A wrong turn

Local news is still dominated by the murder of Jill Meagher. A march of perhaps 30,000 people took place in Sydney Road as an expression of community feeling about the crime:

Commentary on the crime has been wide-ranging, but one remark particularly stood out. A psychologist, Evelyn Field, was asked to explain the outpouring of public grief. One reason why she thought the case had resonated so strongly was that:

All the gains that women have made are suddenly stripped away - you need a man to protect you.

I shouldn't be surprised at this comment. If you believe that autonomy is the great prize in life, then a woman will want to be independent of men, which then requires that she not be in need of men's protection.

That explains as well why the more radically feminist Catherine Deveny wrote that she would aggressively reject a male offer to walk her home because she was perfectly capable of defending herself better than a man could.

But for women to reject male protection as a regressive thing, as anti-woman, has some serious consequences. The instinct to protect wife and children is one of the most powerful masculine drives leading men to commit in a stable way to family life. It is also at the core of masculine self-identity.

Men follow this instinct on the understanding that in doing so they are using their masculine strengths on behalf of women. If they are told the opposite is true and that they are harming women, then you can't expect male commitments to remain as high as they once were.

For women to identify the protection of men as dragging them down seems to me to be one of those wrong turns we have taken in the West. It means that ideals of political progress are set against what a woman needs for a successful marriage and family life.

So women are going to lose out either way.

Why does sharing the housework increase divorce?

Norwegian researchers have found, to their surprise, that couples who share the housework equally are more likely to divorce than those who don't (hat tip: Laura Wood).

The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate”

I thought the researchers explained the likely reason for this quite well:

But the deeper reasons for the higher divorce rate, he suggested, came from the values of “modern” couples rather than the chores they shared.

“Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage” as being less sacred, Mr Hansen said.

The researchers may or may not be aware but a similar research project was undertaken in the U.S. back in 2007 and it came up with similar findings.

The American research was an attempt to find out why women in traditional marriages were on average happier than those in more modern "egalitarian" marriages. The researchers found, just like their Norwegian counterparts, that:

women who earn a greater-than-average percentage of couple income ... and whose husbands take up a greater share of household labor report greater unhappiness.

But why? The researchers were intrigued to find that men in traditional marriages were more affectionate toward their wives (they did more "emotion work"). But the researchers dug deeper and came up with an even more interesting explanation.

It seems that there is a divide in the approach to marriage by traditionalists and moderns. The modernist view is described this way:

a growing number of Americans, influenced by the cultural logic of “expressive individualism”, act as self-interested agents who bargain over their marital roles and interests in an effort to maximize their personal fulfillment

The traditionalists take a different view:

These Americans see marriage as a sacred institution in the Durkheimian sense that the relationship is accorded extraordinary value. Hence, the marital relationship is supposed to trump the individual interests of partners, calling forth virtues such as fidelity, sacrifice and mutual support

This traditionalist understanding then leads to a more altruistic "gift giving" approach to marriage, rather than a critical "acount keeping" attitude:

In this setting, exchanges between marital partners are often conducted according to an “enchanted” cultural logic of gift exchange where spouses give one another gifts that vary in value, may or may not be reciprocated, and often have some kind of symbolic value above and beyond their immediate instrumental value

I think this explanation has merit and is worth serious consideration. There is, however, one further way to explain the research findings, which is that men who are overly domesticated fail to trigger a sexual response from their wives.

If the topic interests you, I wrote two posts on the American research:

What kind of marriage makes women the happiest?

So marriage is a bit of paper?

W.L. George - when a male feminist gets it wrong

We sometimes forget that feminism is now a very old political movement. There were feminist writers in the early 1800s, but it seems to have been picked up at an institutional level by about the 1860s. The first wave reached a peak of radicalism in the years before WWI.

One of the male feminists of this radical pre-War period was an English writer by the name of W.L. George. He wrote a tract called Feminist Intentions which I want to look at. George began his piece as follows:

The Feminist propaganda...rests upon a revolutionary biological principle. Substantially, the Feminists argue that there are no men and that there are no women; there are only sexual majorities. To put the matter less obscurely, the Feminists base themselves on Weininger's theory, according to which the male principle may be found in woman, and the female principle in man. It follows that they recognize no masculine or feminine "spheres", and that they propose to identify absolutely the conditions of the sexes.

George recognises that the feminist programme is a revolutionary one in that it aims to overturn the principle of two distinct sexes, male and female. Sex is to be made not to matter, in keeping with the liberal principle that what is predetermined is an impediment to individual autonomy.

George's second paragraph is also worth reading:

Now there are two kinds of people who labor under illusions as regards the Feminist movement, its opponents and its supporters: both sides tend to limit the area of its influence; in few cases does either realize the movement as revolutionary. The methods are to have revolutionary results, are destined to be revolutionary; as a convinced but cautious Feminist, I do not think it honest or advisable to conceal this fact. I have myself been charged by a very well-known English author (whose name I may not give, as the charge was contained in a private letter) with having "let the cat out of the bag" in my little book, Woman and To-morrow. Well, I do not think it right that the cat should be kept in the bag. Feminists should not want to triumph by fraud. As promoters of a sex war, they should not hesitate to declare it, and I have little sympathy with the pretenses of those who contend that one may alter everything while leaving everything unaltered.

That last sentence is a good insight. Are there not many Westerners who sign on to a radical liberalism without recognising what they are bringing down in the process?

And George is not entirely faultless here either. He expected that feminism would "strengthen the race"; and that it would improve the character of both men and women. I wonder what he would say if he could travel forward in time and witness ladette behaviour, or the thugging up of men, or the declining fortunes of the Western family and the Western peoples:

Therein lies the mental revolution: while the Suffragists are content to attain immediate ends, the Feminists are aiming at ultimate ends. They contend that it is unhealthy for the race that man should not recognize woman as his equal; that this makes him intolerant, brutal, selfish, and sentimentally insincere. They believe likewise that the race suffers because women do not look upon men as their peers; that this makes them servile, untruthful, deceitful, narrow, and in every sense inferior.

Similarly, George thought that if traditional marriage were abolished that it would liberate men and women to have unions based on love alone - he didn't foresee the coarsening of relationships and the instability of family life that would result:

Their grievances against the home...are closely connected with the marriage question, for they believe that the desire of man to have a housekeeper, of woman to have a protector, deeply influence the complexion of unions which they would base exclusively upon love, and it follows that they do not accept as effective marriage any union where the attitudes of love do not exist.

Next comes an argument that time has proven to be utterly wrong. George says that the feminists of his time wanted women to be economically independent, in part, because it would then allow women to choose the best men as mates and that this would have a eugenic effect - which would then benefit the race:

Under Feminist rule, women will be able to select, because they will be able to sweep out of their minds the monetary consideration; therefore they will love better, and unless they love, they will not marry at all. It is therefore probable that they will raise the standard of masculine attractiveness by demanding physical and mental beauty in those whom they choose; that they will apply personal eugenics.

The men whom they do not choose will find themselves in exactly the same position as the old maids of modern times: that is to say, these men, if they are unwed, will be unwed because they have chosen to remain so, or because they were not sought in marriage. The eugenic characteristic appears, in that women will no longer consent to accept as husbands the old, the vicious, the unpleasant. They will tend to choose the finest of the species, and those likely to improve the race. As the Feminist revolution implies a social revolution, notably "proper work for proper pay", it follows that marriage will be easy, and that those women who wish to mate will not be compelled to wait indefinitely for the consummation of their loves. Incidentally, also, the Feminists point out that their proposals hold forth to men a far greater chance of happiness than they have had hitherto, for they will be sure that the women who select them do so because they love them, and not because they need to be supported.

Something like the opposite has happened. The emphasis on being independent and career focused has led many upper class women to delay family formation and then either to settle in a panic or else fail to reproduce; nor does it seem to be true that when women no longer need men to provide for them that they then select men of mental and physical beauty.

George next tells us that feminists want to loosen the marriage tie. However, they want the man to continue to pay even if the woman chooses to divorce as:

The rebels must accept situations such as the financial responsibility of man, while they struggle to make woman financially independent of man.

George then starts to dream of a utopian future:

Personally, I am inclined to believe that the ultimate aim of Feminism with regard to marriage is the practical suppression of marriage and the institution of free alliance. It may be that thus only can woman develop her own personality, but society itself must so greatly alter, do so very much more than equalize wages and provide work for all, that these ultimate ends seem very distant...

....in common with many Feminists I incline to place a good deal of reliance on the ennobling of the nature of the male.

George is claiming that all the sacrifices men make for women as husbands and fathers has the ultimate effect of suppressing a woman's personality. So why would a man make such sacrifices if the effect is a negative one?

And can it really be said that a feminist sexual revolution has ennobled the nature of the male? It's more likely that it is we who look back to George's era and notice a stronger culture of masculine nobility that what we have today.

George also noticed that some feminist women of his time wanted to lay claim to children as theirs alone, with the father having no rights:

One feature manifests itself, and that is a change of attitude in woman with regard to the child. Indications in modern novels and modern conversation are not wanting to show that a type of woman is arising who believes in a new kind of matriarchate, that is to say, in a state of society where man will not figure in the life of woman except as the father of her child. Two cases have come to my knowledge where English women have been prepared to contract alliances with men with whom they did not intend to pass their lives,--this because they desired a child. They consider that the child is the expression of the feminine personality, while after the child's birth, the husband becomes a mere excrescence. They believe that the "Wife" should die in childbirth, and the "Mother" rise from her ashes. There is nothing utopian about this point of view, if we agree that Feminists can so rearrange society as to provide every woman with an independent living...

George did not have a high opinion of the New Woman - the radical feminist women of his own time:

The "New Woman", as we know her to-day, a woman who is not so new as the woman who will be born of her, is a very unpleasant product; armed with a little knowledge, she tends to be dogmatic in her views and offensive in argument. She tends to hate men, and to look upon Feminism as a revenge; she adopts mannish ways, tends to shout, to contradict, to flout principles because they are principles; also she affects a contempt for marriage which is the natural result of her hatred of man.

But, like most revolutionaries, he thought this was a necessary transitory stage and that new social conditions would then create a more ideal type of woman. In his words:

The New Woman is like a freshly painted railing: whoever touches it will stain his hands, but the railing will dry in time.

George then floats another idea, which is that women should wear a uniform:

One tentative suggestion is being made, and that is a uniform for women.

He seems to have associated an interest in appearance with sexually distinct feminine women - something which contradicted the idea of making the sexes the same. Hence a uniform for women.

Finally, George finishes with this:

Thus and thus only, if man will readjust his views, expel vir and enthrone homo, can woman cease to appear before him as a rival and a foe, realize herself in her natural and predestined role, that of partner and mate.

That strikes a false note. For a man to expel vir (manliness) and enthrone homo (humanliness) is not a readjustment of his views - it is overthrowing his own sex and his distinct identity as a man. Here again is the radical insistence on abolishing sex distinctions.

And George "readjusts" the truth by claiming that women traditionally appeared to men as rivals and foes, and only by getting with the feminist programme can women finally become partners and mates. The traditional understanding was not that men and women were foes but that they had interdependent and complementary roles; it is feminism which has institutionalised the idea that men and women are competing for power in the cause of maximising an individualistic autonomy.

One thing I hope this post has demonstrated conclusively is that feminism did not begin with Germaine Greer, nor even with Simone de Beauvoir. It existed in a radical form long before these women arrived on the scene. And the aim has been much the same, namely to make sex distinctions not matter; to maximise female independence and autonomy; and to promote relationships on female terms.

The sad thing is that George believed his feminist programme would strengthen the race, ennoble men and women, and create a more loving culture of relationships. In this he has been proved disastrously wrong.

Apparently I'm a pocket of resistance

Laura Wood has an interesting post up at The Thinking Housewife about an American study into men with stay-at-home wives.

The study has the ominous title "Marriage Structure and Resistance to the Gender Revolution in the Workplace." The three authors of the study summarise their research as follows:

In this article, we examine a heretofore neglected pocket of resistance to the gender revolution in the workplace: married male employees who have stay-at-home wives. We develop and empirically test the theoretical argument suggesting that such organizational members, compared to male employees in modern marriages, are more likely to exhibit attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are harmful to women in the workplace.

Liberal academics, it seems, are hunting out "pockets of resistance" to the "gender revolution". The naughty counterrevolutionaries are those men, like myself, who are willing to support a wife at home.

But they do rule out a purge of counterrevolutionary men from the workplace:

Clearly, organizations should not seek to control the marital status of their male employees, for example, by means of selection. To do so would be unjust, likely illegal, and perhaps, bad business.

Well that's nice to know, but it's interesting that the three academics even consider the idea that "organisations" might try to "control the marital status of their male employees".

It's more evidence that liberal society isn't neutral when it comes to such matters. Liberal society has a notion of the good, one that, as the authors of the study are happy to admit, requires a revolutionary transformation of society.

Just another reminder that we are not living in socially conservative societies, we are living in liberal revolutionary ones.

Learning from Voltairine

In 1908 a woman named Voltairine de Cleyre delivered a lecture to the Radical Liberal League in Philadelphia.

Her purpose was to argue against marriage. What I think we can learn from her lecture is the underlying trend within modernity to "disband" the ties that are intended to hold together a society in favour of a highly individualistic concept of freedom.

She begins by dismissing the idea that there is a real, objective right that might guide people's behaviour:

there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity, depending on the consciously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names “right” and “wrong,” truly, are of human invention only; but the conception “right” and “wrong,” dimly or clearly, has been wrought out with more or less effectiveness by all intelligent social beings. And the definition of Right, as sealed and approved by the successful conduct of social beings, is: That mode of behavior which best serves the growing need of that society.

It is humans who create what is "right" and that alters according to evolving social needs - that is the gist of her moral theory.

If you have this starting point you will then ask "How are social needs evolving?" And she has a clear answer. She believes that until recently men had to respond to the demands of their environment. In other words, in a tough environment men responded of necessity to what had to be done - any other response would have imperilled survival.

But that realm of necessity is gradually giving way. She therefore sees society evolving along these lines:

What is the growing ideal of human society, unconsciously indicated and unconsciously discerned and illuminated?

By all the readings of progress, this indication appears to be the free individual; a society whose economic, political, social and sexual organization shall secure and constantly increase the scope of being to its several units; whose solidarity and continuity depend upon the free attraction of its component parts, and in no wise upon compulsory forms.

She still talks about solidarity and continuity but these have been fatally demoted as they are not what she is defining the "right" by. What is right, in her theory, is a constant increase in the extent to which individuals can self-determine their social ties.

Once she has established this principle, some very radical conclusions follow. For instance, she is led to reject all forms of marriage:

By marriage I mean the real thing, the permanent relation of a man and a woman, sexual and economical, whereby the present home and family life is maintained. It is of no importance to me whether this is a polygamous, polyandric or monogamous marriage, nor whether it is blessed by a priest, permitted by a magistrate, contracted publicly or privately, or not contracted at all. It is the permanent dependent relationship which, I affirm, is detrimental to the growth of individual character, and to which I am unequivocally opposed.

And here we have the great, splintering clash of modern society. On the traditionalist side, marriage is held to be one important aspect of how we fulfil our being as men and women - a stable, happy marriage is therefore a great good. But the Voltairine moderns see it differently - for them individuals develop as an autonomous (non-dependent) self.

Voltairine was a principled kind of woman. She not only rejected formal marriage as leading to dependent relationships, she rejected de facto marriage as well. She insisted on men and women living apart. To those who claimed that she wanted to do away with relations between the sexes altogether she replied:

“Do you want to do away with the relation of the sexes altogether, and cover the earth with monks and nuns?” By no means. While I am not over and above anxious about the repopulation of the earth, and should not shed any tears if I knew that the last man had already been born, I am not advocating sexual total abstinence.

Predictably, her concern for "solidarity and continuity" was shallow - she had little sense of solidarity with anyone, not even with humanity in the abstract.

She then sets out to counter the argument that we fulfil our being as men and women through marriage rather than through absolute individual autonomy:

“But,” say the advocates of marriage, “what is there in marriage to interfere with the free development of the individual? What does the free development of the individual mean, if not the expression of manhood and womanhood? And what is more essential to either than parentage and the rearing of young?

Her answer is that the instinct to have children is now redundant. People once had children, she believes, in order to help ensure survival in a war against nature, but that survival instinct is now being met by science and technology. There is no longer a need for sons when you have mechanical harvesters:

Hence the development of individuality does no longer necessarily imply numerous children, nor indeed, necessarily any children at all. That is not to say that no one will want children, nor to prophesy race suicide.

She was right about families becoming smaller, but wrong that it would not hasten race suicide. She was wrong, too, in thinking that the instinct to have marry and have children exists simply as part of a struggle to survive against nature. That misses the point, which is that our masculinity is expressed, in part, through our roles as husbands and fathers and therefore marriage and fatherhood is one significant aspect of fulfilling our being.

And what of the small families she allows might exist in her future society? How will these be arranged if men and women are not supposed to live together?

Again, true to her principles, she believes that men and women can only develop apart from each other:

People will not, and cannot, think and feel the same at the same moments, throughout any considerable period of life; and therefore, their moments of union should be rare and of no binding nature.

Children, therefore, should be raised outside of marriage:

I believe that children may be as well brought up in an individual home, or in a communal home, as in a dual home; and that impressions of life will be far pleasanter if received in an atmosphere of freedom and independent strength.

Modern society has shifted in the direction Voltairine wanted it to.  Those who understand the fulfilment of being her way have won out.

Why? Why should the Voltairines have triumphed?

Perhaps one reason relates to a point made by Voltairine herself. When living conditions are tougher, such a radically individualistic outlook is simply less viable. But when a society finally produces a comfortable level of material security, then perhaps a certain aspect of human nature starts to assert itself - a certain kind of person emerges who wants to go their own way and who therefore far from wanting to uphold social ties of family, ethny or nation wants to actively disband them.

That's made worse when the "disbanders" are well-off, anonymous urbanites, rather than, say, a landed gentry with a sense of noblesse oblige and dynastic tradition.

And the "disbanders" can recruit to their side all those who don't like the structure of the traditional society: early on, for instance, it might be the merchant classes pushing against feudal economic restrictions, or dissenting churches pushing against the established church. It could include as well ethnic minorities, or some homosexuals, or the mannish kind of women, or even those who are depressed or resentful, or those from unhappy homes.

So perhaps any developed society is going to have take care to protect itself from the likes of Voltairine, from those who are ready to cast off social ties in favour of autonomous development.

When motherhood is reduced to economics

Jessica Irvine believes she has a solution to the mummy wars - the debate about women staying at home with their children or going out to work.

Writing in the Melbourne Age newspaper, she asserts that it once made sense for men to go to work, whilst women stayed home with the children, since men in the past had higher incomes - it was an economically rational decision.

But women are now getting 64% of degrees and are delaying marriage and motherhood until they are set in their careers. So couples should now make the decision about who looks after the children on purely economic grounds:

Something happens to women and their salaries when they enter their 30s, and that something is children.

Couples today need to make more active decisions about who will take time out of the paid workforce to look after children. Couples must consider which partner has the higher earning capacity and whose career progression and future earnings capacity will be most negatively affected by taking time out.

There's a positive and negative side to this argument so far. The negative side is that Jessica Irvine believes that men and women are so interchangeable, and that motherhood is so disconnected from womanhood, that the decision about who looks after baby can be decided solely on economic rationalist grounds.

I don't deny that there are families in which the wife's income is so much greater that the decision is more likely to be for the husband to stay home.

But we're stripping down human relationships if we think of men and women as Economic Man - as abstracted,  rational economic agents. And if we really think of humans this way, then it's difficult to see how a stable family life will endure anyway. Is it really in my interests as Economic Man to make such sacrifices on behalf of my family? Isn't it more the case that if I identify myself with my masculine being, and the higher expression of this being is to act protectively as a husband and father, that I will then commit myself to the service of my family?

However, at least Jessica Irvine's argument so far seems less hostile to the traditional family. It makes it sound as if she's happy, if the husband earns more, for the woman to stay home.

But unfortunately she is not so neutral. Her expectation is that increasingly fewer women are going to choose to stay home and that the government should set its tax and childcare policies to make sure that this is the case:

Because the market value of women's time has risen so dramatically, it is more likely that couples will decide to deploy the male partner to domestic duties, and keep the woman's salary.

The economics of the family are evolving, and where gender policies and quotas fail to deliver, the profit motive will out.

It will take time. It requires that governments keep working to remove tax traps that keep women at home because they would lose more in welfare benefits and tax than they would earn.

The onward march of progress, she thinks, combined with government tweaking of the tax system, will get feminists there in the end - to a situation in which our sex has been made not to matter, so that parenting decisions are made on "neutral" economic grounds, but in which the government acts to ensure that the economic grounds push toward a certain outcome.

It's possible that society will turn out that way. But there are reasons to think it won't as well. Out in the suburbs, the traditional family is still stubbornly holding sway. And elsewhere it's not so much the modern family taking over, but rather a weakening of family commitments.

Interesting chart on marital happiness

Here's an interesting chart showing the percentage of adults in the U.S. reporting that their marrige is very happy (hat tip Dalrock):

As you can see the percentage of very happy marriages declined from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s and there has been no recovery since then.

So despite things being made easier for women to divorce their husbands, women are no more happier in their marriages - they are on average less so.

Nor do the statistics support the idea that women were made unhappy by the traditional family and had to be "liberated" from it. There were more very happy marriages back in 1973 than there are today.

Why did school authorities want this mural painted over?

A reader sent me a link to the following story. Liz Bierendy is a 17-year-old student at a school in Rhode Island in the U.S. She painted a mural for her school depicting the progression of a boy from childhood to adulthood. Have a look at the mural below:

Pilgrim High School mural, Warwick Rhode Island, by Liz Bierendy

It seems that school authorities saw the mural and felt it to be offensive. They ordered that part of the mural should be painted over.

Can you guess why? Here's a clue: the "offensive" part of the mural is the bit at the end.

The authorities did not like Liz Bierendy's portrayal of the family. According to Liz Bierendy she was told that portraying a man getting married to a woman and forming a family,

may be offensive to some people because it is not how society views a family anymore because some people may not grow up with a mother and the whole marriage type thing may be a religious symbol.

I am tempted here to write "Really?" about a thousand times. But I should know better. I have explained in detail myself why liberals have issues with the standard traditional family. I shouldn't be surprised if liberals treat seemingly innocent depictions of the family as being too suspicious to be rendered into art.

The mural was only saved when a higher official, a school superintendent, stepped in and used his authority to allow the mural to stand in its current form:

The section of the mural featuring the family was ordered painted over by school officials. Bierendy said she was notified prior but she was still "pretty upset." The Superintendent of Warwick Schools Peter Horoschak has since stepped in and asked that the student be allowed to finish the mural however she sees fit.

Bierendy says she is going to take the weekend to “think about this,” and on Monday she will decide how to finish the mural.

In a statement released by Superintendent Peter Horoschak he said "some of the members of the Pilgrim High School community suggested that the depiction of a young man’s development from boyhood through adulthood as displayed may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School."

Update: I've just read some comments in a local newspaper about the issue. Most readers are supportive of the mural, but those few that are against really do believe that the mural is an attempt to impose religion or "religious values" in public schools.

Is the American left really going to go down this path and view the family as a "religious symbol" that must be kept out of public life?

It's a serious development as a society needs a stable culture of family life to prosper, but public authorities will not be able to promote such a culture if it is deemed to be a "religious value" that cannot be favoured within public settings.

Beyond the marital ideal

There's always a more radical liberalism. Case in point: a recent opinion piece in the New York Times by law professor Laura Rosenbury.

Laura Rosenbury wants family law to change so that it no longer privileges marriage - not even the most liberal forms of marriage. She believes that family law should focus on our relationships with friends.

Why? She explains her position in a longer article she wrote in 2007 for the Michigan Law Review ("Friends with benefits?"). Her starting point is that we should aim to be equal, autonomous, independent individuals and that this aim is better served through friendship than through marriage. Therefore, she wants family law to be rewritten so that we can freely nominate a number of friends (who might change over time) who will receive the state benefits which now go to our spouse or children.

In her article, Laura Rosenbury explains that family law has two goals of "achieving individual autonomy and gender equality within the family." These goals, she argues, as well as that of fostering pluralism, could be more fully achieved if family law began to consider friendship, as friends are able have a personal connection with each other "while simultaneously maintaining aspects of individual autonomy and equality that can be elusive in domestic coupling".

In other words, she believes that through friendship you can have the best of both worlds: "personal connection" as well as autonomy and equality.

To underline this point she goes on to write,

Andrew Sullivan has made a similar connection between friendship and the desire for autonomous living:

"[F]riendship is for those who do not want to be saved, for those whose appreciation of life is here and now and whose comfort in themselves is sufficient for them to want merely to share rather than to lose their identity. And they enter into friendship as an act of radical choice. Friendship, in this sense, is the performance art of freedom."

Friendship is choice, it is freedom, it is "autonomous living". That's the message. And, to be fair, if your aim is "autonomous living" then that's probably right. People don't generally marry in order to achieve goals such as equality, or radical choice or autonomy. They're seeking something else: a loving union with a person of the opposite sex which completes us and which provides a setting for our adult masculinity and femininity; the chance to have children and to fulfil ourselves as fathers and mothers; the opportunity to contribute to one's own tradition by raising the next generation and so on. Most people understand they are sacrificing a certain amount of autonomy in order to fulfil these other aims.

Laura Rosenbury, in other words, is not being illogical in what she advocates - not if the liberal aim of "autonomous living" is the starting point. Once you begin with that aim, then the family will always seem to be a compromised arrangement - even liberalised versions of the family - as the family can never be entirely fluid, never be entirely inclusive or non-discriminatory or non-hierarchical or non-gendered.

As an example of how liberals are unlikely ever to be satisfied with the family, consider Laura Rosenbury's next argument. She concedes that there has been a "revolution in marriage law" resulting from a "policy decision to treat spouses as individuals rather than as a unit".

However, this "process of individualization" isn't sufficient for Laura Rosenbury. Why? Because the two individuals in a marriage are still dependent on each other. They might be treated as individuals within a marriage by the state, but they still need each other to be recognised as a couple in order to get state benefits:

Although spouses are individuals, the law confers benefits to them solely because they are in a couple recognized by the state; if they presented themselves “merely” as friends, they would not be eligible for state recognition. The individuals in the couple are therefore dependent on each other for the continuance of state benefits and legal recognition. This state-induced dependence is at odds with recent processes of individualization, a conflict which has led to increased rejection of “the romantic dyad and the modern family formation it has supported.

So how exactly would Laura Rosenbury like family law to be reformed? She rejects the idea that people might nominate a "designated friend" to replace a spouse. That would still limit autonomy by making coupling too stable and exclusive:

Chamber's proposal permits unmarried couples to have only one "designated friend." Stable coupling is therefore privileged in Chambers' proposal...

The status of designated friends could therefore be described as a “marriage-lite” approach. Although this approach is designed to permit more autonomy and independence within the relationship the primacy requirement limits much of that autonomy.

Take note: in the world of the liberal autonomist it is thought wrong for "stable coupling" to be privileged in family law.

What does Laura Rosenbury want then? It includes this:

...state recognition of friendship must be sufficiently robust to match, or counter, the signals currently sent by state recognition of marriage and family.

...new constructions of family law can better recognize friendship by embracing the principles of nonexclusivity and fluidity. Nonexclusivity is vital to new constructions of family law because exclusivity risks reinforcing the primacy of one comprehensive relationship over others.

...one relatively aggressive approach would gather all of the benefits, default rules, and obligations attaching to marriage and permit individuals to assign some or all of those forms of legal support to the individuals of their choice.

...In addition, such an approach would not necessitate a legal definition of friendship or family, thereby acknowledging the potential fluidity of family and friendship. Individual preference, rather than legal definition, would control which relationships are supported by the state and which are not.

She is reluctant to define family or friendship as this might limit the "fluidity" of such relationships; note too her emphasis on the idea of family law embracing the principle of nonexclusivity, which undermines in principle the "dyad" relationship between husband and wife.

Finally, it's interesting that Laura Rosenbury then pushes an argument that liberal autonomists always seem to arrive at, namely that if we reject marriage we can happily substitute same sex friendships:

Legal recognition of friendship could begin to disrupt these patterns, creating conditions under which women could more explicitly contemplate why they might prioritize domestic family life, particularly married life over friendship. As discussed earlier, Adrienne Rich called on women to engage in such contemplation over twenty-five years ago. Her goal was to challenge compulsory heterosexuality by creating opportunities for women to question why they have embraced marriage with men over relationships with other women.

Legal recognition of friendship could serve a similar function by presenting women with a socially recognized way of living outside of marriage or domesticity. Some women who are not currently living a lesbian life might gain sufficient strength from such legal recognition to prioritize relationships with women—whether the relationships be sexual or friendly in nature, or both—over interactions with men.

But there were feminists who heeded Adrienne Rich's call to set up female communities. The experiment did not have a happy ending.

The larger point, however, is that liberalism is not finished with the family yet. For Laura Rosenbury, relationships must be fluid, non-exclusive, non-gendered, undefined, individualised and independent if they are to meet the test of autonomous living. No version of marriage, not even the most liberalised, can completely satisfy these requirements, so Laura Rosenbury wants non-marital relationships to be legally recognised within family law instead.

And the task for traditionalists? We have to recognise the dissolving logic of liberalism and reject it at a level of principle.

The case against Magda

Magda Szubanski came out as a lesbian on Australian TV this week. I suspect that most Australians had just assumed she was lesbian, so it wasn't much of a revelation. But she took the opportunity to make an emotional appeal in favour of homosexual marriage.

Homosexual marriage is not an issue I venture into much. Most of my readers will have made their minds up already one way or the other and it's not a good entry point into traditionalist politics. But it's been in the news a lot here in Australia, so I'll reluctantly step in and make an argument.

It seems that Magda Szubanski, best known overseas for her role in the film Babe, requested that Steve Price be on the TV panel when she made her appeal for homosexual marriage. Why? Because Steve Price is not convinced. He is worried that homosexual marriage will change our understanding of what marriage is.

And I think he's right to be concerned. At the moment Australian law defines marriage as:

the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

That definition of marriage makes sense within heterosexual relationships. If we understand the masculine and feminine as complementary, then bringing one man and one woman together is meaningful in creating a unity out of two complementary parts. On the physical side, this uniting of male and female is what naturally produces offspring, and the care of such offspring underlies the lifetime commitment across generations within a family.

If it is possible for two men or for two women to marry then marriage can no longer be understood in this way. It can no longer be understood as a natural unity of two complementary opposites, and the sexuality within this marriage can no longer be understood, in a larger sense, as serving the purposes of creating new life within a multi-generational family.

Instead, marriage must be understood as a commitment ceremony to celebrate the love between people. But that's an open-ended definition. Why, according to this newer definition, must marriage be exclusive? Can't we love more than one person? And why must it be enduring? If the love goes, then why wouldn't the marriage?

For a little while, it's true, the force of custom might keep the Western tradition of marriage roughly as it is now. But on what principled basis, in the long-term, could, say, polygamy be argued against? If a man loves his wife, but has feelings for another woman and she for him, and his wife doesn't object, then why shouldn't he have a commitment ceremony to celebrate his love for this second woman? Is it not his right, according to the new definition of marriage, to marry this other woman? If not, why not? It's difficult to think of a principle, other than "it's not our custom", on which to deny polygamous marriage, once the new definition of marriage is brought in.

And there is one further negative consequence of redefining marriage. A traditional marriage brings together a man and a woman to undertake distinct and necessary parental roles within a family. There is a paternal role and a maternal role and a child is thought to be worse off if he or she is missing either a father or mother.

But if the state gives its blessing to same sex marriage, then the state is effectively sanctioning the deliberate formation of families in which either the father or the mother is absent. The message to society is that the paternal role and the maternal role are not necessary as they were once thought to be.

And that has considerable ramifications, particularly for men. The bond between mother and child is a fairly stable one across societies. But it's a more difficult thing to win the stable investment of men in family life. What often holds men to the paternal role is a belief, held by both the father and the mother, that if the father walks away or is pushed away, that the children will be worse off, i.e. that the paternal role is a distinct and necessary one and that the father should be resilient in pursuing it and the mother active in encouraging it.

But what if people were to start to believe something else, namely that there are no distinct parental roles and that families without fathers are no different to families with fathers? Wouldn't more men be tempted to walk when the going got rough? Wouldn't more women be tempted to sideline the fathers of their children?

For these reasons, I believe that we should hold to the current definition of marriage.

Dead stream, live stream

Sorry, but this is another "symptom of decline" post.

There's a website called "Corporette" which describes itself as "a fashion and lifestyle blog for overachieving chicks". There's a post up there about how a woman can go about freezing her eggs:

Ever considered freezing your eggs, either because you wanted to postpone kids for your career or because the right partner seems to be in hiding?

So that's what "overachieving" women do? They freeze their eggs because they want to postpone kids for their careers?

Anyway, the corporette author discovered that it's considered more viable to have embryos rather than eggs frozen. So her plan is to follow up having her eggs frozen by later on freezing some embryos fertilised with donor sperm:

I’m still considering freezing embryos in a few months, because I think that would be the right decision for me. I do want to have children (ideally, one biological and one adoptive). On the whole, I am comfortable with donating unused embryos to research.

What an attitude. She has decided already that her family will consist of one child conceived with donor sperm and another child adopted presumably from overseas. Has she wondered if her future husband will be OK with this? Or that he might prefer to have a say in whose children he ends up raising? And doesn't kinship matter at all anymore? (A point made by Laura Wood in her comments on this story.)

Why has it all come to this for Ms Corporette? Why hasn't she already found a man to marry and have a family with? That's difficult to know from a distance, but she does tell us that "I pride myself on being an Independent Woman," which is not exactly likely to attract the most traditionally oriented of men. She tells us too that she is not

going to have (yet another) years-long relationship without any concrete direction; I am 34...At this age I feel better about knowing what I want...

Which makes it sound as if she is one of those women who couldn't bring herself to admit openly and definitely to wanting marriage and children and so who drifted along in relationships with unsuitable men.

Some of the comments are also noteworthy:

Anon woman: This is something I’ve always considered. I’m only 26, but my mom struggled with fertility at 24. I’m married, but I’m just starting out (I’m a 3L) and I don’t want to have children for another 10+ years. I am considering freezing embryos as soon as I begin Biglaw next year.

So this woman is married but refuses to consider motherhood until she's about 35 (i.e. until just the time when her natural fertility begins to plummet). Her priority in life is not her children but "Biglaw".

Other commenters revealed that they took the option when reaching their early 30s of becoming single mothers by choice:

Anon: I was 33 when I decided I was not going to wait any longer. I didn’t want to be in the situation where I needed to think about fertility treatments or being pregnant at an older age or being a parent at an older age. I went to fertility doctor and chose an anonymous donor.

a: I’m seriously considering doing the single-parenting thing (it’s crazy, but is it worse than never having kids when I really want them?)

Always a NYer: My point is that not having the biological father around shouldn’t deter or make you feel less as a parent.

AFT: from the time I was teenager, my mom always said that if I wanted children I should just have them and I didn’t need to be married and I shouldn’t wait around for a husband. She thought that it was important that I could have my own choices and that I did not have to bend my life around whether a man would be around.

My point is, you are definitely not crazy for wanting a child/children and considering doing it solo if the time is right for you and no guy is around.

Someone needs to tell these women that there are easier solutions, the main one of which is to be oriented to marriage and motherhood at a younger age. The current life script for this type of woman is not viable. It goes like this:

a) Deliberately push off family formation until the magical age of 30. Focus on career, travel, partying and casual relationships instead.

b) Get to 30 and find it more difficult to find the right man than you expected.

c) Get to 32 or 33 and recognise that there is only a small window of opportunity left to have children.

d) Take desperate measures that will make it even more difficult to marry, e.g. freeze some donor fertilised embryos or have a child as a single mother.

I can't help but think that society is bifurcating. Those following along the modernist path are sinking deeper into a nihilism in which kinship no longer matters as much, in which fatherhood is optional, in which a paralysing question mark is placed next to motherhood, and in which women home in on the most demoralised of men.

But there is also an ongoing, more traditional stream in society, one that is more determined to arrive at positive family outcomes. There do exist women who are part of this stream (e.g. two beautiful, kind-hearted women in my office in their mid-20s who married good men and have just recently had their first child).

Which stream will prove to be the more powerful? Time will tell.

Candace Bushnell & traditional marriage

This won't come as a great shock, but Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the Sex & The City TV series, sees herself as a non-traditional woman.

When Bushnell was 43 she married a man 10 years younger. She has described this large age gap as a great positive:

...the reason my marriage works is that it's not traditional. When I was younger, I dated men of various ages, some a little younger, some several years older. And I saw a pattern begin to emerge: Whenever I was with an older man, all those societal dictates about male and female roles would creep into my subconscious. I'd start acting like the little woman, and then my behavior would make me sick and I'd rebel by staying out at nightclubs until four in the morning. I knew what I wanted - an equal, balanced relationship in which both members could shine, a union in which I'd have a partner as opposed to a provider ... equal partnership is something many women want...My fellow cougars and I found our footing in relationships with younger men.

And by the way, our men don't usually resemble boy toys ... More likely, he's confident, open-minded and willing to make his own rules.

And she has described the inspiration behind Sex and The City as an attempt to liberate women from the "injustice" of the rules of society:

I’m 52 years old now, and when I was a young girl growing up in the 1960s, there were a lot of dos and don'ts. We, young girls, were told what was permissible and what was not, and how we were to behave and conduct ourselves. And I object to that. And this injustice has always driven me. SATC, with all the sexual liberation and freedom expressed by the women characters, reflects a society unfairly imposing itself on women. 

But Bushnell's cougar vision of liberation is floundering. Following on from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's divorce, we now learn that Bushnell is divorcing her husband after discovering his relationship with a much younger woman. Her non-traditional approach to marriage didn't work.

And I don't think that's entirely accidental. Bushnell is mistaken when it comes to equality. A 43-year-old woman is going to struggle to give equally in a marriage with a 33-year-old man. She won't be able to give him her youthful beauty and passion. She won't be able to give him children. The sacrifices will come mostly from his side, not hers.

It's interesting, too, that Candace Bushnell felt the impulse of masculine and feminine roles only with older men, rather than with younger ones. Her rejection of men older than her suggests that she is not accepting of a man expressing a masculine role as a husband and father within a marriage. Again, I don't think that's a giving attitude from a woman. It's as if she wants a marital relationship which resembles the unstable, free-floating, sex based relationships that occur on campus before men and women become conscious of their adult roles. For a woman to insist on that kind of a relationship when married requires a husband who is, in my opinion, either immature or who is forced to suppress his adult personality.

And why? Consider again what Candace Bushnell says about being with older men:

Whenever I was with an older man, all those societal dictates about male and female roles would creep into my subconscious. I'd start acting like the little woman, and then my behavior would make me sick and I'd rebel by staying out at nightclubs until four in the morning.

What does that say about Bushnell's feminine identity? It's not something through which she can connect with a man anymore. She has defined it in a negative way as something externalised and oppressive. But this too then limits what she is able to give in a marriage. The equality of marriage being a meeting point between the masculine and the feminine is lost.

Husbandless and empty

Here's a letter to Salon magazine from a woman who is grieving over her lost opportunity to be a wife and mother with a family of her own. I'm not posting it to panic my female readers but as evidence of just how important men are to women, no matter what feminist women might claim or aim for:

Dear Cary,

With this letter, I think I'm addressing an issue me and a number of my female friends are facing ... and there are probably more of us out there.

I'm a 42-year-old woman and have never been married, which often surprises the people I meet. I have the usual list of attributes ... attractive, kind, quite intelligent and with a warm and loving heart. I'm educated, cosmopolitan, responsible and self-sufficient ... a very normal, grounded woman who grew up in a loving home.

Why didn't it ever happen for me? I don't know ... I have been looking for a good man since my 20s and have always wanted to marry -- I didn't put career first or any of the usual excuses. I guess it is a combination of choosing the wrong men (or having them choose me), having high expectations, or maybe just plain bad luck. I was never willing to settle. I wanted a husband who was my equal, whom I was compatible with, and whom I could love and respect with all of my heart, as he would me. I didn't think this would be impossible -- many women find Mr. Right -- I just didn't and it never worked out with the men I was with. My friends have a similar profile, and are in the same predicament.

Now the problem. I do not want to be, or like, being single and sometimes I look at a future that seems empty and desolate and it frightens me. There are days when I don't know how to go on -- the sadness runs so deep. I have started to withdraw from friends and acquaintances who have a husband and children -- I feel like the odd one out, and the one who is to be pitied. I won't go to my high-school/college reunions for the same reason. It seems more acceptable to be divorced with kids than having never been married. Dating? After my last disappointment, I assume no one wants to settle down with a 40-something-year-old woman -- an eligible man will invariably choose a younger, more attractive option to date and marry. And the fact that I am too old for children causes me a quiet but intense feeling of grief.

All of this basically makes me feel like the train of life left the station and I'm still on the platform.

I guess my question is, what meaning is there to life without a husband and family? Please don't tell me to travel, do volunteer work, have a rewarding career, etc., etc. I have done all that. I have been all over the world and visited my "dream destinations," I have lived overseas for several years, I have seen wonders both natural and man-made. I currently live in probably the most exciting city in the U.S., if not the world, I have a career, I've gotten my master's degree, I've done volunteer work, I attend church, I have friends and family. Yes, all of this is nice, but my life feels empty, hollow and meaningless. I would have traded it all to have had a normal life with a wonderful husband and kids, and a home. I feel adrift, purposeless and like my life is finished ... though it never even really got started.

How do I find some meaning and purpose in my life? And how do I reconcile the life I have now with with the one I expected, when they are so very different? And how do I face a future that seems like an empty void ... no husband, no children, no grandchildren. Nothing.

Husbandless and Empty

She's not alone in her predicament. A report in the Daily Mail today shows that 20% of women in the UK have missed out on having children. The percentage amongst the university educated will be much higher.

In Australia, for instance, a 2003 research paper showed that the rate of childlessness amongst women with a bachelor's degree was double the average. One third of Australian women with an income over $50,000 ended up childless.

In Canada, a 2009 research paper found that childlessness rose with the level of a woman's education: 11% for women with a high school education and 25% for the university educated.

Most of these women did not want to end up childless:

The intention to be childfree is low among the young. Using the 2001 Canadian General Social Survey on Family History, Stobert and Kemeny (2003) estimate that the proportion intending to remain childfree stays constant at 6 to 9 percent for men and women aged 20-34.

So what goes wrong? Clearly, one factor is a failure to marry. It's still the case that married women are much, much more likely to have children than women who are either single or in de facto relationships. In Canada, 12% of married women ended up childless compared to 26% of women in de facto relationships and 60% of single women.

So you might think that something as important as marriage and family formation would be given a high priority and that women (and men) would be raised to cultivate the kinds of qualities needed for family life. But that doesn't happen as much now. Family formation has almost become an afterthought - something to be delayed for as long as possible. It's left to take care of itself, whilst people dedicate themselves to other life pursuits.

And here's one final thought. Miss Husbandless and Empty wanted a man who was her equal, by which she presumably means a man who had at least her level of education and professional attainment. She wasn't willing to settle for anything less.

But this means that she should have been worried by the social trends which have seen more women than men in higher education and in the workforce. It stands to reason that if women refuse to "settle" by marrying men with lower educational or professional qualifications, at a time when women are earning an ever higher percentage of college degrees, that there will be many more disappointed women wondering why they never met Mr Right.

Maria Shriver on marriage and choice

The marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver has broken up after Schwarzenegger told his wife of a child he had fathered with another woman. My own wife is very sympathetic to the plight of Maria Shriver; I would be more so if Maria Shriver believed in a stable family life. Instead, she has taken delight in her feminist writings in the decline in marriage, believing that it opens up choices for women:

In 2009, women have more choices than they did 40 years ago. They can choose to have kids with a partner, in a traditional marriage or not. They can choose to stay childless, live as single parents, or choose a same-sex partner. They can be like the single mothers who raised a president of the United States and a brand-new Supreme Court justice. They can be like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. They can be like Diane Sawyer, Michelle Obama, Sandra Day O’Connor, or like Nancy Pelosi, who spent the first half of her life staying home to raise five children and then went on to become the first female Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Or anything else they can imagine.

If being able to choose anything you want is progress, then did Arnie have the right to choose whatever he wanted? Is that progress for men? Or are men supposed to do the right thing, whilst their feminist wives promote family breakdown?

Seriously, Maria Shriver was married with children. She should not have been celebrating the decline of marriage as a step toward choice and progress. Her feminism was not at all in her own interests or that of her children.

A dismal view of relationships

Here's something good and something bad about The Spearhead, one of the men's rights sites. On the positive side, the administrators of the site do allow a wide range of views to be published, including from more conservative men. But, despite this, there is increasingly a single view being expressed in the comments, one that is not just against modern marriage, but marriage in general and in favour of either casual relationships or none at all.

That seems to me to be too pessimistic a view, one which doesn't even allow the possibility that some men might marry happily and have children and raise another generation of Westerners.

And, what's worse, some of the feminist women who visit the site have an even more pessimistic view of relationships than the men. One comment from "Amanda" is one of the most dismal I have ever come across:

It’s a shame, at first I thought this site would be about men also wanting equality, about the sexism shown men. Now I can see it’s a bunch of sexist angry men abusing women.

As a woman, yes I am ashamed to be one most of the time, but equally I also admit, men, if women are being honest, are not what women want……but have been socially conditioned to drop their standards to get with them anyway. If women were being honest, there would be a majority of celibate single women out there and very few in relationships. Probably equally so, men would say the same if the truth were actually being told. We make each other miserable right now as we are in a time of change.

[Men are not what women want? Women are not what men want? That's way too pessimistic a view. It's certainly not true for men. It's natural for young men to be crazy about girls - and to think of the desirability and the beauty of women as one of the great experiences in life.]

I can put it simply what will make it easier...take away your preconceptions about men and women. Stop trying to control women with labels, a feminist is not angry, or bitter and nor is she necessarily a man hater. My best friends are all but 2 men. Do I like them from a relationship perspective? No and I am honest about that, no what men offer, I don’t want (other than I find them physically attractive and great friends to have). Do I like how men try and control me...no, not at all. DO I like how men sexualise women? No I really don’t. Do I like how men almost treat women like children who don’t know anything, no I don’t as I am smarter than most men and earn more than most thank you. Do I like how as a woman I am expected to be a certain way and perform certain duties? No I don’t. You get the point...you have to admit, you guys do love to make a woman feel like a freak for speaking out and being honest about how she feels, what she thinks or what she really wants. You do love to silence by using labels like angry, bitter, issues and psycho.

[Amanda doesn't want what men offer. Again, a dismal view. Already, we get the idea that Amanda doesn't like traditional gender roles and because of this has been alienated from normal human relationships. Her ideology is getting in the way of a loving relationship with a man.]

I get you guys, yes I would love even as a woman to come home to a gorgeous man, who looked after my kids, was kind and loving and made me nice food and made sure my home was all cozy and lovely. Wouldn’t anyone? It just isn’t fair that you guys are the only ones who get that, so cut us so called feminist some slack, we want that too….it isn’t just you who has a right to the beautiful stay home parent and home maker dream……we just have our dream with a gorgeous manly man (no we dont want weak feeble men and I hate that you make out stay home dads and guys who also want equality are in some way pansys or weak guys dominated by bossy women).

[Amanda misunderstands the male commenters at The Spearhead. They have rejected the traditional ideal of having a loving wife at home. They consider that entrapment or oppression of the male. Again, note that Amanda's rejection of traditional gender roles means that she has been pushed a long, long way away from a normal relationship. She is asking men to transform themselves into feminine homemakers, but without losing their masculinity. That's her asking price for a relationship, one which is obviously likely to keep her single.]

I agree though on this topic, women are dropping their standards and they shouldn’t. I have been celibate for three and a half years now as I want what I offer, I want an equal and I will not get with a guy who thinks it’s in any way womens work to stay home and raise the kids and he would have to believe it’s equally a males role. I would not accept gender roles in that respect………hence I accept I will likely be single forever and I am fine with that, as I have an awesome life and lack nothing. Not saying it wouldn’t be nice to have a gorgeous guy who I adored, but I fear, just as the guy who wrote this article does, that wanting it too much will make you settle as a woman. Don’t forget the rubbish we have been sold since we were born, dependence on men, their approval, we are nothing without a man in our life. I don’t believe that obviously, I like being single and its only going to be my best mate who makes my heart melt and my knees go weak am I ever going to change that for, a guy I genuinely like and respect who doesn’t have any sexist ideas about his or my gender.

[She knows that she is likely to be single forever because she rejects the idea of feminine or masculine roles in relationships despite retaining a heterosexual preference for masculine men. She has boxed herself into a corner. She wants a man who makes her go weak at the knees but he is not to assert masculine preferences as that would be "sexism". Good luck with that Amanda.]

I am a feminist I guess, but I prefer to have a new term, one that just wants to get rid of labels based on gender and is open for men and women to have equality, as equality is not just a womans to chase...as this article points out , there is much sexism toward men (see the court system tacking kids away from men as the woman gets awarded based on her gender, men expected to provide still by many sexist womens attitudes where the guy may want to stay home) . I am as aggressive, competitive and strong as any guy, I dress very feminine, not even a hint of butch before anyone suggests it, I wear make up, have long hair and all that typical stuff of the very feminine woman. However, thats where it stops for me and I won’t fit into a ‘womans role’ and I find it the most unattractive thing to see guys fitting into typical ‘mens roles’ just to conform with their fellow males.

[The unprincipled exception. She thinks that our sex shouldn't matter and yet she still presents herself in a feminine way. Perhaps gender identity matters to her more than she's willing to admit. Or perhaps she knows that heterosexuality really does require an expression of the feminine in women. But her compromise is not a consistent one. She's going to dress feminine but act masculine. Maybe she's internalised an idea that feminine behaviour is inferior to masculine behaviour. If so, that's a great pity. Nor do I think that too many self-confident men are going to accept a deal in which a woman dresses like a woman but acts like a man.]

Instead of fighting against each other and fighting against feminists, we should ditch the terminology and join together, for absolute equality….to ditch all of the social conditioned rubbish forced on both genders and accept (and reject) each other based on there not being a good fit if thats not the case.

Isn’t it better both genders be just who they are and admit they don’t fit from a relationship perspctive?

[They don't fit, Amanda, because you believe that the masculine role is the privileged one and so you want both sexes to follow a masculine path. So there can no longer be complementary relationships between men and women.]

To the calls of look at nature arguers. I tell you the following, females sleep with males only when they want to get pregnant, they sleep with many males at that time, all of the best genetic males only, then they leave. Most males die virgins as only the best genetic make ups ever get laid. Many males get killed by females for trying to mate. You get the point, the nature argument of animals cannot be used to control women back into the kitchen.

[This girl needs a good lie down on a sunny Queensland beach. What a dark and dismal view. As it happens, there is a lot of variation in the animal kingdom when it comes to sex selection. But pair bonding is not that uncommon. And it's even more common for mothers to be the primary caregivers of the young.]

I am a firm believer, when you look at all the couples you know, that in half the cases, the man has more nurturing, kind, warm traits which are better suited to the parental role in a family. However, stupid ideas about it being a womans role mean there are many miserable depressed males going out there slogging his guts out hating his job when really he is the nurturer had he not been socially conditioned otherwise. Then you have many competitive, protective, assertive, strong women who are miserable doing her gender role as stay home parent and home maker when really she would have been an excellent CEO/Engineer etc.

[She gives the game away when she claims that half of men are better suited to the "parental" role in a family. Note that she only recognises one "parental" role rather than distinct maternal and paternal ones. And note that she specifies exactly half of men being better suited to the "parental" role - this is not an accident, it's necessary if she wants to decouple gender from family roles. It's ideology run riot.]

I fight for both sides, I want nothing but to get rid of gender roles and assumptions about both genders. We are PEOPLE, nothing but people, not gender roles and the sooner we all realise this the better and happier we will all become.

[As I've said many times, the aim of a liberal society is to make gender not matter. But look at what it means for relationships. You end up with women like Amanda who have been made wholly unfit for marriage and who preach an extraordinarily dismal theory of how men and women should interact.]

How does Professor Lewin think women step up to personhood? A clue: not through heterosexual marriage

Professor Ellen Lewin

Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife has posted an item about an American academic, Dr Ellen Lewin. Dr Lewin, a professor of women's studies, was so outraged at receiving a batch email from a Republican students group that she fired off a reply telling them to "f-off".

Anyway, I did a little search on Dr Lewin. It turns out that she is a very orthodox liberal. She has written a book titled Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture. The basic argument she runs in the book is that divorced single mothers and lesbian mothers have something significant in common: by raising children without husbands they both have achieved the good of motherhood without a loss of autonomy through dependency on men.

The message is that divorce can be good for heterosexual women because it liberates women to be autonomous.

I have to say that there's a contradiction in Professor Lewin's argument, but I'll get to that a little later.

It's interesting to see how liberal autonomy theory plays out in Professor Lewin's book. For instance, she argues that there is a difference between being a good mother in a marriage and in a divorce. Being a good mother in a marriage is not so good because it is merely a "natural attribute" (not something self-determined). But if a mother gets custody in the courts, that is a "self-conscious achievement" and "evidence of skill" in "protecting the integrity" of her family:

Mothers who face actual or potential custody challenges use strategies of appeasement, support, and autonomy in the course of protecting the integrity of their families. The claim to being a "good mother," a key element of feminine gender identity in American culture, is transformed from a natural attribute into the product of self-conscious achievement...

In this situation a competent mother is one who accedes to enough of her husband's demands to discourage a custody challenge but not so much that her concessions can be turned against her. Being a "good mother" is thus transformed from a state of being, a natural attribute, into evidence of skill, rewarded by the father's failure to gain custody or, better yet, by his failure to pursue it at all. [pp.177-178]

As for divorce being a step up for women, this is how Professor Lewin puts it:

These convergences between lesbian mothers' coming-out stories and the divorce stories of both lesbians and heterosexual mothers point to a telling contradiction in American culture. Marriage is seen as a special kind of success for women, but it also imposes a loss of autonomy and personhood that threatens to compromise the individual's quest for accomplishment and individuality. As observers of American culture have noted since Alexis de Tocqueville described his impressions in the mid-nineteenth century, individuality and the related concept of privacy are such core dimensions of American culture that conditions or behavior that might be interpreted as dependency seem questionable if not shameful...

... Both coming out and divorce shift women's status downward in the eyes of the society as a whole, yet the women who experience them view them in many respects as steps up. At the core of both coming-out and divorce stories is the theme of increasing autonomy and competence, and both kinds of accounts tend to focus on discovery of one's "true" self. In these respects, as Kath Weston has observed, they constitute odysseys of self-discovery; at the same time, they demonstrate a concern with achieving adulthood and autonomy which is a particular consequence of the infantilization that both marriage and heterosexuality can impose on women. [pp.43, 45]

The logic of the argument is that in a marriage women are dependent on a man, that this makes married heterosexual women infantile, so that divorce and/or lesbianism represent a step forward toward an adult, autonomous life.

The fact that the conclusion is so odd, that it suggests that being a lesbian or a divorced woman is more adult than being a married mother, should suggest to us that there is something wrong with the premises of the argument.

My own view is that the mistake is to think of autonomy as a single, overriding good. In practice, we don't do this. We marry despite the fact that we thereby limit our autonomy, because there are other important goods associated with marriage, including those of marital love and parenthood.

As it happens, Professor Lewin finds it difficult to maintain the consistency of her argument. She argues for divorce and lesbianism in terms of autonomy, but when it comes to justifying motherhood she is at a loss – becoming a mother does not increase a woman's autonomy, so it has to be justified on other grounds, but these same grounds could then just as easily justify a commitment to heterosexual marriage:

Lesbians who are not mothers share with other childless women a feeling of distance not only from the kinds of things "ordinary" women do but from the special relationship to the spiritual world women can derive from their connection to children. By becoming a mother, a woman can experience a moment of transcendent unity with mystical forces; by being a mother, she makes continuing contact with her inner goodness, a goodness that is activated by altruism and nurtured by participation in a child's growth and development.

By becoming a mother, a lesbian can negotiate the formation of herself: she can bring something good into her life without having to sacrifice autonomy or control. Thus the intentional single mother (whether she is lesbian or heterosexual) can achieve a central personal goal – the goodness that comes from putting the needs of a dependent being first. By becoming a mother through her own agency, she avoids the central paradox that motherhood represents to married women – a loss of autonomy and therefore of basic personhood in a culture that valorizes individualism and autonomy. Like ending a marriage, having a baby on her own allows a woman to meet her basic personal goals, and she may see it as a critical part of establishing a satisfying identity in a culture that often blocks women's efforts to be separate individuals. [p.73]

She is running with two very different sets of principles here. When it comes to motherhood, what matters to her is not autonomy but feeling connected and the good of altruistic care for another. The very close, dependent relationship of mother and child is seen as a good. But when it comes to heterosexual marriage, personhood is defined solely in terms of being a separate, autonomous individual.

She could just as easily have defined the good of marriage in the way she defined the good of motherhood: in terms of the closeness of the relationship, of finding inner goodness in the giving of oneself altruistically to one's spouse, of the spiritual fulfilment of marital love, and of the completion of a feminine identity in being a wife.

I'll finish with one more inconsistency in Professor Lewin's position. She justifies motherhood in terms of participating in a child's growth and development. But what if that child is a boy? What is that boy growing and developing toward?

If Professor Lewin had her way, that boy would not have much of a future role in society. He would grow up in a society in which women aimed either at intentional single motherhood or else at divorce as a pathway to autonomy, adulthood and self-discovery.

It's not much for a boy to grow and develop toward. So what would be the point of a woman committing herself to participating in his development? What mothers need to justify their role are young women in society who are willing to make a life together with their sons. Professor Lewin doesn't like the idea of this life together and so is no true friend of motherhood.

Liberal woman celebrates the demise of the traditional family

Jill Filipovic has read a report on families put out by the Obama administration and feels there is reason to celebrate. The traditional family, she believes, is dead.

It's finally time to ring the death knell for traditional marriage. Last week, the Obama administration released a comprehensive report on the status of American women, the first of its kind since 1963...The report sheds light on the status of the American family – a social unit that has been remade by social liberalism.

Conservatives are right: traditional marriage is under attack ... [people are] marrying later, they're marrying less, and for reasons other than having children...

She's a feminist who is not entirely against marriage, just the traditional version of it:

We're still a long way from a gender-egalitarian marital utopia, but traditional marriage is blessedly deceased. With its demise has come a new marriage model that is by nearly every measure better for men, women and children, and is hopefully continuing to improve.

Marriage itself is far from dead. But the traditional conservative vision of it is, and thank goodness for that

Why would she be so vehemently opposed to the traditional family? She thinks that it is not based sufficiently on women's autonomy:

Family structures have changed. The definition of marriage has shifted. Gender equality is increasingly embraced. For people who support women's autonomy and believe that progress is valuable, this is a good thing. For those who cling to a separate-but-equal gender ideology... this is very, very ominous.

Let's say you want more autonomy for women. This means that:

a) You'll like the idea of family commitments being deferred. That means that women can continue to live the single girl lifestyle for longer and can focus on careers rather than family for longer.

b) You'll think that careers are more important than family. Therefore, the fact that men focus on breadwinning in the traditional family will seem unequal. So you'll want to see a role reversal in which men do more of the childcare and women more of the breadwinning.

c) You'll want to be self-defined rather than defined by your biological sex. So you won't like the gender roles in the traditional family. You'll see them as fetters. You'll celebrate role reversal for this reason too.

If you're a liberal, therefore, you'll think it progressive if people marry later and if the lines of gender are increasingly blurred within the family. You'll also think it more equal if women focus more on careers than motherhood.

There are numerous ways to criticise this liberal vision of the family:

a) If you were really to take autonomy seriously as the highest good, then why marry at all? Marriage takes sacrifices to work well. It inevitably means restricting your autonomous choice of what to do in favour of other goods (the goods of motherhood, fatherhood etc.)

b) If there is nothing to connect men to a distinctly masculine family role, and if the traditional male role of being a provider and protector is thought harmful to women, then there is less to motivate men to commit to family life.

c) If there are no distinct roles for men and women in the family, so that the roles are interchangeable, then the role of men is unnecessary - it is at best optional. Again, this contributes to unstable family commitments. A man who really believes his role to be optional will more readily walk away from family commitments. A woman who believes the male role to be unnecessary will more readily divorce her husband and/or accept single motherhood.

d) If family formation is deferred until the last moment then more people will find themselves unable to have the children they wish for and more people will find themselves unable to find a spouse. There will also be changes to the culture of relationships between young men and women. If marriage is delayed till our 30s, then women in their 20s will be more likely to select for player/alpha/thug types. Men will either adapt to this or opt out. Either way the family man culture will be weakened, making it more difficult for women to find suitable men to marry in their 30s.

As far as this last point goes, Jill Filipovic doesn't see any such problems. In fact, she paints a very rosy picture of delayed family commitments. She accepts the statistics that twice as many people are now ending up unmarried and childless. But she approves on the following basis:

Those numbers are no indication that marriage and child-rearing are passé or under-valued – quite the opposite. Marriage, more than ever, is something that more people feel the right to opt out of, which means that those of us who do marry are opting in, and doing so increasingly because we want to, not because of social obligations. If you believe that marriage can be a good thing for people who choose it, this should be welcome news. Children, too, should be welcome additions and not obligations. The fact that more women and families are delaying childbirth indicates that there's more planning involved, and that women and men are making commitments to familial stability and personal ability before deciding to have kids.

There's a particular assumption at work here. Jill Filopovic thinks that liberalism gives everyone autonomous choice. Therefore, if the liberal family model leads to people not marrying and not having children it must be, she assumes, because they are choosing these outcomes.

She fails to recognise that there are many people who feel shattered by not being able to marry or have children. Over at The Spearhead there's a good post by Carey Roberts which includes the following quote by Anne Taylor Fleming:

I belong to the sisterhood of the infertile. I am a lonesome, babyless baby-boomer now completely consumed by the longing for a baby…I am tempted to roll down the window and shout, ‘Hey, hey, Gloria, Germaine, Kate. Tell us, how does it feel to have ended up without babies, children, flesh of your flesh. Was your ideology worth the empty womb?

Did Anne Taylor Fleming happily choose to end up childless? Obviously not. It was not an act of autonomous self-determination at all.

In the comments to the Carey Roberts piece there is this:

I don’t give a **** about the future of our society. As a 44 year old childless male with no real hope for companionship or children why should I. I’m betting we have enough cultural momentum to see me through to my death (about 30 years) and doing my own thing to make sure I can survive if I’m off on my bet about five years.

It's not an attitude I endorse, but it shows again the falsity of the assumption that people are freely and happily choosing to be unmarried and childless. This particular man feels so alienated by his condition that he has lost all interest in the future of his own society.

Finally, if Jill Filipovic were right, and lower marriage rates in advanced liberal societies meant that only people who really wanted to marry did so, then divorce rates should be lower in such societies. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

In Sweden, for example, the percentage of women marrying is very low (about 60%), but the divorce rate is consistently high (peaking at about 55%). This combination of a low marriage rate and a high divorce rate means that only about 1 in 3 Swedish women will have an enduring marriage. It's not exactly encouraging evidence for liberal marriage being superior to the traditional version.

Nor is it true that the blurring of gender lines strengthens the stability of marriage. Again, there is ample evidence of this in Sweden. Researchers have found that in Sweden the higher the percentage of income earned by the wife the greater the risk of divorce - to the point that the risk more than doubles if the wife earns most of the income (see slide 9).

The Swedish model is the liberal model. Only 60% of Swedish women marry; the mean age of first marriage for women is 31; the divorce rate for those marrying is high; the breakup rate for those cohabiting is even higher; and the effect is worse the more that men lose their provider role.

It's not exactly an inspiring model of family life. In fact, it seems to have a demoralising effect on some people. I can't see it holding for too long; it will either continue to "evolve" away from anything resembling marriage or else the traditional alternative will reassert itself more confidently.