Feminine Courage

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Eikon.

As a father of five daughters, I think a lot about what it means to be a good woman.

This topic comes up somewhat often in our reading or choosing which films to watch, and discussions that emerge from these engagements. Many recent stories that seek to inspire young women fall into the popular stereotypes of the “girl-boss” and “strong female lead.” But too often these portrayals seem to present feminine strength in ways that mirror the masculine. A common message is that women can do anything a man can do, that they are just as strong as men in the same ways as men. This runs up against both Scripture and nature. Men and women are different. Thus, why do we need to encourage them to be strong like men? Is there not a uniquely feminine way to exhibit strength?

This is dangerous territory. Even many who embrace the label “complementarian” can be reticent to provide any definition for what “masculine” and “feminine” mean.

In this issue on the natural differences between men and women, I would like to offer my contribution by focusing on feminine courage. To begin, I need to explain that there are not particularly male or female virtues. Rather, all the virtues apply to both sexes. However, the ways these virtues are lived out are inflected differently according to the sexes. One’s sex colors the life of virtue. It conditions how the cardinal virtues, such as courage, are expressed.

Thus, with regard to courage, we shouldn’t assume that women should be courageous in the same way as men.

As Herman Bavinck explains in his wonderful little book The Christian Family:

The distinction between man and woman was always known among all people groups, and taken into account by all of them in terms of practice. Nature teaches this distinction, and no science or philosophy is needed to acquaint oneself with this. Man and woman differ in physical structure and physical strength, in psychological structure and psychological strength; thereby they . . . are called to different duties.^[1]

Many recent scholars have helped us retrieve sanity about our sexuality: men and women are not interchangeable. C.S. Lewis hit this message in various ways, especially in his famous essay against women priests,^[2] but then also from a fictional direction in That Hideous Strength. In both texts, Lewis hammers his polemic against the modern, progressive conflation of equality with interchangeability. No, men and women, though equal in important respects, are profoundly different. Pay attention to their bodies — which is exactly what the anti-human forces in That Hideous Strength want to downplay and eventually eradicate. But our bodies provide clues for our unique vocations as men and women, including how the virtues are to be expressed.

The reactionary (or, “sex-realist”) feminists^[3] that have recently emerged recognize these realities. Due to these embodied dynamics, Abigail Favale defines “woman” thusly: the kind of human being whose body is organized according to the potential to gestate new life, i.e. motherhood. And “man” is the kind of human being whose body is organized according to the potential for fatherhood.^[4] Erika Bachiochi explains that women and men are not interchangeable in their reproductive contributions, and because of their embodiment they bear asymmetrical duties toward children (though mothers and fathers are equally responsible for their children).^[5] A century earlier, Bavinck recognized similar facts: “Nature cannot be changed which places on the woman the burden of motherhood and obligates her to care for the child for some time after birth.”^[6] No matter what changes occur in society, the nature of the human species remains the same, and that due to the constitution of women, they have a unique vocation related to child-bearing.

Women bear children. This is not the only thing they do, of course. And there are many other callings they can pursue and good that they can contribute to this world. However, there is something fundamental about the constitution of a woman, about the form of the female, that foregrounds this vocation. My friend Alastair Roberts puts it this way:

Every woman, by virtue of her sex — irrespective of whether she is married or has children — is the bearer of a maternal form of identity. The very form and basic processes of her body declares this meaning and everything that she does and is … inflected and elevated by the fact that she represents this reality. … It is within her body that the child grows and upon her body that it feeds.^[7]

Think back to the Garden of Eden. Many assume that the thing described in Genesis 2 as “not good” regarding Adam’s solitude was his lack of companionship. While that may be a part of it, he was also incapable on his own of fulfilling the cultural mandate given in Genesis 1 — to “fill” the earth. He probably observed the sexual complementarity essential to reproduction (in most creatures) while naming all of the animals. Yet none complemented him in this way. Until Eve — the mother of the living. And her punishment in Genesis 3 is not a general human punishment, but related to her constitution as a woman, as a mother and wife. As Bavinck interprets this, “that which was to have been a wife’s greatest delight would become her greatest pain. From this time forward, she cannot fulfill her calling apart from leading a life of continual physical and spiritual pain.” And yet, she cannot desert this calling nor liberate herself from it, for she remains a woman. And, in fact, there is a promise beneath the curses she receives: humanity will be saved through the seed of the woman. One of her eventual seeds, Mary, will bear the saving seed, Jesus.

The capacity to bear children is a great gift and task that is unique to women. They bear an asymmetrical burden in this essential human activity.

Encouraging Femininity

How does this relate to courage?

A while back I texted my very pregnant wife a message that confused her: “I’m so proud of you for being brave with this baby.” She did not understand why I was calling her “brave.”

I think this reflects a serious problem in our society more broadly. We do not honor the sacrifices women make in childbearing, the courage they exhibit in facing disproportionate dangers so that the human species continues. Why do we fail to see this as courage?

The classical Christian analysis of this cardinal virtue is found in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.^[8] There Thomas defines courage (or, “fortitude”) as the virtue that prevents reason from being overcome by bodily pain. It strengthens one in pursuit of the good in the face of dangers, especially those dangers that can lead to death. But Thomas focuses chiefly on the dangers of battle.^[9] He mentions other dangers that could lead to death like sickness, storms at sea, attacks from robbers, and so forth; but he says that these do not relate as directly to courage because they don’t seem to come upon a man in his pursuit of some good. It is in battle, chiefly, that such dangers come to man directly on account of a good to be defended. Thomas does concede that courage can apply to some forms of personal and civil business that, while not war, do incur the threat of death. But never does he mention the great ordeal that regularly brings women near death in giving birth.^[10] There is clearly a good pursued here (i.e., the life of a child), or even “defended” against pressures to abort in our day. I see no reason to neglect extending this virtue to apply to bearing children. The choice to seek pregnancy or keep the child no matter how it was conceived is a choice driven by self-sacrificing love. And Augustine, in On the Morals of the Catholic Church, defines courage as “love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object.”^[11] If this doesn’t apply to carrying and birthing a child, I don’t know what does. To bear a child is to brave dangers out of love.

Think even of those women who not only face the pain and dangers of delivery, but also the worries, stigma, or shame associated with some pregnancies resulting from non-traditional conditions. For instance, consider women who bravely bring a baby into this world knowing the father will not be there to care. Maybe in some traditional circles a young woman has sex before marriage and conceives, and faces social disgrace. While the sexual act in this scenario is sinful, terminating the pregnancy is to add another sin — one that directly kills. It is courageous for a woman in such a scenario to carry this life — doubly so if the pregnancy resulted from a form of sexual attack. Our communities should encourage such women in their sacrifice and help however we can. These young women in such trying circumstances should find inspiration in another young woman who braved stigma as a result of a non-traditional pregnancy: Eve’s antitype — Mary. While Protestants refuse to refer to her as co-redemptrix, Mary’s courage was certainly key in the birth of the saving seed.

As professor Angela Knobel (University of Dallas) remarks,^[12] there are lots of feminists who present the disproportionate burdens placed by society on women with regard to childbearing as unjust. But it is clear that this asymmetrical burden is not just the product of society, but of nature. And, Knobel explains, we need not understand such burdens in a negative way. Life’s greatest and most vital undertakings are burdensome. Almost anything worth something is costly. And “when only a select group of people are capable of bearing a vitally important burden, we do not see any injustice in asking them to bear it.” For example, she mentions the expectations we place on young men to defend the nation in battle. We tend to see those who are asked to bear disproportionate burdens for others not as slaves or drudges, but as heroes. The problem, Knobel argues, is that today we don’t tend to view childbearing as a heroic task.

Women are pressured in all sorts of ways to pursue anything other than being “just a mother.” As if bringing life into the world and caring for children is not one of the highest possible vocations imaginable — one upon which the future of civilization and humanity itself fundamentally depends. Commercial spaces commonly treat large families as an annoyance, and companies tend to treat the pregnancies of their employees similarly. What if we developed a cultural ecosystem that was friendly to families^[13] and treated women who bear children as the heroes they are? Pregnant women take on a task that is vitally important to humanity, and one that is difficult, painful, and even dangerous. And yes, it is a type of sacrifice. Not only does it take a toll on a woman’s body, it also takes them out of other labor they could be pursuing. They likely have to pause other tasks for which they are qualified and passionate.

Pregnant women who carry their children to term and bring life into this world are heroes. We should treat them as such. This might go a long way in resisting the feminist forces that seek to elevate women by making them like men, and thereby ironically erasing feminine glory. Bearing children is not all women are called to; but it is a fundamentally feminine task upon which the human race depends. It is costly. It is courageous. Thank you, all you strong women.

^[1] Herman Bavinck, The Christian Family, translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman (Christian’s Library Press, 2012), 25.

^[2] This essay was originally published under the title “Notes on the Way” in Time and Tide, Vol. XXIX (August 14, 1948). It was subsequently reprinted under the title “Priestesses in the Church?” in the posthumous book God in the Dock, published by Eerdmans.

^[3] See Mary Harrington, “Reactionary Feminism,” in First Things (June 2021); Erika Bachiochi, “Sex-Realist Feminism,” in First Things (April 2023).

^[4] These ideas are worked out in Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender (Ignatius Press, 2022).

^[5] See Erika Bachiochi, “Women, Sexual Asymmetry, and Catholic Teaching,” Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality 19.2 (August 2013): 150-171.

^[6] Bavinck, The Christian Family, 138.

^[7] Alastair Roberts, “Why a Masculine Priesthood is Essential,” Alastair’s Adversaria (August 30, 2014), https://alastairadversaria.com/2014/08/30/why-a-masculine-priesthood-is-essential/.

^[8] Thomas discusses the cardinal virtue of fortitude in II-II, Question 123.

^[9] See II-II, Question 123, Article 5.

^[10] In a later section (II-II, Question 139, Article 1) Thomas does expand his presentation of fortitude to cover other dangers, and any difficult work. However, this comes only in his discussion of the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, and thus this does not refer to all persons, whereas cardinal virtues do. The argument in this essay is that courage applies to women broadly who bear children, not just Christian women.

^[11] Augustine, On The Morals of the Catholic Church, chapter 15. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1401.htm.

^[12] These comments are from her lecture for the Thomistic Institute podcast, titled “Can a Feminist Be Pro-Life?” The recording can be found here: https://podcast.thomisticinstitute.org/can-a-feminist-be-pro-life-prof-angela-knobel/.

^[13] See Tim Carney, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be (HarperCollins, 2024).