The current drama of history is a contest between two matriarchies: the Queenship of Mary, Virgin Mother, who co-reigns with and deferential to her son, Christ our King, and his heavenly Father; and the tyranny of evil stepmother Eve-ist Faux-Feminism, which serves the master Lucifer. Fleckinstein
In a remarkable piece ("The Great Feminization" Compactmag.com, October 16, 2025), Helen Andrews identifies the eruption of "woke" culture with the demographic transition, a decade or so ago, when women became the majority in important realms like education, law, medicine and other. She agrees that inflection point was the famous demise of Larry Summers at Harvard, in 2005, due to remarks about female competence and interest, at the highest levels, in science and math. The canceling was not in principle or according to clear argument, rather a visceral, emotional reaction of resentment, orchestrated by the now hegemonic feminism.
I would like to offer a further clarification of this monumental development, not to contradict, but to enrich the analysis. First, it is not femininity as such, but rather a toxic form of femininity that is ascendant: it is "eve-ist, non-Marian" femininity that has triumphed. Secondly, closely related. is the contemporaneous decline of wholesome virility that has allowed toxic feminism to fill the void.
Femininity: Marian and Eve-ist
Toxic femininity is what we inherited from Eve herself. In her surrender to Lucifer, she was an isolated individual, separated from, possibly abandoned by but at least neglected by Adam, depending upon her own resources, independent of spouse and God. Vulnerable, she surrendered to suspicion of God at the cunning words of the serpent. She decided to take things into her own hands...without communion with God or husband...and grab the forbidden fruit. She renounced her given identity as receptive, trusting, surrendered, serene and generous. She GRABBED the fruit. Then she influenced Adam, drawing him into her chaos.
In sharpest contrast is the femininity we receive from Mary, virgin and mother. She is fully in communion, from conception, with God. She is receptive, trusting, innocent, compliant. She is eager only to do what pleases the Father. She receives and conceives by the Holy Spirit. She lives a humble, quiet life in union with Joseph. She crushes the head of the Serpent.
The militant feminism that exploded upon us in the 1960s was entirely Eve-ist, not Marian: sexually liberated, suspicious of masculinity, disbelieving in God, self-determining, individualistic, careerist, status-envying, sterile, abortion-loving, resentful, competitive, materialist, consumerist, self-pitying.
This was not the sublime femininity of...say, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Theresa of Lisieux, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta, or Blessed Maria Teresa Demjanovitch of Bayonne!
Nor was it the femininity of an alternate school of wholesome, holy feminism: Mothers Drexell, Cabrini, Cope, Jadot, Hawthorne, Cusak, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elizabeth Leseux, Etty Helison, Faustina, Edith Stein (already mentioned), Sigrid Undset, Raissa Maritain, Alice von Hildebrandt, Gertrude von Fort, Elizabeth Anscombe, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Caryl Houselander, Maisy Ward, Adrienne von Speyr, Madeleine DelBrell, Flannery O'Connor, Eva Peron, Mary Anne Glendon, Tracey Rowland, Helen Andrews, Mary Harrington, Rita Simmons, Debra Herbeck, Heather King, Chiara Lubich, Janet Smith, Helen Alvare, Anne Eberstadt, Margaret Rose Laracy (a favorite of mine), Abigail Favale, Margaret McCarthy, Kimberly Hahn, Patricia Snow, Anne Hendershott, and many more.
Nor is it the St.-Joan-of-Ark like femininity-with-virility we see in figures like Nicky Haley, Condoleza Rice, Margaret Thatcher or...my current favorite: Amy Coney Barrett.
Notwithstanding her radiant femininity, maternity, and charismatic Catholicism, Barrett stands in marked contrast with the faux-masculinity, effeminacy of Donald Trump. In the current term of the Court, she promises to be the distinctive voice, capable of restraining his actions according to the Constitution. She is calm, rational, objective, sober, steady,non-partisan, confident, clear, based, restrained, serene. Trump is quintessentially the non-virile, toxic male: agitated, irrational, emotional, resentful, jealous, attention-seeking, volatile, unhinged, unrestrained, obsessed with himself, indifferent to institutional protocols. In her recent book and current round of interviews (note especially that with Ross Douthat) she clarifies that the Court's decisions are not personal, not about Trump, but about the future of our country. She is our judicial Caitlin Clark: clear, competitive, forceful, determined, steady...and yet feminine! That is a miracle!
Another striking figure of virile femininity is Erika Kirk. Breathtakingly beautiful in every way; but strong, clear, decisive, determined, fierce. She is Catholic and Evangelical. She may ultimately exceed her husband in influence for the good. If so, it will be because her radiant femininity is infused with a holy, wholesome, vigorous masculinity...largely through the love she shared with Charlie.
The Decline of Masculinity
The great puzzle and tragedy of our time: the virile men who returned victorious from the war to work hard and raise large families failed, in large part, to communicate their masculinity to us, their boomer sons. My analysis: we are all Momma's boys. Our fathers were out working long hours...lots of overtime and career advancement...and our mothers happily left the work force to concentrate on the kids. At the same time our economy exploded with prosperity. By around 1960 our shared standard of living was surely the highest, on such a large scale, in human history. If our fathers were hardened like steel in the Depression and War, we were softened, pampered and indulged by affluence, too much mothering, not enough fathering. We are the spoiled generation.
I speak with the expertise of an insider. A certified boomer, I am a "mama's boy in recovery." Always have been. Soft in temperament, I profoundly crave infantile regression: return to the enclosing womb, the warm breast, the maternal embrace, vision of the exquisite face, all the comforts of feminine attention. Fortunately, I am painfully aware of this disordered compulsion. Many men are not; and so they use porn; stay on their phones and computers; refuse to commit to marriage/career/family; contracept/cohabit to retain maternal comfort without the cost of marriage and paternity. I benefited in the long run by being exiled from the maternal paradise by the rapid birth of 8 younger siblings so I had no choice but to find my way as a man in the cold world of competition, confrontation, and warfare. (okay, dear Reader, I am being melodramatic here! It was not that bad!)
En masse, upon entering adulthood in the late 60s and 70s, we embraced the sexual revolution, contraception, materialism, resentment of authority and tradition, the hegemony of the Imperial Self. We abandoned our Catholic faith and the heroic ideal of manhood.
Militant feminism, suspect of full throttle masculinity, preferred a soft, androgynous variety: gentle, non-competitive, domestic, therapy-friendly, quasi-pacifist. Toxicity was attributed to police, military, all-men clubs, competition, evangelicalism, traditionalism, capitalism.
Traditional rituals and rites of passage, absolutely necessary for the itinerary into noble virility, were systematically replaced by the amorphous ideal of androgyny. This takes, of course, an extreme expression, not so much in homosexuality as such, as in gay and transwoman identity. But it takes a more pernicious form across the mainstream as, for example, all-boy prep schools endorse feminism and sponsor LGBTQ clubs.
And so we welcome the primal, volcanic explosion of raw masculinity in the Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk and even Donald Trump phenomena. We hope to channel it into nontoxic, wholesome, even holy forms in the tradition of our fathers.
Effeminate Church
That Andrews' demographic model requires correction and elaboration becomes evident when we consider the Catholic Church. Holy Orders remains restricted to men. Notwithstanding recent appointments of women to administrative positions, leadership remains 99% male. Yet, our Church has largely gone woke and effeminate.
The Church inherently, internally is feminine as Marian, receptive of the love of the Groom. But "effeminate" is not feminine. It is a perversion of the masculine: a weakness in identity, a faux-femininity springing from a depleted or poisoned masculinity. It is a pathology.
This is manifest in the priest scandal, which afflicted teenage boys predominately; as well as in the gay culture that is no longer so covert. It pervades the entire clerical culture and the Church itself since the Council. Arguably, today's Church is less the product of the (Spirit-inspired) Council than of the Great Emasculation. Priests, bishops, theologians and many laity are simply "mamma's boys," lacking in integral masculine confidence, certainty, fortitude, chastity, humility, and magnanimity. They are heavy on compassion, kindness, tolerance...which is good. But these are not tempered by justice, truth, retribution, wrath, ferocity, courage and authority.
The fetish with synodality is effeminate: it replaces the masculine, decisive, authoritative, apostolic synod with a vague, feel-good, indecisive, bureaucracy of endless listening. At the same time, the protocol is tailormade to be manipulated, behind the scenes, in the effeminacy of a disguised progressive agenda.
The new, absolute ban on capital punishment is effeminate. It is not based on principle and reason: it does not firmly call the thing inherently evil. It is in part a foggy, illusory trust in prison systems as adequate protection; in part an avoidance of the reality of retribution, here and in the afterlife; but mostly a sentimentality, a distaste for the practice. It is emotional, not intellectual. It is effeminate.
The papal/episcopal disapproval of borders is admirably compassionate, but in its implicit approval of Biden-type open borders it lacks the masculine sense of boundaries, rules, protection, order, and rule of law. It is effeminate.
The papal surrender to the Chinese Communists and the Cultural Progressives of the West: effeminate, a failure in virile, truthful witness.
The crisis of the Church is one of effeminacy. No wonder men are not drawn to the priesthood!
Conclusion
The two defining saints of the 20th century were St. Mother Theresa in her maternity; and St. John Paul II in his paternity. He in his iconic virility. She in her even more virile, heroic, holy femininity.
Male effeminacy is an infection, a sin to be overcome. As is "Eve-ist Femininism." But femininity and masculinity are creations of God. They are intrinsic to the order of reality. They are finally inexorable. We see around us surges of wholesome, holy femininity and masculinity. This is a Joy. This is our Hope.
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