When women reject a higher nature, what takes over?

In my last post I drew a distinction between elevated and base aspects of womanhood. The elevated aspect is inspiring to men and is associated with feminine virtue:

Men who only see women spiritually as elevated creatures are at risk of becoming "white knights" who hold men alone as responsible for problems within the family. They aren't likely to understand the civilisational effort that is needed to keep women from falling down toward their baser nature.

I mentioned in my last post some of the characteristics that can make female behaviour petty, unstable and destructive. First, women's emotions can slide easily along several horizontal axes, one of which has "fun" at one end and "bored" at the other; another with "love" at one end and "hate" at the other. Women tend more than men to have an external locus of control, believing that what happens to them is the result of cosmic forces that have to be divined.

By chance, soon after writing this post I came across the columns of Karley Sciortino, who writes for Vogue. She is someone who has given herself over to these baser qualities of womanhood to an unusual degree, so she illustrates where the "liberated woman" (i.e. a woman "liberated" from traditionally feminine virtues) will finally arrive.

The purpose of writing this is twofold: first, to encourage women to cultivate virtue and, second, to persuade men that it can't just be left to chance that women will be formed successfully for marriage and motherhood - that this requires the culture to push in whatever way it can toward the virtues.

At first, it seems as if Karley does not prove my point about women externalising. In my first post I asserted:

...women tend to externalise. In their experience, they are acted upon by external forces, so that they don't "own" their personal emotional states. These states happen to them, in ways difficult to understand, perhaps brought about by cosmic forces they cannot control.

...most modern women still give some credence to various forms of fortune telling such as tarot cards. Even highly educated, professional women will use spells or magic to try to ward off "negative energies" that exert a baleful influence over them. Some women still go to fortune tellers to help them make major life decisions, such are those relating to marriage or divorce.

If you read Karley Sciortino's columns they are analytical and self-reflective and therefore disprove my point - until, that is, you read Karley's descriptions of her own female peers:

...even in notoriously skeptical New York, it’s increasingly difficult to find someone who doesn’t believe that some magical cosmic force is dictating everything from subway timing to whether or not they’re getting laid.

And I note too that she is not above dabbling in such matters herself: one of her columns is titled "Can a shaman cure my fear of normalcy?"

What really stands out in Karley Sciortino's writing is her fear of sliding along that axis from fun to boredom. It has been her ruin:

Last weekend, I found myself sitting in front of a shaman in a mansion in Berkeley, talking about my commitment problems. You know, cliché white people stuff. “I have this fear,” I told the shaman, “that I’m going to wake up one day with a husband, two kids, a house in the suburbs, and wonder how I got there, as if it’s my destiny. So to avoid it, I continually destroy my relationships at the first sign they’re headed in that direction.”

...In the past, once a relationship began to feel routine, I cheated...Basically, as soon as something feels stable, I sabotage it. I’ve often thought this impulse stems from my super-white-bread, middle-class upbringing: I grew up in a small town with married parents who loved each other. It felt safe but not interesting, and I’ve spent my life fighting that fate.

She is worried that she will be bored by marital love, motherhood and security and so sabotages her relationships. She also finds virtue in men boring. She explains that she goes for men who are sexually uninhibited because:

the goal is certainly to live a life full of intense and new experiences. And if you prioritize thrill and excitement over security, then a hedonist is the right choice.

And that,

Every time a relationship with a different sex maniac comes to a fiery end, I have the same thought: “This time I’m going to date someone nice, who’s never even once been accused of sexual harassment.” Every time I say it to myself in this really self-congratulatory way, like I’ve just discovered the cure for cancer. But then, without fail, when I start dating one of these nice, in-control people, within two weeks I want to kill myself. It’s hard to get off on virtue alone.

And what about pettiness? This is how Karley Sciortino filters men:

Essentially, we are far more discriminating in our 30s than we were in our 20s, which is both a blessing and a curse. We know more about what we want and what we won’t tolerate—but to a point where almost no one is good enough. I find myself having thoughts like, “I could never date him, he wears V-necks.” Or, “He was nice, but he sleeps in a mezzanine bed.” And this perpetual dissatisfaction is especially true in New York, where inflated egos are paired with incredibly high standards and the illusion of infinite choice. That cliché of thinking “someone better might be just around the corner” is real.

Karley also fits everything that the red pill sites say about the modern girl lifestyle. She rode the carousel during her 20s, but now that she is in her early 30s is worried that she has hit the wall. She has written a whole column explaining her change of heart, which includes this:

...it’s not just that being single suddenly feels alienating in your 30s. It’s also that dating itself becomes more difficult. For one, the stakes are higher. You don’t want to waste your time on someone who doesn’t feel like they could be “the one.” But simultaneously, thinking “would he make a good dad?” after knowing someone for the duration of a martini makes you feel like an insane, rom-com cliché of a woman. Not ideal.

...The catch is, as we become increasingly picky, the pool of soul mates keeps getting smaller. Here’s another 30s development: Now, when I meet a cute guy, he’s often already married...

But after so long with so many men she is, by her own admission, very jaded. She writes that she has given up on meeting a hotter circle of men and is finally thinking of settling. She writes:

Now, being jaded doesn’t simply mean that you’re “over it.” It’s more that you’ve become sick and tired after overindulging in something. And I’m pretty sure that my current state is the result of binge-eating on sex and relationships for the past 15 years. Some of the telltale signs include: Being around cheery, optimistic people makes me nauseous...I often swipe through Tinder in front of my friends, sighing unnecessarily loudly and saying things like, “See, this is what I have to choose from!”...When I see engagement notifications on Facebook, I think, She must have settled. (Or, if I’m in a particularly bad mood: She just ruined her life.)

It’s gotten to the point where I’ve pretty much convinced myself that my options are either to be single forever or eventually be like, “Eh, you’ll do.”...But even if you know you’re jaded, that doesn’t mean you have the power to control it.

Would you really want your son to be the man who ends up marrying this woman? Is this woman likely to successfully pair bond? Is it not likely that she will see her future husband as a beta male she settled for and who will therefore always be on the back foot trying to please her? Is it not likely she will want to go back to the thrill of the low-virtue, uninhibited men she spent her formative years with?

It is true, no doubt, that Karley Sciortino has pushed the "liberated" girl lifestyle further than others, but her mindset illustrates what is possible, negatively, within the nature of women. Does anyone believe that you can form stable marriages from this kind of lifestyle? Or maintain a civilisation?

It is wrong to disregard the choices women make, or to think that it is only masculine virtue that counts. Women have to be drawn to a standard of virtue - this is something basic to family formation, to the possibility of marital love, to a society successfully reproducing itself, and to men being inspired to defend their own tradition.

Male dominion, magical women

I saw this on Twitter and had mixed feelings about it:

There is a sense in which women can claim to be a crowning achievement of divine creation. There is an aspect of womanhood which men perceive to be beautiful, pure, lovely and innocent and which inspires men to a higher form of love and protectiveness. This is women as they exist, potentially at least, on a spiritual level.

There are some alt-right women who are steering the ideal of womanhood back to this higher concept. Below, for instance, is a list of feminine virtues which fits in well with "spiritual womanhood":

The list is good, but a society has to be wise to other less elevated aspects of womanhood. Women can, in their emotions, be petty, unstable and destructive. You could think of a woman's emotions as sliding along a number of horizontal axes. For instance, one axis would have love at one end and hate at the other. Another would have fun at one end and bored at the other.

And, combined with this, women tend to externalise. In their experience, they are acted upon by external forces, so that they don't "own" their personal emotional states. These states happen to them, in ways difficult to understand, perhaps brought about by cosmic forces they cannot control.

This spells trouble for women's commitments, particularly their relationship commitments. Easily bored, easily feeling shifts from positive to negative emotion, sometimes prone to seek drama and excitement, sometimes unable to identify their own contribution to their emotional condition, and sometimes expecting an undefined "rescue" by or from some external agent.

It can lead to dissolved families or unhappy marriages. And it can be the most attractively feminine, emotionally vivacious and "nice" women who are most prone to these qualities.

The axis for men is different, as it does not involve as much sliding back and forth. Men seek to travel along a horizontal axis, the end point of which is a certain kind of mastery and control, e.g. to grasp the nature of reality, to penetrate to truth or knowledge, to exercise mastery of one's own will, to gain dominion in some sphere of life. The nature of this ambition means that men will try not to slide backward but to hold onto gains they have made, and it also means that men are pushed toward an "internal locus of control" - that the task is to use one's own concentrated powers to either succeed or fail in achieving mastery.

To illustrate the point further, think of the divergence that has opened up between men and women in the modern era when it comes to such things as auguries, divination and witchcraft. In pre-modern times, men used to seek control over events, in part, by such practices as reading the entrails of sacrificed animals. The scientific era pulled nearly all men away from all this (as being ineffective).

But most modern women still give some credence to various forms of fortune telling such as tarot cards. Even highly educated, professional women will use spells or magic to try to ward off "negative energies" that exert a baleful influence over them. Some women still go to fortune tellers to help them make major life decisions, such are those relating to marriage or divorce. Why? Presumably because they don't have the same mental focus as men on mastery or dominion but instead feel themselves, like the ancients, blindly and randomly subject to the Fates, or to Fortuna, or to cosmic energies that aren't rationally to be grasped but that can only be divined.

Most women, in their heart of hearts, are still ancients. Most men have moved on.

Which is not to say that the male axis is beyond criticism. At its best it is an attempt to grasp an order of existence that harmonises the spiritual, the social and the natural aspects of reality. But it often falls far below this. Some male moderns have tried to reproduce the success of the natural sciences in finding a single "law" by which society and/or self might be ordered. Some seem content to narrow life down to a sphere within which the individual might compete for dominion (e.g. man in the market). Some think only in terms of their own personal mastery within this sphere, the exercise of their own individual will, and so have little regard for the larger tradition they belong to, their communal identity, or for past and future generations. Those who do consider the larger society sometimes seek to achieve rational control via a soulless technocracy. And some have been reduced to a focus merely on the exercise of will itself, having lost faith in the possibility of a rational ordering of self or society.

Once more on the WQ

I'm never really confident writing on the Woman Question, so take what follows as speculative thought on the issue.

One thing that can disappoint men is that women aren't very attracted to masculine virtue. A man can be honourable, courageous and upstanding - but this is not what is likely to attract a female partner. But the thought occurred to me that perhaps the same thing is true when it comes to male attraction.

What men find attractive in women is something that could be described as an outflow of warm feminine emotion - of love, care, kindness and concern. A man is likely to think that a woman who shows this feminine quality is "nice" or "sweet" - as opposed to the opposite ("bitchy") - and this can become a man's moral framework in judging women. In other words, the nice woman is considered to be morally good, the harsh one to be morally bad.

But maybe this is, in part at least, confusing attraction with morality. Just as a woman might confuse a dominant masculine man with the idea of a "good man" - so too might men confuse the warmly or sweetly feminine natured woman with a "good woman".

This doesn't mean that it's of no concern whether a woman is attractive in her femininity or not - obviously men will want the women of their society to be attractive (and feminine attraction might be connected to a woman's ability to bond to her children etc.) However, what I am suggesting is that there needs to be a moral framework for women that stands apart from attraction.

Let's say that we have a woman who already qualifies as being feminine and attractive in the sense I set out above. She still requires a moral framework separate to this in order for her to make the right choices in her life, to contribute to her family and community, to retain the integrity of her personhood and so on.

For instance, a woman can be emotionally "sweet" but in her adult life she will need beyond this a moral framework that includes patience, forgiveness, industry, loyalty, humility and service (without these she is unlikely to be successful in her family commitments). Therefore, it is right for women to be judged on their possession, or lack of possession, of these virtues.

It seems to be the case as well that women, even more so than men, require larger commitments in order to fully establish a moral framework. If a woman commits to her family (i.e. she is proud of her family lineage and tradition and wishes to uphold it); or to her church and her faith; or to her nation and people - then this brings out her more serious moral commitments (which are not activated in a society based on the individual pursuit of happiness).

On the woman question 3 - virtue, reason and the male frame

My last post dealt at a very general level with the woman question. I argued that it falls mostly to men to create the frame in society, rather than this role being split evenly between men and women. My argument was that women are tasked with embodying the softer virtues, but that a woman's softness paradoxically makes it difficult for her to embody these virtues: she needs a frame that she cannot easily uphold herself in order to reach her true purposes.

What sounds neat and tidy at the general level, quickly becomes more complex when you look in a more detailed way at how women vary. I want to look in particular at how women differ when it comes to the attainment of feminine virtue; and at differences amongst women when it comes to reason governing feeling.

Feminine virtue

I argued in my last post that many women are influenced by the feelings that descend on them, and that a passive "recipient" mentality can lead women to certain characteristic vices, such as a lack of constancy and accountability.

However, it should be said that some women are so well-natured that their positive feelings/emotions are strong enough to conquer the negative ones. Therefore, they do not rely as much as other women on a social frame in order to reach toward their higher qualities as women.

In other words, you could chart a line with women who are strong in "natural virtue" at one end of the line and women who are most dependent on "learned virtue" at the other end.

There are at least some women who are strong enough in natural virtue that they do not need an outside frame - but they are a small minority of women. They are not sufficient in number to override the general argument I made regarding the necessity for men to lead in creating a frame for society.

And for those women most dependent on learned virtue? This is where the frame is most important. This is not the place for a complete treatment of what is required for the frame to work. But to give some idea of the issues raised, here are a few things that were once considered important in traditional societies.

a) Protecting the ability of young women to pair bond. If women are more influenced by feeling than by commitments of will, then it is paramount that they reach marriage with the pair bonding instinct as intact as possible. There are many factors that can strengthen or weaken this instinct. Being raised as a girl in a home with a strong family culture, in which the parents love each other, can strengthen her desire to have what she has observed her parents to have enjoyed. Being encouraged to protect the sense of reserve or modesty in not giving away her feelings too easily (i.e. not being "promiscuous" in the giving of herself to men) whilst unmarried is another psychologically protective factor. Not delaying marriage until too late in life might also help.

b) Practising doing for others, as a way of overcoming entitlement and ingratitude. In traditional societies young unmarried women might be expected to practise works of charity, or to help look after other members of the household. It is possible for fathers to enable vices in their daughters by cossetting them too much and providing them with the opportunity to live a shallow, party girl lifestyle. Men do want to create a protected space for women, but there is a danger that this space becomes a hedonistic, materialistic, status seeking, self-entitled one.

The public lives of some young modern women may not be like this: they may live under considerable pressure to succeed at school and at work. They may have to develop the ability to discipline themselves to rules and hierarchies. This may help to counteract some of the "entitlement princess" mentality, but it is not necessarily transferred into what is left of the private sphere of these women, i.e. how they conduct themselves in their leisure time and relationships with men.

c) Men's double standards. In traditional societies men were not as rough and coarse in the company of women as they were in male company. If graciousness and delicacy are female virtues, then this double standard has a logic to it: men instinctively felt that they were damaging or degrading something in women by acting too roughly and coarsely in their presence.

Another point I'd make is that motherhood can draw out some of the finer and more mature qualities in women, perhaps because it is less possible for women to adopt the passive recipient mentality when caring for their children. Mothers become the active, responsible agents in this relationship. It may not help, therefore, when women spend so long in party girl mode before finally becoming mothers relatively late in life. It is also, I believe, more of a test of a woman's virtue how she treats her husband, rather than her children, as this is the relationship where she is more vulnerable to expressing her vices.

Reason

In my last post I repeated the claim made throughout history that women are less able than men to govern their feelings/emotions with their reason/intellect. But this is obviously a generalisation. When you look at a range of individual women, then you see a significant degree of variation.

I believe there are two factors that influence how much a woman is able to govern her feelings with her reason. The first is her level of intelligence, or, more specifically, her intellect. The less intellect there is, the less likely it is to come into play. Second, there is another line you can draw, with "male mind" at one end and "female mind" at the other. Some women have a strikingly female mind, a small number are at the opposite end of the line and have something closer to a male type mind.

What this means is that a woman can be highly intelligent but yet still have a strikingly female mind, one in which the influence of floating emotions (and emotional insecurities) is still highly visible.

There are all kinds of possible mixes here.

This does complicate the attempt to apply a frame to society. For instance, there are some women who are relatively able and competent to aim at masculine standards and ideals rather than feminine ones. These women may have internalised the idea that the masculine ideals are the superior ones and the feminine inferior. And so they move into a kind of rebellion against their own created nature as women - a rebellion which is often accompanied by an existential rancour and rage.

Such women tend to form the dominant strain within feminism: the strain which wants to maintain the male frame, but with women running it (these women have an animus against men - they want to take men down).

So what should be the male attitude to such women? First, the danger has to be recognised. These women are not the true allies of men, they are not trying to serve the larger good. Second, as many of these women as possible should be encouraged to see the feminine more positively, even if they are capable of achieving along more masculine lines. The rage and the rancour is connected to a rebellion not just against society, but against created reality, so the solution is not to change society but to encourage these women to identify more positively with creation itself (including their own role as women within it).

Another group of women have nothing like a male mind; nor do they accept the imposition of a male social frame. From the ranks of these women is drawn the lesser strand of feminism, i.e. the strand which openly wants to assert a female, feelings-based frame on society. This type of feminism is more accepting of sex differences, but it is still hostile to men and it does not recognise the need to bring the female mind to virtue.

But there are also women who do identify positively as women; who are able to look at the good of society as a whole; and who are able to defend the good in a reasonable way. My own view is that it would be wise of men to draw these women into positions in which they can influence society in a positive way (but with men still taking ultimate responsibility for the maintenance of the social frame).

I'll finish on this note. There are now many men who are critical of women, in particular Western women. But it is inevitable that women would lose respect in a culture that, in a sense, abandons them not only to the best but also to the worst of their own natures. There is an underestimation of what is required to get the best out of people, of what traditional cultures did to try and achieve this. The culture, the social structures, the frame have been dismantled (for the purposes of "liberation") and whilst this remains the case, then how could we expect a better outcome?

On the woman question 2 - the truth of the body

What is it that we are called to be? Our body gives us some sense of our telos, of our ends and purposes in life. If a man looks at his body he will see his muscularity; his angularity; a body shape built for strength, stamina and speed; a layering of hardness. A woman will see softness, flowing curves, elegance, delicacy, beauty. In both sexes, it is possible to see glimpses of nobility and dignity written into the body.

Our sexed bodies give us some sense of the truth of our created being, of what it means to fulfil our masculine and feminine natures.

Men are made to embody the "harder" virtues. The masculine virtues involve disciplining oneself consistently to a principle; striving to create a unity between thought, belief and action; acting to bring one's environment into line with a sense of right order; a willingness to submit oneself to rightful authority to achieve this; a willingness to bear a burden to achieve this. Integrity, duty, service, discipline, courage, perseverance, concentrated focus, right order, fortitude - these are significant to the male soul.

And women? It was thought until fairly recent times that women were the "weaker sex". I find it interesting, though, that the word "weak" has an extended meaning in the Germanic languages. In Old English it meant "weak, soft, pliant" and in modern German the word "weich" has the primary meaning of "soft".

And I'd like for the moment to focus rather on the idea that women embody the softer virtues. If women are beautiful and graceful on the outside, then we might wish them to be equally so on the inside. Ideally, we think of women as being warmly emotional; as giving unconditional love; of being immediately present to those around them; of being sensitive to others' needs and feelings; of being caring, nurturing and thoughtful; of being delicate in feeling and expression.

However, there is something of a paradox in all this. Women were made to embody the softer virtues, but the softness makes it difficult for women to become virtuous. Men can embody the harder virtues with will and force of character. But if a woman is softly natured, she won't have these same qualities at her disposal to direct herself toward the feminine virtues.

What seems to happen in practice is that many women instead inhabit the feelings that they happen to have at a particular time. They do not have the same drive as men to govern their feelings or emotions with their intellect or reason (this is a generalisation, not equally true of women, I will discuss the significant exceptions later).

In what particular ways does a woman's softness make it difficult for her to embody the softer virtues? It will help a man to understand this if he has an image in his mind of a woman who has feelings descend on her: she experiences them; enjoys or is discomfited by them; may act to alleviate the worst ones; but generally speaking has the sense that feelings happen to her and shape her reality. Feelings happen to her in a disconnected way, brought on by seemingly external forces.

What effects does this experience of the world have on her? We can see one negative effect when it comes to a woman's understanding of marriage. The traditional Western view of marriage is that it should be based on "caritas": on an altruistic, self-giving love that exists not only as an emotional experience, but is settled in the will as an ongoing commitment. It means being actively and deliberately oriented in a loving way to one's spouse. Marriage too was once thought to be based on a commitment to fulfil the offices of husband and wife, father and mother, with these being lifelong purposes.

But if you experience life as a series of disconnected emotional states that you passively experience, i.e. "that happen to you," then you won't understand marriage in the traditional way - you won't be able to participate in traditional marriage. Traditional marriage requires, at a minimum, that our feelings are governed by our reason.

There are many women today, even capable, well-educated women, who see marriage as contingent on feeling alone. If the feeling is right, then so too is their commitment to marriage. If it is not, then the marriage was not meant to be and is not considered valid.

It was once the case that men would note this aspect of a woman's softer nature humorously as being "fickleness" or "inconstancy". But today, in an era of easy, no-fault divorce, it has taken on a more serious dimension, in which lasting damage is done to a culture of family life.

Another weakness that can afflict women is a lack of accountability. If the softer mentality of women is that things just happen to them in a disconnected way, then what might women think when things go wrong? Women are then less likely to see themselves as being responsible for their own predicament. They will put themselves in the position of "recipient" and externalise the source of their misfortune. They might be tempted to see vague forces as determining the outcome of their life (and turn to psychics and the like to find out what is in store for them or what they should do). Or if they feel discontented in a marriage they might, in putting themselves in the "recipient" position, see their husbands as responsible for their negative feelings. They might even, when in this mindset, hold their husbands accountable for negative events that their husbands cannot possibly at a rational level have any control over, i.e. for acts of God.

If a woman is prone to an unhappy disposition, then this can end badly for her husband. His wife might then cultivate a bitter, critical, judging and unforgiving spirit, in which relatively small offences are held onto, remembered and thrown out at her husband as accusations, or internalised and expressed passive-aggressively through the withholding of love or affection.

The recipient mindset of women can have other negative effects. If it is held to deeply enough, then women can begin to see men instrumentally as existing to serve their own female wants and purposes. If women see men in a depersonalised way as instruments, they will lack empathy for the hardships or difficulties endured by men (in fact, readily dismiss these on the grounds of male disposability); they will feel entitled to the labours and achievements of men; and they will lack gratitude for the sacrifices made by men on their behalf.

The recipient mentality can also lead women toward sectionalism. A woman might make demands on society in terms of getting things for herself as a woman, i.e. for just one section of society, rather than seeing herself as responsible for the well-being of society as a whole.

There is also the issue of softer women being frivolous. It helps here to compare the harder masculine and the softer feminine experiences of life. A man who is committed to embodying the harder masculine virtues will seek to penetrate to the truth of things, to right principle, and then to master himself and his environment so that both conform to right principle. It is a quest that makes of man a seeker after knowledge of self and reality. A softer woman will experience life in terms of feelings that she is subject to, that she receives, one after another. Her feelings will lead her to thoughts, but there is not the same drive to tie these thoughts together to have effect in the world.

This can lead to men seeing a woman's purposes as relatively shallow. Women, it can seem, just want to have fun - to experience pleasurable feelings in the moment. A husband might experience demands from his wife to entertain her, to amuse her, to alleviate her feelings of boredom. A husband knows that he is at risk if his wife is bored - he is then on thin ice in his relationship with her.

For a man, the fun side of life is there as an occasional diversion and rest from his true tasks. A life that was just about seeking pleasure would make many men feel uneasy - it would not engage the masculine soul. Men sometimes have the instinct to deliberately choose the difficult and arduous path, over the easy and pleasurable one, as a way of coming to a better sense of who they are as men.

(I should point out that I am not arguing that a woman's purposes cannot be as deep or as worthy as a man's, only that a woman might struggle, from within her own nature alone, to realise these purposes.)

Which brings me to one final observation. It is obviously true that a man can be immature. In fact, in modern life, men are sometimes put in a position that encourages immaturity. However, if we look at the workings of the harder masculine spirit and the softer feminine one, then there exist reasons for women to be more immature than men, particularly over time as life progresses. If a man seeks to fulfil himself through masculine virtues requiring qualities of fortitude, endurance, integrity, duty, service and self-knowledge, then it is likely over time that he will develop a mature, adult persona. But if a woman is left in a state in which she sees herself as acted on by forces she cannot identify and has no control over; in which she seeks only for pleasurable feeling states; in which she sees herself as responsible only for herself rather than for larger communities; and in which she turns with negative emotions toward those she holds accountable for her feeling states - then the potential exists that she will not develop as a fully mature person, even into her adult life.

Why go to the trouble of pointing out the negative aspects of a woman's softer nature? In my last post I described the three most common approaches to the woman question. The first and dominant one, namely the liberal egalitarian approach, I criticised at length. The second one, the complementarian approach, I suggested was also flawed. I am in a better position now to explain this flaw.

The complementarian framework rests on the idea that men and women are different but equal. It is thought that the masculine and the feminine are like two pieces that together form a harmonious unity. Some complementarians, including recent popes, have concluded that women should have more power in society so that the feminine can have a wider influence.

I too was once a complementarian, but I no longer believe that it is an adequate framework. If I am correct in what I have written in this post, then it is possible still to view men and women as equal in an ontological sense (i.e. in the sense that both are made in the image of God, and in the sense that the masculine and feminine, in their essential being, are equal). However, the relationship dynamic between men and women cannot be equal.

This is because it is a woman's purpose to fulfil the softer, feminine virtues, but the logic of her softer nature does not bring her toward these virtues. To accomplish her telos requires that men establish a frame in society that gives encouragement and direction to the feminine virtues - it is highly unlikely that this will happen unless men lead the relationship dynamic.

Nor is it easy to establish such a frame. There is no simple fitting together of the masculine and feminine to establish a harmonious unity. Complementarianism is sometimes trite and superficial in its understanding of what is required to make things work.

I intend to look in greater detail in my next post as to why this issue is so complex. In brief, the situation is made complex because the nature of women does vary. There are some women who are so well-natured and feminine that they are able to embody the feminine virtues in a relatively easy and admirable way; there are other women who are more able to govern feeling with reason and who therefore may look to a masculine role and masculine virtues rather than identifying with the feminine; there are also women who struggle to avoid the feminine vices, and within this group some may look instinctively to men for guidance whilst others may attempt to assert a feminine feelings-based frame on society. There is complexity too in the issue of how men might ally themselves with the more capable women in establishing an effective frame in society. Finally, and most importantly, there is the issue of the frame itself. What have the different traditions identified as the means by which women might be brought from the feminine vices to the feminine virtues? How can it be done? What does it take? It takes more, I believe, than most people realise.

On the woman question - preliminaries

The woman question hasn't gone away. It is still the main topic of debate at many political websites. My own views have changed a little lately, and I'd like to explain why in a series of short articles. The main point I want to make is that one cause of this being such a difficult issue is that there is a paradox to womanhood itself. However, I think that it is useful to begin with something else, namely a look at the three main approaches or frameworks that are applied to this issue.

1. Liberal egalitarianism
This is the dominant framework in the West. It is supported by the state, the mainstream media, the educational systems and the major political parties. It is the idea that men and women are, apart from some irrelevant physical differences, the same and that our biological sex should have no effect on our role in society. Many who support this framework believe that "binary gender" (masculinity and femininity) is a social construct that oppressively denies choice to individuals.

2. Complementarianism

This is the view that men and women are different but equal and that the sexes complement each other. The Catholic church holds to a particular understanding of complementarianism, as have I at this site (though I have shifted to something a little different).

3. Biblical patriarchy

Those who follow this framework believe that scripture places men at the head of the family, and also gives to men teaching authority within the church. This framework has most influence today amongst parts of the evangelical churches in the U.S., including the quiverful movement. One of its prominent online defenders is the writer Dalrock.

So what are the merits of each of these approaches? I'll start with liberal egalitarianism, as it is so prominent in today's society. Despite its influence, it is the least convincing of the three frameworks. It requires us to believe that there are no significant differences between men and women; that masculinity and femininity have no basis in human biology but are oppressive social constructs; and that being a man or a woman can and should be rendered irrelevant in society.

These ideas run against our own lived experiences; against scientific knowledge of human physiology; against the history of human society; and against the heterosexual instincts of the average man and woman. It is very difficult for even the most fervent of liberal egalitarians to live in a principled way according to these ideas.

So why then is liberal egalitarianism so dominant? It dominates because it is a framework that fits in well with the larger philosophical trends within Western societies. For instance, liberal modernity assumes that there is nothing external to the individual that is inherently good, but that value comes from a freedom to choose our own subjective goods. But if what matters is a freedom to self-determine, then something predetermined like our biological sex will be thought of negatively as a restriction on the individual, something to be liberated from. If our sex is viewed in such a negative way, it will no longer form part of our core identity or our telos (our ends or purposes in life). Similarly, liberal political philosophers have usually chosen to base their ideas on what is called the "unencumbered individual", meaning an abstracted and atomised individual without particular qualities, identities and relationships - this too removes the significance to the individual of their biological sex. Also, modern philosophy generally holds that there are only particular instances of things, and therefore it is held that there is no real existence (no real "essence") to categories like "masculine" and "feminine". If these categories don't really exist, then they cannot be significant to human life.

Finally, it is typical in modern thought to look for "scientistic" ways of managing human societies. The prestige of the natural sciences has been so great, that social scientists want to discover principles as equally clear and applicable as, say, the law of gravity, on which to neutrally, rationally and scientifically administer social life. The idea of administering men and women as equivalent units is much more amenable to this scientistic, technocratic view, than more difficult, messier and "opaque" understandings about distinctions between the masculine and feminine. It also suits big business interests to view men and women equally as labour units (as market resources).

So liberal egalitarianism is weak in being out of step with how people experience life personally, but strong in having the support of certain underlying assumptions within modernist philosophy.

(Note, though, that even if the liberal egalitarian framework is wrong, this doesn't mean that there is never any merit to the more particular and pragmatic observations of those who support it.)

And what of complementarianism? This framework is, at one level, easy to support as it recognises the reality of the differences between men and women, but also asserts an equal value to each. Furthermore, it sees a kind of harmony in the differences, with the masculine and feminine forming complementary parts of a whole. It is an ideal and positive view of the relationship between the masculine and feminine.

But complementarianism is not without its complications. First, it matters a great deal how the differences between men and women are understood. One option, for instance, is to see these differences as irrelevant in terms of which sex takes the leading role in public life. This is the option taken by the modern Catholic church. Recent popes have preached a Catholic kind of feminism, in which sex distinctions are defended but at the same time claims are made that society will be better off the more that women are brought into positions of leadership in society (a strange stance for a church with an exclusively male priesthood to take).

The alternative is for complementarians to argue that men are more naturally oriented to create and uphold the formal structures of society (the way I used to conceive it was that men acted to create the secure space within which women could then successfully bear and raise their children).

I have increasingly come to the view that complementarianism doesn't say enough about the difficulties in creating successful marital relationships between men and women. It isn't sufficiently focused on the potential for disharmony and discord between the masculine and feminine. The vision remains fixed on an ideal rather than confronting the more difficult reality.

Finally, there is biblical patriarchy. This is the framework I am least familiar with, as I do not belong to this church tradition. I suppose one weakness of this framework is that being based on scriptural authority its appeal will be greatest to those who come from an evangelical Christian background, which is a limited demographic in many Western countries. I have read a few accounts of families practising biblical patriarchy and there are some things I admire about it, such as a willingness of parents in this tradition to educate their children according to their own principles rather than leaving their children to be entirely influenced by the secular liberal system. Some families, too, are serious enough about their community to encourage a healthy birth rate and to protect the pair bonding instincts of their young adults. I do read Dalrock regularly and it seems that the principle of biblical patriarchy is being undermined within the larger evangelical organisations.