Feminism is a Dangerous Pseudo-Religion
Some reflections, for International Women’s Day, on the irrational and destructive nature of feminist belief
Janice Fiamengo, Mar 08, 2025
“I often joke with people that feminism has been like a born-again religion for me – that once I found it and let it into my life, my entire perspective shifted in such a way that suddenly, everything made sense – and that I feel compelled to spread that gospel.”
The author of this passage from Everyday Feminism claims to be joking about her “born-again” faith. However, feminism is accurately understood not as a social science but as a perverse secular religion, steeped in mythology and faith-based claims, and exerting a malign influence on adherents’ minds.
We see its results every day: the rage, the apocalyptic anxiety, the rankling discontent and festering bitterness. A recent American Family survey showed “liberal” (i.e. feminist) women to be markedly lonelier and less satisfied with their lives than “conservative” (less feminist) women, at least in part due, as the study’s authors theorized, to liberal women’s alienation from positive sources of meaning. No one should be surprised by such findings, for the so-called gospel of feminism is anything but good news.
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In what ways is feminism like a religion?
The following serves as a working definition:
A religion is a belief system that explains the origin and purpose of life on earth, posits a spiritual or supernatural dimension to human existence, involves faith in what cannot be definitively known, and results in the radically changed understanding and behavior of the adherent.
All of these are true for feminism, but they lead not to gratitude and peace but to grievance and pique.
Feminism offers an origin story: the patriarchy, an unjust social system in which elite white men oppress all other groups. Some, though not all, feminist theories also posit an ancient matriarchy, a nurturing, egalitarian, and non-exploitative society that predated patriarchy, in which human beings lived in harmony with one another and with nature. This is a feminist version of the Garden of Eden, protected not by a deity but by a reigning “ethics of care.” Here women held power and exercised it for the good of all. Some Indigenous cultures are of particular interest to feminists because they offer evidence of such matriarchal structures.
At some point in all feminist origin stories, humankind fell from grace because of male sin. Men invented and imposed a male-led structure of social relations that severed women from their power. Men also introduced other forms of hierarchical control based on race, sexual identity, and physical ability. Specific feminist theories have been developed to address these related forms of oppression. But all feminisms, regardless of their particular emphases and approaches, reject the notion that the male-led social order had any purpose other than exploitation.
