There’s been so much talk around the Catholic internet lately, it seems, about feminism and womanhood. On one side you find progressivism’s seeming dismissiveness of women and their great, unique capacity for love, sacrifice, and the bringing forth of life, and on the other there is a traditionalist and utilitarian reduction of women to what they are supposed to do or not do, wear or not wear, and the hyper-specific set of responsibilities they ought to have.

Speaking personally, I have foregone any sort of career and stayed home to raise my children because that is something that was, and still is, important to me. (My youngest is 3 years old.) Gender roles at my house skew traditional, largely because it’s a division of labor that makes sense for all involved here. But it’s also a division of labor that has enough built-in flexibility to accommodate the ups and downs, ebbs and flows typical of family life. I would never call myself a “traditionalist” or “tradwife,” for example, because I don’t take a reductivist approach to marriage and motherhood, even as I recognize I am indeed a rather traditional sort of wife.

It is my view that womanhood itself encompasses many things, even as it is rooted in very specific biology, and ought not to be reduced to simply one aspect or another. Not every woman will have the same gifts, callings or limitations, and therefore it is not up to you and me to make specific, wide-sweeping pronouncements about what, precisely, women ought to be doing — beyond the obvious and more general ideas related to living out one’s vocation, which Catholics believe to be the most important responsibility in a person’s life, whether male or female. If called to marriage, spouse and children must naturally come before career. That is a given. But what that looks like in a particular situation may vary.

In my junior year of college, I took a Women’s Studies course, which I both loved and loathed. I’ve always been interested in such things, but my professor was such an uncritical accepter of the tenets of secular feminism that she killed any remote possibility of a robust class discussion. She was certainly passionate and interesting, and I’d rather listen to her lecture than listen to someone bored with the subject, but so much of her content was simply unexamined and unquestioned. She simply took everything for granted. The three boys in the class remained conspicuously silent for fear of offending. The three “moms gone back to college” in the class were bitter and jaded. Most of the rest of us, though, college-aged girls brimming with hope and idealism (and me with a shiny diamond engagement ring on my finger), were not quite so convinced of the professor’s many claims.

I remember the day I shakily raised my hand, took a deep breath, and told my professor that I was getting married in a few weeks, and I did not find marriage to be a fundamentally oppressive institution. I was choosing it, after all, and the man I was marrying was not a tyrant like she seemed to imply all men were. I said some stuff about how being married didn’t mean you had to trade in your intellect for a dust rag and a vacuum cleaner, but also that there was nothing wrong with cleaning your house from time to time. I remember the professor looking back at me with suspicious, patronizing eyes, and then claiming that she hadn’t said what I thought she had.

To this day, I think we all knew otherwise. 

The truth is that I’d gone into the class wanting to learn something. But that is nearly impossible when someone has an agenda. I remember being in political science courses with some members of the College Republicans, who took an aggressive and antagonistic attitude toward the dyed-in-the-wool liberal professors. These students had an axe to grind, and I never cared for that, even if I did potentially agree with their position. So it’s not so much that I expected to be of the same mind as the woman who taught Women’s Studies, but I’d hoped for deeper and better conversation around topics that have a tremendous effect upon both individuals and the culture at large. But her ideology and blind rage, in this case at the patriarchy, made it nearly impossible, just as the College Republicans’ disdain for liberal politics sidelined many a class discussion.

Of course, the same can and does happen on the other side. Traditionalists expound upon and play up the many differences between men and women, but then occasionally ignore or give short shrift to the real problems that arise in a world marked by original sin (or evil or whatever you choose to call it). It’s a world in which women are, by nature of their biology and those very aforementioned differences, particularly vulnerable.

In Margaret Sanger’s autobiography, the social problems she describes and attempts to address through hormonal contraception and sexual education are both real and deplorable. So while the notorious founder of Planned Parenthood is everyone’s favorite villain, it ought to be remembered that when Sanger’s first clinic opened, the line to get in wrapped around the block, filled with women eager to obtain birth-control pills. They were ready long before Sanger opened the door. Margaret may have supplied the means, but it is the women themselves who drove the demand. They were desperate to have ultimate control over their family size, or at the very least confused and unsure about what being a woman is all about.

But we Catholics know better, and have an advantage here, being that we espouse a rightly ordered view of the human person and the vocation of marriage. We see sexuality as the gift of self, and we approach life and child-spacing in a way that does not wage war against our very bodies. We recognize Margaret Sanger’s solutions as short-sighted, anti-woman and gravely sinful, because her ideas stand in opposition to God’s plan for love — divorcing sexuality from the miraculous potential for procreation, and diminishing the very beauty and power of womanhood. No matter how well-intentioned.

The work we do, the homes we create, and the love we pour into our families and friends are of immense value on so many levels — personally, spiritually and socially. No one person has the same gifts, the same calling, the same story. It is imperative, then, that we ignore the influencers trying to convince us that being a woman means this or that very particular thing you do, whether the influencer is progressive or conservative. Our dignity goes far beyond that, and there is great mystery to living life with Christ. We are all created in the very image of God, with a particular biological makeup. This is what makes us human. Body and soul, we exist to love and serve God in this world. As women, we do this in our own particular, female way, with the astonishing capacity for nurturing and bringing forth new life.

One of my favorite quotes about feminism is something Flannery O’Connor wrote to a friend in 1956. O’Connor of course was a profoundly talented writer, a deeply faithful Catholic, and a brilliant thinker and philosopher. Her fiction is delightfully grotesque and quirky, and I am here for it — without shame, I can say that I am a true Flannery O’Connor fangirl.

“On the subject of the feminist business,” wrote O’Connor, “I just never think … of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.”

Amid the culture wars and Catholic Ghetto infighting, O’Connor’s levity is both a breath of fresh air and a welcomed dose of sharp insight, characteristic of the writer. Human beings, both women and men, are created with dignity, and for love. A woman is more than the sum total of her deeds and tasks and sacrifices. Made in the image of God, she lives out her vocation to the best of her ability, serving and loving her husband and children in big and small ways. The finer details will sort themselves out — in my case, I am quite grateful to have been home with my children, and highly recommend it. It’s been a beautiful and productive way to live out my vocation, and has hopefully brought some value to my family.

But ultimately, when it comes to the discussion of feminism versus traditionalism, and the qualities that are specifically feminine or masculine? I, like Flannery O’Connor, am generally more concerned with the classes of the irksome and the non-irksome.