Commenter James asks if there isn’t at least a kernel of truth to Stanton & Gilder’s view of men, women, and marriage, even if they have in the process mangled this kernel of truth:
Isn’t there some sense where the “woman civilizes the man” is true, or am I conflating two different ideas? In other words, the lament about the Peter Pan man-boys not desiring to achieve much in life, because there’s no reward for them in marriage, or the women are not choosing them, so therefore they don’t try too hard to better themselves, and this is understandable. In way then, this is saying that being able to get a nice female is a reason why young men would want to improve themselves or to become providers and have all the resources they need, instead of living at home with their parents and playing video games. Perhaps this “civilizing” is not done in the terms and conditions which Gilder says it is, but something like it is going on. Gilder’s terms for what he says is the woman’s role in civilizing men is horrendous, for sure.
James is right. There is a kernel of truth there. But while Stanton and Gilder have accurately noticed that marriage and civilization go together, they have incorrectly pointed the causal arrow. Stanton and Gilder think that women naturally civilize men. Starting with this catastrophic misunderstanding, Stanton and Gilder have created the conservative intellectual foundation for the destruction of marriage in general, and specifically the destruction of headship and fatherhood. As Dr. Daniel Amnéus explains in Chapter 1 of The Garbage Generation, The Pathology of the Female-headed Family, the feminist model of the family that Stanton and Gilder are celebrating is not a path towards greater civilization, but retreat from civilization:
“Men and women,” rejoices feminist-anthropologist Helen Fisher, “are moving toward the kind of roles they had on the grasslands of Africa millions of years ago….Human society is now discovering its ancient roots….The recent trend toward divorce and remarriage is another example of a throwback to earlier times….[T]he so-called new extended family [read: broken family] may actually have evolved millennia ago….At long last, society is moving in a direction that should be highly compatible with our ancient human spirit….The ‘traditional’ role of women is a recent invention.”
Biologically speaking, it is indeed a recent invention, scarcely older than the civilization which it made possible and which emerged coevally with it and created the wealth which reconciled women to accepting it. But women’s new economic independence is leading them to yearn for a return to the prehistoric mammalian arrangement. “[W]herever women are economically powerful,” says Fisher, “divorce rates are high. You see it in the Kung and you see it in the United States.” Let’s say, wherever women are economically powerful and there are no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families, divorce rates are high–such being the case among the Kung and the Americans. The Kung have no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families because the Kung never emerged from the Stone Age. The Americans have no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families because there exists an elementary confusion in the heads of policy makers, lawmakers and judges, who imagine that the obvious strength of the biological tie between the mother and the infant (the “biological fact” Margaret Mead refers to) means that it requires their assistance. A biological fact does not require the services of the legal system. What does require these services is the weakest biological link in the family, the role of the father. It was the creation of this role–only a few thousand years ago–which made patriarchal civilization possible. Prior to that, mankind had to muddle through the million years of the Stone Age with the female-headed reproductive arrangements of the ghetto, the barnyard and the rain forest.
Related: More ominous than a strike.
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Women can do a lot to make men glad they went the extra miles for her. But they cannot turn boys into men. Stanton’s self-description from the last thread sounds a lot like “the Army made a man of me” stories I’ve heard except that drill instructors know how to turn boys into men and wives don’t. Stanton was instead twisted into a white knight for a woman wanting to usurp male headship. Original sin being what it is, he probably finds his de facto enslavement very satisfying.
I have read and been told all my life that women “tamed the Wild West” of the US. Now, I’m beginning to feel (much like everything in this era of lies) that the opposite was true. Namely, the cowboys settled the women who sought them out.
“The Americans have no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families”
This is a fact I have highlighted many times to acquaintances arguing with me about the state of marriage today, and I have yet to have one of them actually challenge that assertion.
Underlying all of this is the assumption that the Powers That Be don’t need to do anything or change anything, because men eventually will buckle and get married. They can whine and complain and protest all they want, but at the end of the day they have no choice but to comply, because all marriages fall under the purview of the state, and once a man has a child the state has a foot inside the door.
If only Gilder and Stanton would read their bibles. Its clear God demanded women be controlled and who was charged to do it.
“If however the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there *the men* of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.” Deuteronomy 22:20-21″
In the present day and age the false teachers of the so called church won’t even complain about women’s sin. They pretend it doesn’t even exist. They’re so ashamed of the above scripture they ignore the basic principle of accountability and consequences to control women’s sin. They don’t seem to have as big of a problem acknowledging men’s sin, even blaming women’s sin on men.
When women fulfill their role in the patriarchal system, it encourages young men to grow into the responsibilities of a patriarch. When they do not, the whole thing falls apart. But it is not women who civilize men, it is the Patriarchy.
Women have defied the authority of their fathers and husbands. How were they originally civilized, and why have they rebelled en masse? There were sanctions. Punishment for bad behavior and reward for good behavior. The sanctions have been lifted – men no longer have the backbone to say “No” to bad behavior and let women suffer the consequences of their own actions, or punish them with civil laws.
The sanctions have been lifted – men no longer have the backbone to say “No” to bad behavior and let women suffer the consequences of their own actions, or punish them with civil laws.”
This. I do.
Same thing applies to men as well.
All about strong, responsible *FRAME* in men: don’t put up with *ANY CRAP* from women if it doesn’t involve dealing with them at your workplace or livelihood. Especially if they aren’t even “blood-related”.
Be kind, courteous and charitable to all people in public but don’t dare let someone “unreasonably use you as a doormat”. NO tolerance. That’s how I roll. Amen.
~ Bro. Jed
‘At long last, society is moving in a direction that should be highly compatible with our ancient human spirit….The ‘traditional’ role of women is a recent invention.”
That ‘ancient human spirit’ got us kicked out of paradise. Some people just prefer to live in grass huts and misery.
Again, it is the father’s fault. He didn’t have the balls to discipline his little angel or disown her if merited. Now, she thinks she deserves everything. I know many females 20, 25-35 and they ALL think they deserve the world. Ok maybe the hot 16-23 y.o. who is young, beautiful and most importantly, VIRTUOUS. I always ask the others, “what do you bring to the table. You are way past your prime youth, beauty and fertile years so what do you bring to the table?’. The explosion of rage is unbelievable and should be studied. I don’t mind if someone explodes with rage and it is merited, but they do not merit it.
I’ve spread this far and wide – so everyone can see that Focus on the Family is anti-Christian. I’ve read these Stanton and Gilders writings you have linked to, and they are more foreign to me than reading the latest fatwa from an Egyptian cleric – at least the Islamic clerics are consistent and honest.
There have been enough experiments – Match.com and Tinder, the Islamic wave of refugees into Europe just the latest – to show that civilization has to channel women’s sexual inclination into being married to one of Vox Day’s Deltas, or else we get a society ordered around hoop houses, grass skirts, and polygamy. Case in point – how many American women would be more than happy to be Tom Brady’s concubine? That is an entirely anti-civilizational position. There’s a reason that civilization amounted to a lot of marrying off the daughters instead of letting them find themselves and ride the carousel.
Glenn Stanton has taken his wife’s materialism and envy and recast evil as good to pretend her greedy demand for more possessions was somehow godly.
You had an article some years back about an idiot judge who said, “I never seen no calf follow no bull” as justification for assigning custody to the mother. We’ve seen what years of single motherhood has done to civilization – we live in a cargo cult where over half of the voters are emotionally crippled and believe that going down on somebody is an indirect hint that she meant to tell him no.
Once again, it is not woman who civilizes man, it is God. To attribute to woman the work of God is pure idolatry; it is worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.
Truth, justice and mercy are the weightier matters of the Law. The Law teaches us how to be civilized, and that law comes from God; first through the patriarchs, then through Moses, and finally through Christ, all of whom were men.
When God sent lawgivers he always sent a man, never a woman. The only female monarch who ever ruled Judah was a tyrant usurper who slaughtered her own grandchildren. God’s chosen rulers for Israel were men.
God sent His Son, not a daughter, to bring the New Covenant and rule His kingdom. Christ chose exactly 0 women to serve as apostles.
Women were excluded from the priesthood of Israel.
The idea that women civilize men is an EXPLICIT rejection of the ultimate Father, God the Father. These cretins reject the authority of fathers on earth because they have rejected the authority of the Father in Heaven. Their contempt for fathers here is merely a reflection for the contempt they show to God Himself.
Some people just prefer to live in grass huts and misery.
As long as there are tingles to be had
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What these men believe, and many others apparently, even in the secular sphere, is that women are naturally highly moral. They will naturally, even without any kind of impetus, choose to marry decent, reliable (Beta) providers, stay married and have children with them.
It seems the truth is though that without some strong impetus women will prioritize pursuing exciting, exceptional (Alpha) men, will marry Betas only temporarily or not at all, and will only have children if it doesn’t interfere too much with their lifestyle and ability to pursue Alphas.
Excellent article Dalrock. And it’s good of you to quote Daniel Amneus, whose work is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the roles of men and women in civilization.
The recurrent theme that runs through Amneus’s thinking is that the fatherhood bond is social / artificial and therefore weaker than the mother-child biological bond. It is the social / father bond passes on civilization and culture, while motherhood simply passes on biology (birthing and weaning). Lawmakers, women’s rights groups and various churches have weakened the social bond, and Western civilization is paying the price for it.
What packs a punch most in his books are that the worship of God the Father, as we have come to know Him, arose structurally from the social bond of fatherhood.It is then no wonder that the forces of Left-Darkness attack it.
Women do not civilize men. Look at any of those chicks in any inner city. If you are stupid enough to tease one away from the clique of lesbians or get to her early enough for the philosophy and lifestyle not to take, you can get a wife and mother out of her, even though it will cost you a great deal of pain and will nag you forever, because there will always be a part of her that will want to re-join the lesbian clique.
If you don’t do that, she will flit from cafe to cafe, squat to squat, partner to partner, low-paying job to low-paying job, with an ever-increasing gaggle of ever-more-wacky lesbian friends. Society and civilization then, become ever poorer.
If you want an interesting read on what has build civilization? Read Rodney Stark’s “How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity”. Really, you should. His answer (short answer): Christianity. It’s astounding that even the Chinese are very aware of this.
What do you think the role of women have been during the era of buildup of western civilization?
Were women leading and men following, and as a result civilization arose and prospered? That’s such a ridiculous proposition, NOBODY can take that serious. But unfortunately some clowns seem to suggest otherwise.
As others have rightly pointed out: “walk outside, look around, EVERYTHING you see is build by men” And I probably do not need to remind you how technically illiterate most women are.
@Paul
Thanks. I just bought it as well as a copy of Garbage Generation. Finding time to read them is another matter…
What struck me after reading Chapter 7 of Dr. Daniel Amnéus “The Garbage Generation” is his contention that it is deeply natural for women NOT to like the constraints that patriarchy places on their sexuality, and on their choices in general.
In other words, if Dr. Amnéus is correct, then women will always chafe under patriarchy. To use a metaphor, patriarchy is always and everywhere “naturally” a bitter, foul-tasting medicine for the gentle sex. It may eventually taste tolerable to a woman, she may even acknowledge its advantages (and a man can certainly help with that) but it will never taste good to her. Her “natural” instinct will always be to spit it out.
As a corollary, women will never “naturally” agree to patriarchy, and will never “naturally” congratulate men for imposing it. It tastes bad to them!
What a woman knows naturally is that patriarchy tastes bitter and foul. And telling her that it is needful medicine, better in the long run for all, including herself, while true, is hardly enough.
For after all, someone who needs medicine is — not quite right as she is.
Wow, this is great stuff — thanks for the link to The Garbarge Generation, Dalrock.
What these men believe, and many others apparently, even in the secular sphere, is that women are naturally highly moral. They will naturally, even without any kind of impetus, choose to marry decent, reliable (Beta) providers, stay married and have children with them.
It seems the truth is though that without some strong impetus women will prioritize pursuing exciting, exceptional (Alpha) men, will marry Betas only temporarily or not at all, and will only have children if it doesn’t interfere too much with their lifestyle and ability to pursue Alphas.
It’s a deep-seated belief that comes from the Romantic movement in art and literature and, in Anglo countries, the Victorian era and its views about women. Both of these exalted women as more moral, more beautiful, more just, more perfect than men, and that therefore (1) women were in need of protection from male predation and immorality and the corruption that was seen as indemic to men (but not in women) and (2) men were in need of taming/civilization/moralization coming through falling in love with a specific woman, and making himself vulnerable to her moralizing/improving/perfecting nature, to make himself better. These attitudes were quite old and entrenched already when women were given the vote, when feminism second wave happened and so on — they were, in many ways, what informed the “liberation of women” all the way through from Seneca Falls onward, in the broader society. They aren’t something arising from the culture of the 60s, they are deep-seated and go back 150-250 years at this point (see “**” below for an aside on that), embracing most of the history of the United States, and therefore decisively formative of American culture in particular. They will be hard to remove at this point, because they are entrenched and have become ingrained, and they have certainly, as we have seen, permeated most areas of thought, including most religious thought on the issue which is coming from this culture.
—-
The recurrent theme that runs through Amneus’s thinking is that the fatherhood bond is social / artificial and therefore weaker than the mother-child biological bond. It is the social / father bond passes on civilization and culture, while motherhood simply passes on biology (birthing and weaning). Lawmakers, women’s rights groups and various churches have weakened the social bond, and Western civilization is paying the price for it.
Yes. The odd thing is that Gilder would agree that women have the stronger tie, but then he doubles down on that and wants to increase and magnify that strength that women have, rather than building men up to create the kind of balance that is required for family formation to succeed. Again, I suspect that this is largely informed by a romantic/victorian perspective, lingering in Gilder. It is extremely prevalent throughout the culture, but especially virulent among conservatives —
pedestalizing women while denouncing men is so stereotypical of conservatives in America that it could actually be rightly seen as their most consistently identifiable characteristic, really — regardless of how they may disagree about this or that other priority, almost all conservatives agree on that.
——–
** (note from above) — An interesting look at the period when this change was taking place can be done by looking at how Mozart portrays women in his operas (like Cosi fan Tutte or Figaro) as compared with how the even slightly later Beethoven does (in Fidelio), never mind Wagner in the middle of the 19th Century, when romantic victorianism was in full swing. Beethoven considered Mozart’s operas to be musically exquisite but thematically troubling and wrong, largely due to how he portrayed women, which was more, shall we say “realistic” than the romantics did (and Cosi didn’t get a lot of play through much of the 19th Century because audiences in that era in particular felt the same way about that). The change happened right there as romanticism was coming to the fore in the culture, and it has remained ingrained, despite the massive technological and economic changes of the 20th century.
The theory that the Agricultural Revolution was sparked by ancient people harvesting cereal grains to brew beer for their feasts has always been regarded as kind of a joke in the scientific community. But here are some anthropologists who believe there may a grain of truth in it (har). If so, then you might say that it is primarily BEER that has civilized men.
Cheers!
@JohnK, we are all descendents of Adam and Eve, and thus sin is in our DNA. This means that both men and women tend toward sin — it is our natural state. Women tend toward Eve’s sin (wanting to be equal with God/authority/husband) and men tend toward Adam’s sin (prioritizing wife’s desires over God’s — see Stanton, Glenn).
Consequently, for women, their created role (helper, submissive) tastes foul, and men naturally find it much easier to let the wife run things, regardless of God’s desire. Overcoming these DNA-based tendencies is possible, but only with determination and supernatural help.
Women nurture boys; men civilise women. This is how it ought to be.
Marry, peace it bodes, and love and quiet life,
And awful rule and right supremacy;
And, to be short, what not, that’s sweet and happy?
Dalhrock, try audible. That’s how I did it. For several Rodney stark books. Hint he is big on Christianity in general having been good for the west. Specifically the building of the modern world, and the crusades as a just war.
On topic of your post.
Men become civilized because it is the price a woman demands. Like a car dealer demands the price for a sports car has a man become a good earner of money. Women don’t demand this anymore, so men aren’t bothering. If all I can get from the dealer is a clunker, why bother going to the dealer? The statement of “women civilize men” makes it sound like this is work that women do. Like teachers teaching students their letters.
Nope, the men do the work, the women were the reward for having done the work. BIG difference.
Novaseeker
An interesting look at the period when this change was taking place can be done by looking at how Mozart portrays women in his operas (like Cosi fan Tutte or Figaro) as compared with how the even slightly later Beethoven does (in Fidelio), never mind Wagner in the middle of the 19th Century, when romantic victorianism was in full swing. Beethoven considered Mozart’s operas to be musically exquisite but thematically troubling and wrong, largely due to how he portrayed women, which was more, shall we say “realistic” than the romantics did (and Cosi didn’t get a lot of play through much of the 19th Century because audiences in that era in particular felt the same way about that)
This right here is an excellent piece of, hmm, “forensic cultural antropology” or something similar. Because Cosi fan Tutti “Thus they all are” could be right out of TRM or Heartiste. No glasses needed, it is that clear. Beethovan’s opera is very Romantic in multiple ways, but….just not reality.
Seems to me Helen Fisher’s approval of matriarchal societies is very consistent with Camille Paglia’s observation that if women ruled the world we’d all still be living in grass huts.
Perhaps someone might ask Helen Fisher why “moving in a direction that should be highly compatible with our ancient human spirit” is preferable to living in (or compatible with!) an advanced post-industrial society that takes for granted such as air conditioning, automobiles, the Internet, and not worrying about starvation.
Perhaps someone might ask Helen Fisher why “moving in a direction that should be highly compatible with our ancient human spirit” is preferable to living in (or compatible with!) an advanced post-industrial society that takes for granted such as air conditioning, automobiles, the Internet, and not worrying about starvation.
That wluld asking her to consider cause and effect. We all know how women fair in that area.
“That would be asking … (damned SmartPhone keypads!)
O/T but this is the kind of post I always want manosphere guys to read and chime in on.
https://americandadweb.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/how-do-you-organize-your-goals/
Carry on.
Nathan Bruno,
I’ve spread this far and wide – so everyone can see that Focus on the Family is anti-Christian.
Very good! Not enough commenters other than Boxer do that, so the subjects of these articles often may not know that they have been dismantled. The goal is to get them to double down and have a Streisand effect, or (1% chance) see the error of their ways.
That is an entirely anti-civilizational position. There’s a reason that civilization amounted to a lot of marrying off the daughters instead of letting them find themselves and ride the carousel.
Read this, particularly the ‘The Fabric of Humanity will Tear’ portion :
http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html/
The magnitude of resource misallocation to women, on account of this being a mature democracy, is far greater than even most red-pilled people think.
@JohnK
And so patriarchy is unsustainable in countries whose citizens have both wealth and liberty – except for the few women whose desires are countered by the right kind of religious belief.
Without that belief, we can pick only two out of family, wealth, and liberty.
Without God, perhaps any attempt at building a society where we would like to live is doomed by our fallen nature. All civilizations are destined to fall. I wonder whether this is the meaning of the Tower of Babel.
Well, they don’t make women like they used to and so the boys/men don’t bother. But it isn’t basement-dwellers. A lot of them are engineers, educated kids that make serious dough. Met many at a wedding near Boston this fall. They couldn’t believe their friend, 30, a skinny (5’9″, 150 pounds, TOPS), frugal, rich engineer just like all of them was marrying this 6′, 260-pound amazonian she-beast degree course-collector (who never seems to get her degree) who is 37 this year. But that was one marriage out of many single guys who swear they ain’t getting married, ever. They do the single, MGTOW thing and they just pile up money for themselves that they know damned well would go to a modern wife in a divorce. And one of them said that even if he had a kid, the ex would take it away somehow. So these guys simply don’t trust the women. Trust. Once they put the Sword in the hands of the women, what the hell did they THINK the boys would do? I wish there was a way to post pictures.I have the faces cut out, but the body-contrast between the two is stunning.
I like Tucker Carlson, but his insistence that these boys should marry these women is really cuck.
And another theme I heard at my Boston wedding from these kids, and some with stunning girlfriends, BTW, fear of becoming like their uncles, fathers, fathers of friends, all through their lives, divorce-rape of the men in their lives. We have several generations run through the grinder and now the boys at the head oof the sluice are opting out. They even get vasectomies, age thirty, just to make sure. Trust. They just don’t trust the women.
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If you want to know if it’s true or false that women civilize men, you don’t have to go to the Kalahari and observe the !Kung.
All you need to do is take a trip to your nearest ghetto. It doesn’t matter if it’s a black inner city ghetto, a rural Hispanic ghetto, an Indian reservation, or a meth-ridden Appalachian town. The details are different, but the overall picture is similar. You’ll find an abundance of women, and a dearth of civilization.
What else is in short supply? Married fathers.
Ergo, it isn’t women who civilize men. It’s married fathers who civilize young men AND young women.
Don’t trust women? Here..
It might be more accurate to say “wives” civilize men, not “women.” Wives civilize men in the same sense that domesticated cattle civilize men. It’s not because they have some tremendous power to influence men’s thought patterns and behavior, it’s because men accept the responsibility and cooperate because it’s personally beneficial.
And if you actively oppose attempts by men to lead anyway you will get a mess.
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“In other words, if Dr. Amnéus is correct, then women will always chafe under patriarchy. To use a metaphor, patriarchy is always and everywhere “naturally” a bitter, foul-tasting medicine for the gentle sex. It may eventually taste tolerable to a woman, she may even acknowledge its advantages (and a man can certainly help with that) but it will never taste good to her. Her “natural” instinct will always be to spit it out.”
I can tell you from my own very personal experience (16 years of marriage) that this isn’t true. Perhaps it’s true for “most” women, but certainly not for all. I see this with my own eyes, every day.
@Jim Christian says: “I wish there was a way to post pictures.I have the faces cut out, but the body-contrast between the two is stunning.”
piece of cake.
drop photo.jpg to free file sharing site.
just paste in the link to in in your comment.
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