Book Review: The End of Woman by Carrie Gress

This is one of the hardest book reviews I’ve ever written because I want to stop every man, woman, and child in their tracks and tell them to read this book, to force them to read it.

But instead of force, I’ll try and woo you.

I’ll woo you by telling you that this book is filled with philosophy and history but is also very approachable. It’s not filled with seminary, doctorate-level language. It’s clear and concise. It may stretch you a bit, but it will be attainable.

I will tell you that Gress takes us from first-wave feminists to today and shows that the end was always transgender, gender dysphoria, and the loss of women. She will show you that the end was always the overt destruction of the family. That the end was always a full abandonment of home. But Gress does this by showing the terror and horror endured by our mothers so that even when they ask the wrong questions and get the wrong answers (42 anyone?) we can face them with pity. This book is filled with the sheer heartbreak of wanting to scream and rage at a villain but finding yourself only weeping at the lost and broken girls and the lost and broken boys.

I will tell you that even when Gress helps you pity the men and women driving the feminist propaganda forward, she never lets them off the hook. She never justifies what they did, the choices they made, and what they teach. Their victimhood is never an excuse for the people they hurt, their rebellion against God, or the marriages and the next generations that they ruined. Pity is present but not an excuse.

I will tell you that Gress will remove the blinders, and make you see how all our art, media, and stories have been waging a quiet, cold civil war on us and our homes and our people for decades, generations. You won’t be able to unsee it once she makes it clear how steeped in free love, occultism, and communism feminism has been from the get-go. That’s not a threat, it’s a warning.

I will tell you that Gress will show you how our sons and daughters are being ruined and broken and destroyed and raped by the feminist movement. This isn’t an easy book to stomach, but it is necessary. If you read Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe by Voddie T. Baucham Jr., and Strange New World: How Tinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution by Carl R Trueman you should also read this. You will finally feel like you can combine the pieces that intersected throughout our culture and history to bring us where we are today.

I will tell you that Gress gives us hope in the end with a call to answer the question, “What is a woman?”, that she reminds us of our power and our grace and our worth. The last chapter made me weep like a weary soul finally finding home, like a soldier on the front line getting pulled back for a shower and a hot meal, like finding out I wasn’t alone.

And I will tell you that Gress didn’t make a fight in the church. She points all believers at the enemy and not at each other, and she did this so well that I only had one tiny paragraph I disagreed with her doctrinally on. This isn’t a denominational argument, but a call to the fight of all believing women.

“Their now predictable reaction to their circumstances was the belief that ‘the system’ must be thrown out and that women must become free from the demands of men, children, and family life. Most moved away from convention, seeing it as the source of their problems, and moved toward free love and self-actualization, unencumbered by men, children, or home.” – First Wave Overview

“During this period, the tender relationship between mother and child begins to be erased from feminist rhetoric. There are no more testimonies like Mary Shelley’s agony of missing her dear Wilmouse after his premature death, nor are there heartrending testimonies like Sojourner Truth’s of losing her own thirteen children to slavery: ‘I have born thirteen children, and seen most of ‘em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me—and ain't I a woman?’ Any discussion of what a mother’s heart feels for a child drops off dramatically, with feminist rhetoric rife with the language of drudgery, burden, and exhaustion that afflict the lives of women with children. Tender memories like Mery Shelley’s recollection of hair and giggles, wonder and joy, no longer have a place in the movement.” – Second Wave Overview

“Mean girls, or mean girl tactics, are those used to hide data, mislead, or outright lie about information that might hurt the feminist movement. Mean girls frequently employ smiles and/or euphemisms as part of the deception to avoid betraying their devious actions.” – Tactics of the Second and Modern Wave

“Their goal via the sexual revolution was to reject motherhood, monogamy, and marriage in favor of hookups, money, glamour, and it has left so many unfulfilled, and deeply unhappy.”

“The essential piece used by feminists is the iron wedge between the sexes, tearing apart the united force of husband and wife and making them mortal enemies.”

“Where feminism has taken the place of religion, the queen bees are the stand-in for the clergy, preaching the gospel of discontent, narcissism, self, worship, and human sacrifice.”

“’People’ and ‘human beings’ became a shorthand for referencing women without reference to motherhood, homemaking, being a wife, or anything else that might point to what most women have done throughout history… This usage has led, in part, to the inability of most of the Western world to define what a woman is.”

These are just a handful of my favorite quotes. What I found in reading this book was a mirror to see places where the feminist movement had strewn bad seeds that I was still letting grow in my garden. It made me pity the women caught up in all this, and it made me better understand my current culture while running as far away from it as possible. It made me stronger and clearer and braver in my thoughts. I know where I stand and why and with whom, and it isn’t the feminist or any of their lies.

I stand with mothers, wives, and ordinary woman in my home, at my hearth, right where God designed me to be, and knowing my power.

I have quoted and will continue to quote much from this book. I have several articles to publish over the coming weeks that unravel more of Gress’ influence on my thinking and perspective. I imagine I will have more, some overt and some subtle. I wish I had the gift to give all of you a better review filled with supportive quotes from other sources, but all I can say is that I’ve read this book twice. I’ve highlighted, underlined, and annotated much of it. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve cleaned the grime off the window of history and understand, truly understand how the feminist movement came about, how it tied itself to communism, how it has actively sought to destroy the family and men, and why I live in the mad-hatter world where no one dares define a woman. I have been waiting a long time to read this book, I just didn’t know it until this year. Please, please, please get this book, read it, pull back the curtain on the art and stories you imbibe and that your sons and daughters are imbibing, and go on the offensive in your own soul and in your home so that our daughters don’t become the next lost girls.