshaped, often in troubling and debilitating ways, by the mass entry of women, especially elite, college-educated women. Her claim is not that women are unsuited to work, nor that feminism was insincere, but that institutions adapted to female preferences and constraints in ways that produced unintended consequences: heavier bureaucratization, risk aversion, HR governance, speech regulation, and the treatment of normal male behavior as a liability to be managed. Feminism, on this view, did not merely seek equal opportunity; it reengineered workplaces around moralized expectations that now structure who may speak, how conflicts are resolved, and which explanations are permitted. I don't know how far Andrews rightly discerns the net impact of women’s entry into white-collar workplaces on organizational efficiency, but I do know that contemporary public discourse cannot be trusted to assess such questions fairly.
"More than environmentalism, feminism has its natural enforcers. Its inquisition is staffed by legions of professional women who have been indoctrinated in its tenets and feel a duty to be offended if those tenets are ever challenged, questioned or transgressed. In this domain, reasoning is forbidden. Men who can't avoid noticing and thinking stuff had better keep their thought-crimes safe within the walls of their skulls."
I'm struck once again by how much of your argumentation consists of the witch hunting move of accusing people of holding views that they have never stated or would deny. That's why I'm creeped out by feminism as unphilosophical and anti-rational. It cannot abide by the rules of discourse that characterize a conversation with a propensity to lead to truth.
Drawing out implications of people's views, including those that they would prefer not to see, is not "witch-hunting" but a good Socratic service. That is the epitome of rational behavior. If anything it is you who are moving in the direction of witch-hunting by attributing dialectical stances to "feminists" that nobody here has taken. I have never seen *anyone* in the FD space make the argument "Inequality of outcome necessarily implies grave injustice and la la la I can't hear you trigger cancel culture." If you want to supply counterpoints, maybe you should start by reading what people are actually writing in this space and assessing the conversation. I'll post a link to Erika's "Sex-Realist Feminism" piece to get you started.
Are you not aware that there is, in fact, a real contingent of antifeminists out there now who actively argue that women should be excluded from a wide range of opportunities, including the franchise? This is a real thing. The "Repeal the 19th" memes are very trendy right now! Young women especially, if they trend towards conservatism or traditionalism, are regularly encountering it in their own social circles; they are actively pressed to explain why they should be permitted to vote, run for office, or pursue careers. In that kind of moment, it's just not reasonable to act as though "feminists" are a mindless, emotion-driven mass railing against a settled, common-sense traditionalism. That is just not where we are.
"He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry" St. John Paul II, pray for us.
Have I ever told you that my late maternal grandmother was friends with William F Buckley, Jr? He was also my uncle’s godfather. (Ironically, I’ve scarcely read a word he wrote.)
Like you, I’d like to call what we’re doing “Aristotelean feminism” but that may be even less evocative for most than 2026 Women’s Convention.
Thanks for this post, Rachel - really enjoyed reading your reflections and glad you thought it a success. Can’t wait to publish your remarks!
I did not know this! How fitting! (Buckley's greatest achievements really weren't *as a writer* anyway, though he wrote plenty if you've got a mind to explore it.)
"Aristotelian feminism" is my preferred description, yes, and I do explain that for people who understand it. But right, not a lot of retail value in that term. People often reply, "So, some sort of conservative feminists?" Sort of. Sure. You can call *me* a conservative feminist if you want, but I won't force it down anyone else's throat.
wonderful essay and take on the weekend. So blessed to be a part. It has given me hope for the next generation. We should be required to read and watch Willam F Buckley and Erica Bachiochi
You summed it up really nicely, Rachel! And it was great hanging out with you.
Such a pleasure, Angela! Your work has been immensely helpful to me, really fun to get to hang out awhile.
Likewise! You are a beautiful writer and have a great phlegmatic personality, much needed with these issues lol.
Now that I’ve heard you speak in person, I read this in your voice and that was a delight 😀
Hi Rachel! It was great catching up with you after what, 19 years? The whole weekend felt like being surrounded by more than a hundred kindred spirits. Definitely a shot in the arm after despairing at the state of discourse on social media aka The Place Where Nuance Goes to Die.
So wonderful to catch up, Sandy! I feel like it may not take 19 more years to bump into you again, but we’ll see…
Sounds wonderful! Next time make it multi-generational and invite your Moms!
You would have been very welcome! If another such event happens you should definitely come!
I do like to bask in my children’s glory!
It was nice to meet you last week. I would like to know more about this statement below. It could probably fill a book. You don’t need to write anything to satisfy my curiosity. But if you have already written something that fleshes this out (commonly held premises of this sort), I would appreciate you pointing me toward it.
“It can take real work to persuade people that they are in fact eager to see women as the morally inferior sex. (And often, by extension, wanting to conclude that marginalizing or exploiting us may therefore be somewhat acceptable.) Most people deny this, and one rarely moves the ball by flinging angry accusations, so you have to show people that the conclusion falls pretty naturally out of their own premises, then work backwards to the question of why they embraced the premises in the first place.”
Thanks, sure, I can drop in a few links that point in the general direction. Here's one responding to Carrie Gress, suggesting that her form of "complementarianism" really isn't compatible with both Aristotelianism and the moral equality of the sexes. I sometimes explain it like this. Suppose you have three things on the table: a robust gender complementarianism, an Aristotelian account of human nature, and the moral equality of the sexes. You can pick two.
Gress doesn't openly jettison (3) but she's sufficiently committed to the first two that I think that's truly the most natural way to harmonize it. Likewise, coming from the opposite direction, Tony Esolen's "No Apologies," on men. I think he would agree if asked that the sexes are morally equal, but the easiest way by far to harmonize everything else he's committed to is by rejecting that premise. Here's me on Gress' book:
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/01/92099/
As for Andrews, her Great Feminization theory creepily mirrors narratives favored by racialists and antisemites ostensibly just "noting differences" but... well...
I wrote on that here:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3862729/great-feminization-falls-short-theory-of-everything-women-woke-culture/
I have not read “No Apologies.” When you refer to “everything else [Esolen] is committed to,” are those other commitments laid out in that book or his writing more broadly?
Seems like (2) and (3) are incompatible. Aristotle did not believe in the equality of the sexes, did he? I think he believed that men were more rational. I'm not endorsing that, but insisting that the moral equality of the sexes is true, meaningful, and important, while also trumpeting that you're an Aristotelian, seems like a strange combination.
I don't think so. For Aristotle that claim is contingent; he doesn't think it's improper or contrary to nature for women to be rational, only that rationality is less developed in them. We could just hold (as I do) that he was wrong about that. The defining elements of an Aristotelian account can then be consistently maintained.
Many antifeminists want to work from an anthropology that is fundamentally Aristotelian, but with a more robust and codified gender complementarity. All sorts of things that are good and excellent for men are *not* appropriate for women, in light of differences in their nature. Maybe you could hold that if women and men are really so different that they don't meaningfully share a telos. But the Aristotelian account doesn't readily bifurcate, certainly not cleanly or to anything like that extent. Likewise, if women really are just significantly inferior in their rational powers, being under the authority of more rational people (presumably men) may be their best chance at thriving all things considered. Maybe they shouldn't try to be like men because they won't succeed and will likely do harm (to themselves or others) in the attempt. That would be another sort of justification for a relatively strong separation of spheres.
In that case though, women clearly *are* the inferior sex. Again, thinking in Aristotelian terms.
So you hold that Aristotle was wrong about the lesser rationality of women? Fine; I'm certainly not inclined to endorse him about that either.
But if you're saying Aristotle was wrong, where does that leave your trilemma argument? It seems like "you need to agree with me on this or you can't be an Aristotelian" is your key argumentative move here. But you're the one who's rejecting Aristotle. He certainly wasn't a believer in equality in any sense!
I'm indebted to Aristotle in some ways, but much more to Christianity, and there's a fundamental aristocracy in Aristotle's view of human nature that I reject. I think breadwinner/homemaker specialization is 100% compatible with "moral equality" in the sense I consider cogent and important (though it's a clumsy concept I wouldn't want to rely on much in an argument). If Aristotle thinks being a philosopher or politician is morally inferior to being a loving mother who raises happy, virtuous people into adulthood, so much the worse for Aristotle.
Can a regular people go to this or just the cool kids?
All welcome! Though obviously being there does make you cool.
It really sounds like a rare and dreamy group. Gives me hope!
Dear Rachel, I was wondering if you might possibly be willing to read/review my trilogy in progress set during the American Revolution (primarily the Saratoga Campaign) which also deals with Catholic recusancy in Britain and her colonies called "All Ye That Pass By." The first two books are already published, and the third is to be published next year. I am eager to get some more reviews (especially by historians such as yourself) published on it to help expand my readership, so if you might be willing, I'd be happy to send you copies.
In the interest of counterpoint, here's an excerpt from my "Moral Follies of the Information Class":
"Men and women are naturally the same and should be treated the same: this principle seems to be at the heart of feminism. Sometimes feminists think instead that women are different and superior, but the takeaway is the same: that women should have more privilege, power, and/or preeminence than they do.
"The knee-jerk questions of feminism are “if men do x, why can't women do x?” and “why should men have more of x than women have?” – asked rhetorically, of course, as if they’re self-evidently unanswerable, and expose the unrighteous power of the patriarchy. Good, cogent, tradition-friendly answers to these provocative rhetorical questions are readily available, but anyone who articulates them is treated as a moral monster socially, and may even run legal risks.
"And if men and women are treated the same, then outcomes will be the same – so the reasoning goes, often only implicitly, but in a way that's not safe to challenge or deny – so if outcomes are different, the treatment must be different and unfair, and we should figure out how, and who's to blame.
"Reasons for treating men and women differently are plentiful, and patriarchies down the ages sometimes articulated their reasons. In other cases, they didn't bother to defend what wasn't challenged, but their reasons can be roughly deduced. A good entry point to the rebuttal of feminism is simply to ask, persistently, “But who will take care of the kids?” Beyond that, sociobiology is a good argumentative resource. Of course men and women, as embodied beings, have different instincts aligned with their different reproductive functions. Evolution must have ensured that. Honest cross-cultural study will quickly confirm that gender differentiation is not an accidental feature of this or that culture, but a universal pattern. There is mild variation in how gender differentiation is expressed, but no human culture conforms to feminist norms because human instincts are programmed differently from that. Neither history nor biology gives any basis for the notion that human nature can, let alone should, be pressed into that mold.
"Breadwinner-homemaker specialization doesn't have to be the universal model, but it's economically efficient for many, and harmonious with human instincts that guide men to focus on public, women on private roles. Men and women both instinctively prefer, on average, a spousal age gap with the man being older, so husbands are generally more experienced and naturally lead. Etcetera. All of this can be acknowledged without implying that any woman should be denied any particular opportunity on account of her sex. But none of it can be acknowledged without exploding any notion that unequal outcomes imply unequal opportunities, and thus delegitimizing most feminist grievances. Even if treatment by laws and employers is the same, such reasons can explain why outcomes differ by gender, so that to deduce from a career or income stratum being disproportionately male that there was any ex ante unfairness is very invalid.
"But it's not safe to say so!...
(The cases of Larry Summers, James Damore, and Jordan Peterson are described by way of illustration)
"... In light of cases like these, one can see why Helen Andrews finds that the modern professional workplace has been quietly but profoundly reshaped, often in troubling and debilitating ways, by the mass entry of women, especially elite, college-educated women. Her claim is not that women are unsuited to work, nor that feminism was insincere, but that institutions adapted to female preferences and constraints in ways that produced unintended consequences: heavier bureaucratization, risk aversion, HR governance, speech regulation, and the treatment of normal male behavior as a liability to be managed. Feminism, on this view, did not merely seek equal opportunity; it reengineered workplaces around moralized expectations that now structure who may speak, how conflicts are resolved, and which explanations are permitted. I don't know how far Andrews rightly discerns the net impact of women’s entry into white-collar workplaces on organizational efficiency, but I do know that contemporary public discourse cannot be trusted to assess such questions fairly.
"More than environmentalism, feminism has its natural enforcers. Its inquisition is staffed by legions of professional women who have been indoctrinated in its tenets and feel a duty to be offended if those tenets are ever challenged, questioned or transgressed. In this domain, reasoning is forbidden. Men who can't avoid noticing and thinking stuff had better keep their thought-crimes safe within the walls of their skulls."
I'm struck once again by how much of your argumentation consists of the witch hunting move of accusing people of holding views that they have never stated or would deny. That's why I'm creeped out by feminism as unphilosophical and anti-rational. It cannot abide by the rules of discourse that characterize a conversation with a propensity to lead to truth.
Drawing out implications of people's views, including those that they would prefer not to see, is not "witch-hunting" but a good Socratic service. That is the epitome of rational behavior. If anything it is you who are moving in the direction of witch-hunting by attributing dialectical stances to "feminists" that nobody here has taken. I have never seen *anyone* in the FD space make the argument "Inequality of outcome necessarily implies grave injustice and la la la I can't hear you trigger cancel culture." If you want to supply counterpoints, maybe you should start by reading what people are actually writing in this space and assessing the conversation. I'll post a link to Erika's "Sex-Realist Feminism" piece to get you started.
Are you not aware that there is, in fact, a real contingent of antifeminists out there now who actively argue that women should be excluded from a wide range of opportunities, including the franchise? This is a real thing. The "Repeal the 19th" memes are very trendy right now! Young women especially, if they trend towards conservatism or traditionalism, are regularly encountering it in their own social circles; they are actively pressed to explain why they should be permitted to vote, run for office, or pursue careers. In that kind of moment, it's just not reasonable to act as though "feminists" are a mindless, emotion-driven mass railing against a settled, common-sense traditionalism. That is just not where we are.
https://firstthings.com/sex-realist-feminism/
From that, it sounds like I'm not the type of anti-feminist you're attacking. That's good then.
Link to full post: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/moral-follies-of-the-information
"He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry" St. John Paul II, pray for us.