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Abigail Favale

Abigail Favale, Ph.D., is a writer and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. A Catholic convert with an academic background in gender studies, Abigail writes and speaks regularly on topics related to women and gender from a Catholic perspective.
Abigail’s memoir, Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion, traces her journey from evangelicalism to postmodern feminism to Catholicism. Her latest book is The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, released in June by Ignatius Press. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Church Life, Public Discourse, The Atlantic, and various academic and literary journals. 

What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? An Interview with Dr. Abigail Favale on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

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Feminism is a very fractious world. There’s a lot of different visions of what’s wrong and how we fix it. But all of the modern strands can trace their roots back to The Second Sex.
Father and mother holding small newborn baby hand, closeup.

A Feminism Embedded in Human Nature

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In our cultural moment, an embodied, relational feminism—one that does not see sexual difference as a threat—has to be reactionary; it is counter-cultural by default. Those hoping to realize that vision need to be against progress, but also for something more stable and enduring: a feminist movement that recognizes and embraces the limits of our nature, as well as norms that steward that nature; that guard it from pathological excess and enervation.
Image of Abigail Favale's book cover, The Genesis of Gender

Our Bodies, Our Selves: Gender Dysphoria and the Longing for Wholeness

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Gender dysphoria needs to be acknowledged and treated as a psychological illness. I understand the resistance to language of disorder and pathology, motivated by a fear that such language is stigmatizing. I understand, but I disagree. To reclassify disorder as order forecloses the possibility of recovery. I think of my own battles with anxiety, depression, self-harm. I don’t want someone telling me those things are normal and good. I want to be healed.
Women's March

Feminism’s Last Battle

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We are witnessing a kind of last battle, a feminist Armageddon that will determine whether feminism, as a movement centered upon the wellbeing of women and girls, will endure into the future or self-immolate. Only a return to realism can provide a stable definition of woman, the requisite ground for effective feminism.
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