8. No Cookies for Popes
A Week of Watching the World Celebrate the Conclave’s Spectacle of Male Supremacy
It’s so often the case that when Very Important Patriarchal Men want to convey power and seriousness, they reach for the dresses. Imams, priests, academics, lawyers, monks, judges, princes, kings and—this week—Catholic cardinals draped in brilliant scarlets and silks. One hundred and thirty-three of them were sealed into the Sistine Chapel to choose the head of one of the West’s oldest, most enduring and powerful male supremacist institutions. I know, so harsh. After all, the new Pope, Francis XIV, seems, well, moderate and, a plus, his twitter feed alone has thrown MAGAites into a frenzied spiral. It seems callous and peevish to say, so what? This changes very little. Celebrating this event like a pop culture party and lauding his election only make sense if you go along with the idea that we will all agree to operate within a spectrum that ranges only from benevolent to hostile sexism; from intimate inequality to brute force domination. This whole newsletter is an exercise in rejecting that demand, so no cookies for Popes, even those who seem more “reasonable.”
I don't know why anyone would ask if the Catholic Church is male supremacist, but let’s quickly address this. Is it? Yes, yes, it is. Cisgender men are elevated and protected in theology, beliefs, symbolism, cultural norms, political investments, chain of command, and power while everyone else is systemically sidelined and, ultimately, endangered. At the Conclave this week only straight, cis men could vote. Only straight, cis men can be priests. Only straight, cis men can be pope. Women hovering at the margins of the Conclave mainly tend to the cardinals' bodily needs. They remain outside the doors, never casting ballots, interpreting texts, determining doctrine, or consecrating anything. Secrecy, solemn oaths, elaborate processionals, and an all-male electorate create a ritualized process of power with zero accountability.
Misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia aren't unfortunate minor side effects; they are the load-bearing pillars of male supremacist patriarchal faiths, of which Catholicism, with 1.3b adherents, is the largest.
The male supremacy of the Church is a plain fact, even if its expression is cloaked in compassion, masked in comforting rituals, and delivered with a grandfatherly pat on the head. It is a fact even if the institution provides humanitarian aid, runs global charitable organizations, defends refugees and immigrants, and pursues its own varied social justice agendas.
Peak Patriarchy
This week’s papal election was a pitch perfect study of how male supremacy is performed, protected, and paraded before us all without serious commentary, question, consequence, or care. The near-total lack of critical scrutiny regarding the Church’s misogyny and its anti-LGBTQ ripple effects illustrates how deeply male supremacy is naturalized and how rarely its rites, roles, and rituals are considered harmful.
From altar boy to white smoke, the Catholic Church’s pipeline for leadership and authority is boys and men only. Sure, some communities give women supporting roles and more visibility than others, there are congregations that welcome LGBTQ parishioners and protect immigrants, and others led by women priests who, excommunicated, create more inclusive spaces. But the accumulated influence of these efforts still can’t begin to offset the scope of orthodox Catholic institutional power, reach, wealth, and influence.
I've been thinking about how little women’s marginalization and exclusion, and their resultant oppression and violence, means to most people; about how media colludes in masking enduring harms.
What Do We Think Children Are Going to Learn Anyway?
Every time a child attends Catholic religious services, they learn very specific lessons about gender, obedience, hierarchy, and power. Parents might model egalitarian behaviors and beliefs, they might say children can be anything they want to be, but within the walls of a Catholic Church everyone accedes to listening to and watching men speak, advise, and judge and to women absorbing their words in silence and acceptance.
Religious instruction begins in childhood, often through family life. Children have to be taught—explicitly and implicitly—to treat each other differently and, in Church, they are. Church is often their first encounter with openly sanctioned gender inequality. What, for instance, do they learn when a brother is chosen as an altar boy, but a sister is turned away for being a girl?
Kids easily learn that men have the right and should, in fact and practice, ritually silence women; to judge and condemn those who refuse silencing or who violate rules. The absence of women from clerical and textual and symbolic relevance beyond, in essence, variations of motherhood and suffering, limits girls’ self-conceptions and ambitions and boys’ perceptions of their own and women’s capacities. Instead, what children are mainly learning, regarding gender, is that men and women complement each other, that women have specific natures and a vocational “feminine genius,” and that each has their own separate but equal roles and dignity. This always results in men ruling, women obeying.
Men’s authority is maintained by keeping women in support roles and out of public and influential positions. Even when nuns, for instance, hold power over others, they are subject to the rule of men as priests. The formal exclusion of women from speaking, preaching, or presiding in sacred rituals shows children that this is all "natural," acceptable, normal, and even expected. Boys learn to see themselves as future community leaders and trusted authorities, while girls learn to doubt themselves in both capacities. Gendered language, titles, imagery, and symbolism convey persistently subordinate roles for girls and women.
The enforcement of rigid gender roles not only limits aspirations and self-expression, but primes sexist, homophobic, and transphobic bullying (all of which are experienced at higher rates in parochial schools). Gender non-conforming, gay, lesbian, and transgender children may be shamed, ostracized, and denied sacraments or religious education unless they present according to their assigned sex at birth, either learning that deviation from strict gender norms is unacceptable or that they have to leave their families and communities altogether.
Home life mirrors is meant to mirror all of this. Fathers are heads, women, bodies. Authoritarian parenting, reinforces this model, using rules, hierarchies, fear and punishments. And all of it is dressed in the language of love and faith, meaning children are more likely to accept unequal roles and relationships, to undervalue their own experiences, desires, needs, and thinking, and to understand relationships in terms of domination and submission. In terms of enforcing or violating rules, claiming or being subjected to power and its abuses.
Is sexual abuse bullying? Is it disciplining? Or is it just the predictable abusive outcome of rigid, hierarchical, male fraternities like the Church? Closed men’s spaces with unchecked power, including for example, the boy scouts, certain college fraternities, many sports organizations, and police and military barracks—breed entitlement and abuse. Organizations like these typically have strict, rigid, male-dominated, or male-exclusive hierarchies in which authority is generally held by a small group of men, almost always free from any meaningful oversight. In the Catholic Church, for example, the significant spiritual and administrative authority of clergy operating in strict orders has hurt and silenced victims repeatedly and to protect and pass along predatory abusers, something the newly elected pope, whose election is a ‘grave concern’ and insult to survivors.
It is notable that the public outrage that eventually exploded in MeToo and ChurchToo did not originate in widespread alarm over the sexual abuse and rapes of girls and women but rather in the growing horror of learning that boys were being assaulted by priests, then coaches, then boy scout leaders. For the most part, people who could see and understand the rapes of boys by trusted men in trusted institutions as a function of power still struggle to understand the rapes of girls and women living in ubiquitous male supremacy the same way.
When adults accept inequality, hierarchy, and obedience without question, children learn that power is unaccountable, that inequality isn’t worth fighting for. Some may dismiss religious sexism and misogyny in Catholicism pointing to the veneration of women saints or Mary or by arguing that complementary roles for men and women are not oppressive, but all of this requires frankly, ignoring facts and evidence, which, I know, convince no one. Identity shapes cognition, especially to protect belief and status, but, either way, facts or feelings, the overall impact of most rigid belief systems is that they tamp down critical thinking.
Religious male supremacy is still male supremacy. Religious sexism and misogyny are still sexism and misogyny. Religious homophobia and transphobia are still homophobia and transphobia. Dressed them in any way you want, in luscious red robes or plain back ones, and this is true.
What Is a Women to Do? Well, Leave, for One Thing.
Family life, with men as decision-makers and women as carers “willingly led,” is supposed to mirror Church structure. I say that with my tongue in my cheek—most Catholic girls and women I know would laugh outright at this depiction. They’re sharp, outspoken, and, often, committed to good works and justice. Many work within the Church to challenge patriarchal norms, support women’s leadership, and fight for reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ inclusion. Navigate the real tensions between feminist values and religious tradition and finding ways to carve out space for both is no small task. Women asking this question exist “in the space between.” (One of the best examinations of this dilemma is Julie Hanlon Rubio’s Can you Be A Catholic and a Feminist?”)
Many of us, however, couldn't or wouldn’t reconcile this tension and not only left Catholicism but became feminist activists precisely because of our experiences of religious oppression. Today, despite glowing mainstream media coverage of reactionary but glam Tradcath media makers, more and more young women are doing the same.
According to the Survey on American Life, In Gen Z, more young men are religiously affiliated than women, a first in American history. Sixty-five percent of Gen Z women, as the survey put it “think” churches don’t treat men and women equally. Researchers found that there was no one reason for women leaving, but rather, “a steady accumulation of negative experiences and dissonant teachings that made it difficult or impossible to stay.” Sixty-one percent of Gen Z women are feminists, a far greater percentage than women from earlier generations. Nearly thirty percent identify as non-straight and/or nonbinary. They are explicitly concerned about the unequal treatment of women and LGBTQ people in American society overall and in religion specifically. They are deeply disappointed with and suspicious of religious institutions that promote traditional gender roles, binaries, and norms.
Meanwhile, Gen Z men are moving in the opposite direction, reflecting masculine disorientation and discomfort with equality. Religious communities that unabashedly endorse traditional gender roles and position men as deciders and women as dependent have a lot to offer men if they stay within pretty rigid man-box ideals. Churches are refuges for traditional masculinity, promising clear behavioral guidelines, relational hierarchies, and obedient wives. Many straight young men unable to find romantic partners interested in these norms explicitly say they’re joining churches to find women who want and accept traditional roles. Online influencers frequently feed their desires with rhetoric about “godly masculinity,” anti-wokeness, and the purpose and benefits of “traditional values.” Men's greater shift towards patriarchal religiosity isn't surprising but rather a predictable facet of broader male supremacist backlash. (Besides, no one likes women with “vinegar faces.”)
It's really disturbing to think of how many young men won't acknowledge how implicated these norms are in wider injustice, violence, and oppression. Catholicism's locking women out of sacramental leadership and its condemnation of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, transsexuality, and "gender ideology" are not only religious but intimate, social, and political realities that do civic and political damage. The churches and congregations, from Evangelical Protestant to Catholic to Orthodox, that young men are disproportionately joining are at the forefront of opposing progressive change. In conservative congregations women's time, energy, and bodies, whether as volunteers or mothers or nuns are broadly treated as free communal resources. LGBTQ people are typically marginalized, vulnerable, and, still often openly thought of as damaged, sinners, or dangerous deviants, sometimes openly referred to with slurs.
The Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception and abortion directly impact Catholics but also non-Catholics. One example, for instance, is Catholic control of hospital systems negatively affecting public health and health care which is exposing people to dangerous neglect, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and other health risks.
What some people want to characterize, in Gen Z men's religious turn, as a positive sense of purpose, I call the legitimizing ideological and emotional protectionism of male supremacist domination—over women, over LGBTQ people, over anyone outside the lines. I think boys and men should have healthy relationships and a clear sense of purpose, but if these come at the personal, social, political, and cultural expense of the people around you then purpose isn’t the issues, entitlement and power are.
The Link to Authoritarianism and Support for Strong Men Leaders
Whether unquestioning or punished for curiosity and difference, children schooled in these dynamics, studies show, are far more likely to become adults predisposed to seek out and submit to authority. Political scientists trace what is often called the "authoritarian family" to greater acceptance of societal inequality and greater deference to strong men leaders (by which I include women who adopt masculinist power). Catholics who affirm father‑rule beliefs consistently and reliably score high on scales for Right‑Wing Authoritarianism.
Let’s go back to the Conclave for a minute and consider media's obsession with aestheticizing and trivializing power. Commentators poured over processions and robes, the suspense of the smokestack, and the secrecy of the vote instead of considering what was going on as a brazen display of fundamentally authoritarian patriarchal governance, dressed in the aesthetics of fascist pageantry.
The ornate uniforms, the secret rules, and the rigid all-male hierarchy on public display are not outdated and exclusionary relics of the past the ceremonial face of men’s institutionalized power and dominance, engineered for obedience, exclusion, and unaccountable power. The Conclave's pageantry, for instance, is as good an illustration of glorified military culture as any. Beautiful robes work, ranking uniforms, convey august status, power, and access. Elaborate processions communicate order and conformity to hierarchy. The system only works if no one really questions orders or only questions them within strictly defined parameters. True dissent is pathologized and punished. Related language also lends itself to combat metaphors: the "cultural battles," "moral fortresses," "spiritual warfare," and enemy ideologies, like "gender ideology," (a particularly preposterous claim given that gender complementarianism is the OG of the OGist of gender ideologies.)
Throughout, authoritarian masculinity is central, reflected in the spectacle of everything from roles, rituals, and clothing to processional hymns and warrior saint imagery. All cultivate psychological comfort with strong men that seamlessly ports over to political rallies and leadership cults.
PRRI's 2024 American Values Atlas study, Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States, found that the more frequently a person attends Church, the more likely they are to hold both Christian nationalist and authoritarian views. White evangelical Protestants (64%) are the most likely to score high on the RWAS, followed by white Catholics (54%) and Hispanic evangelical protestants (54%).
Hannah Arendt warned totalitarianism always seeks to reshape not only society by human nature itself, not through overt political oppression but through fear and ideological conformity that permeate daily life. In patriarchal faiths, authoritarian beliefs colonize identity and intimate spaces, making domination and submission to authority seem natural. Each mass where women kneel and pray, and men walk and talk, each parish coffee staffed by women volunteers, each dinner tinner table where mothers quietly and politely acquiescence to fathers' debate ending opinions incrementally conditions citizens who will trade equality, fairness, justice, and pluralism for oppressive social and political orders.
Media, Entirely Complicit, Shrugs It All Off
Religious male supremacy is considered too embedded to address, too sacred to challenge, too outdated to be relevant, or too abstract to prioritize. It's treated like a nostalgic throwback instead of the active system shaping real lives, laws, suffering that it is. Most of the time, when I talk about this problem, I hear some variation of “The Church represents millennia of tradition and isn’t relevant today the way it once was,” and “There are much bigger problems—problems that perhaps we can do something about—to worry about,” or “That’s only a problem if you’re Catholic.”
The pervasive harms that stem from organizations like the Church are easy to ignore or dismiss because they are quiet, respectable, and traditional. But that's precisely what makes them effective and dangerous—the violence is slow, the exclusions are normalized, and the power is dense and global.
But “harmless” quotidian habits and exceptional harmful extremes go hand-in-hand. The latter depends on the former for ideological rationalization and operational fluidity. Refusal to see, name, or expose this problem ensures that it remains solidly in place, and worse, is easily and profitably reproduced.
What makes patriarchal religious authority so insidious is its granularity, invasiveness, and ordinariness—the way it kindly and warmly transforms systematic exclusion, separate but equal palaver, and micro-aggressive and immersive denigration into unremarkable routine, turning men’s authority and domination into family friendly tradition and community so thoroughly that questioning any of this appears not as a reasonable and justified demand for basic dignity and fairness, but as a silly, deluded, or peevish attack on something vital and revered. Male supremacy normalized in religion saturates individual psychologies, family dynamics, and political lives. The most effective oppression does just this, training people to defend their own subordination and see resistance as sacrilege rather than as liberation.
Unmanned is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Laundering of harsh realities is taken up and amplified in media that routinely packages patriarchal power in fun, palatable, entertaining forms.
This week, for instance, the Conclave was presented as a fashion extravaganza or a sporting event that America won (everyone is very proud and celebrating!) Frequently, coverage also described the conclave in terms of “ancient tradition,” stressing it as a relic of the past rather than a very modern policy choice with real consequences.
Articles focused on the pageantry, ceremony, and the mystery of the process and not on examining the lack of transparency, the authoritarian aesthetics and dynamics, or the gender implications, shielding the practice and the institution from scrutiny that might have been applied in virtually any other context. Wait, maybe not, I take that back. You’d be hard pressed, for instance, to find much discussion about how children and society are harmed by patriarchal faith practices.
Criticizing religion and religious practices continues to violate social and politeness and, today, more than in any recent time, political ideology. The Department of Justice, for instance, just called a Washington state law requiring clergy to report child abuse 'anti-Catholic' and a violation of the First Amendment. It's opened a civil rights investigation into the matter, part of a larger mission to eliminate anti-Christian bias in American life.
As a secular feminist I am used to people thinking that I don’t appreciate how important religious beliefs are or how vital it is for people to come together in shared commitment. This has always struck me as strange and ironic given that, in my experience, the opposite is true: feminists critics take the Church and its influence very seriously. In fact, far more seriously than most adherents do and certainly more seriously than most mainstream media.
With the exception of the most obvious and egregious risks to and crimes against children, ongoing, generally stayed away from deep and sustained critiques of religious oppression, certainly in terms of the long-reach of male supremacy.
Search "Catholic Church and Misogyny," for instance, and you will find what I did, a pretty scant and dated short list. Even when political commentary about Catholicism and its butterfly effects covers key issues, such as a consolidating Christian Nationalist integralism movement, the meaning of the Church’s effective gender apartheid and persistent hierarchies is typically missing.
One piece citing Mary McAleese, former president of Ireland, did stand out, however. "The Catholic Church is one of the last great bastions of misogyny," she explained in 2018, concluding with "It's an empire of misogyny.” As the leader of a country that is currently confronting the corrupting and horrifying realities of male supremacist religious power acting throughout society, she would know. Over the course of the 20th century alone, more than 10,000 women and girls in Ireland were forcibly confined in Magdalene laundries. These were institutions run primarily by Catholic nuns but with the complicity or direct involvement of priests, higher clergy, and the state. Many if not most, of these women were subjected to forced labor, emotional and physical abuse, and social isolation. These teenagers and adult women were incarcerated for reasons ranging from being “promiscuous” or pregnant to simply being thought of as disobedient or at risk of moral failure. Mass graves for nameless “fallen women” are still being found.
This week there was no or at least very little talk of the harms that come with male supremacist faith. Why ruin a good frat party? So, instead, we get ravioli bans, Cardinals’ fashion preferences, and fun procedural fact-checks. If you try to find any commentary on say, the Conclave and sexism or misogyny, you get reviews of the recent, fictional film of the same name, a fantasy with a surprising and dramatic twist at the end.
We’re All Implicated, So Now What?
Does this mean that all Catholics and their spiritual leaders are male supremacists? It does, and I say this as an erstwhile former Catholic. Aren't we all male supremacists when we start off? When we begin to wonder what it really means to think independently? To pick and choose our battles? None of us is born outside of this system, usually we have to claw our way out.
Unlearning male supremacy doesn't happen in a startling epiphany but takes daily practice: naming the advantages and disadvantages we've been handed as part of this system and then deciding if and when to refuse the habits and scripts that maintain them. It means deciding how to rebuild ourselves, our relationships, workplaces, and communities. Each of us regularly has to figure out how to spot supremacist structures of thought, all sorts, shaping our default beliefs, habits, and actions. We have to make decisions, often complex, as individuals, spouses, parents, workers, and citizens, about where our personal lines are because, frankly, there are so few trustworthy collective, public, and political ones when it comes to male supremacy.
This week, as I watched and listen and thought about what any of us can do in the face of formidable obstacles, my bar was pretty much as low as it could get: just say what I think and know out loud. Saying nothing or pretending nothing should be said or done only serves to shield bad actors and the Catholic church as an institution from responsibility and accountability. At the very least I a talk about what’s going on, in plain sight and find others who do the same.
Naming what we see— plainly, repeatedly—is a first act of resistance and each act is worth its weight in cumulative resistance gold. We can’t dismantle what we fail to name; we can’t talk about problems with people who can’t see them or would rather look away. Let’s not minimize and normalize or glamorize men’s corrupt monopoly of authority, glory, influence, knowledge, resources, money, and networks. Let’s not quietly accede and let the powerful - including media - off the hook.
You can do challenge all of this with humor, anger, compassion, kindness, sarcasm, or engaging storytelling. With pride and peevishness. But, no matter how you choose, be the clear voice in someone else’s head. Because until male supremacy is consistently and clearly named and talked about it will continue to structure how we live and determine how we die.
I started this whole newsletter as an exercise in rejecting the demand that we exist within the range of benevolent to hostile sexism and misogyny and, even so, I feel the social constraints and pressures of my childhood. I can hear people explaining that it’s just not nice to rain on the kind Pope’s parade. It’s peevish and rude to refuse to be nice, understanding, and accommodating. Everyone is just looking for relief and distraction from a ceaseless onslaught of terrible news. It’s just not the right time to call out the underbelly of delighting in tradition and “personal” belief.
When is? Never. NEVER is the right time until we make one.
In conclusion, and in solidarity with Catholic women everywhere who stay and fight (and because nothing seems to register with some people until they experience it themselves), I am closing comments on this post.
Off to enjoy a vampire film and hopefully put away my computer for the weekend!