Jon Barlow points us to the sad testimony of Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the radical feminist, Alice Walker. Her words show why feminism has failed (and always will) — creation and the fall sum it up. Listen to a few of Rebecca’s comments:
[Speaking of her son] ”I love the way his head nestles in the crook of my neck. I love the way his face falls into a mask of eager concentration when I help him learn the alphabet. But most of all, I simply love hearing his little voice calling: ‘Mummy, Mummy.’
It reminds me of just how blessed I am. The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from ‘enslaving’ me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late”
“I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.”
“Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. . . . But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities - after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.
My mother would always do what she wanted - for example taking off to Greece for two months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain selfish?”
“But the truth was I was very lonely and, with my mother’s knowledge, started having sex at 13. . . . Now I simply cannot understand how she could have been so permissive. I barely want my son to leave the house on a play-date, let alone start sleeping around while barely out of junior school.
A good mother is attentive, sets boundaries and makes the world safe for her child. But my mother did none of those things.
Although I was on the Pill . . . I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don’t remember my mother being shocked or upset. . . . Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I’d never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.”
“The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn’t take into account the toll on children. That’s all part of the unfinished business of feminism.”
“Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.”
Rereading this, the paragraph about her abortion struck me: She believes that it was “the right decision” to destroy what she acknowledges to have been a child. She still hates motherhood if she can believe that.
Even for the disillusioned, dropping all the old positions takes time. I choose to look at this incoherent sentiment (It was right to kill my child, but I suffered for it) as an oddity along the way of her road to a fuller recovery. It is one thing to realize that your feminist upbringing has some glaring defects; I imagine it is quite another to self-consciously abandon some of its most fundamental tenets (like the “right” of abortion). But give her time and she may come around there, too.
When I first became Reformed I told myself that I would NEVER be anything but a Reformed Baptist, b/c child baptism was non-negotiable for me. So I thought at the time….but if you had heard me explaining my theologyin 1997/98, I would have been downright incoherent on the sacraments and the Church, even though on soteriology I had become solid.
yeah, Valerie, you’re right of course, but there’s a lot of guilt and pain in her statement that may well eventually lead her to repentance. What was striking to me is how her rejection of ideological feminism was forced upon her by the reality of her nature. she’s a woman and her testimony indicates the amount of energy that must be expended to suppress your God-given nature and calling.
But still, there’s a lot of confusion here for sure.