“I often joke with people that feminism has been like a born-again religion for me – that once I found it and let it into my life, my entire perspective shifted in such a way that suddenly, everything made sense – and that I feel compelled to spread that gospel.”

The author of this passage from Everyday Feminism claims to be joking about her “born-again” faith. However, feminism is accurately understood not as a social science but as a perverse secular religion, steeped in mythology and faith-based claims, and exerting a malign influence on adherents’ minds.

We see its results every day: the rage, the apocalyptic anxiety, the rankling discontent and festering bitterness. A recent American Family survey showed “liberal” (i.e. feminist) women to be markedly lonelier and less satisfied with their lives than “conservative” (less feminist) women, at least in part due, as the study’s authors theorized, to liberal women’s alienation from positive sources of meaning. No one should be surprised by such findings, for the so-called gospel of feminism is anything but good news.

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In what ways is feminism like a religion?

The following serves as a working definition:

A religion is a belief system that explains the origin and purpose of life on earth, posits a spiritual or supernatural dimension to human existence, involves faith in what cannot be definitively known, and results in the radically changed understanding and behavior of the adherent.

All of these are true for feminism, but they lead not to gratitude and peace but to grievance and pique.

Feminism offers an origin story: the patriarchy, an unjust social system in which elite white men oppress all other groups. Some, though not all, feminist theories also posit an ancient matriarchy, a nurturing, egalitarian, and non-exploitative society that predated patriarchy, in which human beings lived in harmony with one another and with nature. This is a feminist version of the Garden of Eden, protected not by a deity but by a reigning “ethics of care.” Here women held power and exercised it for the good of all. Some Indigenous cultures are of particular interest to feminists because they offer evidence of such matriarchal structures.

At some point in all feminist origin stories, humankind fell from grace because of male sin. Men invented and imposed a male-led structure of social relations that severed women from their power. Men also introduced other forms of hierarchical control based on race, sexual identity, and physical ability. Specific feminist theories have been developed to address these related forms of oppression. But all feminisms, regardless of their particular emphases and approaches, reject the notion that the male-led social order had any purpose other than exploitation.

According to the origin story, patriarchy imposed artificial gender arrangements, prohibiting women from their once respected roles as warriors, healers, and inventors. It restricted women to the domestic realm, forcing them to serve men’s sexual, emotional and material needs. It limited their personal development to the nurturing of children, enforcing their economic and social inferiority.

In positing a matriarchal society from which women fell, most feminisms also imagine an idyllic condition of liberation towards which women can and should strive. (A partial redemption for men may come through strenuous renunciation of their masculinity.) Feminists’ purpose is the bringing into being of a just world in which hierarchy will be vanquished and free women will (once again) love one another and the earth.

A mystical element is often part of the feminist story. Feminist theories almost always associate femininity with spiritual power. This power may take the form of a deep insight or caring, a profound empathy, or a superior capacity for peace. By virtue of being a woman—whatever that might mean to the theorists (the category of woman being hotly debated)—one brings gifts to the world that men do not possess.

Feminist theologian Mary Daly argued that women’s interactions demonstrate a revolutionary, non-hierarchical “cosmic covenant”; radical feminist Andrea Dworkin claimed that only women, because of their lived experience of sexual violence, can imagine “the real practice of equality”; American psychologist Carol Gilligan argued that women develop a different, and superior, form of interpersonal morality; French feminist theorist Helene Cixous celebrated women’s special creativity, which she claimed was linked to the fecund powers of the female body; avant-garde lesbian novelist Monique Wittig pictured woman-loving women as uniquely sexually powerful; and many popular notions stress women’s capacity for empathy, problem-solving, non-violence, and egalitarianism. In contrast, masculine habits of thought and action are consistently linked with violence, predation, and dehumanization, as revealed by the widespread use of the term “toxic masculinity.”

While most feminists deny that feminism promotes female superiority, nonetheless many contemporary feminist campaigns and social movements make supremacist or quasi-supremacist claims. Arguments to increase the number of women in politics and in the boardroom often rest on the (explicit or implicit) assumption that women bring distinctive powers for good—caring about children, social sensitivity, cooperation—that men do not possess. Arguments to increase the number of men in certain occupations or sectors of society—for example, in primary-school teaching—almost never rest on similar assumptions about masculine goodness.

The striking contradiction between the two ideas—that femininity is a social construct and that women possess distinctive capacities for good—is an example of the magical thinking that characterizes much of feminism.

Thus far, the parallels I have traced between feminism and recognized religions are superficial. A religious element might be found in many totalizing worldviews that critique injustice and embrace utopianism. Feminism’s affiliation with religion becomes more striking when one considers the operations of mind and heart involved in accepting feminist claims.

Most fundamentally, feminism requires a fervent faith in a central tenet or proposition for which no indisputable evidence exists.

Although feminists of all stripes cite irrefutable-seeming statistics about the wage gap, violence against women, sexual harassment, and many other examples of women’s subordination, all of these not only fail to stand up to rigorous scrutiny but are effectively nullified by other statistics showing male suffering, including figures for male suicide, workplace fatalities, health outcomes and longevity, real wages and job status, criminal sentencing and incarceration, and post-secondary participation. If it were merely a matter of looking at evidence, feminism would have lost its legitimacy years ago. Yet no matter how many times feminist claims are shown to be false, they continue to be cited with respect by pundits, politicians, and decision-makers.

Here is the element of faith, the holding on to baseless or self-contradictory beliefs, often simply by repeating a mantra with fervor and conviction. A range of fantastical beliefs—about rape culture or gender bias in STEM or “trans women”—are embraced as real.

The matter of belief leads to the most salient cult-like feature of feminism: its marked effect on the believer’s attitudes and behavior. Becoming a feminist is akin to a religious conversion in that there is a transformation in the believer’s entire orientation to the world, a sense of “rebirth” or “awakening” that changes everything. Melissa Fabello spoke for many when she explained that

“Feminism has colored every single thought and action that passes through me in a day. Feminism has changed how I see myself and others. [It] has rebooted my entire being.”

For the believer, what may once have seemed a heterogeneous collection of personal experiences is now organized by a single dazzling insight. Previously innocuous behaviors can be newly recognized as expressions of male privilege or internalized misogyny. All interactions are evaluated as negotiations of gendered power. This changed perception is not only applied to the world out there, but to the most personal dimensions of the believer’s life.

In consequence, a profound sense of grievance wells up in the believer along with a fervent longing for feminism’s Promised Land. All of the believer’s former experiences are now re-evaluated in light of the ever-present reality of sexism. In cases where the conversion is truly radical, a sweeping hatred of feminism’s other—the white heterosexual man—usually develops.

A young woman can write about her horror at discovering that she is pregnant with a male child. A feminist leader can argue in a national newspaper that boys’ poor performance in school is the result of their privilege in the world. The blatant misandry passes for informed opinion. The satirical question once popularized by Milo Yiannopoulos, “Would you rather your child had cancer or feminism?” refers to an immediately recognizable reality for many parents, friends, or lovers, who have seen family members alienated irreparably because of feminist-inspired resentment.

There are parallels here to the religious believer who becomes alienated from non-believing former friends and family members. The difference, however, is that the major religions of the western tradition, including Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, stress the believer’s continued responsibilities to family and community (especially in the commandment to “honor your father and mother”). The God of these religions is a loving Father who cares for His created beings whether they know Him or not. Such is not the case with feminism, whose goddess-spirit does not dwell in the masculine.

Feminism differs from most orthodox religions in making its Promised Land a place that must be built in the here and now, not in an afterlife, with the result that a deep urgency attends all efforts to renew the present social order. The effort must include the harsh punishment of feminism’s enemies (think of feminist efforts to destroy those who argue with them online), for the feminist utopia cannot be created while the unregenerate pollute the land. Feminism contains no injunction to “Love your enemies” (or even your neighbor) and it demands immediate and ongoing reparations for the perceived injustices of the past.

Feminism thus encourages all the negative aspects of fervent religious beliefs—irrational passions, a worldview that refuses other perspectives, the demonization of non-believers—and none of the benevolence and self-sacrificing love that characterize true religions at their best. In its supremacism and justification of violence against non-believers (and ‘dhimmi’ status for male feminists), it perhaps most closely resembles Islam.

Feminism is closer to a religion than a social science, concerned less with truth than belief, often impervious to reason, and highly intolerant of competing viewpoints. It may be allowed a carefully circumscribed place in the public sphere, but it should never have been allowed, as it has been, to operate as an unofficial state religion.