Carrie Gress Is Still Wrong
Guess who's back-back-back, back again-gain-gain
I have zero desire to turn this newsletter into a Matt Fradd Reaction Cyclone (although wow, you all love those) and I know you don’t want that either.
But Carrie’s back on Matt Fradd and that’s how I spent my morning.
Look, I took it to prayer and do think that I have something to offer in this sphere. I don’t ever aim to tell you what to think but instead I attempt to demonstrate a way of thinking: a process for engaging with ideas that allows you plenty of room for disagreement without diving into that sweet, sweet cesspool of sin and middle fingers. If nothing else, I’m starting to feel like my mission with this newsletter is just to show people that every single human is just a flailing ball of emotions trying their best, but the more and more we can dig deeper than those emotions to our true identity as sons and daughters of Christ, the more fulfilled we’ll be, and the closer we’ll be to what we were meant to be.
Secondly, they spent lot of time discussing “publications with Catholic and feminist in the name” and while I’m obviously not the only platform, I’m one of the larger. So, y’know. Invite me into the ring and I’ll climb right in1.
I’m not going to do the throat-clearing I did last time; all of the disclaimers that I don’t read hearts and I don’t think Matt Fradd is a total grifter. I think he has done some things that are very helpful to the church. His book The Porn Myth is brilliant. I’ve met him twice (very briefly, years ago, and he almost certainly does not remember) and he was very gracious. I have never read Carrie’s books, and can only speak into her public interviews.
What follows are my opinions on an interview between Matt Fradd, an incredibly popular Catholic YouTuber, and Carrie Gress, a working mother with a PHD who travels for her career while promoting the idea that women should stay home with their children full-time.
I also apologize that there’s no way on earth I could completely recap a 2 hour + interview. I highlighted what I see as the highlights but there are many other things that could be discussed. I’m sorry if I missed something you found vital—let me know in the comments.
Lastly, to be brutally honest, this interview was less interesting than their first and essentially a rehashing of their first conversation with a lot of side anecdotes. It kind of meandered on things that I wasn’t sure had to do with the bigger picture—that men and not women mainly go into construction work, and that people with dyed hair are fighting against nature, and that Matt saw some prostitutes in Switzerland . . . if I squint I can kind of see the threads of arguments they were trying to make but man, I think Matt’s conversations would benefit from some serious focus and editing2. It also spent a lot of time talking about her critics, and what bothers me is that I do feel as if I and others have bent over backwards trying to be generous to a woman we see as getting a lot wrong, and not feeling like I got that charity back. But—hey. I run a newsletter called the Catholic Feminist. The skin is #thick.
We begin:
Carrie Gress has decided that her definition of feminism is the correct one, while simultaneously insisting that it’s a shape-shifting term.
A theme you’ll see here is that there were many times throughout Carrie’s interview that I found her self-contradictory, and this is the main one. Carrie both says that her extremely narrow definition of feminism is the only one and that people just say feminism means whatever they wants. She says multiple times that feminism is the belief that women should separate men and children, because life would be better without men. This definition is accepted by almost nobody who calls themselves a feminist, and it seems to me that you should at least ask the people claiming the title what they believe feminism is. Otherwise, you’re arguing with a straw man. Even the most liberal of feminists, many of whom I have far more serious disagreements with than I do with Carrie, would not identify with that definition. It’s a definition made for the applause of those who want to dunk on it, which I find distasteful and, to be frank, an excuse to avoid getting your fingernails dirty with the other side’s argument.