XX Vs. XY: Feminist Theology, Fatherhood, And Motherhood

Andrea Pia Yates has been found guilty as charged in the case of the systematic, methodical, premeditated murders of her own children. She chased them down, and used her superior strength to hold them under the water, as they struggled in mortal terror for their lives.

The little ones she killed that day, in an act of horrific brutality, were: Paul, age 3; Luke, age 2; John age 5; Noah, age 7, and little baby Mary, the image of innocence at only 6 months of age.

Yates, 37, will spend at least the next forty years of her life incarcerated, staring at the walls of a prison cell.

This was the right verdict. While millions wanted the Texas jury to flip the switch, it is fitting that Andrea Yates spend the next forty years in a small, cold, damp cell, knowing that society has pronounced her guilty as charged.

Killing children, as Andrea Yates did, is wrong, and there is no excuse for it. It doesn't matter what her state of mind was. It doesn't matter what her psychiatric history was. When an adult hunts down and kills five children, this is wrong on an absolute level, and must be recognized as such.

Not everyone agrees. Feminists, as represented by the National Organization for Women, do not.

The Texas Chapter of the N.O.W. put together a (now-unsuccessful) legal defense fund called the Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition. One of their leaders, Deborah Bell, proclaimed that one of their "feminist beliefs is to be there for other women".

Is this the feminist view of motherhood? Of maternal empowerment? Do they consider killing one's own children to be representative and indicative of what motherhood is?

Because the feminist deconstruction of the essentiality of fatherhood is so overt, it is easy to overlook how feminism negatively characterizes motherhood.

Feminism regards homeschooling mothers as incompetent rubes who need to get on board with the government-enforced concept of "it takes a village to raise a child".

Feminism regards motherhood itself as something which needs to be divorced from fatherhood, both figuratively and literally. To the feminist movement, motherhood is an unfortunate reminder that a) men exist, b) men co-procreate, c) men often get along with the women they love very well. Often, get along so well that the human race gets brand-sparkling-new members.

Feminist syndicated columnists characterize motherhood as an innately oppressive situation, and mothers as potential killers, a la Andrea Pia Yates:

Anna Quindlen, feminist syndicated columnist, said, "Every mother I've asked about the Yates' case has the same reaction," Quindlen wrote. "She's appalled; she's aghast. And then she gets this look. The look says that at some forbidden level she understands."

So according to Quindlen and the National Organization for Women, "every mother" understands hunting down and killing five innocent children. According to this feminist theology, "every mother" wants to kill her kids. Not figuratively, but literally.

And yet reality still exists outside of feminism's collective subjective perspective: five children are dead. Andrea Yates, their mother, killed them. These are the facts, and they are not in dispute. Incredibly, the N.O.W.'s National President, Kim Gandy, still recently said, "The National Organization for Women is troubled by the March 12 guilty verdict" in the trial of Andrea Yates.

Clearly, the proponents of feminism, who employ the phrase "in the best interests of the children" to justify their social agenda, would side with a killer rather than with five innocent children who were hunted down and destroyed by that killer.

Most mothers would not do as Yates did, and are not natively inclined to do so. Equally, most fathers would not do as Yates did, and are not natively inclined to do so.

So why are feminists willing to paint Andrea Yates as an iconic emblem of Quindlen's "every mother"?

Because within feminist theology, the Y chromosome is the sole source of fault and failure in this world. Feminists speak of "subverting the dominant paradigm", which they then label "patriarchy", otherwise known as fatherhood. Through abortion, matercentrism, and the divorce courts, deconstructing the essentiality of fatherhood has always been and will always be the number one goal of feminism, the umbrella under which all else falls.

The only way that feminists can pursue this number one goal is by setting up a standard "Us and Them" paradigm, with those who have an XY chromosomal combination on one side of the aisle, and those who have an XX chromosomal combination on the other.

Thus, the actions of a killer mom must be, within the collective subjective perspective of feminism, both universalized to all who have the XX chromosomal combination, and divested of any moral culpability.

Even though that means siding with a systematic, methodical killer over her innocent little victims.

That's very sad. Just as most men/fathers are good people who treat their children well, most women/mothers are good people who treat their children well also.

In zealous opposition to any taint that reality would bring to their extremely polarizing 'Us vs. Them' paradigm, feminism manages to impugn fatherhood and motherhood simultaneously.

That's very sad. Moral culpability, character, and every ability not purely physical are equally distributed between men and women, between fathers and mothers. In order to respect good women/mothers and good men/fathers, we must as a society proactively recognize that the majority of women/mothers and the majority of men/fathers are better than feminism gives them credit for being.

To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Isaiah at isaiah_flair_2002@hotmail.com .

Do you really think that living in a prison, is going to bother this woman? Do you really think she has a single regret?

It did not bother her to kill those kids. It will not bother her to be faced with their deaths for 40 years. They are alreadly long gone out of her mind.

Killing her kids bothers her about as much as going out to dinner bothers you. She won't think about it or worry about it ever again.

Why do you think the conscience of this killer is anything like yours? It isn't. She will have an easy life in prison. She will have it easy with no responsibilities. She will have a TV, a bed, three good meals, and a butch to be the husband she always wanted.

Get real! Forty years of punishment? Only someone who has never been around such a murderer or seen inside todays prisons could believe it.

It's hard to say if realization will kick in. I've witnessed my mother's intense guilt over an abortion for thirty years.

Ms. (for "monster") Yates will have to work hard to not remember Luke, John, Noah, Paul, and Mary.

I agree with you: I think it will hit her at some point, though she must be blocking it out presently just to survive. I don't read her as an across-the-board psycho devoid of all conscience. I think she was twisted inside by a variety of conflicts and that rage (directed towards???) was an integral part of her ability to carry out FIVE drownings.

She deserved the death penalty for what she DID. Period. Motivation may interest the psychiatrist, but action interests the law. Or it used to.

Feminists are unwilling to accept the truth: that while most men/fathers and most women/mothers are decent people who love their kids and would never hurt them, there is a very small percentage of women/mothers and men/fathers who are capable of acting in the definitively filicidal manner that Andrea Yates and Nikolay Soltys did. Andrea Yates is not representative of most women/mothers, and Nikolay Soltys is not representative of most men/fathers.
>br> And MOST feminist do not say most fathers or most mothers are bad. MOST feminists are not the way this author represents them. Some are. He wants to bash feminists as collectivist "haters" and collectivisly "wrong-headed" yet he he himself is collectivist in his diatribe against feminists. There are lots of differnt types of feminists. NOW is not representative of most feminists in the world, nor even perhaps in the USA. Even if they were, I rather doubt NOW holds all the opinions this author claims they do. NOW is certainly up for criticism, but the collectively lump feminist with NOW and even with made-up precepts of NOW is stupid, especially when decrying collectivism itself.

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