Katy Perry vs. Harrison Butker: Who Really Supports Women?
The Pop Singer “Remixes” the NFL Star’s Graduation Speech
Did you hear?
Katy Perry remixed part of Harrison Butker’s infamous commencement address to make it sound like he said the opposite of what he really said. Social media cries,“Sick burn!” But I’m a little confused.
You see, I thought the pop star supports women.
Here’s what I mean.
One remixed line goes like this: “I have seen firsthand how much happier someone can be supporting women, and not saying that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
In Butker’s actual speech, his “firsthand” anecdote refers to a choice his wife, Isabelle, made. We’ll turn to the details of that choice soon, but for now let’s consider some hypotheticals.
Imagine if Isabelle had said she wanted to have a career, and Butker supported her. Perry would regard him as an ally. Plug in various other scenarios, and we can assume Perry’s reaction would be the same.
Is there any doubt Perry would support Butker if he supported Isabelle’s choice to, say, have an abortion, experiment with polyamory or kiss a girl?
So the chain of events goes like this: Isabelle freely chooses X, Butker supporters her, and Perry supports Butker. In other words, Katy Perry will support men who support women’s choices.
Now let’s drop the hypotheticals, and examine what Isabelle actually did freely choose: to be a stay-at-home mom.
Here’s where I get confused.
What Katy Supports
Isabelle freely chose to be a stay-at-home mom, and Butker supported her, so why didn’t Perry support Butker?
Maybe Perry’s beef with Butker has more to do with what he said to the young women on the verge of graduating from Benedictine College. Butker knows that choosing family over career makes his wife happy because she told him that. But how could the NFL star know what will make the women in the audience happy?
And if you’ve examined social media or read the news, you’d get the impression that Butker wasn’t exactly focused on women’s happiness. You’ve probably heard he behaved like a jock hepped up on toxic masculinity.
People reported that Butker “attacked working women.” The New York Post said he told the women in the audience that their “most important title” should be “homemaker.” And Kansas City Star columnist Sam McDowell put it this way:
Women in the audience, rather than being rewarded with a diploma on graduation day, were made to listen as he promoted the role of homemaker—not as an acceptable choice, but as their duty as a husband’s servant.
But forget what you might have heard from the media or on social media. It’s clear that many who are piling on Butker couldn’t be bothered to actually listen to his 20 minute speech (or even just the couple minutes he devoted to addressing women).
As I noted two weeks ago, Butker didn’t order women to stay home, and he didn’t call “homemaker” the most important title a woman could hold. He called it one of the most important titles. That’s a big difference. Moreover, Butker framed his remarks within the context of women’s free choice and happiness.
His actual truth claim is quite modest:
Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
Butker merely ventures “to guess” (not claiming certainty!) that “the majority” (not all!) of “you” (not Katy Perry fans, not every woman on planet Earth—just the women students about to graduate from this one college) are most excited about family.
Pair Butker’s modest claim with the fact that these young women chose to attend a conservative Catholic college, and his comments seem perfectly reasonable. Unlike Perry, Butker is reflecting on what the women graduates actually want.
And according to a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, it turns out that people around the world (and especially women) value family more than careers.
No wonder even famous lefties like Bill Maher and Whoopi Goldberg responded to Butker’s speech with a shrug.
But maybe Perry’s antics deserve more than a shrug.
What Makes Women Happy?
Perry’s all for supporting women until they choose to do something she doesn’t approve of, like putting family before career. Her response makes you wonder if the pop star noticed that Butker’s “homemaker” line elicited a 16-second applause break, or that, at the end of the speech, nearly everyone in attendance—including women—gave Butker a standing ovation.
Does the pop star want women to choose things that make them happy or things that make Katy Perry happy? On Instagram, a very pleased-with-herself Perry announced her remix this way: “Fixed this for my girls [and] my graduates.”
She might have fixed it for “her” girls and graduates, but Perry’s circle of acolytes doesn’t represent the views of most women, let alone the priorities of the women graduating from Benedictine College. Butker has a better grasp on what the female students want because, unlike Perry, he actually pays attention to the free choices they made.
Perry’s remix may have received a virtual standing-o on Instagram, but had she delivered those words at Benedictine College, the response would have been very different.
Perry may favor career over family, but if she really wants to know what makes women happy, she should venture beyond her bubble. Yes, many women find happiness by foregoing marriage and family.
But, on average, women who get married and have kids are happier than those who don’t. Once they hit age 55, only 10 percent of unmarried and childless women report being “very happy.” And while marriage and kids don’t tell the whole story, they’re an important part of the story.
Perry’s fans deserve more than naive remixes that reimagine reality. If the pop star really wants to support women, she should level with them.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.
No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.
Source: “A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir,” in Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, (New York: Random House, 1976)
Perry is at least carrying on the ancient feminist tradition.
Great piece, Ted. Catherine Pakaluk did a nice piece on Butker's speech:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/05/harrison-butkers-speech-wasnt-for-us