 Hey guys, I'm Anthony Johnson, founder of 21 Studios. Thanks to tune into the channel today. I'm here at CPAC 2022 in Orlando, Florida with the author, Keri Gress. She's the author of Ultimate Makeover. Show you guys that. As well as the Anti-Marry Exposed, a book I found from Elliot Hulse about a year and a half ago. I'm a friend of mine, one of her speakers. Hi, Andrew, and CPAC 2022, and how are you doing today? It's great, thank you. It's my first time here, so it's been fun. And you came from Virginia, you said? Virginia. So tell me about the basics of these books. First, the Anti-Marry Exposed. What's the fundamental thrust of it? Well, the Anti-Marry Exposed really looks at second-wave feminism and how, really, from the very start, they had all these ideas that they were promoting, and we're just living them out. We've been seeing this ideology play itself out for the last 50 years. The problem is really that we've told women that they need to be like men, and that's the real problem is that women aren't men. So the idea is to help us understand what womanhood is and how it's been destroyed. So you're criticizing second-wave feminism. What about third-wave feminism, fourth-wave feminism? Well, they both come out of second-wave feminism. The seedbed of the ideas came from second-wave feminism. But absolutely, I have problems with third and fourth. But if you're going to roll it back, let's look at really where it started, and that was certainly second-wave feminism. So what are some of the main basic points in the book for the Anti-Marry Exposed? What are your main criticisms of second-wave feminism? I think the one thing that most people don't realize is just how baked into the cake it was. I mean, the fact that we can still be seeing signs that say, smash the patriarchy. I mean, this is a 50-year-old slogan that they haven't had to change. Like, most movements have to change and update themselves. They haven't had to do it because there hasn't been enough pushback. Do you believe we even live in a patriarchy in America today, or is that delusional? No, I think it's amazing what, you know, the fact that they're still fighting that is just kind of absolutely ridiculous to me. So yeah, I think that the big issue is that they've had these ideas and they have been able to take over media, academia, politics, Hollywood, fashion industry, magazines, all of these things. Everything. So women don't really even know what it means to be women. We just know what it means to be the kind of women that they tell us that we should be. And what's happened? We have absolutely miserable women. We've got, you know, all the metrics show that women are really unhappy with it. You mean birthing persons? Menstruating persons, because we're not all gonna have babies, right? So, yeah, exactly. So before we move off the smash the patriarchy bit, in my opinion, and I've seen others say this too, smash the patriarchy may have been kind of code for like smash fatherhood, smash the family. Do you have opinions on that? Yeah, and this goes right back to Kate Millet. Kate Millet wrote sexual revolution and she passed away and her sister Mallory Millet has been talking about all that Kate did. And they had this Maoist litany of sorts that they would chant and that was the whole goal, was to really destroy the family. And they knew to destroy the family, you had to get rid of monogamy, you had to get rid of fatherhood, you had to get rid of the patriarchy, but you also had to put in its place abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, all of these other things that destroy the culture. New ideologies, basically. Yeah, yeah, which it's all Marxist. I mean, and there's also, the other thing that's fascinating is this and also another layer of the occult that was really involved in it from very early on. And of course, we know that the Judeo-Christian tradition is weak, that paganism always comes in and especially for women, I think that women feel like that's a way that they can feel powerful because really all of this is about power, whether it's trying to steal masculine power or sort of this celebrity culture or this idea that women have to be empowered. That's always the word that's used, it's always about power. Well, the future is female. Well, exactly. Haven't you heard the news? It's another one of those slogans that's so old and they just keep recycling because we haven't pushed back. So really what this book does, I think in a lot of ways, though, is also show the depth of compassion that we need to have for women because of the fact that most of us have been totally indoctrinated in this and have never had another avenue of what femininity looks like exhibited to us. And this is one of the things I talk about all the time now is we need to start offering women an alternative to thinking about themselves as women and it needs to be done on a cultural level. This is actually the entire genesis of why I started Make Women Great Again, the conference. That's awesome. Because women had nothing. They had feminism and nothing else. Yeah, that's exactly right. So I've been working a lot in terms of trying to develop other products. We have a line called theologyofhome.com, it's a blog but also is a line of products. There's a book too, right? There are books where the third one is coming out this May. So they look like magazines but it's our ideas and values pushed through the book instead of the obnoxious ones that we are exposed to all the time through like the Gwyneth Paltrow's and all of that. So it's, I mean, in a certain respect, it's exciting because I think we have a great opportunity here. I mean, it's a totally underserved market thing. 42% of women are pro-life and yet nobody would know that based on what the culture says. So if we can sort of start tapping into those women and let them know they're not alone and that they're important and needed and heard, I think that can go a long way. It's okay to be female, right? It's okay to be a woman. It's a great thing to be a woman, yeah. One of the things I've said, I like to know your opinion on it and my convention about feminism is that in many ways it's become the religion of modern women. It's replaced almost everything else in terms of guiding their actions in real life. Yeah, and abortion is a sacrament. You can't, you have to have abortion in order for all of it to hang together because that's really why the sexual revolution can work. And that's, the lie is that children are gonna get in our way of our happiness and our fulfillment. And if you can, allowing us to be like men and if you don't have abortion and if you have children, then you're not gonna be fulfilled. That's the lie. So yeah, we have to really start exposing what these lies are that women have been fed because we're not happy. We're just more medicated, I think, is really what we're seeing. Yeah, more than ever. Yeah. So your mother herself, how many children you have? I have five kids. Wow, nice. Yeah. That's a lot, yeah. Yeah, no, it's okay. Well, by today's standards it's a lot. Yeah, but. And has that said to do both your beliefs and your religion too, Catholicism? No, absolutely. I mean, it's one of those things I firmly believe that God has given me the gift of motherhood. And I need to be open to those gifts in all the ways that I try to be open to everything that he's given me in my life. So, and it's, they're my greatest joy. I mean, my life has changed because of them. I still have a PhD in philosophy and I've written 10 books, but all of that pales in comparison. And actually my book was canceled, the anti-Mary was canceled last year. And I always think like, even if I get canceled and nobody ever hears from me again, like it just doesn't matter because. How was it canceled? What was the plan banned from? It was on Facebook and Instagram wouldn't allow it on its marketplace anymore because they said it went against community standards. Yeah, it was a, it was kind of a big deal. And it was on Russia times and all the Eastern European media was covering me and Breitbart and the usual people in the US but not mainstream media. So yeah, so that happened. But yeah, ultimately I'm a mom before I'm anything else. So. I love it. I love it. It's a great thing to be. How does feminism line up with Catholicism? Are these two antagonistic? Are they, how compatible are they? Yeah, they're not really compatible. And this is the fascinating thing actually and really hard thing because there are some feminisms that are written by Catholics that are very nuanced with lots of distinctions and philosophical points that separate themselves from second-wave feminism. But it's still the same word and that is what can be so confusing because then you have a lot of people that don't know these philosophical distinctions. They don't know that this kind of feminism is an espousing in the patriarchy and whatnot. So when you have second-wave feminism and Catholicism try to work together, which I think a lot of people do very well-intended people, like let me put these things together because feminism is popular and Catholicism isn't. They don't understand that they're like, it's two sides of a magnet. They are not going to fit together because one of them is against the patriarchy and the other one is patriarchal. And there's not to be ashamed of in that. Do you view Christianity as a completely patriarchal religion? Some of my friends or Christians do. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a way, we can look back at scripture. This is not even, you know, it's an Old Testament. This isn't just Christianity. But look at the order of creation. And the problem is that we stigmatized what it means to be a woman altogether. It's only, you know, women have to fit into this male mold and we don't even have a grammar for speaking about what a woman does anymore. You know, nobody can define womanhood. So, you know, if you're going to look at this through this prism of, you know, the patriarchy is bad. Well, it's only bad if you're looking at it in terms of, you know, the denigration of womanhood. So yeah, I think that they're very incompatible. I also think it's fascinating though, because this idea of mixing feminism with Christianity, you know, as well intended as it is, it seems a little bit wrong-headed because you would never say, you know, we're going to try and convert the Nazis by mixing that with Christianity. We're Nazi Christians because we want to get rid of Nazis. Like it just, it's a very odd way to try and reach people. Like oil and water. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think it's a really big, I think it's a mistake. And I've taken to just not using the word feminism at all unless I have to because it's so confusing. It means so many different things. You know, almost to a woman, I mean something different. So it just doesn't even have any real value behind the language anymore. Yeah, I think that's also how it's been so effective. It's very vague and like fluid. So if you ask a million- Yeah, yeah, exactly. It sort of fills in your blanks for you. What do you think about the feminism we've seen over the past, say, 10, 15 years where it's gotten like super radical in my opinion? We see things like kill all men, the features female. Hillary Clinton almost became president of the United States and said that right after she lost. And the pink hats, and this is really getting out of control in my opinion. Yeah, well it actually isn't new. A lot of the stuff was totally baked into the cake. It was just all of this anger at men was there from the very beginning. Phyllis Chesler is one of the grandmothers of the movement. She's written a book about it exposing all of the things that these women, they call themselves the lost girls because these are just incredibly broken women. Most of them had mental illness. I mean, Chesler describes all of this as someone on the inside who loves these women. But she's explaining that these women are so broken and they found one another and they found the media and they found a way to get their message out. So we basically had the most broken women on the planet kind of determining what the next 50 years are going to look like for women. So yeah, I think it's just a, it's playing itself out because what it really is is about power and they know that they're very effective if they're victims or they're bullies. If you watch the view, this is what happens. You've got, you've got. I'll run an interview. Do you mind? Thanks. So you've got either the women are playing the victim card or they're being bullies and shouting people down and silent canceling them. So I think it's just, it is about power and so the fact that we're seeing these things shouldn't surprise us because it's exact, it's that ideology just accelerating. And I think there's also kind of a frantic nest to it and there's also this element of just being so associated from who they are as women that they don't really know how to react anymore. So it just comes out as rage and violence and anxiety and angst. This is what I found with young women even when I was back on the dating market let's take a couple years ago. Young women studies have no idea how to be a woman. I mean, they see things not like on their phone. They have birthing men with pregnant bellies like this stuff's really gotten crazy. Right, yeah. No, it's really sad because I think we need some incredible role models and they're out there. We just need to do a better job of perpetuating them. And I think as conservatives we have also thought of these things as just fluff. These things aren't, you know, a magazine is really not important and we've completely underestimated the power that a magazine has to influence women and the power that these celebrities have. And we just haven't taken it up in terms of the use of media and culture and really interjected our own values. And the amazing thing is is that when we do that, what is it? It's beautiful. It's compelling. Women, it resonates with women. They don't, they get it, you know? And it's just a matter of showing them but we have to find ways to show them and that's what we're not doing. I want to move on a little bit to this book. So The Ultimate Makeover. This is a book on the transforming power of motherhood. Can you talk to me about the basis of this book and what led you to write it? So I wrote this book. I guess I had four children. I just finished my doctorate and, you know, I just, I had this insight at one point that I was hoping, you know, with motherhood I was expecting every week to get easier. You know, okay, next week the baby will stop teething. Next week the baby will, you know, sleep through the night. You know, at all these expectations and they just kept getting dashed. I just, it was just hard work. And finally it was one of these like light bulb moments like, oh motherhood is actually supposed to be challenging and that challenge is there because we're selfish and we have, you know, I've lived my life, you know, I was 35 when I had my first child and, you know, I had all these habits and these different ways of dealing, you know, dealing with only myself and then my spouse and all of those- You were well into adulthood at 35. Well, well into it. So yeah, there was a lot of things that had to be rubbed out of things that I just wasn't even aware of that, you know, that's what children do is they help us become better people. And so that's really the basis of this book. You know, I wanted it to be a very jargon-free book and a lot of the books that we write on womanhood are too elevated. They're not something you can just hand off to any woman and have her enjoy. And that's what I wanted this book to be was, you know, the chapters are short, very anecdotal and just get people thinking about, you know, why motherhood is so hard because that's the reason why people don't have more children or don't have children because it's hard. But, you know, if you had to ask somebody what's your most prized possession, a parent, they will say they're children, then why don't we want more of them, you know, because it's hard. And if we can get past that point of seeing it as just hard and recognizing that there's actually incredible gifts for us in those challenges, then, you know, I think we view it very, very differently. What are your views on Thomas Aquinas? I believe you quoted him quite a bit in this book. And I was tweeting on Twitter like, as soon as I read these quotes, I was just like dumping him on Twitter. Right, that's, no one's ever asked me that. Yeah, I have a PhD in philosophy, so I studied a lot of Aquinas as a graduate student. You know, I don't know. It's just an incredible thinker. How many influence would you write in this book though, right? Yeah, in terms of drawing from Aquinas and Aristotle and this idea of the virtues. The virtues are truly the way the Greeks define happiness. When we live a virtuous life, then that's the way through which we become happy. So the more that we grow in virtue, virtues are like powers that we have. You know, think of patients. Like, when we're impatient, we can't do things. But if we're patient, we can do things. And so I think that's just a great example that we need to develop these things so that we have the capacity to do more. And it gets us out of our own self. You know, it gets us out of narcissism. And that's what something like motherhood does. And that's certainly, you know, what Aquinas and Aristotle talked about as far as if you want to be happy, that's how you do it. It sounds like there's millions of women on Instagram and TikTok that need to read your books for months. Yeah, I would love that if they've read my books. So, yeah. I want to take a step back to a question I thought of earlier and just remember now. You've probably seen, and I've even seen this in Catholicism a little bit. Obviously it hasn't gone anywhere. There are women and other denominations of Christianity that want to be preachers and they're pastors and stuff. Friends of mine who are Christian pastors like really, really, really hate that. I've even, I think I've even seen in Catholicism, women are trying to push to be priests, which I don't think is going to happen. What are your thoughts on that? It's been going on for a long time. You know, I think it's highly problematic. And again, this comes back to the fact that we don't understand what it means, what womanhood means. And I've written another book that you don't have called Theology of Home, The Spiritual Art of Homemaking. But in that book, my co-author Noelle Marying and I really focus on the idea of trying to create this grammar of womanhood and trying to help people have ways to speak about woman. And so we compare it to very basic things like gardening and things that people can understand. And we have a lot of just amazing pictures in this book as well. But that's one of the big problems is we don't understand what a woman is and what she has made biologically to do. You know, our form and function go together. They're not meant to be separated. So this is why women have the bodies that they do. Even our arms, you know, if you look at my arm and it's got this bend in it, well, why is there this bend? So I can cradle a baby. You don't have that bend in your arm. You know, it's just basic things like that that we- I'm a non-birthing person. I think that's on your business card, isn't it? Thank you. So in any event, I think we need to get back to that understanding that women are really made to help shelter, protect, and generate life. And we do this on ourselves and we do this on our husbands but we mainly do it with children. And it can, but it can also happen on a spiritual level. So even if we look at religious women, like nuns, I mean, they have this amazing experience that mimics the biological experience that women have. You know, a woman's pregnant and pregnant, seed of life, and then she gives birth to a child. She's the first one that knows about it. And then she's, you know, develops over time and finally the child is on its own. You know, she raises it so that it can have its own life independent of her. Well, the same thing happens in religious life for women that they have these spiritual seeds that are planted in their souls. Mother Teresa is a great example of this, that she had this idea to help the poorest of the poor in India with what happened. We all know Mother Teresa has, you know, this incredible order of women that help the poorest of the poor throughout the world. So it was this single idea that like a child was came to life and she, you know, when she died, it could live on without her. So it's this kind of idea of this beautiful, active receptivity that I think we've really lost. And that's just really important for us to start speaking of in a language that doesn't feel weird or odd but that actually like makes sense to us. Like common sense femininity. There you go. Yeah, common sense womanhood. There you go. So you have a lot of thoughts, obviously, on feminism and women and femininity and motherhood in the same sense, both as a PhD and philosophy and as an author, what are views on masculinity and sort of the collapse of masculinity that we've seen along the same track with feminism and women? No, I think they're actually, you know, intimately connected because of the fact that this was part of their effort. And this is the amazing thing. I mean, I call it this ninja move of feminism because they have effectively completely silenced men. They've done it very, you know, just in a remarkable ways. Again, this victim or bully, you know, take your pick. Mansplaining, stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. And they found all this language to just sort of shut you down. And, you know, I don't fault you for it because I think it's, most men have the best of intentions. They want to love the women in their life and they don't know how to do it. And they're seeing all the same thing that women are. And so they don't know how to navigate all of these pieces either. So, you know, I think the big thing is really just to try and get around the jargon and try to just get back to just these, again, this common sense and not allow this division to keep festering between us. Because it's, and I see this a lot. I get a lot of, you know, men will write me and say things publicly or privately that they know they can't say publicly about women. And, you know, I think what feminism has done. Gloria Steinem talked about, you know, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bike. Well, the bike doesn't need the fish anymore. You know, men are frustrated and given up. And, you know, they've finally gone to a place where they're not going to follow women because women aren't really women anymore. So, anyway, it's incredibly tragic. And I think, you know, I applaud you for trying to bring back awesome masculinity. I'll do it for women too. So final question. What was your kind of initial gut reaction to make women great again on the hat? I think it's great. Yeah, I think, I love the idea of making women great again. I love the idea of helping women know who they are and know how to use the gifts that they've been given in their bodies and minds and souls to help and serve others instead of just themselves. Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. I appreciate you seeing your seat back 2022. Maybe see you soon. Maybe see you next year. Maybe at the 22 convention. Sounds great. Thanks, Gary.