A Way Out Of Feminist Resentment

The founder of this newsletter, Adam Coleman, prefers not to see racism as the main cause of his own problems or the black community in general. He chooses to adopt a positive “victor” attitude towards racial injustice rather than feeling defeated or resentful. “Yes, black Americans were victims,” he told the Plebity podcast. “However, I see us as victors, because we were able to overcome such odds… that’s something to celebrate.”

Many women have had a similar experience of liberation from the feminist belief that we are permanent victims of the “patriarchy.” We have realized the negative consequences of such beliefs in our personal lives and communities and embraced a more positive and balanced attitude instead. 

During my own slow spiritual awakening and conversion to Christianity, what I believed about men and sexual politics changed radically. Once I had subconsciously absorbed notions of the intrinsic “wrongness” of masculinity (and many other things) and the unjust, perpetual mistreatment of women. I had viewed my own bad experiences with men through this lens. 

I now see my former worldview as infantilizing and disempowering, and it poisoned the bonds of relationships with others and strangled the possibility of genuine love. 

I am not the only woman to experience the negative effects of feminist ideas. Recently I read two memoirs of female adventurers within evangelical churches that are cautionary tales. First, Into the Deep by Abigail Favale, who describes how feminist ideology corroded her evangelical faith in God. It led her to dislike the Bible because it is a “creation of men”, and “teeming with things that completely contradict my most deeply held beliefs and ethics.” Ultimately she rejected these progressive beliefs and converted to that bastion of traditional patriarchy, Catholicism.

Author and Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing’s 'Black Victim to Black Victor: Second Edition' is now available at Wrong Speak Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble! Pick up your copy today!

The second book is by a woman who is still immersed in progressive ideology, and demonstrates how feminism can affect our perceptions. She recounts numerous perceived wrongs from churches and her powerful reactions to them. 

When a man in her former church, whom the author acknowledged was generous and caring, advocated for male-only preaching, it made her “insides boil with anger.” She read an extraordinary amount into this interaction, including that it is born out of a universe where men are “benevolent demigods who control women’s movements in the world.” She felt “patronized” and “infantilized” and had a “blood-boiling, shrinking, sinking, shocked, confused feeling.”

This same church, she admits, invited her on to leadership teams, welcomed her onto the ministry training program, and encouraged her when she said she wanted to go to seminary. When another brave pastor suggested therapy – and I’m not surprised he did so – she dedicated a whole chapter to her rage. I recognize a little bit of her attitude in my former self - it is not good for anyone to be so angry. 

I communicated with her before writing a critical review and she was gracious enough to respond thoughtfully, even when I asked challenging questions. For example, I wondered if she recognized any validity in the suggestion that some of her difficulties were due to her own attitudes, rather than the fault of the people who hold different beliefs. But then, her whole book was her justification for the latter. 

Of course, women have had their fair – possibly unfair – set of difficulties throughout history. But just as Coleman feels about his skin color, I believe that we women have the choice of viewing the woes of our sex through a much more positive lens than feminism permits. Many women do overcome through the power of love and still appreciate the goodness in men, however imperfect they may be. 

We can look at women through the ages who achieved “great” things in the eyes of the modern world, such as Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, slavery abolitionist Hannah More, and women’s campaigner Josephine Butler. 

They wielded power, they had ‘careers’, and/or they worked towards the good of women and society as a whole. In Butler and More’s case, they successfully campaigned for the rights of the oppressed in a way that modern progressives would celebrate if only both women had not been religious conservatives. 

We can value a feminine perspective on human history, that women made a good and equally important contribution to society through the domestic domain, even if the wives and mothers of good men are not always acknowledged for their achievements. But public recognition is not everything, and neither is power, nor a career. 

Not to deny that I and many women have been mistreated, nor that these woes are not important, and our traumas are sometimes difficult to overcome. However, an aggressive and biased feminist worldview does nothing to help the person experiencing such challenges, even if the rage feels cathartic at first. 

Such a mindset also ignores the wrongs committed by women and inspires poor behavior towards men. In turn, men have developed their own poisonous reaction to feminism through the “red pill” movement and the “manosphere,” which are no better than the ideology they critique. Worryingly, the “anti-woke” movement that challenges anti-racism seems to degenerate into racism at times, too. 

Instead of these negative, pessimistic, nihilistic, vengeful, narcissistic worldviews, we have a choice of adopting a kind, positive attitude that overcomes wrongs with spiritual growth and recognizes the good that can exist in all people, while being willing to challenge real injustice. Such an outlook can liberate people from the entrenched resentment that strangles our ability to love - the only force that can truly liberate us.  

Heather Tomlinson is a freelance journalist. Find her work on Substack and X

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.