As I move forward into the territory of Royalty and of Feudalism, all tangential to matters of the sacrament of Marriage, I am picking up signals that there are some basic questions that our experience with the phenomenon of feminism in America hasn't answered clearly.
The other day on the Dennis Prager Show, his question of the day was to survey whether or not women who worked were more or less affectionate with their husbands than women who didn't work. The Conservative answer you might guess was winning in the survey when I turned the radio off. The Spousal Unit, with whom I was listening, ironically said she thought she was less affectionate. I said that she was equally affectionate, not out of cowardly husband-speak but truthfully. She then proceeded into Wamu to get me some more cash because I was spending the day with my kids and my brother's kids, and she went to work.
I think we well understand what it is that we're supposed to be comporting ourselves to vis a vis the nuclear family but we really have no idea where feminism is supposed to take the family. All we know is what we're not supposed to say. That's a problem in and of itself. But let me propose some provocative questions and cobble my way to some preliminary conclusions.
First, I think it bears repeating that I am not convinced that 'the Family is under attack'. Rather, I think that the presumption that all of us are equally willing to sustain strong families, is false. In fact, I believe that too many Americans have notions of very personalized romantic love combined with a relativism that tells them anything they want to call a family is indeed a good family. I think one has to consciously make the decision to put a principled idea of family first and make it work based on a selfless adherence to those fundamental virtuous principles. People who can't find it in their hearts to do so are, to put it bluntly, rabble. To the extent that much of what we chew and mumble is sociology, let me then say that family is Primary Nurture when it comes to questions of Nature vs Nurture. But don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in IQ or any such reduction of 'capability'. Rather I only aim to say that a proper family isn't everyone's aim, nor need it be. If the poor are always with us, then so will be the poor in spirit.
My interest is in the context of feminism's effect as reflected in the popular culture, and I think it has dampened the spirits of proper marriage. I am suggesting broadly that what feminism in America has done well is confuse the roles of parents and of spouses in marriage, and of men and women in gender roles. It has done so by demonizing patriarchy without recognizing its positive role in community or the nation. This is the big problem. There are other ones, but that's the main one.
I once asked an academic what is the fundamental thing that feminism brought to all of philosophy. It's not as if nobody ever asked or answered questions about what a woman is all about or her role in society. The answer I got was that feminism brought into focus the nature of interpersonal relations and specifically that of force and coercion between individuals. Why does one individual submit? Why does another individual dominate? When such individuals are co-dependent, what arises from dominance and submission and how are such intimate relations carried to other levels within society? I think that's pretty interesting except for the last part, because what happens in other levels of society happen within very different contexts than the intimacy between man and women. But it was that slip of context that allowed this academic to suggest (very strongly and in 'good' company) that feminism was thus tied to racism and homophobia, and from there it was a straight shot into identity politics. I've undone that thinking's effect on me, but there is still the problem of feminism itself which perhaps in misinterpretation and perhaps by slight has come to mean a host of other things. But of the main point, I'll only say that the matter of dominance and submission begs an unanswered question of consent. Only in a relative world where gender-roles are flexible can the matter of consent in marriage undo itself. Only when one cannot agree with finality what the role of marrieds must be is consent undermined by the vagueries of personal satisfactions. Only when a relationship can be solopsistically defined and redefined by those unbound by any convention can such dominance and submission be the cause of pain. This is what so many refuse to understand.
But what of equality? What indeed does the feminist female do to find equality in the eyes of men? It appears to me that she must do the deeds of men. I'm afraid we do not know how to raise women thus, and I would think we never shall. Equality in all things is an improper standard because by that we must mean equivalence, and that shall never be. We only need consider what it is by rights we give women in our courts owing to the jurisprudence of centuries in matters of family. Who says there is such a thing as parenting? Not true mothers. Not true fathers. What sense does it make to raise boys as girls and girls as boys? What kind of person would 'parent' a daughter in the ways of being a good father? For what aim? Equal pay for equal work, or something more?
If there is a job that pays a woman as much as a man, then it is not a woman's job nor a man's job, but a job. In the end what satisfaction can come of such work? Someday a machine might do the same. Someday the economy might obviate it altogether. For us in the working and middle classes such sustenance is fine, but if there is manly pride in work it comes from doing it in the company of men. As for myself, if I'm any example, then it comes from the pride of providing for my family as a husband and father. But for that I'd do any work at all.
For all that, there is a singular endeavor for which feminism has no answer but negation, and that is the business of war. I submit that the premises of feminist equality are rendered meaningless by the realities of warfare - and to that extent feminism is itself a bourgeois conceit which only gains adherence in those comfortably far from the experience of it. Warfare and I mean battle, I mean combat, I mean bloody destruction are the matters of manhood. Men are not made for war but by war are we made such men as we must sometimes be. It is our constant reminder of that fact which most fundamentally shapes our society, to always be ready in some way for the conflict we bring to each other in the course of human events. I cannot say which came first, the puffed chest or the need for the puffed chest. But it is ours, men's, and it cannot be argued away. This is the the duty of patriarchy, to instill in us the honor of protecting that which is ours, our families and that self-same honor with our very lives.
Feminism give us nothing to replace our patriarchy except the sentiment for a society of powerful women. if that were to give us more just justice, more honorable honor, more merciful mercy, more gracious grace we'd be fools to reject it. Who could deny that women hold such virtues now? Don't they too have the vices of men? Are women not vengeful, petty, spiteful and haughty as well? I don't think it is that women lack any of the character attributes men possess for leadership be it noble or treacherous. But I wonder why it is women do not bind together in order to assert such leadership of whatever character and forcefully wrest such power from men they find inferior? Why do women not conspire to do this? Why instead do they insist on feminism as their avenue to equivalence? It is a mystery for which I have but one clue.
I offer my own brief encounter with the oddment of last weekend during the Texas Tech football game. I asked the Spousal Unit that if Boy could be the greatest in the history of any sport known to man, which sport would she have it be? She answered without blinking an eye, whichever one would hurt him the least. I pressed and pressed for a real answer knowing deep in my heart that it was a question for men in a bar or a bowling alley, which was where we were, but she is no man.
So my clue tells me that women will not volunteer themselves nor their children to endure a bloody struggle. In the face of the fearsome, they will turn to men to guard and defend their virtues and their vices, their persons and the bodies of their babies. So too will boys. So too will weaker men. Perhaps that is a paradox, if so it is an eternal paradox and it is one that for the life of me I've not heard a good feminist explain. I must confess it's not an argument I've gone looking for, but at this moment in time as we are engaged in a small war with large consequences and Americans ask for marriage and society to be diluted into anything but permanent values, it is an argument I must engage. And so it starts here.
As for the question of economy, I will only elaborate on this point. The extent to which our society calls us to manly or womanly work has, I think, declined. And in that regard we have been reduced to a proletariat. As such I think we get less meaning from work, but we should get equal pay. Money is not the object of virtuous manhood or virtuous womanhood, and it is for that reason that family means more than perhaps ever before.
I should also say that I perceive an aim of feminism to get men to capitulate the value of manly deeds. This is why all the 'men' on prime time television family sitcoms are henpecked oafs.
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