Misunderstanding Sex-Realist Feminists: A Response to Maibritt Henkel

In her famous essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," the magnificent Dorothy L. Sayers mourned the misunderstandings that arise because of conversationalists’ failures of understanding language. How can it be that people could hear something and misunderstand it so profoundly as to be unable to have a coherent conversation about the topic altogether? For Sayers, this problem came down to educational failures. This is often true in our time no less (and arguably more) than it was in 1947, when Sayers first gave her speech. Yet I have been noticing in our public discourse of late, even very highly educated people are struggling with the same issue Sayers noted—and not necessarily because of inadequate education. Rather, sometimes at fault are underlying assumptions that individuals bring to a topic—worldview baggage, if you will. I thought about this baggage and its ability to utterly distort perception when reading Maibritt Henkel's essay for The Argument last week about the September Fairer Disputations convention in Rochester, at which I had the privilege of speaking on a panel on care work, along with Ivana Greco and Stephanie Murray. (I also wrote my impressions of the convention for Mere Orthodoxy.)

The convention in Rochester in September gathered for the first time many of the regular writers from the online journal Fairer Disputations. In addition, though, the public and in-person nature of this event meant that it was the first opportunity for some who have never encountered the ideas of sex-realist feminism or read Fairer Disputations to be introduced to the general idea of what such an unusual feminism might mean in a world where, since the Second Wave at least, feminism has meant something rather different than what this community is after. 

Sex-realist feminism, at its most basic level, affirms the dignity of women qua women—and the dignity of men qua men. It seeks to erase competition between the two through encouraging flourishing for both—in the context of family relationships, in particular, but also in a modernity that is defined by all kinds of casual violence against women. Furthermore, in a world that increasingly attempts to erase all differences between men and women (and transgender ideology is the pinnacle of such erasure), sex-realist feminism affirms the importance of recognizing the biological differences between the two sexes, and the significant implications to women's lives that their physical bodies present. 

Maibritt Henkel was present at the conference, and her essay, "My weekend with the 'sex-realist feminists," is subtitled "The pro-life conference that wasn't." It is a report of her subjective impressions. But what I found most striking in reading her report is the profound misunderstandings of the basic premises of sex-realist feminism. In a nutshell, Henkel found that the conference was not really interested in the important questions she had hoped to find addressed—and that it was not even pro-life in her understanding of the term. She furthermore found herself bewildered by the questions the conference speakers were interested in, including the devaluing of mothers and children. "No one hates children. Please be serious," she writes in one of the subheadings in her article. 

As multiple mothers at the conference would be happy to tell Henkel, this, alas, is not true. In so many policies that she notes she would like to see revised, we see a profound devaluing of motherhood and of children's lives. Modern America is profoundly "family unfriendly", argues journalist Tim Carney in his best-selling book by this same title. Furthermore, multiple writers associated with Fairer Disputations have published not only essays but also books on a variety of topics related to this—meaning, there is significant research that these writers have put together following years or even decades of work. In other words, there is much more research and reading I would encourage Henkel to do first—before reporting back on whether she still thinks as she does.

For this recommended reading list I could name Erika Bachiochi's The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision; Mary Harrington's Feminism Against Progress, which addresses the ways modern feminism dehumanizes women; Louise Perry's striking research in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; Angela Franks's remarkable book Body and Identity: A History of the empty Self; Abigail Favale's excellent The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory; Leah Libresco Sargeant's The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto; and my own book, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic. All of these authors, in addition to regularly writing for Fairer Disputations and elsewhere about issues pertaining to women and sex-realist feminism, were present at the conference—and Henkel spoke in person with at least some of them, as she notes. Other prominent speakers writing on these topics who were present at the conference include Freya India, whose recent book, Girls, is a NYT sex-realist feminist bestseller. Finally, Henkel attended the care work panel, on which, as I already mentioned, Ivana Greco, Stephanie Murray, and I spoke about the history of care work from antiquity to the present (the subject of my remarks) and on policy changes we would like to see today (the subject of Ivana's and Stephanie's remarks). 

Henkel seems deeply uncomfortable, though, with the idea of any "biologically fixed gender roles." She writes in concluding her piece, "By the logic of sex realism, it is always women who are at fault. You can't very well blame men for not taking on the burdens of childcare if they're just following their reproductive destinies. You can only blame the girlboss with frozen eggs for shirking hers." But this view does not express the view of any of the speakers at the conference! Indeed, as Henkel herself remarks, several women had expressed concern over some far-right men, whose anti-feminist stance includes support for repealing the 19^th Amendment. And the care work panel emphasized the contributions of fathers as well as mothers to the work of the home—indeed, one of the historical figures of care work that I talked about in my paper on the history of care work was Jesus as the Good Shepherd, a masculine model of compassionate care for children and adults alike. 

So how might someone who attended this conference misunderstand some fundamental premises of the sex-realist project so profoundly? Henkel's profile at the magazine states that she is "The Argument’s Gender, Families, & Culture fellow. Originally from Copenhagen, she graduated from Harvard in 2025 studying economics and social studies, with research focused on men’s role in feminism. She has previously worked at the Danish magazine Zetland, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and in political consulting." This background is important, because it highlights where she is coming from in her impressions of the conference and the ideas surrounding sex-realist feminism.

There are key things to note about Henkel's experiences in life so far, because they clearly color her coverage of the event. First, she has just recently graduated from college—so she has no personal familiarity with motherhood and the rearing of children. As one of the speakers at the conference—former British MP Miriam Cates—noted, studies in the UK show a significant difference in the political views and concerns of mothers and women who are not mothers. This is a grave concern for the evolution of British politics, Cates noted, because the absence of mothers in the voting booth makes for a less family friendly society. Second, "men's role in feminism" is a topic that FD has covered in various ways, but perhaps not in the way Henkel has learned about it so far. In my skepticism, indeed, I would like to know more about what Henkel means by “men’s role in feminism.” 

For instance, a former colleague of mine, who was a historian researching this very topic, has written a book arguing that Hugh Hefner and the Playboy empire were key players in advancing feminism. Indeed, Hefner and the Playboy project were feminist to the core, she argued. Their work is the model of men promoting feminism. Of course, sex-realist feminists would disagree. If this is the role of men in feminism Henkel has studied, a different kind of feminism would certainly be... confusing. And third, Henkel hails from Copenhagen, not America. While Scandinavian countries are well regarded for their exceptional support for maternal leave, they also have had exceptionally low birth rates of late. Last but not least, while Fairer Disputations is emphatically not a Christian project, a significant portion of speakers at the conference (and writers for the magazine) are Christians (whether Catholics or conservative evangelicals, like myself). This too makes a difference in worldview and in our interest in the larger questions of the purpose of men and women in God-created world. 

But perhaps it makes sense that a childless recent college graduate (and from a very secular college—and a very secular country of origin) would have a hard time wrapping her head around this project. About a year ago, I had a conversation with a Christian woman who had been a progressive feminist on gender roles much of her life. And then she had a baby. She was explaining to me, with utter surprise over her own life, just how completely her views on all matters of gender have changed. Overnight, she admitted, she had become a gender essentialist. 

Theory and ideas are all fine and dandy. But then real life crashes in, in the form of an eight-pound squish who will not sleep at night. So there you too will be, thinking about Aristotle (or, in my case, the Roman Empire), all while breastfeeding at 2:00am. 

And so, I want to thank Henkel for attending this conference that included a record number of babies and small children (my seven-year-old included) in attendance. And I want to encourage her and others who perhaps feel a similar sense of curiosity mingled with confusion about sex-realist feminism: Please keep coming to such events, join the conversations, and ask questions. In the Middle Ages, disputations were formal debates, where participants could ask difficult questions and debate over them, with the ultimate purpose of learning for all sides. Today, Fairer Disputations, deliberately echoing that tradition in its very name, continues to encourage this same spirit in support of the dignity of all women.