The Case for Christian Nationalism

Epilogue: Now What? | II. Gynocracy (Part 2)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

It is true that “Feminine empathy is good in itself, but its virtues arise only when constrained,”¹ but this true of all virtues, regardless of whether one classifies them as masculine or feminine. We are again presented with naked irony, because the case can be easily made that Wolfe’s own worldview is one of unrestrained virtues gone awry; can that not describe a philosophy that takes “masculine virtues” so far that the relationship between husband and wife is compared to a restaurateur and his chef employee?²

Take the bizarre celebration of obesity today. It makes little sense apart from unconstrained feminine empathy. Or what about hoards of mainly single, able bodied men from patriarchal nations who have migrated to Western borders? The West lets them all in and then has to conceal the spike in sexual assaults, and women will only quietly acknowledge their fear of going out in public…

The most insane and damaging sociological trends of our modern society are female-driven.³

In classic authoritarian fashion, Wolfe takes a hard-line framing of social issues that the average citizen may be concerned about and names an enemy driving the social ill. Imagine someone criticizing COVID policies of 2020 through 2022, but instead of directly naming the specific bureaucracies responsible they claimed that these wrongs were scientist-driven. Was COVID policy not also politician-driven and corporate-driven? Was it not also fueled by existential dread within the general populace? Likewise, there are multiple factors, both direct and indirect, in the issues he names. As with the GAE, Wolfe is again hypocritically engaging in his own Two Minutes Hate, this time towards women.

Wolfe next writes of a flamboyantly gay officer, lauded by his female compatriots, but despised by straight males, writing, “If the formation were exclusively male and they were not constrained by higher administration, the men would find ways to rid themselves of this officer.”⁴ I was in a male-only occupational specialty before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, but I can affirm that most soldiers have the same contempt for those who have a chip on their shoulder about their own masculinity, and who overcompensate with aggressive, stereotypical “masculine” behavior. These men often fall into the category of a Blue Falcon, someone who undercuts others to his own advantage. Wolfe will next accuse women of regularly doing this in professional settings.

But many men hesitate to fully integrate women in high-level discourse, because they suspect that inclusion will heavily gender the discourse… The fear is that women will take disagreement personally and frame the disagreement as an oppressor silencing the oppressed.⁵

It must be noted that, based upon his resume, Wolfe has never worked in the private corporate sector; since leaving the Army, he has spent his time exclusively in academia. Therefore, because he presents no evidence to substantiate this claim, it must be considered highly subjective and biased, perhaps even completely made up; this section reads more like a description of online, activist, or cable news discourse than everyday interactions in the real world. I have spent over fifteen years in the white-collar corporate space, and have a considerable amount of experience with executive meetings run by both men and women. In all that time, I have only seen one woman, a mid-level employee with no subordinates, play the “oppressed” card; she got nowhere with the complaint, because it had no merit. I have never seen a female executive even remotely suggest she was currently held back by her male colleagues - the notion would be ridiculous for the multiple VP- and C-level women I have worked under. I also have never heard a male manager or executive complain about female managers or executives in this manner. In my experience, “high-level discourse” in the upper-echelons of American companies, beyond the ubiquitous trappings of the idolatry of career, has a very healthy, egalitarian nature.

Wolfe ends the section with a call to build a society ruled by masculinity, but what he offers is not masculine at all, it is a beta-male’s imaginary ideal of a proto-masculine order. Women are not adversaries to be conquered and contained, they are fully human and of equal worth as men. A truly complimentarian masculinity allows women to offer their complimentary talents to any sphere, whether the home, the workforce, or government. Scripture restricts the specific office of church overseer to men (1 Timothy 3:1-7), but it takes no issue with female leadership in broader society (Acts 16:14-15). Ultimately, Wolfe’s argument against the “gynocracy” is one of weakness, because he must believe that his own innate masculine ability is not strong enough to succeed in female-led systems.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 450.

2. Ibid., 312.

3. Ibid., 450-451.

4. Ibid., 451.

5. Ibid., 452.