We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Fighting Back Against the Culture
My Speech from the Catholic Women’s Conference

I delivered these remarks this weekend at a friend’s inaugural Catholic Women’s conference in southern California. They were expecting 50 people. Over 180 women showed up, of all ages, many with babies in their arms. I’m grateful for the chance to see again, in real life, that my fellow domestic extremists and I are not alone!
Hope you enjoy it!
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We Go To Conferences
Thank you all so much for coming today. It's a great honor to be here and I want to thank you guys for inviting me, and for taking a chance on some anonymous writer named “Peachy.” I grew up in Los Angeles but I used to come up here all the time as a kid, when my grandparents lived in Ventura, and it always brings back happy memories for me.
So let’s start with the obvious question: who am I and what qualifies me of all people to give a talk about being a Catholic woman and mother?
After all, I am not a parenting expert, an academic, a gender studies professor, a sociologist, or a theologian. I’m just a writer. For almost my entire adult life, I managed to make a living as a writer. Girls, don’t let your parents tell you not to be an English major! It worked for me!
I’m also a former totally secular, pro-choice liberal atheist who somehow escaped feminism – by the skin of her teeth. Growing up, I had literally zero interaction with anyone who believed in God. I was a basic, half baked, feminist who thought religion was bad, abortion and birth control were good, and that the Catholic Church silences women, holds them back, and oppresses them.
Which is pretty funny, looking back. Do I look like I’m being silenced?
Here I am now, a pro-life Catholic and a mother of five who has been fully liberated from the feminist mindset.
And, since everyone else in California gets to pick their own bespoke gender identity, I invented one for myself. I identify as a husbosexual, which means I am only attracted to people who identify as my husband. Luckily, so far that’s just one guy. But you never know!
I am also delighted to be in a church named for Mary Magdalene. I named my youngest child for her. And my Twitter avatar photo is from a Renaissance painting of Mary Magdalene, whom I consider a patron of mine. So how could I say no to coming today?
Mary Magdalene is maybe also the coolest saint. Like me, she was a convert. I converted officially 10 years ago this Easter. And she was, like me, sometimes “problematic,” if you know what I mean. I think about her when I make a mistake, or get in trouble. She was one of the guys, holding her own as the only woman in the boys club, but she was always herself, and utterly fearless. Would you sneak into a tomb, alone, of someone you’d just seen crucified and buried? Me neither.
But her example gives me courage. Because when I first started doing crazy things like going to mass and baptizing my children and giving up my long held beliefs in feminism and abortion, I couldn’t tell a single person what I was up to. I didn’t have one friend or relative I could tell. Not one. They would all think I was crazy or weird for believing in Jesus Christ. I had to hide what I thought and who I was becoming, or I would alienate my “friends,” shock my colleagues, and confuse my parents and siblings.
And it sort of was crazy—I was converting to Catholicism and I didn’t know a single catholic. The only person who even knew I was converting and was happy about it, was my husband. And then for years after I converted I kept it a secret from old friends, the other preschool parents, and even some family members. I admit it – I was scared of being shunned, ostracized, and judged.
Luckily, I am now on the other side of that painful “transition.” These days I am surrounded by friends and other parents who think like I do. Who wants what I want for my children. And who teach me by their example so much about our shared faith. I’m so honored that some of them are here today.
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Not Afraid of Being Canceled
I may still make a lot of mistakes and sometimes tweet dumb things or make dumb jokes, but at least now I’m always trying to stay honest and “be authentic,” as the kids say. Because I refuse to hide who I am anymore.
I am not going back in the closet, scared that my neighbors will find out how I really feel about God or motherhood or the unborn or how to raise young girls. I may write under a pseudonym, but I always try to say exactly how I feel, without shame, or fear of being disinvited from a party, or fired from a job.
The funny thing is, I am not by nature a very bold or courageous person. I was so shy growing up, so afraid to talk to boys that my mother thought I’d never meet one. I didn’t know how to make friends and I had terrible stage fright. And not much has changed. I’m still scared of airplanes and heights and spiders. My husband still kills all the spiders in our house.
But alas, now, we find ourselves in a culture war. It’s not a war we sought, but it is one that has sought us. I realized I had a choice – I could either go back in my closet, hide, and wait to see who won.
Or….. I could use the only weapon I have and try to fight back. And if not fight, then at least boost morale in our foxholes. And so, that’s the choice I made. I had to burn all my ships, as Cortez did when he reached the new world. Because there is no going back. The only way out is through, for all of us.
There is a Flannery O’Conner quote I used on the first page of my book:
“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.”
And that’s what I feel like I am called to do, every day. Push back against the age, as hard as it's pushing against me, and children and my Catholic community and Catholics worldwide. I mean, that’s why you’re all here today.
We, as women, as mothers, and as Catholics, and being pushed, hard. We have two choices: we can let ourselves be pushed down, pushed over, and pushed in directions we don’t want to go. Or, we can find our resolve, and start pushing back.
We aren’t being called to die on the cross, or be burned at the stake, or be eaten by lions—yet.
But make no mistake—we are under attack, and so are our kids. Only my faith gives me the sturdy scaffolding I can cling to as I try to keep my sons and daughters faithful—and immune to the toxic culture that surrounds us. Catholicism really has become my life boat. Without it, my children and I would probably have sunk long ago. Honestly, becoming a Catholic puts motherhood on easy mode.
Instead of feeling oppressed by religious faith, I’ve learned that in fact the opposite is true. Catholicism, the Magisterium, the real deal, actually liberates women. It is in fact the source of female liberation. It is the engine of female empowerment.
Because female liberation is not just about the freedom TO do whatever you want. It’s the freedom NOT to. It’s the freedom to say no to what the culture or “the officials” or “the authorities” are pushing on you.
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Immunizing Our Kids Against the Bullsh*t
I mean, imagine trying to raise teenagers in 2024 America, without the guide rails the church gives us? The mind reels. Being a mom today is kind of like being a bouncer. You have to carefully bounce bad ideas and destructive tendencies that try to get in the front door. And without God and without faith, why bother? If nothing matters and there's no sin and no eternal life, then why not make life about the pursuit of social affirmation, short term pleasure, and self-indulgence?
Catholicism also, uniquely, enshrines the mother and father as the authority over the child. Only God supersedes it. No civil authority, no teacher, no school board, no politician, has the right to get between you and your parental authority.
But especially these days, especially in California, trying to exercise your God-given right to parent your children can get you in trouble. Whenever I write, I like to inject some levity into it, to make people laugh so they don’t cry. But sometimes, all you can do is cry.
And sometimes, the stakes are so high that crying isn’t strong enough. Screaming is more appropriate.
Especially when you hear the story of Yaeli Martinez. At age 15, Yaeli, a stunningly beautiful but confused young girl, was secretly transitioned into a boy behind her mothers back, at a Los Angeles public school—by the school officials, county social workers, and a local LGBT group.
Her mother Abby, a woman who had come here seeking a better life for her daughter, objected to this, but her pleas were ignored. When Abby accidentally used the wrong pronouns for her daughter, the state took Yaeli away and put her in foster care, where she was only allowed to visit her daughter for one hour a week. The LA county Department of Children and Family services had full custody of her child.
They started injecting her with testosterone, but Yaeli’s depression and confusion got worse. The excuse the city used was that if they didn’t keep Yaeli away from her mother and her family she'd end up killing herself. According to the state, they knew best, because they were saving Yaeli’s life and rescuing from an abusive, uncaring mother.
After four long years with almost no contact with her “obstructive” mother— but plenty of testosterone injections—19 year-old Yaeli knelt on the tracks in front of an oncoming train, raised her hands to heaven, and died.
“They killed my daughter,” her mother told the Washington Examiner. “They had to pick pieces of her off of the track.”
Abby later testified that her daughter was not actually transgender, but had some serious mental health issues. Instead of addressing those issues, her child was put on testosterone—and shockingly, the LGBTQ group behind this travesty used Yaeli to raise money for their organization.
Abby’s story is a warning and a call for all of us to stand up now, before it's too late, and be brave and be courageous.
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Dangerous
Which brings me to this: if I’m so courageous, why don’t I just use my real name when I write?
Well, it’s probably obvious by now that some of my opinions about the world are considered extreme and even dangerous—especially when you are working at a Hollywood studio. And, when I started writing about all this stuff, I was working full time for a very large entertainment company where my hot takes would have gotten me fired instantly. Even beheaded, right in the office.
I can’t reveal the name of this company, but let’s just say it was not exactly the happiest place on earth to work.
Now I write under my pseudonym about lots of different topics, but the issue I care about most is the fate of women and children in modern society.
And last summer I published a book about this: Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War.
My book is my attempt to push back against what I consider one of the most insidious and pervasive threats to traditional American life, female happiness, and family formation: and that is, contemporary feminism.
In my book, I make the case that the only way to rescue western civilisation is by encouraging responsible adults to form families. By convincing young women to embrace the calling of motherhood.
Unless you’re threatened by monogamous breeding pairs, the book has nothing to do with violence, or hate of any kind. I’m not an actual domestic extremist—I’m just extremely domestic.
For my purposes, a domestic extremist is simply someone who chooses to live a life that is a little bit more domestic. Someone who chooses to prioritize things like a marriage and children over a career or pleasure seeking as its own end.
Someone who rejects the lies of feminism and chooses to live the way a lot of women did before feminism made those things uncool and unpopular. After all, I’m not talking about going back to the 1780s. I’ll take the 1980s!
The title “domestic extremist” is a play on words, of course, but it has a real truth to it. Maybe you’ve noticed that women like me, and women like some of you, are considered actual extremists by other people. In the last few years we’ve witnessed peaceful pro-life activists get raided by the FBI and arrested, facing years in prison—for the very extreme crime of praying—in public.
Some people I meet get upset when they find out I have five kids. And that I converted to Catholicism. And that I quit my job at the happiest place on earth to stay home with my baby, because to me, THAT was the happiest of earth. But doing all of this made me a traitor to the feminist sisterhood.
But—that’s not ALL I did!
I also taught my kids there are only two genders, and they are assigned at conception by God. I taught them life begins at conception, and abortion entails killing a life. I taught them it was actually okay and even–uh oh!– preferable if a new mother has the opportunity to stay home with her newborn. And—we even go to mass! Every sunday. In L.A., this is an extremely extreme, ultra extreme lifestyle.
But, don’t worry—we’re mostly harmless. We may be extremists, but ours is a movement of peace. Unless you are scared of monogamous mating pairs, or dirty diapers, or piles of laundry, you have nothing to fear from me and my fellow domestic extremists.
We’re Catholic Women, We Approve of Staying Home to Raise Your Baby
Sometimes people, usually older women, confront me and want to know if I think all of feminism is bad. Feminism liberated women from the patriarchy, after all. Feminism empowers women! So they can be more like men! They’ll ask me, don’t you think women should be allowed to work and contribute to society?
Of course it’s okay for women to work. Just look at me, here I am!
But I do object to the idea that there is only ONE way to contribute to society, and it’s by making money. There are many ways for women to contribute to society. My argument is that the most important one of all, the one we should value above all others, is the contribution of motherhood.
The feminist attitude on motherhood seems to be why bother? there’s no money in it, no glory, its low status, low glamour. Why waste your time?
When I converted to Catholicism, I realized that motherhood is a calling and a vocation that requires a level of sacrificial love that you won’t find in any other modern career. And that’s exactly what makes it so special – and so tragic that it has been so degraded as a valid feminine life choice.
Unfortunately, the only women contemporary feminists care about these days are men who think they’re women.
Telling a young woman she can do “anything a man can do” actually diminishes girls—because girls can do some incredible things no man can do.
Not even the men who pretend to be women. But we treat a woman’s unique gift of fertility and child gestating like it’s an incurable disease.
Imagine telling your little girl that her success in life depends on her willingness to sever her maternal bonds to any future children so she can live her dreams. So she can be anything—except “just” a mother or a devoted wife.
My goal is to try and reveal the lies of feminism. It really is a house of cards. And it’s much more fragile than it looks. The lies are almost too easy to debunk. So let’s debunk some of them, shall we?
We’re Catholic Women, We’re Not Freezing Our Eggs
And now I want to tell you a story that is maybe a perfect example of how feminism hurts women much more than it helps them:
Brigitte Adams caused a sensation four years ago when she appeared on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek under the headline, “Freeze your eggs, Free your career.” She was single and blond, a Vassar graduate who spoke fluent Italian, and was working in tech marketing for a number of prestigious companies. Her story was one of empowerment, how a new fertility procedure was giving women more choices, as the magazine noted provocatively, “in the quest to have it all.”
Adams remembers feeling a wonderful sense of freedom after she froze her eggs in her late 30s, despite the $19,000 cost. Her plan was to work a few more years, find a great guy to marry and still have a house full of her own children.
Things didn’t turn out the way she hoped.
In early 2017, with her 45th birthday looming and no sign of Mr. Right, she decided to start a family on her own. She excitedly unfroze the 11 eggs she had stored and selected a sperm donor.
Two eggs failed to survive the thawing process. Three more failed to fertilize. That left six embryos, of which five appeared to be abnormal. The last one was implanted in her uterus. One, she got the devastating news that it, too, had failed.
Adams was not pregnant, and her chances of carrying her genetic child had just dropped to near zero. She remembers screaming like “a wild animal,” throwing books, papers, her laptop — and collapsing to the ground.
“It was one of the worst days of my life. There were so many emotions. I was sad. I was angry. I was ashamed. I questioned, ‘Why me?’ ‘What did I do wrong?’”
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Not Feminists
Brigitte Adams went from being the poster girl for female empowerment, to the poster girl for the victims of feminism. She did end up having a baby eventually – as a single mother in her late 40s, using a donor egg and donor sperm.
Because what they don’t tell you is that the chances of getting pregnant from IVF with your frozen egg at age 40 is 9%. Over age 44, there’s just a 2% chance. If only someone had told Brigitte and others like her that actually there is a better way to become a mother. It’s ancient and timeless. It’s even free! Minus the cost of an engagement ring.
When you freeze your eggs, you are also removing urgency from the need to find a mate. You think, well, I like him, but is he egg worthy? I like him but is he perfect? I have eggs waiting for me, so I don’t really need to hurry.
And so you don’t hurry, and eventually all the sand runs out of the hourglass.
Feminism has been prowling about the world, seeking the ruin of souls, for over 50 years now. It’s tricked several generations of women into thinking you can have it all, at any age—thanks to the wonders of reproductive technology.
Of course I believe women can work and do all the things that men can do, but come on—why would any woman want to do every single thing a man can do?
Early feminism had noble goals, I’m glad I get to vote and work if I choose to. Our problem is contemporary feminism. Contemporary feminism, those pro-choice activists, actually took away a woman’s choice to work. They gave us the right to work outside the home, but they took away the choice to do it.
And woe unto you if you dare to have more than one or two or three children. We live in the most sexually permissive society on earth in the most sexually permissive city ever to exist in human history, outside of maybe the late stage Roman empire, but there is one thing left that you are absolutely, positively, not allowed to do: have a big family.
Technically it's still allowed, but restricting family size is something on their agenda, coming soon from Klaus Schwab and the other climate change fanatics.
As an aside: I wish I could explain to the climate change people that big families have tiny carbon footprints. People with six kids are not taking a lot of trips on airplanes. I barely leave my neighborhood! We don't take private jets or travel by yacht or motorcade. Those are only things people who really care about the climate do.
We’re Catholic Women, We Like to Have Babies the Old-Fashioned Way
And now, feminism is reaping what it sowed—young women are rejecting marriage and family in huge numbers. Birth rates are plummeting not just here but around the world.
In response to this collapse in our fertility rate, some tech geniuses in Silicon Valley have decided that full artificial reproduction is the way to go.
This past December, I attended the first ever Natalism Conference in Austin. Natalism just means “pro-baby.” Why yes, I do like babies!
The organizers correctly identified that population collapse and civilizational decline are a direct result of family breakdown. I was one of the speakers on how to increase our fertility naturally.
Other speakers were part of the so-called transhumanist movement. We share the same goals of getting people to have babies, but our methods are slightly different.
The transhumanists believe in propagating their high IQ genes as widely as possible using technology like IVF and advanced embryo selection. But this process inevitably leads to enormous number of discarded embryos.
Creation decoupled from morality begets death, every time.
We’re Catholic Women, Of Course We’re Natalists
Of course, I almost missed my chance to have a big family. Whenever I thought about my future, I thought, sure, I’ll have kids, one day. Not yet though! And I wouldn’t have too many—I mean, I wasn't a weirdo.
But then I started having my own babies and I realized these guys are great! I had to move fast if I wanted to get more of them.I had five kids in 10 years, one at a time, the old fashioned way: no reproductive technology.
Sometimes having a bunch of kids in LA is a bummer. When people find out, I’ll get comments like “Oh, I’m sorry.” Or: “You know there are ways to prevent that these days.” Once when I was pregnant with my third, a neighbor saw me and asked me with a sneer. “What are you, some kind of Mormon?”
When I was pregnant with my fifth, a colleague asked me why I didn’t abort this one, since I already had four. She was genuinely curious. No one could quite understand what I was up to—why would any normal person in their right mind keep going past one or two?
There seems to be something primal and threatening about a woman who has “too many” kids. This is the vibe I get from women who choose differently. Is it FOMO? Does my refusal to stop at two make them reconsider getting their tubes tied after their last baby? Is it a reminder that actually, they could have kept going?
People like this tend to react with panic and then immediately try to talk you out of having any more. After I had my fourth kid, every single person I met asked me the same question. “You’re done right? Please tell me you’re done.” They needed me to be done having kids. I would always answer “oh not yet, I’d love a few more.”
But hear me out: we can use their hatred of big families to our advantage. The other side is not reproducing! The anti-natalists are sterilizing themselves! They’re getting on the pill at 14 and staying on it past 40. They’re even sterilizing their own kids with puberty blockers, wiping out their own chance at grandchildren.
Imagine fighting a war in which the other side decides to shoot each other instead of their enemy.
This is our opportunity to seize the means of reproduction. What if we could encourage more young women to embark on their own motherhood journeys naturally, before they start freezing their eggs? Having a family needs to be rebranded as not just something the very rich or the very religious can do—into an aspirational, living your best life, must-have.
The only way forward is to make motherhood a must-have. To make siblings a status symbol. And to make children a hotly desirable currency.
Our job, and everyone in this room’s mission therefore is to make motherhood great again.
To those who think becoming domestically extreme is out of reach—do not reject it as a luxury lifestyle. We don’t have that luxury. You go to war with the ovaries you’ve got.
I hope if nothing else, you take this home with you today: that to be a Catholic woman today requires courage. Without it, we and your kids are going to get swept away by the rip tides of the culture.
But just by being here, by showing up today and hearing me out, is an act of courage. The courage to sometimes say the truth. And teach the truth to our children. It’s hard. It would be so much easier to quit and let the culture have its way with our kids.
But if we can put on the full armor of God, and know that the truth will always win, in the end, no matter what, then nothing anyone says or does can hurt you.
After all, we’re Catholic women. To quote another of my favorite female saints, We can’t be afraid. We were born to do this. And with God's grace, each other’s help, and a little luck, we’re going to win this fight.
So go forth—and be extremely domestic!
Thank you.
Last summer when my husband and I were out for a rare dinner date, leaving our (mere!) three children at home with indulgent grandparents, a woman in her 70s stumbled over to our table and sat down. She was drunk and lonely so we let her stay and chatted with her a while. Within moments she let us know she was an OG feminist and had proudly chosen not to have children. She told us of friends who have come and gone, a husband who passed away earlier than she’d hoped and her self-published book of poetry all about how no one needs her. As a former sh*tlib feminist myself, it was a sobering glimpse into a future I almost inflicted on myself. This year my husband and our kids will all be baptized at Easter and I am so grateful for our Catholic Church, our RCIA team and wonderful deacon and priest.
Courageous essay and inspiring story of having chosen the more compassionate and difficult path. I’m the 9th of 10 kids and am thankful to Jesus and my parents for life.