What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

The sexual constitution.

Last week I wrote about my suspicion that a little-noticed cause of the failure of gun-control is what we might call the masculine or fatherly instinct to protect the weak, felt most acutely when the particular “weak” in question are a man’s wife and children.

The ensuing conversation predictably divagated into a wider discussion of the human sexual constitution. So the context of the fatherly instinct to protect was expanded to include the whole tremendous question of gender differences and how they should be viewed vis-à-vis policy and the social state.

On one side of this debate, as I see it, we have people who, arguing from a wide variety of factual sources, employing various lines of reason from initial deductions, recognize gender differences as a matter of empirical fact of sufficient gravity to impact policy and the social state. They do not all reason from one source, nor do they all share the same presuppositions; on many other matters these students of the observable fact of a unified sexuality constituted by differences — what the rhetorician with a gift for imagery might call the “one flesh” union of man and wife — would not agree at all.

But they do differ strongly with the other side of this debate: those who believe that whatever the nature of gender differences in objective reality is, it is not of sufficient gravity to appreciably affect policy and the social state. Some of the folks on this side would no doubt argue that actual differences are just not relevant to political matters, and only barely relevant to most social matters, a kind of detail of human variety with no lasting importance; others will gesture toward the possibility of in-group differences exceeding group differences; still others of a Rousseauian bent are more animated by the idea of “getting past” what differences do linger, through a direct policy of leveling.

In any case what we have in front of us is a serious disagreement as to the constitution of being, perhaps one characterized by that opportunity for clarity and camaraderie that often attends a good and honest disagreement. In other words we might be in the presence of a fruitful disagreement.

With that in mind I’m going to point to the flip-side or even dark-side of my “fatherly instinct to protect” argument. (All men are not fathers, but all men are potential fathers, all fathers are men, and most men are fathers. So I think I’m on solid ground to use that phrase as a synecdoche for the broader argument about masculinity suggested in the previous post.)

Consider what happens when this protective instinct is subverted. What happens when fathers fail to protect, families are rent asunder, and boys lose touch with the healthy protective instinct, instead finding solace from squalor and insecurity in an aggression that is not tethered by the native attachment to the weak? What happens when men, far from seeing women and children as beings potentially needing defending, approach them with a predatory and acquisitive mind? What happens when that protectiveness toward the weak, overthrown, is replaced by rapaciousness toward the weak?

Why, then we get barbarism. Whether barbarism of the old frontier — the Viking raids, razzias from Turkish pirates, the pitiless acquisition of imperial ages — or barbarism of a decadent civilization, as in our own inner cities or the revolutionary irruptions of early modern Europe, the predation of violent and lawless young men is a perennial problem for humankind. It is often a more terrible personal terror for women and children bereft of the protection of law.

Note that I am not talking primarily about statutory law. Our topic here is not the legal constitution but the sexual constitution. Thus what I am referring to is something more like “law of the heart,” which is related to Tocqueville’s term “social state” that I used above: all that fund of mores and usages, insights and customs, obligations and privileges, which form and are formed by positive law, though they themselves stand apart from it. In healthy societies men adopt the burdens and joys of fatherhood (even if by some degree of detachment, as in unclehood, so to speak) not by force of positive law at all, but by personal embrace of what has come before, now modified and reformed by their own experience. Men are brought into their natural role in the sexual constitution by a process of conformity to tradition — though we must not neglect to recall the considerable creative aspect retained by them even in that conformity. But only in extreme cases of neglect or abuse does positive law enter directly.

Which brings me back around to the disagreement mentioned above, and why I am so emphatically on one side of it: in my estimation we tamper with the sexual constitution at our great peril. Sexual difference is an observable fact of nature with which we must reckon; one feature of that difference is the innate aggressiveness in men, which when disciplined towards its natural end — the protection and provision of a family — will conduce to productive and civilized life; but when subverted to lawless desire and acquisition will terrorize the weak and irrevocably disrupt productive and civilized life.

Comments (53)

It's interesting how social conservatives will cite study after study showing how important fathers are to the well-being and healthy development of children, but none of that "support" translates into social policy prescriptions. For example, even as they cite those studies, social conservatives still overwhelmingly support a legal regime wherein mothers are automatically given a presumption of being the ones who should have custody of children.

Social conservatives are almost utterly useless here. When they see men bowing out and/or getting bitter, they try to shame them than ask why many men are turning away toward video games, pornography and other diversions. Could it possibly be that modern woman feels that she has no equal duties to her man? Perish the thought that on some level, many men are waking up to the rotten state of affairs we have today and realizing that playing into it is a chump's game.

The reward that most good men get today is a marriage that lasts maybe 10 to 15 years. Their wife divorces him, takes the kids, embitters them toward him and leaves him approaching or at middle age with half of his life's investment in ruins and another good portion being eaten up by the vultures euphemistically called "family law attorneys." He's lucky if he doesn't get on the hook for alimony and docked into servitude for child support.

What incentive is there to invest in a civilization that does that to men? Why should men love a civilization that shrugs at that and then says that men owe women their time and labor?

I should also add that our ancestors were far wiser than modern mainstream social conservatives. Our ancestors understood that to give unwed mothers access to the father's wealth was nothing short of rendering a mortal blow to the institution of marriage. All that would serve to do is make the status of "wife" an honorific title, not a special status with legal rights and privileges that made it unique. Our forebears also knew that the fastest way to make a woman not leave a marriage willy nilly, as most marriages are dissolved today, is to automatically award custody to the father unless he is proved to be unfit.

I just finished reading Men and Marriage by Gilder for the first time. I was too young to notice it when I was first published, but it seems that many of the ideas he presents in the book are now more widely known and repeated than just a few years ago.

I found his presentation of the "Sexual Constitution," as Mr. Cella refers to it, to be intriguing, though it seemed lacking in answering some of the questions that came to my mind as I was reading. The largest question that seems to demand an answer if one is to argue in his context is, why are there men (males) at all? The only purpose he gives is to provide for and protect women and children. The sort of provision he speaks of in the book is material, and the sort of protection he speaks of is the kind that a man can give to protect women and children from other men.

As he often presents the existence of men as a problem, it seems like an obvious solution to the problem would be for men not to exist at all. As for protection, they would not be needed to protect women and children from other men who don't exist; and as for provision, women can gather necessary food, as well as survive in grass huts if necessary.

Of course this solution is unacceptable, but his mode of argumentation begs this sort of question. It teases us with larger metaphysical questions, while feigning to only dwell in the realm of the material and biological. He and Hanna Rosin would seem to be in agreement on the main point of Men and Marriage, if not their politics.

Right, Gilder's focus on natural marriage as a civilizing institution for men is definitely limited. Also, I think he fails to appreciate the degree to which women, also, "need" men and the institution of marriage.

I think the idea that women can just easily provide for themselves physically in some sort of hunter-gatherer situation is kind of ridiculous, though. Tell that to the pregnant woman faced by a wolf, or with a tiny baby to care for, or exhausted by pregnancy and unable to "gather." Tell that to a woman living in a climate where a grass hut = freezing to death. One could go on all day. The only reason people can fool themselves into thinking that women can easily take care of themselves and their children materially without men is because we live in such a highly developed situation with so much help for women--hospitals, daycares, etc., etc.--that we don't really have a vivid sense of life in the rough. And all that infrastructure wouldn't have gotten here in the first place, I might add, without men. Alternative histories in which women invent everything are merely silly science fiction.

Or are we to imagine "women" who lay eggs in warm soil where they hatch themselves and the young immediately begin foraging successfully? In that case, while we're at it, let's just endow these "women" with male biceps and upper body strength.

No, the physical differences between men and women go a lot farther than a need to protect women from other men. And the lengthy period of weakness of human young, coupled with the strong maternal-child bond in humans, tells us something as well.

Still, there is an enormous amount of insight in Gilder's book. I can't help but think, for instance, that his chapter on "The Princess Problem" discloses some of rarely remarked pathologies that drove us to the financial ruin we're in -- the emancipation of desire in one realm cannot be easily contained. The man who uses his power and wealth to bed younger women will not likely scruple to defraud his investors. Etc.

Paul,

Scripture says it best: he who sins is a slave to sin and he who sins in one area sins in all areas. There are seven deadly branches of sin, but one trunk. It is the sense of pride, the mis-evaluation of one's station in life, that is the cause of all sin. I say it, again, the problem is not the sexual constitution, per se, but the fact that feminist, etc., believe that they are either the author of their sexual constitution or at the very least its supreme court justice. As for the true Author and his justice, they know him not nor do they follow.

The Chicken

Does marriage make men less aggressive or are aggressive men less likely to get married in the first place?

I lean toward the latter interpretation. Someone who doesn't care about social stability, as aggressive men are likely not to, won't see any real purpose to marrying. He'll just fool around with other people's wives and make them care for his children. Perhaps the fear of God might motivate a psychopath, but perhaps not; I suspect fewer aggressive men have religious beliefs than less aggressive men for the simple reason that most theists God want there to be a God, most atheists desire for there not to be a God, and it is not in the interests of aggressive men to restrain themselves. And anyway, intra-group aggression is a different matter than aggression against outsiders; is there any evidence that the Vikings had weak families?

In all practicality Lydia is most likely right--the idea of women living without men would probably spell disaster for them. It is much easier, however, to theorize about a civilization of all women than one of all men because of the obvious biological impasse that men would have to face to reproduce which women do not have to face. Gilder even touches on the fact that, even back when he wrote the book, it was possible through cloning to continue the human race with exclusively females.

Even supposing, however, that women need men for protection and provision, this seems quite a paltry exchange for everything Gilder purports women to bring to the table in forming civilization. One can train a dog to protect oneself, but only a human can nurture and form another human being. Gilder assigns the latter almost exclusively to women, while the only solution he presents for men to keep from reducing themselves to animals, is to agree to provide the service for a woman that an animal might also provide. No--there is much more that men bring to the table than physical protection and provision, and Gilder's silence on the matter is misleading in learning how we build and maintain civilization.

That said, I agree with Mr. Cella that there are very useful insights in the book. I would say that it is his main thesis that I have trouble with, which, even supposing it is correct, is stated so crudely in regards to men that it is misleading.

Gilder even touches on the fact that, even back when he wrote the book, it was possible through cloning to continue the human race with exclusively females.

There is a novella that explores this theme, written by a female using a male pseudonym, and the result was a strange lack of intellectual advancement and creativity. She makes the case indirectly that man's territorial instincts have a benefit in that they spur new strategy and new tools for controlling his environment and showing off his status.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_Houston,_Do_You_Read%3F

My opinion, (and it very much an opinion that I could not hope to back up with hard and fast proof) is that the obvious physical (and emotional) differences are properly speaking the secondary results of the primary differences that God intended when "He made them male and female". After all, when God made us, He made us male and female in the Garden where there was no sin, no aggression, and no natural disaster to protect against. But there WAS marriage, and therefore the origin of family. But at the same time, "In His image He made them." Male and female, then, instantiate in humans, under different aspects, images of things that exist in a unified and simple way in God. Our ability to see that is clouded due to the damages of sin, so we should not expect a clear image. But roughly, and as a first approximation: The male is the first actor, the initiator, the generator, in the relationship. The female is the passive principle, the enricher, the completer. Complementarity is obvious. These characteristics are born out in traditional gender roles (roughly), so that anti-traditionalists will of course claim that I am just trying to read my traditionalist preferences into the Bible and into my view of "nature". But such a claim doesn't actually make my suggestion wrong, it is an ad-hominem attack that leaves the substance of my point intact.

Nobody will ever convince someone of the natural differences in genders who rejects the very idea of human nature. Gays (and anti-traditionalists generally) have a prior motive for believing that there is no such thing as human nature. But even gays will have a tough time pretending that there is no complementarity between the sexes. If that complementarity were SOLELY physical, their case would be easier, but the physical is a consequence of deeper truths.

But even gays will have a tough time pretending that there is no complementarity between the sexes.

They actually do acknowledge it in the way one partner plays the role of a woman.

Nobody will ever convince someone of the natural differences in genders who rejects the very idea of human nature. Gays (and anti-traditionalists generally) have a prior motive for believing that there is no such thing as human nature.

I think of it more a struggle to redefine human nature than deny there is one. There is a wide acceptance among Christians for the idea that there is a genetic component to homosexuality, but that doesn't or wouldn't matter. However I"m not persuaded that either is the case, though I'm not going to argue it here. And yes I know that wouldn't necessarily make it natural and that high profile and wise Christians make this argument.

Lydia

‘The only reason people can fool themselves into thinking that P is because we live in such a highly developed situation’

Where P is ‘they live longer than our foraging forefathers’ or ‘they can attack or repel those physically stronger than they are’, I guess you have no problem because you don’t mind people living beyond age 17, or whenever it was they used to kick the bucket then, and you also approve of gun ownership. So is it the case that you see ‘fooling ourselves’ as a problem only where P is something you disapprove of?

The reason I’d like to know is because I get this warm feeling from Paul’s post, which I do appreciate and which entices me to contribute to the discussion if I can. But I’d like to be clear first that it’s fair to take what’s involved here as having to do with distinguishing among phenomena on the basis of what we approve or disapprove of.

Huh?

I don't think we should fool ourselves about anything. I believe in objective truth. As it happens, I think there are a lot more problems *even now* with women providing for themselves and their children materially without a man, but these are more subtle than those in a rougher situation. I see them pretty clearly, but utopians often don't. Sometimes the rougher situation, or the imagination or remembrance thereof, can help as a thought experiment to focus our thoughts. And we can't assume that our present prosperity will continue indefinitely, either. It may not even, unfortunately, be economically sustainable. In any event, whether I "approve" of something or not is a very confusing way to talk about the matter. I think that we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking something that is *not true*--in this case, concerning the self-sufficiency of women and children without men. I always disapprove of thinking things that aren't true.

Haven't these pundits realized that all of their arguments are symmetric? One could have a whole world of women or a whole world of men. Either one could get along, but neither one would be fully human.

Also, I get bored by people who don't know how to theorize properly in the sciences, as neither if these authors do. There is a reason why God made them male and female. They have no clue why, so they just re-invent nature according to their opinion. Hubris.

The Chicken

The Masked Chicken wrote:

Haven't these pundits realized that all of their arguments are symmetric? One could have a whole world of women or a whole world of men. Either one could get along, but neither one would be fully human.

In fairness to Gilder, he never posits that a world with just women would be ideal. Considering the idyllic way he characterizes women and their contributions to civilized society, I was, however, left wanting to question the author as to whether he would think a world with just women would be ideal.

Something similar to what Tony was speaking of above (i.e., emotional and physical differences between male and female being secondary to something much larger) was going through my mind when trying to determine just what it was I found wanting in Gilder. Judging from the context of the book, Gilder is not uninformed of the Christian understanding of the nature of man and woman, and I daresay he would profess to embrace that understanding. Assuming I'm correct, why does he hamstring himself by confining himself to physical explanations of things that can only begin to be understood with metaphysical thought? If I'm not correct in my assumption of his Christian background, then he is simply arguing out of his league on the larger points of the differences between the sexes.

I go back to my idea that his thesis is stated so crudely that it is misleading at best. He says civilization rises or falls based on whether women demand that men submit to women's more long-term, future-oriented sexuality. He might also then say that men's ability to eat rises or falls on whether they demand that their wives cook them supper. His silence on the subjects of human will, love, and volition as well as transcendent beauty (especially that as portrayed in woman as motivating man to see beyond himself, or even herself) causes him to fail in his attempt to raise man above the barbaric or animal.

Excellent insight, Paul.

Those who aren't prepared to protect life must not consider it worth defending.

It's a plausible interpretation based on the facts.

I agree with Paul that Gilder's book contains many important insights. It was a pivotal book for me at one time. But you are right, Buckyinky, that he is hopelessly reductionist and therefore paints a seriously defective picture. As I recall I think he has Unitarianism in his background, so I don't know how strong his Christian understanding of the created order might be.

Keep this in mind, too: the book was written when ideological feminism was hitting its stride. Gilder exalts the power of women every bit as much as feminism does. He's right about that power in some respects, but he's wrong to think that men have no power to turn this ship around. Feminism is a chastisement. We brought it on ourselves, going back hundreds of years when the embodiment of feminine character and sanctity was banished from the religious imaginations of western Christians. Once men lost their Marian respect for the fair sex, and women for themselves, the rise of feminism was inevitable.

Historically, I don't quite get that, Jeff. I don't think feminism is inevitable in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, but there is no "Marian respect for the fair sex" there. Maybe your point is that the Western world had already abandoned pagan brutality against women, and that _then_ feminism was inevitable after the Reformation, or something like that. But in non-Christian societies, I think plain, old, pre-Christian nasty treatment of women is always an option, and feminism not inevitable. Not that I wish it were inevitable. I think those cultures need to be Christianized, truly Christianized, which would offer something better than feminism. (Though as a Protestant I'm unlikely to call that something "Marian.")

Feminism is a chastisement. We brought it on ourselves, going back hundreds of years when the embodiment of feminine character and sanctity was banished from the religious imaginations of western Christians. Once men lost their Marian respect for the fair sex, and women for themselves, the rise of feminism was inevitable.

I don't know about that. I think a radical and unchecked forces that try to make unequal things equal is more the reason. Good or true ideas taken too far as just as dangerous, and perhaps more, than bad ideas.

With Jeff, I think our understanding of Mary may have much to do with a proper understanding of the sexes, though I am leery of anything that suggests women were particularly misunderstood or abused in history. If we fail to understand the proper dignity of women, you can be sure we are failing to also understand the proper dignity of men. In practical terms, if the men of a society are treating the women poorly, you can be pretty certain that the women are somehow reciprocating the favor.

For this reason I'm not really sure what Lydia is getting at when she speaks of "pagan brutality against women," and "pre-Christian nasty treatment of women." Do you mean that these societies were brutal and nasty to women when compared to men, who were typically treated with proper dignity and respect?

Do you mean that these societies were brutal and nasty to women when compared to men, who were typically treated with proper dignity and respect?

Not necessarily with dignity and respect, but there are, right now, certain non-Christian treatments of women in non-Christian cultures that are _distinctly_ worse than said cultures' ways of treating men. It could get pretty unpleasant to go into all of these. Muslim culture is an especially egregious offender. In a sense, pulling men into the whole mess isn't exactly respecting their dignity either. To take just one example, I wonder how dignified a man feels whose wife has been horribly sexually mutilated and scarred to the point that special hospital facilities must be provided near the honeymoon site so that surgery can be performed to allow him to consummate his marriage, as is the case in Egypt. Nonetheless, the severest and most obvious physical and psychological horrors of these practices do fall on women. It is not women cutting off the noses of their husbands in Afghanistan but vice versa. Something similar was true in ancient pagan societies, where baby girls were a good bit more likely to be murdered by exposure than were baby boys.

‘problems … are more subtle than those in a rougher situation’

Indeed. Nobody claims to be ‘self-sufficient’ outside of North Korea, but not many children die for lack of a father. Fatherless kids can thrive and even become Presidents of the United States! Your current president seems to think men have a role to play as fathers, and tries to be the kind of dad to his own kids his own never was to him. But this can’t be about survival. It has to be about ‘quality of life’. And I don’t know if being fatherless has greater impact on a kid’s life than being e.g. poor. I don’t know if single-parent households are poorer because a parent’s missing, or if poor women are more likely to end up as single parents. It must be hard to separate the effect of growing up in a single-parent set up from other confounding variables but I don’t see how we can attribute an effect otherwise. I don’t want to believe things that aren't true either.

Paul

I take you to be concerned that men won’t be able to figure out what use they can be to anyone any more, because there are so many single-parent families, and might get to do something silly. This isn’t implausible. What I’m not clear about is how you think we got to be in this situation, with so many single households; or why it might be better, or who for, to keep within a dysfunctional traditional set up because daddy may get to be nasty to someone else otherwise.

There seems to be a presumption on the part of some commentators that the universe is teeming with men longing to fulfil their parental obligations if we’ll only let them; that heading a single-parent household is the result of a woman’s unilateral choice. I don’t think that’s true; it wasn’t true in the president’s case for example. But even when it is a woman’s decision to decline a marriage proposal or seek a divorce, we can’t assume it is the ‘wrong’ decision just because it’s a woman’s.

Courts do tend to award women the custody of children, and this looks like an acknowledgment of a ‘sexual constitution’ to me: If men were judged to be equally willing and able to bring up kids by themselves, why would there be such a trend? Bringing up children can be a source of fulfilment and satisfaction, but it can be other things too. Women with kids are unlikely to earn as much as women without kids. To men’s earnings it makes no difference.

I think John H is making some interesting points about aggression. Whether married or not, aggressive people can be responsible for domestic violence and as long as they have kids they get to propagate their genes and their traits. I share Lydia’s pessimism about our economic future, and I am concerned about the prospect of social disintegration. But if women need to put up with drunk abusers because they have nowhere else to go and their options are closed this can’t be an improvement to any constitution. Whoever loses out we don’t want it to be the kids. I’ll want to keep thinking about these complex issues, Paul. Thanks for bringing them to the fore, and for the manner you did so.

All these arguments for the lack of need for men, the hyper-importance of women, etc., all of them, are nothing more than bait-and-switch tactics for an attack on the family and traditional marriage and on a metaphysical level, since marriage and family are a type for the Church, all of these stupid arguments are a veiled attack on the Church. I go so far as to say the amazing thing that where there is no true relationship with Christ and his Church, these sorts of attacks are inevitable. It is seen at every stage in history and in every culture.

The Chicken

What happens to some women in Afghanistan and other places is terrible, and there's no mistaking it. It is also very sensational, and makes headlines in the West, creating the illusion that almost every wife has gotten an ear or nose cut off at one time or another. While it is not likely that a wife would or could cut off her husband's nose, it is likely there are many wives in Afghanistan who demoralize their husbands in ways that only a wife knows how to do, and in such a way that a husband might rather have his nose or ear cut off. Such happenings between husbands and wives don't make the covers of the news magazines.

I'm not trying to one-up Lydia on what happens to men vs. what happens to women. I'm saying that fallen human nature as it is played out between the sexes is similar wherever you go. Particular instances of abuse and oppression are indeed horrendous, but when societies are taken as a whole, men and women are pretty much on par with each other in knowing how to abuse, oppress, and take advantage of the other.

Buckyinky, that's a pretty uninformed statement. I am as far as it is possible to get from being a feminist, but that's ridiculous. Women are _systematically_ horribly treated in many non-Christian cultures. FGM is not an "isolated" thing. 90-some percent of Egyptian women have been mutilated, and, yes, the women are now involved in upholding it as well, and they do it so that their daughters can get married, which is horrible, but the point is that it happens to women and not to men. The abuse of women and their second-class status in Islam is _not_ isolated but is written into Islam in myriad, systematic ways. The differential infanticide and abortion rates against girls in ancient pagan societies and modern China and India are _not_ isolated but systematic. To compare these things to women's "demoralizing" their husbands is absurd and shows a serious lack of perspective and understanding.

No, Christianity has raised the status of women from *really bad stuff*, specifically women, specifically and systematically really bad stuff that females and not males suffered, throughout space and time. This is something for Christians to be proud of, by the way.

What happens to some women in Afghanistan and other places is terrible, and there's no mistaking it. It is also very sensational, and makes headlines in the West, creating the illusion that almost every wife has gotten an ear or nose cut off at one time or another. While it is not likely that a wife would or could cut off her husband's nose, it is likely there are many wives in Afghanistan who demoralize their husbands in ways that only a wife knows how to do, and in such a way that a husband might rather have his nose or ear cut off. Such happenings between husbands and wives don't make the covers of the news magazines.

Um ... having a hard time with this rationalization. No one needs to think that most women suffer this for it to be a massive moral evil. Even in the most brutal societies and groups usually most don't suffer anything directly, but they know what may happen if they step out of line. If brutal men and tyrants don't know how to effectively use the threat of violence and terror, such that they don't need to brutalize everyone, they don't get to be in such a position.

Though men's failings in Western culture may be exaggerated, let's not forget that in brutal societies the women get the worst of it for reasons that are fairly obvious.

It looks like I've failed in trying to avoid a "what have women suffered" vs. "what have men suffered" discussion. I lack the wherewithal to articulate it or demonstrate it, but I have a hard time buying that there is any human society where the men are barbaric toward the women, while the women are simply doing right by the men, or even just doing their best under the circumstances.

Christianity has raised the status of women in a specific way, and I too am proud of this, Lydia. However, I don't understand why modern Christians are fond of acknowledging this while never acknowledging that Christianity has dramatically raised the status of men in very specific ways, as though men's dignity has been always and everywhere unassailable and perfectly accepted no matter what the creed.

bucky, let me suggest an idea in the same arena. Just as male and female roles stem from differences that had a place in the world even before sin entered it, so too the first sin damaged that complementarity right from the start. If the male's role is that of leadership, taking the initiative, then Eve's choosing the apple and then leading Adam to it was itself an affront to Adam's proper role. (Likewise, maybe Adam should have been involved earlier by leading her away from temptation?)

One of the ways men are damaged in the current feminist-led culture is in not being allowed to exercise proper spiritual and temporal leadership of their families. Very often (even in families where both parents are trying to be good Christians), if the wife's sense of Christian culture is stronger than the husband's, he finds it almost impossible to take the leadership role. (And then, there are hen-pecked and nagged husbands, as well). But even in a much more mundane sense, the fact is that most women work outside of the home for bosses who are not their husband means that most husbands "have to" put up with the fact that there is some man who, for 8 hours a day (and more, to the extent the non-working day must be used to prepare for work) bosses her around and controls her response to much of life. This cannot but impact the husband's capacity to be to her the head of the family. How many families are there that don't even know that there is supposed to be a head of the family?

Alternatively, if (especially in a non-Christian society) women are treated as second-class citizens, who have no rights and are totally oppressed by men, then it seems likely that men are going to have bear consequences of that. But the most obvious consequence is not exactly something that I would call an "abuse" towards men: the men will not have the willing, cooperative, creative and enriching support of a true help-meet, but rather the services of slaves. They may also have to deal with an awful lot of passive-aggressive behavior from women, and a certain amount of malicious compliance. These certainly rob men of the their proper dignity, and though these men probably don't feel the lack very well, their society will suffer for it.

Overseas --

I cannot speak for other commenters, but as far as I'm concerned tracing the history of the discredit and ruin of the traditional family could well comprise the entire career of a great historian at this point. It is a long and tangled tale, mostly squalid and not particularly susceptible to the kind of rationalistic analysis our social science favors.

There are, of course, statistical devices for resolving the correlational complications you refer to. Regression, for instance. There are also methodological devices: we could study the effect of divorce on children of wealthy households, thus removing the poverty variable. I recall, back when I was studying Psychology at Wake Forest, some fairly recent scholarship derived from exclusively adult children -- many already married themselves -- whose older parents divorced. The interest of this material was the elevation in articulateness of the subjects studied. Most divorce research focuses on divorcees and affected young children. But it's much easier to discern what a divorce has meant for a child when it happens at age 25 as opposed to age 6. These studies produced a pretty unexpected level of psychological trauma on even independent adult children of parents who divorce.

So I suppose one data point I would hinge my sketch of the history of the decline of the traditional family on, is the definite and measurable trauma -- actual permanent damage approaching such horrors as the loss of a parent in accidental death -- borne by children in a culture and political realm that permits and even encourages marriage without life-long monogamous commitment irrespective of personal feelings. Easy divorce hits children extraordinarily hard. The damage is measurable by a wide variety of research techniques.

Now, if there is physical abuse then of course a legally protected separation and probably divorce is amply justified. No question about that.

But the vast majority of cases do not involve such extremity. Many millions of divorces are on little more than a whim; others are long-pondered and heartfelt but still grounded basically on selfishness. I think of all the poor souls our age has miseducated in the insidious falsehood that marriage must always and everywhere include romantic love. Anyone with any sense can see that romantic infatuation is a fleeting and capricious emotion; to imagine that this institution could be built up on such a foundation of sand is unutterable folly.

Nor is divorce the whole of the problem. Far from it.

But for the sake of length and if you'll excuse my abbreviation, I'm just going push my point to its fullest logic (remembering, I trust, my earlier stipulation that this is a very complicated tale):

Every instance of sexual coupling must acknowledge that, off at the end, it could entail the obligation to raise as man and wife the natural issue of that union. Our technology, if properly applied, can prevent this natural issue most of the time; but not always, as all the manufacturers of it forthrightly declare. So the natural teleology of human sexuality is evident in the facts of the world, no matter how desperately we work to conceal it.

It is this first fact that we must reckon with, not (say) the fact that sex is pleasurable; or the fact that courtship is exciting and memorable; or the fact that men and women have varied sexual appetites, both as between the sexes and within each sex; or even the fact that sexual desire is for most folks wrapped up in some of the deepest vulnerabilities and unpredictable passions. These are all, I would say, facts worth keeping in mind. They ultimately have to be reckoned with as well. But prior to them is that first fact I mentioned above.

Paul, did not the average Viking also have the same instinct towards the "protection and provision of a family" as yourself - as long as it was his family? Andrew Jackson was very protective towards his wife, not so much for the wives of the Cherokee.

"Sexual difference is an observable fact of nature with which we must reckon; one feature of that difference is the innate aggressiveness in men, which when disciplined towards its natural end — the protection and provision of a family — will conduce to productive and civilized life; but when subverted to lawless desire and acquisition will terrorize the weak and irrevocably disrupt productive and civilized life."

Tp the extent that there are sexual differences perhaps they are irrelevant to the achievement of that "productive and civilized life". Perhaps less attention to the superstructure and more to the factors of production would be more fruitful.

This,

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/01/finally-able-to-capture-their-fair.html

is more likely why we slouch towards that new Dark Age.

So I suppose one data point I would hinge my sketch of the history of the decline of the traditional family on, is the definite and measurable trauma -- actual permanent damage approaching such horrors as the loss of a parent in accidental death -- borne by children in a culture and political realm that permits and even encourages marriage without life-long monogamous commitment irrespective of personal feelings. Easy divorce hits children extraordinarily hard. The damage is measurable by a wide variety of research techniques.

Minor issue, but I have heard that there are studies that show that divorce is more traumatic that parental death. It would make sense to me if so. Having a parent die is bad enough, yet the rejection of having a parent just walk away for reasons unclear and start another family would seem to be at another level of hurt and pain.

"This ...is more likely why we slouch towards that new Dark Age."

Actually, it's both. Unlimited sexual liberty and unlimited financial liberty are merely flip sides of the same coin. They both make "choice" a god, and they feed and feed off each other (Madison Ave. and Hollywood know this. Why do you think there's so much sex in advertising?)

To the extent that we even believe in sin anymore, we've managed to purge both lust and greed from the list.


To the extent that there are sexual differences perhaps they are irrelevant to the achievement of that "productive and civilized life". Perhaps less attention to the superstructure and more to the factors of production would be more fruitful.

In other words, "Al doesn't want to have this conversation." Okay, fair enough; but might I point out that about half my blogposts since the autumn of 2008 have been comprised of criticism of the financial sector of America and the world? Of globalization and financialization? Of corporate law and the structure of property rights?

I can hardly be accused of not paying attention to the factors of production.

It is interesting, though -- this Leftist instinct to throw the whole matter to a higher level of abstraction. Forget virtue in your personal life, you pitiful creatures, and focus your mind instead on the perfidy of those above you, in positions of power in the plutocracy. Do not notice that their sins of concupiscence are your own. Rather, turn your thoughts and efforts to the (probably futile) project to restore DC and NYC to virtuous capitals of governance. Make your mind up to be a socialist like us, who believe that all virtue is a derivative of proper legislation anyway.

My preachment is to the men who read this and it needs no legislation to succeed. Al constantly whines of "imposition" but never answers when his own creed is shown to do little more than impose.

By contrast, my preachment makes no reference to legislation, to lawmaking and complex rules binding 300 million people. The Christian moral creed touches individuals directly, and the social state only indirectly.

So here is my sermon: Men, commit to virtue in your sexual life. Make a vow and mean it. If in your folly you conceive out of passion, realize that you may well have constrained yourself to an unhappy marriage "for the children." Accept the fate you brought on yourself and see that you live with honor anyway. Live your life toward the idea that the children of the union will learn from your mistake and be better people; discipline your selfishness against your sin-bought misfortune. Be a man.

Or, as Chesterton put it in the book from which we take our name, the Christian philosophy has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

But to the Left this sort of thing is just so much pedantic puritanism. These people who have outlawed everything from cigarettes to fast food for propriety's sake, dare to lecture us on our ideals of purity. This personal virtue creed is too much for them. Let's talk about "the factors of production" instead.

You’re a man of many talents, Mr Cella, and you’ve spoken wisely. I’d just like to clarify that when I spoke of a ‘dysfunctional traditional set up’, I meant it wrt specific divorce cases I have in mind, and there's at least one where it's really hard to apportion blame to anyone in particular, involving a guy who, two kids later, came out as gay. I can discern the underlying antinomy I take you to be alluding to: When it comes to divorce, there’s property to share and kids to be looked after and the state has an interest. But no questions are asked when two people agree to marry, e.g. why him or her instead of anyone else? There’s not meant to be an answer for an ‘irrational’ choice.

Lydia

You seem to think that human civilisation started with Christianity, and I don’t think that’s right. Re pre-Christian societies I know of, in Athens e.g. only boys were sent to school and there were fees payable. But in Sparta both boys and girls were taught basic reading and writing, at public expense. So it’s taken us a while to re-instate that long-lost standard in education we now take for granted. It was 300 Spartans who marched to the battle they knew they wouldn’t win and historians see a causal connection between the survival of western civilisation and that battle being fought which the westerners couldn’t win. Of course Spartans did expose sickly or disabled newborns on a mountain. But I doubt Spartans in particular would discriminate against females; there’s no reason to do that in an ‘egalitarian’ society. It’s in that other kind of society, where there’s no veil of ignorance and people know what the deal is that there’s a preference for bringing up males; which means there will be fewer females for the males. I think the way you’d put it is ‘Patriarchy devours itself’.

If Christianity could ‘offer something better than feminism’, it would have likely offered it in the course of 19 centuries. But it was only in the 20th women got to vote, for a start; there must have been more proximate causes for that. Muslim women seem to have had property rights and rights to work recognised long before Christian women did. Wasn’t the prophet married to a business-woman? People can read all sorts of things into holy books but this doesn’t make adherence to some religion or other the necessary and sufficient explanation for phenomena in human history. We need to cast our net wider it seems to me; you wouldn’t want to give credit for democracy, philosophy, drama and the Olympic Games to the cult of Zeus.

Muslim women seem to have had property rights and rights to work recognised long before Christian women did. Wasn’t the prophet married to a business-woman?

Drink the kool-aid, Overseas, and I hope you enjoy the burkha your new masters impose over there in oh-so-tolerant Europe. I'm not even starting on this "Muslims as enlightened proto-feminist" revisionist history garbage. It is so, so seriously crazy as history.

Actually, the Virgin Mary got to vote long before Muslim women - the biggest aye or nay in human history.

The Chicken

But I doubt Spartans in particular would discriminate against females; there’s no reason to do that in an ‘egalitarian’ society.

Then why were only males allowed in their army? And only males were allowed into the ranks of the rulers.

Of course civilization did not start with Christianity. But Christianity moved it forward.

Thanks, Tony, for your thoughts above, which were helpful to me. For the most part, I think I'll remain silent on this matter until my own thoughts have formed more on it. As it is, I'm not able to articulate it without coming across as indifferent or callous regarding Islamic women. I think it is safe for me to say, however, that something as huge as Islam could not be sustained without the willful collaboration of both men and women, just as feminism in the West could not be sustained without the willful collaboration of both sexes. Many men feel oppressed by feminist society, but many men also benefit from it, and are quite keen on sustaining it. It only makes sense to me that something similar could be said of Islam, replacing 'feminist' with 'Islamic' and 'men' with 'women.'

I remain skeptical at best that women, as a class, are or ever have been oppressed in any society, at least not in a particular way, notwithstanding the horrendous treatment of many individual women throughout history and in our day. An entire people might be oppressed, but the idea that a particular sex among a people is singled out for particular and systematic oppression just doesn't make any sense to me.

there's at least one where it's really hard to apportion blame to anyone in particular, involving a guy who, two kids later, came out as gay.

I don't see any problem to apportion blame to the particular guy that turns his back on his wife and family and chooses the gay lifestyle. He would be blameless if he left his family by dying of natural causes. Oh wait, I get it ... you're saying that being gay is a natural cause. That's the point isn't it?

Muslim women seem to have had property rights and rights to work recognised long before Christian women did. Wasn’t the prophet married to a business-woman?

He was also married to a 9 year old girl and authorized the mass rape of an entire tribe's girls and women.

Furthermore, you would do well to read the fine print about Islam and women. All of those "rights" exist for Muslim women only. You need only look at how the female "peoples of the Book" like the Coptic women are treated in Egypt to realize that non-Muslim are one step above garbage to much of the Muslim world.

Bucky, try reading Azar Nasifi, Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is a memoir by a woman who lived in Iran after the revolution. (Don't worry about the title, if Lolita disturbs you; there is nothing in the book that is sexually explicit. I regret waiting so long to read it because I was concerned about that.)

Bucky, as you're thinking about this, please try to get rid of the idea that if "women in a culture cooperate with" some phenomenon, that phenomenon cannot be spoken of meaningfully as systematic and specific oppression of women. These are compatible.

When some American feminist tries to say that I'm "cooperating in my own oppression" and in that of my daughters by not working outside the home and by raising them to hope to be at home with their children, it's ludicrous.

When we're talking about women who mutilate their little daughters (who cannot possibly be "cooperating" in the process), women in ancient societies who obeyed their husbands and exposed their infant girls on hillsides (who couldn't have been "going along with it"), when we're talking about cooperating with systematic beating and honor murder, then we can speak meaningfully of women in a society who really do cooperate in the systematic oppression of women and girls. That's just the way it is.

Facts are stubborn things. You can't just say, "The concept of the systematic oppression of women qua women in an entire culture doesn't make sense to me, so I don't believe in it." You have to look at what really happens. This isn't just a matter of isolated individuals.

Lydia,

Thanks for your thoughts. You said,

Bucky, as you're thinking about this, please try to get rid of the idea that if "women in a culture cooperate with" some phenomenon, that phenomenon cannot be spoken of meaningfully as systematic and specific oppression of women. These are compatible.
To be clear, I agree with you that these two ideas are compatible, and that they happen together in our world all of the time. I'm curious what made you think I embrace the idea you want me to rid myself of. Of course I don't think infant girls who were exposed or young girls who are mutilated are collaborating in their own oppression. Nor when I speak of women who collaborate with men in evil do I have specifically in my mind those women to whom you refer, who have a more direct effect on these cases of violence, such as the mothers of the girls undergoing mutilation.

More specific in my mind are women in general, along with men, in the past and present, from all cultures and societies, who take no thought nor care for others undergoing difficulties which they might have helped to relieve, because the others difficulties don't directly affect them, and they are living their lives quite comfortably maintaining the status quo. There are sins of omission that are as grave as sins of commission, and there are things infinitely worse than physical disfigurement (which is not to say that physical disfigurement is a trivial matter). Our sins affect all, and we are responsible for all, and it has ever been so throughout history.

I do not believe Islamic society is simply a story of evil men oppressing helpless women (though to be sure, there are evil men and helpless women), not because I have anecdotes, statistics, or experiences to prove it, but because of what I believe about humanity, and the fallen state of both men and women. And I also believe that God doesn't judge simply based on what makes the news.

‘I'm not even starting on this "Muslims as enlightened proto-feminist" revisionist history garbage. It is so, so seriously crazy as history.’

I’ll take your word for it. But you can be a sophisticated Bayesian when you want to, so I’m intrigued how, if Egypt, Turkey and Afghanistan are all mainly Muslim countries, and women wear a burkha in Afghanistan but not in Egypt and female circumcision is practiced in Egypt but not in Turkey, then these traditions can be best explained by reference to religion. I don’t underestimate the difficulty of separating religious from other traditions in specific contexts: Perhaps what was happening with medicine and astronomy in the Middle East during the European ‘Dark Ages’ had more to do with Arabs than with Islam. But it can't be that when Muslims cut a woman’s nose off it’s the fault of Islam and when Christians burn a woman at the stake it’s an honest mistake. We don’t want to attribute all and only stuff we approve of to institutions we like and all and only stuff we disapprove of to institutions we don’t like, to the extent of misrepresentation; it’s nice to have a principled way to do things.

Patriarchy certainly predates Christianity so I’m disinclined either to credit with or fault Christianity for it. Christianity did seem to get along just fine with pre-existing institutions for quite some time: It was e.g. the end of the 20th century before people gave up trying to justify on Biblical grounds the apartheid regime in South Africa; I’m prepared to accept they were mistaken since they’ve admitted their mistake. But one would be hard pressed to avoid implicating patriarchy when trying to explain sex-selective abortion or - in the absence of ultrasound - female infanticide in Asia; so if you’re ‘as far as it is possible to get from being a feminist’, watch your step.

Regarding the burkha, I certainly don’t expect some Iranian-style-fashion-police scrutinise people’s attire and so I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to go out in a burkha if I fancy. But I admit I don’t like seeing people in a burkha and I have difficulty relating to them; the lack of eye-contact? But then I also don’t like seeing people in a plain hijab either, which doesn’t affect eye-contact. So it’s probably just a prejudice on my part. I think people have a right to their prejudices when they come clean about them; but they have no right to turn prejudice into legislation, so I don’t favour outlawing the burkha. There’s something dubious about coercing people out of suspected coercion anyway. So I agree with you re stay-at-home mums etc, though I doubt daughters will be as comfortably well off from now on as their middle-class mums may have been. But there's just no way facts can be more stubborn than people!

Hi Tony!

Good questions - that’s why I used the quotes; and I was referring to exposing babies for reasons other than health. But there was arguably a link between having an obligation to go to war and having the right to vote. Women were property owners in Sparta and would look after their own and their husbands’ affairs at war time, which was a lot of the time; that was the official reason they had two kings. So Spartan women were largely autonomous and unique in being literate and as well educated as the men were, though the emphasis in the Spartan curriculum was on athletics. Boys and girls could train in the nude together, at a time Greek women were barred from the Olympic Games even as spectators. To the rest of the Greeks it looked as if the Spartans were ‘ruled’ by women. And the response was apparently that only Spartan women give birth to ‘real men’, who aren’t bothered if the women rule; that's said to have been a Spartan woman’s response btw.

‘Of course civilization did not start with Christianity. But Christianity moved it forward.’

So western civilisation started with people who believed in Zeus and was moved forward by people who believed in Jesus? Not the way I'd put it.

Hi Mark!

Glad you get it, sorry I don’t quite get this 'gay is a natural cause'; of what?

Hi Mike T!

Are you covered by my response to Lydia?

Beth,

Thanks for the book suggestion. I'll look into it.

So western civilisation started with people who believed in Zeus and was moved forward by people who believed in Jesus? Not the way I'd put it.

Overseas, not the way I would put it either. For one thing, I would put the origins earlier than the Greeks, but that's a debatable issue and partly a matter of semantics, so I would not insist upon it. Can we say that Western civilization was moved forward by earlier by people who believed in the rule of law and justice, and then moved forward again (a) by people who believed in mercy as well as justice, (because they have received the deepest Mercy possible, that of Jesus and the redemption He gives) and (b) by people who saw women as instrinsically just as human and redeemable as men.

‘not the way I would put it either.’

Good; but the advantage of the way neither of us would put it is that it’s an attempt at a streamlined, unified explanation in terms of people’s religious beliefs. The alternative you suggest does not involve religious beliefs at all, until it does! - there’s this arbitrary midway switch, as if we’re giving up on trying to explain before we’ve started.

I’m not sure what precisely it is you want to credit Christianity with, but I certainly don’t want to blame Christianity for burning women at the stake; and that was an institutional church policy btw, not some run-away bandits who may cut noses in rural Asia. So, like with any other variable I’d be inclined to leave religion out unless it really looks like a comparatively good explanation, which here it doesn't: See what I wrote to Lydia, or consider the differences between the teachings re women in the Old Testament and in the Quran; there can’t be that many. So, unless Israeli women are exceptionally virtuous, if there aren’t as many instances of stoning in present-day Israel as there may be in present-day Iran, then the reason cannot be people’s adherence to their religion.

I know how it feels when what we admire doesn’t look perfectly admirable; it bothers me e.g. that the Spartan city-state depended on second-tier citizens who did business in the outskirts and third-rate slaves who worked in the fields. But when a Spartan went to war, his mum or his wife would hand him the shield saying ‘either it or on it’, which meant ‘bring it back victorious or be brought back on it dead’. These people wouldn’t settle for mere life, or an easy life; they aspired to ‘the good life’. But they weren’t perfect and I can’t pretend they were, just to make my life easier; I’d rather endure what hardship it takes to stay honest, like the Spartans and non-Spartans I admire did.

This may be perceived as irrelevant to the topic of this post, but Tony's point about civilization being moved forward "by people who saw women as intrinsically just as human and redeemable as men" intrigued me, because it restates an assumption about the particularity of women in our improved understanding of human dignity, an assumption that confounds me.

If we examine the treatment of human beings in uncivilized societies, or societies not heavily influenced by Christianity, we see abuses particular to one's sex, but we do not see one sex particularly abused. Therefore men have not typically been on the receiving end of sexual abuse (though young men and boys often have been) like women have. No man has ever suffered the indignity of being reduced to only his child-bearing capabilities, as has been done frequently to women. But neither have women typically been thrown against their will into a galley to work with the dignity of a pack mule, or pawned in the front lines of a battle with the expendability of lab rats, as have men.

In each of these cases, a person suffers indignities particular to his or her sex (particular because of the nature of men and women, both physiologically and psychologically), but none of it translates to mean that one sex was in more need of restored dignity than the other. My question is why do we acknowledge Christianity's role in raising us above the treatment of women described in the first cases, but don't acknowledge Christianity's role in improving our treatment of men? Is our understanding of men not also markedly changed by Christianity, or was there nothing to improve upon from barbarism in our understanding of men? (This gets back to my problems with Gilder as a foundation for Mr. Cella's discussion. Glider appears to have no vision other than what he takes in from the phenomenally observable world. His observations have caused him to incorrectly conclude that a man is really nothing but a barbarian unless a woman can get a hold of him.)

I may be quickly corrected on the following point, since I am not deeply familiar with historical Church writings, but I don't see any Church Fathers or other non-modern Church theologians making a particular point about how Christianity raised our understanding of the dignity of women without including it in how Christianity raised our understanding of the dignity of the whole of humanity, man and woman. The emphasis on how it raised only the dignity of women, as if men's dignity is always properly understood, seems a recent phenomenon, and one impaired by feminist nearsightedness, which sees only the most privileged of men in history (a small minority in comparison to all men) and translates that privilege as having been received by all men, simply because they were men. It carefully points out (indignantly) that all kings in history were men, then falsely supposes that all men were kings.

Hi buckyinky!

I hope too this isn’t off-topic; but I don’t see anything controversial about the claim that there was a time when some men had a right to vote and some men did not have a right to vote, because they were slaves or did not own property etc. And I see nothing controversial about the claim that men got the right to vote before any women did either. What I don’t quite see is the case for the rise of the Christian religion being either a necessary or sufficient condition: There were clearly men who had a right to vote about five centuries before the rise of Christianity, and women didn’t get a right to vote till about twenty centuries after.

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