Women in the West are under threat | Miriam Cates

For all the faults, the cracks, the decay we see in our nations — for all that has gone wrong — there are still no better alternatives.

Western civilisation, founded on Christian teaching and classical liberal principles, provides the greatest opportunity for human flourishing.

But why?

What is it about European culture — about its essential values — that we feel compelled to defend? During this conference, we have praised many of the fruits of European civilisation: freedom of expression and freedom of association, the freedom to trade and become prosperous, the freedom to live under the rule of law.

But there is one freedom that is perhaps even more precious, even more fundamental to Western culture. A freedom that at least half of us cannot afford to lose. That is the freedom of women.

Now I’m no political feminist. I’m not here to rail against the patriarchy or make the case for more female astronauts.

I’m talking about the freedom of women to participate in society — free from the threat of physical and sexual abuse.

Western civilisation is built on the idea, the belief, that every individual has a sacred or inherent worth. That is why we value individual freedom. For us in the West, “every individual” includes women. Yet if we look around the world, at other cultures both now and through history, this is not the norm.

The Western attitude to women originates in Jewish and Christian teaching, strengthened during the enlightenment, that women are fully human, that we are equal under God and under the law.

This equality might be a moral and a spiritual truth. But it is not, in some senses, a biological one. It has taken a great deal of cultural effort — boundaries, norms, laws and customs — over centuries to create a society where women are — and expect to be — safe and free.

In our modern era there is tendency to think that women’s equality is a given — the rational result of “progress”. But it really isn’t. Without the ideal of monogamous marriage, without strong legal and social incentives for men to restrain sexual urges, without a belief system that honours women, women cannot be safe or free.

These values are the foundation of Western culture.

But these values, like our women and girls, are under threat.

As a woman I am extraordinarily grateful to have been born in the West — not primarily because of our history, but because I am safe and free. Yet for women and girls in Europe, safety and freedom are in decline. From the horror of the grooming gangs to the almost unspeakable abuse of Giselle Pelicot, every day brings a new sickening story of women and girls being brutally violated. These attacks are the undeniable physical manifestations of the challenge to the Western idea that women are equally human.

Three ideologies are challenging the Western view of women.

The first is Islam.

Islam is a religion of male dominance. In Islam women are not equal under the law. They are less than men. Islam teaches that the answer to unchecked male sexual desire is not self-control, but for women to be covered up and hidden away.

A recent report by Dr Mark Durie for Christian Concern documented how Islamic teachings have been explicitly used by many Muslim men to justify the rape, torture and forced marriage of non-Muslim girls — not just in England, not just in Europe, but also in Muslim majority countries.

Of course, not all Muslims believe that their religion justifies rape. Yet Islam as a cultural force is a direct and growing threat to the Western understanding of women’s freedom and safety.

But let’s not pretend that Islam is the only ideology threatening Western beliefs about women. There are two other powerful cultural forces that are threatening our freedoms.  

The first is pornography. Pornographic material used to be difficult to access and, until fifty years ago, its distribution was largely prohibited in most Western countries. Yet the internet and smartphones have taken porn from the margins to the mainstream.

Internet pornography is not light entertainment. A vast amount of online pornography is violent. It frequently depicts women being almost unimaginably humiliated, often by multiple men at once.

Porn has normalised acts that would otherwise be considered criminal — rape, incest, sex with children. In the UK, the majority of men under 40 watch porn regularly, and the average age of first viewing is now just eleven years old.

Porn, far more than Islam, has transformed our culture. Last week on a train, I sat near three white British boys — aged around fourteen. Without any embarrassment or attempt to hide their conversation, the boys spoke openly about what they wanted to do, sexually, to one of their friend’s mothers, using graphic pornified language.  

Porn rewires developing brains and sexuality with terrible real world results.

Almost 40 per cent of young women in the UK have been strangled during sex, compared to just 3 per cent of women over 55. Over half of child sexual abuse is now carried out by other children. Dig deep into many stranger rapes and we find a pattern of hardcore porn use.

Until recently, the West recognised that porn is corrupting to society and undermines the belief that women are equally human. Porn, like any other powerful idea, shapes the way we think, and therefore the way we act. If you don’t believe that Porn has the power to undermine Western culture then you don’t believe in the power of culture.

The third anti-Western ideology is less blatant in its mission to degrade women. Woke progressivism is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It claims to promote women’s equality — to give women more choice, more independence. Yet the reality is different. The demand that women can “have it all” when it comes to family and career has left women less happy and fulfilled.

Liberal abortion laws pressure women into accepting sex without commitment. Woke progressives support pornography and prostitution, framing the abuse of women for male entertainment as “empowerment”. Transgenderism, the showcase of progressive liberalism, is of course yet another vehicle for female subjugation.

The worst attack of liberal progressivism has been on marriage. The abandonment of marriage by the elites has left record numbers of women with no children, or bringing up children on their own. It has left millions of children without fathers — fathers who play an essential role in keeping girls safe and in raising boys to be good men.

The epidemic of fatherlessness is perhaps the greatest threat to our culture of all, because it is fathers — and trusted older men — who put downward pressure on boys to control their aggression. Having fathers around is what keeps women and girls safe.

Our elites may claim to support “women’s rights,” but they have been duped into allowing — even welcoming — three dangerous anti-women, and anti-Western, ideologies into the heart of Europe.

Islam, porn and progressivism weaken the most important foundation of our culture — the fair settlement between men and women.

For the sake of our daughters, we must resist.

We must stop making unspecific complaints about immigration, or cultural cohesion, and start talking about Islam as a belief system — one that can be in conflict with Western culture. We must take action on pornography, and against those who profit from its proliferation. We cannot be taken in by the argument that porn is freedom. Pornography undermines everything good, true and beautiful upon which our culture is built. When it comes to woke progressivism, meanwhile, the answer is not to attack equality but to restate the truth at the heart of Western culture: men and women are equally human but we are not the same.

Islam, pornography and progressivism are eating away at the soul of Europe, and at the safety of our women and girls. It’s time to change course.

This has been adapted from a speech at the MCC conference “Battle for the Soul of Europe”