Jim’s Blog

To 1933, wives in movies are never spanked by their husbands.

From 1933 to 1945, wives in movies are sometimes spanked, but it is shocking, unexpected and unusual.

From 1945 to 1963, wives in movies and on television are sometimes spanked and it is routine, respectable, and usual. For example in “I love Lucy” we are never shown a spanking on screen, but Lucy is regularly very afraid of receiving a well deserved spanking for her many amusing misdeeds.

In the Western “McLintock” the authority figure, representing virtue, middle class respectability, and normality, unambiguously endorses the husband beating the wife severely for gross misbehavior, with a small coal shovel.

From 1945 to 1963, appropriate and proportionate corporal punishment of wives is depicted as normal, proper, appropriate, expected, and respectable. As in McLintock, it is what respectable middle class husbands do ensure that their wives and families behave in a respectably middle class manner – since women, unless restrained, have a not at all middle class preference for drama.

This had a dramatic effect on marriage and fertility in the US, almost as spectacular as the disastrous fall in fertility that ensued when McArthur emancipated Japanese women. Marriage went up, fertility went up.

USA fertility and corporal punishment of wives

We see a significant rise in fertility when spanking starts being depicted, and massive rise in fertility when it starts being depicted as normal. When spanking stops being depicted as normal, stops being depicted at all, soon followed by a massive demonization of men who rule their families and a hate fest against them, which is to say, against marriage and husbands, as marriage was traditionally understood, fertility drops like a stone, as spectacularly as when women were emancipated in Japan.

The high high fertility period was the gap between first wave feminism (Amelia Earhart getting a ticker tape parade for being transported across the Atlantic by a man like a sack of potatoes) and second wave feminism.

During that period it once again became socially acceptable to refuse to hire women for jobs for which they are inherently unfit, and once again became socially acceptable to spank one’s wife (McLintock). During that period women were once again expected to aspire to becoming wives and mothers, rather than despise that role.

Before 1933, no corporal punishment of wives depicted in Hollywood. 1933 to 1945 portrayed as shocking and unexpected, though not necessarily wrong. It is often justified in the context of the movie, but it is also depicted as the act of an outlaw – illegal but romantic.

We first see corporal discipline of one’s wife (spanking) portrayed in the media as normal, legal, proper, and socially acceptable in 1945, and fertility abruptly rises, and this depiction continues to 1963. whereupon it abruptly, suddenly, and totally stops – and fertility starts falling.

As the MRAs argue, feminism has artificially raised female status above male status. When a man and a woman walk in opposite directions down the corridor, the man gives way and the woman walks right down the middle of the corridor. Women continually interrupt men with impunity. (Perhaps the reason I am not totally unsuccessful with women despite being old, fat, and bald is that I am competing with the likes of Scott Alexander.)

But the MRA demand, actual equality, feminism done right, is obviously absurd and unworkable, because of the obvious inferiority of women in the male sphere. (Obviously women are superior in the female sphere, such as babies, home, housework, and finding my car keys.)

Thus, for example, no one really expects women to bear the costs of their own decisions, because women really should not be making those kind of decisions unsupervised. Thus “equality” in practice means women make decisions and men pay the costs of those decisions.

So what we have to sell is the principle of patriarchy – that women should be ruled by fathers or husbands, that men really are superior, that women should give way and should not interrupt. All women should be deferential to all men, but should obey those men and only those men who are committed to care for them.

And we have to reject and dismiss consent culture. Consent does not make sex right, nor lack of consent make sex wrong. Moment to moment consent is bad for everyone, and particularly bad for women. Women lack agency in sexual matters, making “rape” ill defined. The concept maps poorly to real life situations. “Rape” used to mean dating a woman without the consent of parent or guardian, irrespective of how she felt about it, or whether you physically had sex with her. We did not really have a word or concept for what we are now calling rape until the late eighteenth century or so.

The very concept of rape and consent attributes unrealistic agency to women. As in the old testament, we should give female consent as little moral and legal weight as possible, because the word is difficult to fit to real life events.

I don’t think women have agency in sexual matters, since between menarche and menopause their sexual actions are driven by volcanic forces of which they are scarcely aware. They do not want what they want, and they do want what they do not want. Nor do female children get “talked into sex”. If you have good preselection from adult women, female children with no breasts who have not yet experienced menarche will sexually harass you. The problem of adult men having sex with female children is primarily a problem of badly behaved female children, not badly behaved adult men. With women who have boobs, men pursue, and women choose, for sperm is cheap and eggs are dear. Pre boobs, and pre menarche, which is to say pre eggs, the shoe is apt to be on the other foot.

Thus, for example, Scott Alexander’s girlfriend consented to sex with lots of people, not including Scott Alexander, felt bad about it, felt that a gay man could do what she did without feeling bad about it or making Scott feel bad about it, so proceeded to surgically disfigure herself and declare herself to be a gay man. Clearly she would be much better off had she received a few severe spankings followed by some nonconsensual sex from Scott Alexander.

The population collapse is nothing to do with automation etc, since emancipated women in poverty stricken third world countries reproduce even less.

It simply a matter of whether or not men and women can enforceably contract with each other to durably form patriarchal families. If they can, total fertility per woman is around six or seven. If they cannot, total fertility per woman substantially less than replacement. If something in between (as for example the fifties when marriage as traditionally understood was illegal, but was nonetheless depicted on television as normal, normative, and respectable) then the fertility rate is something in between. The economy makes scarcely any difference, short of outright famine and hard Malthusian limits.

Timor Leste proves that if men have the opportunity to be patriarchs, they will not let poverty stop them. They will do whatever it takes.

Back in the fifties, when spanking was respectable, employers tended to advertise for married men, because they expected married men to be more highly motivated.

So we set up society so that prosocial behavior, reasonable competence, upholding order, and a bit of hard work pretty much guarantees a man will become a patriarch, and lo and behold, we will get prosocial behavior, order, hard work, and lots of well brought up children.

If, however you deny men the opportunity to become patriarchs, they hang out in their mother’s basements and watch cartoon porn, regardless of whether their society is rich or poor.

If patriarchy is the law of the land and I have a legal path to be a patriarch but no job, I can find a job, or create one, or scrape up a living somehow. If patriarchy is outlawed and I am legally prohibited from being a patriarch, I will be receptive to the life of the outlaw, the life of the bum, the vagrant, or hanging out in my mother’s basement. Jobs are not the problem. The lack of a reason to get a job is the problem.

If you look at high fertility and low fertility times and places, the factor that massively outweighs absolutely everything else by far, is whether or not a man and a woman can make a deal to form one household and have babies and expect their partner to be forced to stick to it. Patriarchy is necessary for this, since one household must have one captain, but patriarchy is in itself insufficient – the woman also needs protection that her children will neither be torn away from her, nor will she and they be abandoned by their father. The deal has to guarantee both the authority of the husband over his wife and children and the economic and emotional security of the wife and children, has to guarantee the father and husband obedience and respect, and the wife and children that they will be protected and looked after.

Reality is that wherever and whenever men have the option to be a patriarch, the overwhelming majority of men gladly make whatever sacrifice necessary to attain that role, even if extremely poor.

Hookers are only a marginal improvement over masturbation. What progressives offer men is just not what most men want, as revealed by men’s actions.

Yes, a harem is better than just one wife, but a changing rotation of whores is not a harem. The point of having more than one woman is having more than one woman. If I sleep with several women that is really great. If one of them sleeps with another man that is really bad and I will certainly dump her, probably beat her, and might well kill her. I will be very angry and sad for a very long time.

Look at the typical male polyamorist. He is psychologically scarred and mentally crippled for life. Having a bunch of whores rather than owning a woman, or better, owning two women, just really sucks brutally. Those guys are traumatized and damaged.

It unmans men, as if every day a bully beat them up, and they could do nothing about the daily humiliation but suck it up. Just look at what it does to men. It would be kinder to cut their balls off, which is pretty much what progressives are planning to do to us.

The typical male polyamorist looks as if a fat blue haired feminist has been beating him up every day – indeed, he would probably love it if a fat blue haired feminist beat him up every day.

Whores are a marginal improvement on beating off to anime. When men are reduced to such desperate straights, it totally crashes their testosterone and they buy an anime cuddle pillow and weep bitter tears upon it.

The criminalization of patriarchy was the criminalization of the deepest and most powerful need of white men.