In a heavily footnoted essay, fundamentalist homeschooling ministry Vision Forum, publisher of “Manly Men Write Manly Letters,” “Be Fruitful and Multiply,” “Passionate Housewives Desperate for God,” and “Manliness,” awards me the “2009 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award” for following the greatly-missed feminist writer Ellen Willis in trying “to destroy biblical patriarchy and the Christian family.” Here’s an excerpt:
But to really understand the genesis of Joyce’s obsessive passion to debunk patriarchy and prolific parenting, one needs to understand her philosophical origins. Joyce was personally mentored and trained to become a cultural revolutionary by one of the most significant radical feminists of the 20th century, Ellen Willis. Joyce and Willis were both at NYU, where Joyce was a student and Willis served as head of NYU’s Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism. A founder of the ultra-fringe Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, Willis would later state that “Redstockings’ dominant political tendency was a kind of neo-Maoist materialism” and that her personal politics were a “blend of cultural radicalism, populism, and Marxism.”
Like the book that Joyce has just authored, Willis’ mission was to destroy biblical patriarchy and the Christian family. “In my view,” Willis wrote, “radical feminism did exactly what its opponents accuse it of: it played a key role in subverting traditional values and destabilizing the family…” She expressed her hope that the debate over marriage would result in “an implicit revolt against the institution of marriage into the very heart, further promoting the democratization and secularization of personal and sexual life.”
Update: Feministing’s Courtney Martin weighs in on the momentous occasion.
Update II: Beacon Broadside and Killing the Buddha cross-post my acceptance speech:
I’d like to thank Doug Phillips and Vision Forum Ministries for awarding me and Beacon Press their “2009 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award” for the publication of my recent book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a journalistic investigation of a growing fundamentalist lifestyle that opposes all contraception and women’s careers, proudly affirms biblical patriarchy, commands wives’ and daughters’ submission to husbands and fathers, and teaches homeschooling followers that feminism and gender equality– even women’s suffrage– is the root of all modern social ills.
As Phillips movingly writes, nothing captures the image of this feminist bogeywoman better than the Vulgarian Child Catcher, the bloodthirsty enforcer of the “self-indulgent” child-free state documented in the historical work, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This Child Catcher, who seems possibly on loan from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “with his net, hook, crooked black hat, odd funeral clothing, and protruding snozzola,” sniffed out offending children and killed them. According to Phillips, I’ve done the same in my book (a “little book,” he writes), which has been called by numerous critics (including evangelical flagship, Christianity Today) an empathetic and respectful entry into a lifestyle that would be easy to mock. Apparently, it takes someone with Phillips’ “vision” to see that most of those reviewers are also “feminist leaders and ‘child catchers’ of many stripes,” and that even Christianity Today has aligned itself with anti-family forces on a mission “to destroy biblical patriarchy and the Christian family.” Read all …
