A great many woes have been laid at the doorstep of feminism, but one of the saddest must be the attitude it fosters—mostly among conservative men—: I mean the attitude that women really are inferior, if not in intellect, then at least in temper. Chesterton was notoriously opposed to the involvement of women in politics; he seemed to think that it would coarsen them, that they were in some mystical sense creatures too fine for its smoggy air. For somewhat similar reasons, he was opposed to their being regular members of the workforce. He was extraordinarily prescient.

Today there are men who have embraced the masculinization of women (they are usually called liberals). They fail to grasp the fact that this insistence on women doing and speaking and acting as men do, speak, and act, implies a perfection in masculinity that is as absurdly chauvinist as the psychological fancies of the discredited Sigmund Freud. That a woman might want to be a woman, that it might be better to be feminine, is a thought that does not seem to have crossed their enlightened minds.

The other kind of men (who admit, very loudly, to being conservatives) are rather fond of the Kinder, Küche, Kirche model, though they rarely put it in so many words. Unlike Chesterton, who saw woman’s genius in her universality (in regard to this quality, he compared her to Aristotle—high praise indeed!), they take an inordinate pride in their own specificity, in contrast to the woman’s more homely (in all senses) abilities. They point out women’s preference for staying home, not as if the preference were a noble thing, nor even as if it were chivalric of them to honor that preference, but in tones that suggest it will be best for the Little Woman after all. They regard the failed experiment of feminism with something approaching Victorian glee. There is even, among the less savory proponents of the new masculinity, a certain tendency to genuine chauvinism—not to that imaginary thing supposed to have existed in the forties and fifties, but the real McCoy, that imagines women were created for men.

The sad deficiency of both these views is all the more apparent in contrast to traditional Western understanding of a woman’s role. While it may not always have been practiced without exception (as Chesterton admits) it was preached to perfection by none other than that centerpiece of Western civilization, St. Thomas Aquinas. Commenting on the creation of woman, he remarked that

It was right for the woman to be made from a rib of man . . . to signify the social union of man and woman, for the woman should neither “use authority over man,” and so she was not made from his head; nor was it right for her to be subject to man’s contempt as his slave, and so she was not made from his feet.

This is a rational account, and hard for anyone to disagree with. But I have found that the true test of a man’s opinion of women is to give him, not a rational account, but the following story (paraphrased from the wonderful Alice von Hildebrand).

When God set out to create, He had a definite hierarchy in mind. He began the physical creation with light, energy, matter—the simpler physical things. He went on to create planets and stars, suns and moons—still working with inert matter, but treating it in more complex ways. Then He created plants—life—vegetable life, to be sure; but life nonetheless and the highest form of being yet. After creating plants, He turned to the lower animals—fish and birds—followed by the higher animals, the mammals. Then He created man, the crowning jewel of the physical world, because, having reason, he partook not just in vegetable and animal life, but in the life of God Himself. But God was not done yet; there was yet a higher being left for Him to create: and that was, of course, woman.

Most men, on hearing the story, immediately begin to argue. This is natural, and they really shouldn’t be rebuked for it. It is an exceptional man who does no more than laugh.