Marriage continues to be under attack as our decaying society embraces immorality and the deconstruction of Western civilization’s cultural norms and traditions. This is nothing new in the communist playbook, nor in Satan’s playbook for that matter. Their primary goal is to deconstruct the family unit, which makes you dependent on them and, as a result, gives them power over you.
We saw the beginning of this latest attack on marriage in our country roll out with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Many were enticed by the lie that they were trapped in the patriarchy and that shaking off its “shackles” would bring about freedom and equality for women. Then they were indoctrinated by the culture of the ‘70s and ’80s, which held that the working woman was the ideal. If women wanted to be relevant, cool, and empowered, they had to pursue careers just like men. Next came the educational indoctrination of critical theory of the ’90s and 2000s, which is all about power — who has it, who doesn’t, who should have it, and who shouldn’t. This led to the deconstruction and demonization of men and the replacement of them with the new dominant force: the feminization of society.
Helen Andrews addressed the feminization of culture in a speech she gave at NatCon here and in an essay she wrote for Compact Magazine here. I would recommend listening to or reading the whole thing because she makes some excellent observations and points. But in a nutshell, she’s saying that institutions and many career fields are becoming majority female, and that is not a good thing.
“Medical schools became majority female in 2019,” she noted. “Women became a majority of the college-educated workforce nationwide in 2019. Women became a majority of college instructors in 2023. Women are not yet a majority of the managers in America, but they might be soon, as they are now 46 percent.”
Andrews points out that this correlates with the rise of wokeism in timing and in substance. As institutions shifted from majority male to majority female, wokeness emerged. She notes on the substance, “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.”
She most certainly is not arguing that women shouldn’t be in the workplace or pursue careers. The problem, as she sees it, is that allowing women to control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses, will lead to the collapse of our civilization. Not because women are bad, but because men and women are different, and female modes of interaction are often not well-suited to accomplishing the goals of major institutions.
Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation,“ Andrews expounds. “Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism or negative sentiment, if it absolutely must be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments. The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it. The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.”
This is why the institution of marriage has also been undermined. With the rise of feminism and wokeism came the idea that men and women are the same or at least interchangeable. It’s the lie that if women are equal to men, they must be the same as men, as well as the lie that women don’t need men (and vice versa) in order to live happy, fulfilled lives. As more and more studies come out, revealing how unhappy and lonely both men and women are today, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
A Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the University of Michigan revealed that 12th graders are less likely today to say they want to get married than in the past. The survey showed that 67% say they would choose to get married, down from 80% in 1993. The percentage of young people wanting to have children has also decreased; only 48% in 2023, down from 64% in 93. Girls are now less likely than boys to say they want to get married. While the proportion of boys who say they want to get married is virtually unchanged from 1993, the percentage of girls has dropped from 83% to 61%.
According to Katie McCoy on the World and Everything In It podcast, these are all symptoms of the root problem. The core of the conflict is the application of critical theory, derived from Marxism, to gender. That is our current form of feminism. “Effectively,” she explains, “we are seeing all the chickens come home to roost, because now we have two generations since second-wave feminism, the sexual revolution that happened concurrently with that, where the message that women were told is it is effectively all about you. It is all about your experience. Your experience is authoritative over every other source of authority, including Scripture, including indeed nature itself.”
Essentially, anything getting in the way of a woman’s happiness is considered oppressive. As women are less and less connected to God and to family life, the more they are radicalized into this way of thinking and believing.
Andrews offers some useful solutions to the feminist takeover, which would help keep our nation from being drowned in the tidal wave, but those ideas will only do just that. They will not lead us back to a thriving, happy society because we can’t have that without traditional, whole families, and we can’t have those without God’s original design laid out in Scripture.
Only in Christ can men and women find their true identity — who they are and how rightly to relate to the opposite sex. Men and women will only find true happiness in a relationship that has God as its head, where men exercise servant leadership, sacrificial love for their wives, and strength under control, and where women submit to authority, surrender themselves for their family, and stabilize their emotions through Scripture.
From the moment marriage was first instituted by God in the Garden, Satan has sought to sabotage it, and with what he does best — lies. We have witnessed this again firsthand in our culture today. Men have caved to shirking their responsibilities, which has led to loneliness, destructive behaviors, and unhappiness. Women have followed the siren call of dominance and control, leading them to loneliness, destructive behaviors, and unhappiness. I’m sensing a pattern here. Perhaps instead of trusting the influencers, professors, or culturally accepted dogma, it’s time to trust God’s design for us.
