Girl on the Net

Today’s guest blogger has a message for Harrison Butker, the football player (and traditional Catholic) who decided to use a commencement speech at Benedictine College in the US to make some pretty alarming statements about society. Violet Grey is a fabulous sex blogger who runs her own site at Becoming Violet Grey, and she’s guest blogged for me before with some gorgeously horny femdom fiction, as well as excellent rants on being a submissive feminist and the harm caused by Hollywood’s ‘bury your gays’ trope. Violet is a bisexual woman and a practicing Anglican (specifically, the Anglo-Catholic tradition) who has absolutely no time for misogyny, homophobia, and the other things Butker was advocating in his speech…

Who are you, if not ‘Mrs’?

Last week, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker became the topic of controversy after his commencement speech at Benedictine College: a private, conservative Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas. In the twenty-minute speech, Butker rallied against Covid-19 restrictions (particularly towards President Joe Biden), IVF and surrogacy, birth control, abortion and the LGBTQ community, and urged men to fight back against their apparent “emasculation” in today’s society.

Butker’s comments have been met with a mixture of shock, anger, disapproval, indifference, and praise. The NFL has distanced itself from his remarks and the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. St. Scholastica, part of Benedictine College, have issued a statement denouncing his speech, taking particular issue with the notion that a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman (he referenced his wife as “living her vocation as a wife and a mother…embracing one of the most important roles of all: Homemaker”, to thunderous applause). For those who might not be familiar with religious sisters or nuns: it’s extremely rare for them to outwardly denounce someone like this. It’s huge.

Some have praised Butker for “bravery” and for “defending traditional Catholic values”. Others call his comments misogynistic, antisemitic (comments re: Congress’ recently passed Antisemitism Awareness Act) politically motivated, and inappropriate for the place and time. Some have even called for him to be stripped of his place in the NFL.

Being a Christian woman (Anglo-Catholic, and a convert) and a self-confessed theology nut, I wanted to add my two cents. For context, I’m traditional in my approach to the liturgy, preferring high-church services. I’ll genuflect when I go to my pew, I cover my head in church, I pray the rosary etc. On social topics, I’m a firm believer in people’s freedom to choose, fully affirm the LGBTQ community (I am also bisexual), as well as women’s reproductive autonomy. Butker’s speech left me flabbergasted, so I did what my curious little brain does: dive into any information I can find and form my own opinions.

*Cracks knuckles*

Let’s get started.

If not ‘Mrs’, then who?

From Butker’s address:

“For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

For someone’s accomplishments and prospects to be diminished because your personal opinion is that they actually really want to be wives, mothers and homemakers, is a slap in the face to the women graduating that day. There’s nothing wrong with being a homemaker, of course: I’m able to do some myself, and I enjoy it! But it is not a woman’s only role. It’s not even her highest role unless she chooses that for herself. Considering the different vocations, including single life, marriage and children, cloistered religious life, non-cloistered religious life etc. it is not up to one football player (especially one who has no financial issues to support a growing family on one income) to say what a woman’s place is.

Butker firmly believes that the solution to the world’s problems is hyper-traditional values. That no matter how much success you have in work, if you don’t get married and start a family, you will not leave a lasting legacy and will never be fulfilled. Butker is also an advocate against birth control. He takes it a step further even than the Catholic Church Catechism by discouraging Natural Family Planning, which involves taking note of when you might be fertile and avoiding sex around those times. Many devout Catholics believe in the teaching of “openness to fertility” in married couples, though it’s important to note that Natural Family Planning is not an effective method of preventing pregnancy. He’s also anti-abortion, of course. The message to women is very clear: tie the knot and start cranking out those kids.

In fact, there’s nothing in church teachings – either Anglican or Roman Catholic – that says women can’t have careers, or must be homemakers. Yes, people quote the book of Titus and Proverbs 31, where the woman runs her home and builds her family…

She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her

However, this never says it is a woman’s only calling. As we see in religious life, we all know this isn’t a be-all and end-all for women. In fact, there are many women in the Bible who were active in Jesus’ ministry, which was very counter-cultural for the time. Also to note, the Proverbs 31 woman also worked. She did it all. Women have worked since day one, even when culture was more traditional.

She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.

I have two degrees and work a job I love. I’m not planning on kids any time soon. I find fulfilment in my career and am thankful for the doors opened by my education. That is my choice and my decision, as it should be. I have no intention of letting my faith and work be discouraged by someone who believes my highest calling is really to be barefoot and pregnant.

If you want to be a wife and a mother, I fully support you. But Butker’s sweeping generalization based on gender is regressive and limiting, building back the doors women have had to kick down, because we refuse to be told what our path is, instead forging our own.

A prominent theme of his speech last week was “staying in your lane”. However in this so-called “lane” I only see people – particularly men – who use the faith to subjugate women, rather than love them as the Bible teaches.

The idea that a woman’s role is solely to be a wife and mother reminds me of an eerie scene from The Handmaid’s Tale. When Serena Joy wants to leave her husband, Commander Waterford, she is discouraged by her mother. In Gilead, where a woman has no rights and is the property of her husband, her mother states:

“Who are you if you’re not Mrs. Waterford?”

Persecution or accountability?

A staunch believer in the Traditional Latin Mass (the previous form of Catholic mass before reforms in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II) and traditional Catholic values, Butker believes he and those like-minded to him are being persecuted, even within the Catholic Church. The Traditional Latin Mass movement is a very vocal minority of Catholics (an estimated 100,000 American Catholics attend TLM on Sundays) that are, to put it very politely, not happy with the reforms in the Church. The TLM has grown in popularity in recent years with more traditional Catholics.

There are many layers to this discourse and it can be quite a rabbit hole, so I’m giving an astronomically condensed summary. Traditionalists who love the TLM can vary, from simply wanting more accessibility to the Latin Mass instead of an English/French/Spanish/common vernacular mass, to claiming that Pope Francis is not a legitimate Pope. The Papacy has cracked down on the TLM, due to growing concerns of disrupting church unity, and its apparent use as a rallying cry for traditionalists who are angry with church reforms. While this isn’t the case for everyone who loves the TLM, it has become a symbol of anti-reform and for some, a denouncement of Vatican II altogether.

Not exclusive to Butker, there is a notion amongst certain conservatives, both religious and not, that backlash for any sort of marginalising i.e. homophobia, antisemitism, racism, transphobia etc. is persecution or an attack on free speech. This is not the case. Rightly being held to account for marginalising innocent people, and with reasoning that has long been debunked by various scientific and social studies, is not persecution.

You have the right to be as traditional as you please. You don’t have the right to discriminate because of that.

Butker denounced what he called the “tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion”. Aside from that being a massive oxymoron, going against equity for people regardless of sex, ethnicity, religion etc, that statement directly contradicts the Catholic Church Catechism’s teaching on equity to ensure the dignity of all human life (CCC 1935). While I personally think the church can do a lot more to ensure equity (like full reproductive autonomy, in my opinion) it just shows how Butker is leaning more into politics than church teaching here. Especially as the Church also denounces domination (and not the fun kind) of spouses over each other in a Catholic marriage, when this denouncement of equity would rob the rights and opinions of a woman, among other demographics.

The important point here is that Butker’s takes have been concerning for many, including Catholics. While rubbing shoulders with people like Republican Senator Josh Hawley (famously known for raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists on January 6th before they stormed the Capitol, and is also accused of being theocratic in his views towards government), you can see why people are concerned that Butker may be fast becoming the next poster boy for the growing overlap in religion and theocratic far-right politics that we’ve seen in the last few years.

‘Moral good’ or ‘means to an end’?

To say Butker’s opinions are controversial would be an understatement. Butker is not afraid of the hot water he lands himself in. In fact, he welcomes it. Butker genuinely believes he is doing what he thinks is “morally right”.

However, an excerpt from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on morally good and evil acts stuck with me. Specifically, how even if the moral act is good, if it has a morally evil end, it will effectively nullify the morally good act (CCC 1755). In layman’s terms: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Although Butker is advocating for what he believes is morally good in accordance with his traditionalist beliefs, does he see the damage these views can and do cause in the long-term? Or does he see that and not care?

But as a fellow Christian, I can safely say that this attitude does not reflect my faith. In fact, the overlap between fundamentalist Christian circles and alpha bro podcasts is more eerily reminiscent of The Stepford Wives than of the Gospel I know and love.