5 Ways In Which You've Internalized Feminism

You are (probably) more of a feminist than you think.

None of us are totally immune to the cultural trends of our time. We absorb them unwillingly, similarly to how we absorb a native language, simply by being immersed in them. Over the last few decades, there has been a sustained cultural effort to dissolve every distinction between man and woman, redefine the language we use to describe them, and quietly displace the order God established. The real danger lies not in the conditioning itself, but in the fact that most of us think that, because we hold to the Christian teaching on marriage, family, and the roles of men and women, we are safe from the cultural forces that seek to confuse us.

But thinking that we’re protected ironically makes us more liable to be manipulated.

Even the man who believes himself most resistant to feminist ideology has likely internalized some of its premises without ever noticing the moment they moved in. In this article, I’ll share five of the most common ways in which this happens. At the end of this post, we’ll take a look at how you can actually eliminate these subtle feminist beliefs and truly resist the cultural forces of gender-role-confusion.

5 Ways In Which You’ve Internalized Feminism

1. Thinking that your woman should be less emotional

This is something that I recognized very strongly in myself some time ago. I found myself becoming frequently frustrated by the sensitivity of my girlfriend. I didn’t understand why “she made such a big deal” of things that I considered trivial, and I tried to fix whatever was going on by suggesting that she be less emotional. I don’t know if this has happened to you too, but in my experience, it happens to almost all men nowadays.

This is a direct result of subtle feminist conditioning, because it’s a passive conviction that women should be more masculine, more similar to us. We think that if only they were less emotional, the relationship would flow better.

Women are different than men. They experience emotions differently, they view the world differently, and they need different things. You and I know this rationally, but when it comes time to manage the emotions of the women that we love, we fall into the feminist trap of treating them as we would a male friend: we offer solutions and try to get them to toughen up, becoming frustrated when they don’t, instead of offering the emotional stability and learning to provide them with the emotional safety that their feminine hearts require. Of course there are times and situations when your girlfriend or wife can be excessively emotional, but most of the times, it’s just her being a woman, with all the richness and complexity that real femininity carries.

2. Forgoing your leadership in the small things

Carrying the burden of leadership in a relationship is a very difficult job. Our feminist era always focuses on the “privileges” of leadership, and conveniently ignores all the pressures that come with it.

What has happened as a consequence is that most men, in an attempt to be kinder, seek to share the role of leaders of their relationship with their women, unknowingly placing an unwanted burden on their shoulders.

Every time you delegate a decision to your wife or girlfriend, no matter how small, you are tasking her with the weight of choosing. There are obviously times when this is the right decision, and in a properly ordered marriage, the woman will be responsible for making some important choices. More often than not, however, what I’ve seen —in myself and others— is simply cowardice disguised as prudence.

A man is tasked with leading even in the small decisions, and contrary to what the feminist zeitgeist claims, when you act decisively and when you try to avoid burdening your woman with making the important decisions, you are actually acting in a charitable way by giving her the space and freedom to thrive in her femininity.

3. Measuring your own worth by productivity and achievement alone

There’s a feminist notion that has been internalized by the vast majority of the population, and that is that a person’s value is primarily found in career output and measurable achievement. This is a premise feminism borrowed from a materialist, achievement-based view of human worth. Even though this is obviously opposed to our faith, many Christian men (including myself in many cases) have unknowingly absorbed this same metric, evaluating our own dignity by output rather than by our fidelity to God and by God’s love for us.

The feminist worldview is completely at odds with the Christian worldview. It focuses too strongly on the outside variables that surround a human life instead of on the interior life, the pursuit of virtue, and the humility required to surrender the heart to Christ. In that sense, feminist ideas don’t affect us just relationally, but they can affect how we understand the most fundamental questions regarding human dignity and worth.

If you find yourself letting your worth be determined by the titles you hold, the money you make, or how prestigious your career is, you’ve likely internalized the feminist idea that humans are only worth something when they make their career their number one priority.