A radical French feminist apologizes for offending Catholics

Michael Cook
November 05, 2024 3 Reactions

Here’s a surprising story from France whose ingredients are bare-breasted feminists, the burning of Notre Dame, transgender activism, and prayers for the dead.

Back in 2013, on the day after Pope Benedict XVI resigned, 22-year-old Marguerite Stern participated in a protest by the radical feminist group Femen inside Notre Dame. With their torsos bare and painted with slogans like "Pope No More" and "Get lost, homophobe", eight women screamed slogans before they were dragged away by security guards.

Femen’s shtick was noisy topless protests. Later in 2013 Stern was jailed for a month in Tunisia for demonstrating with two companions about the arrest of a member of their group.

She eventually became well-known in France as the founder of collages contre les féminicides, whose activists plastered walls with posters and grafitti protesting gender-based violence against women.

However, transgender activists gradually invaded the feminist circles she moved in. Talk of female biology was deemed transphobic. This outraged her. “I am not a ‘vulva person’,” Stern told the British feminist Julie Bindel. “I am a woman. I was born a woman, and even before my birth, in my mother’s womb, I suffered discrimination as a result. I went through things that a man who would like to become a woman will never be able to understand.”

From her anger emerged a best-seller, Transmania, a critique of the transgender movement written with Dora Moutot. She has become the J.K. Rowling of France, the woman that trans activists love to hate.

 

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In fact, her life and opinions are evolving in a surprising direction – thanks to the transgender movement.

On November 1, in the magazine Famille Chretienne she published a public apology to the Catholic Church for her aggressive hostility a decade before. She explains that she changed as she researched trans ideology:

… beyond the danger for women and children, transgenderism represents a civilizational threat. Transgenderism does not create, it destroys. It advocates the destruction of bodies, the non-respect for life, the abolition of differences between women and men, the destruction of our human nature, and the culture that unites us. It is part of the death drive and self-hatred.

And she saw that her hatred toward the Church had been part of the same logic of destruction. She is an atheist, although she was baptized and received Holy Communion. But now she appreciates that the glories of French culture are part and parcel of its Catholic heritage. When Notre Dame burned in 2019, she wept.

My opposition to transgenderism has made me a patriot. When almost all of those around me rejected me because of my positions, I realized that my country was my only deep anchor, and that it is now in danger, diluted in globalization and disfigured by mass immigration. It made me conservative. I realized that it was absolutely necessary to save what we have left, that we could not permanently recreate everything and reject the past on the pretext that it is imperfect. France is a Catholic country. It must remain so, and for this, we must continue to bring its rites to life.

She felt this even more keenly last month when she went to a memorial Mass for Philippine de Carlan, a young woman who was raped and murdered in Paris, allegedly by a Moroccan man. “Before the beauty of the cathedral, the songs, the ceremony, I felt I belonged to a great civilization,” she wrote.

Struck by the beauty, tolerance, and humanity of Catholic culture, she felt compelled to pen an apology and to post a video message on X (Twitter).

It is currently fashionable to denigrate Catholics, and to pass them off as old French idiots, insufficiently trendy to deserve the status of human beings. In the past, I have used this climate to act immorally, while helping to strengthen it. I sincerely apologize for this. 

It took courage (and humility) to write that.

Stern's reaction to the beauty of the memorial reminds me of Dostoyevsky's words: “Mankind can live without science, without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there will be nothing more to do in the world!" Might they also suggest that beauty is a healing balm for the wounds of the victims of the sexual revolution? 

Forward this to your friends! 

Michael Cook is editor of Mercator

Image credit: Marguerite Stern in 2013 and Notre Dame in flames / Wikipedia, X  

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  • mrscracker
    It is currently fashionable to denigrate Catholics, and to pass them off as old French idiots, insufficiently trendy to deserve the status of human beings. In the past, I have used this climate to act immorally, while helping to strengthen it. I sincerely apologize for this. "
    *************
    That was lovely & a reminder to Catholics to not denigrate others either but to reach out to them in sincere Christian charity. We have differences but we also have common ground.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-05 17:18:00 +1100
    “Struck by the beauty, tolerance, and humanity of Catholic culture…”

    Easy to think if you willfully ignore history, I suppose…
  • Michael Cook
    published this page in The Latest 2024-11-05 14:57:44 +1100

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