Freedom

I was recently running an imaginary conversation through my head (I do that a lot, sometimes to prepare for a coming conversation, sometimes to work out an argument, and sometimes because I'm bored. Usually 'cause I'm bored). I played a modern 'feminist' against the Church with the claim "the Catholic Church oppresses women and gives them no freedom."

The response is quite interesting: "The Church gives women the freedom to be women. Society denies her this right and tells her to be a man. Who really oppresses?"

To suggest that freedom is bound up in the idea that one can have the freedom from their very nature is absurd and dangerous. It is like suggesting that trees are oppressed because they have not been given the freedom to be mountains and all trees out to be mountains because they are bigger and stronger and exert a greater influence on the world. And once all the trees are mountains, the mountains will be bare and ugly.

The nature of something is what makes it what it is. A 'freedom,' or rather exile, from one's nature is a destruction of one's being. When a tree becomes a mountain it can no longer be a tree and thus is no longer the same being.

Society's attack on feminity and masculinity lies upon these lines, that nature is as interchangable as clothing. One can simply shuck their feminine nature for a masculine one just like changing pants. The problem is, it is more like leaving the pants and changing the person inside of them. A lack of foundation results in a lack of person.

The only response is the freedom to be what one's nature is. If man is free to be a man he is not scared of it and has no reason to desire to be a woman and vice versa. If one can embrace their nature they would have no reason to change it for both masculinity and feminity are, on their own, perfect, complimenting each other.

A woman's greatest gift is to be female and a man's to be male. It cannot be given up.