The Feminist Response to Harrison Butker’s Commencement Speech Proves He Is Right

Especially about the need for masculine values and leadership

“Stop giving men microphones,” wrote one of the signers of the petition to have NFL kicker Harrison Butker fired.

“As a woman living in post-Roe America,” declared another, “I’m exhausted from men telling women what to do with their lives.”

“How offensive to imply women are put here on this planet to help a man reach his full potential,” fumed a third. “We should be empowering women to achieve greatness however that looks for them. Having children or being a mother isn’t the currency we must pay to be treated as equal members of this society.”

And on and on they go in predictable, and predictably incoherent, statements. Apparently, it is offensive to say that women should help men reach their potential; but, in the next breath, men must help women reach theirs. 

At a time when women encourage one another in “rage rituals” and feminists like Mona Eltahawy call for perpetual anger as the route to liberation, few can be surprised by the hysteria that followed National Football League kicker Harrison Butker’s speech to the graduating students of Benedictine College in Kansas. It is a rage that has led well over 200,000 of the furious, mostly women, to sign a petition demanding he be fired by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Manufacturing outrage is what feminist journalism does best, and its audience is eager for cosplay rebellion and narcissistic posturing even when, as in the case of the speech, the hyperventilating is far in excess of the fact. That even Benedictine nuns have joined the chorus shows how many women in all walks of life find such posturing near-irresistible.

Of course, if Butker had addressed the Benedictine College graduates to say that Catholicism was riddled with misogyny and homophobia, no popular petitions would have been launched. If he had said that abortion was a gift to humanity and that female priests would lead the church to glory, his words would have sparked dissent only in the most marginal of venues.

Let a man praise his wife for her devotion to family, and we witness a stampede of foul-mouthed nasties to their bullhorns.

Typical was the expletive-filled objection of Susannah Leisegang [above], one of the graduating students who booed Butker. She has since been profiled in a number of articles lamenting how the football player ruined her day. “Yeah, it was f---ing horrible,” she clarified in a video. “It definitely made graduation feel a little less special knowing I had to sit through that and get told I’m nothing but a homemaker [sic].” “I’m not a f---ing homemaker.”

Butker never said she was, but don’t expect accuracy from rage-merchants like Leisegang or even from most journalists, who have been busy spreading falsehoods over the past week. GLADD claimed Butker used his speech to “disparage LGBTQ people,” when in fact he simply objected to Pride Month. Global News would have us believe he told women their “‘most important title’ should be that of ‘homemaker.’” He didn’t; he said it was “one of the most …”. The Benedictine nuns took issue with his (alleged) assertion “that being a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman.” He made no such assertion. CNN even reported that he “promoted the role of homemaker—not as an acceptable choice, but as [a woman’s] duty as a husband’s servant.” Complete B.S. There are so many articles filled with mouth-frothing misrepresentations that it would be tedious to canvas them all.

Women’s unmoored anger, purportedly forbidden for centuries (I wonder why!), is now such a glorious force for good that it is to be stoked at any opportunity.

Apart from two (perhaps ill-considered) sentences about President Biden’s support for abortion and one reference to Pride Month, Butker’s speech rehearsed classic Catholic themes of holiness. He relied heavily on the ideas of St. Josemaria Escriva, a popular Spanish priest and founder of Opus Dei. Large portions of the speech were taken up with an explanation of why Butker prefers the traditional Latin Mass and why he encouraged graduates of the college to seek it out. He spoke against birth control and in favor of natural families. He also exhorted priests to be more devoted shepherds and expressed shock that during Covid-19, mass was denied to many of the faithful, and many Catholics died alone without the Last Rites.  

Butker did not tell women that they should not have careers or that they had a duty to be homemakers—and certainly not that they were to be servants to their husbands. On the contrary, he celebrated the “amazing accomplishment” of the female graduates in his audience and recognized without condemnation that “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world.” He stated his belief, however, that his listeners were “most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” Perhaps he was wrong on this point, but it is hardly an assault on women’s freedom to assume that a majority of young Catholic women dream of marrying and having children. Butker also said that “Women are being told the most egregious lies,” presumably referring to encouragements to compete with men, to put professional life above all else, and to believe that traditional female vocations are outmoded.

Butker’s affirmation of men’s roles as fathers and husbands was equally, if not more, impassioned. He mentioned how he has “leaned in to [his] vocation as a husband and father and as a man.” He said that his wife is the person who knows him best and who helps him strive for goodness. “She’s the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from [the roles] of husband and father.” He encouraged other men to reject “the lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities.” On the contrary, he asserted, “As men, we set the tone of the culture. And when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in.”

I’m trying to imagine a star female athlete giving a graduation speech in which she thanked her husband for ensuring that she never let her career become a distraction from her roles as wife and mother. I’m trying to imagine this same woman encouraging other women to “set the [Christian] tone of the culture.” And then being attacked by men for … never mind, it’s just unimaginable.

The simple fact is that Butker gave an orthodox Catholic speech at a Catholic college, where he expected that many would appreciate it. And most did (his jersey sales are way up, showing that NFL fans loved it too). The speech received a standing ovation from the graduating students. Benedictine College has as its declared mission “the education of men and women within a community of faith and scholarship.” A section on its webpage, “Building a Culture of Evangelization,” affirms traditional Catholicism, explaining that all students take courses in Thomist philosophy and theology; that co-ed dorms are forbidden; that students are taught the “theology of the body;” that crucifixes are placed in every dorm room and students expected to participate in Rosary and morning prayer. No one attending Benedictine College should have been unaware that it takes its Catholicism seriously.

Most of the women worked up about Butker’s words have probably not watched his address or read the transcript, and their self-preening anger is the now-familiar fruit of feminist grievance-mongering. It is disgusting that these women should feel no shame in demanding a man be fired for speaking about his religious convictions at a Catholic college. It is indeed a disordered society, as Butker said, in which women believe it their right to dictate what a man is allowed to praise in his own wife.  

Butker did speak some plain truths about the need for masculinity: “Be unapologetic in your masculinity. Fight against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy.” In “saying the difficult stuff out loud,” he embodied the masculine bluntness and commitment to truth-speaking that he values. These have been remarkably absent from religious life and college campuses for the past 50 years, as have the (masculine-inspired and religious) values of order, self-restraint, modesty, and service to others. 

On one level, the fuss about Butker’s words is much ado about nothing. A man spoke at a Catholic college and many in his audience, and outside it, liked what he said. But it is a serious matter that hundreds of thousands demand his firing for it, and that the NFL is taking their rage seriously rather than defending the free speech and conscience rights of one of its players. The craven cowardice of the National Football League—and the majority of Butker’s teammates—has never been more apparent.

When the most macho sport in America is afraid of alienating the intersectional feminist lobby, the official degradation of masculinity and the triumph of the raging feminine would appear near-complete. Let those of us who can, take heed.