Homer Edward Price left a comment at my early The Atheist Case for Patriarchy post where he makes the argument that a return to patriarchy is neither possible nor desirable. My position is completely the opposite; that a return to patriarchy is both inevitable and vitally necessary.
The purpose of patriarchy is ultimately emotional well being and in the extreme survival in that if family breakdown and the destruction of family relationships goes far enough then the actual maintenance of civilization and ability of human beings to perpetuate themselves will fail. It is very interesting that feminism seems to lead to below replacement fertility universally. True the fertility decline below replacement level in many many countries is a form of population control that provides benefits to the environment; the carrying capacity of planet earth is finite; but feminism leading to below replacement fertility just proves that feminism is totally unsustainable as a social system or means of organizing society.
In the modern world where physical survival is easy to maintain in the rich Western countries it needs to be seen that patriarchy is about emotional well being and sustaining relationships between men and women and between parents and their children. Patriarchy is both emotional and practical but it is the emotional necessity of patriarchy that is the most pressing concern in the rich countries where feminism is running rampant and where physical survival is not a problem due to high income levels and social welfare. Patriarchy is the means by which men love women in a practical way. A man can love women emotionally under feminism as the love emotion is hardwired in men in reaction to attraction indicators in women but under feminism a man’s love for women has no direction or purpose and so cannot “do anything” or serve the woman in a practical concrete way. Patriarchy allows for men’s romantic feelings towards women to be put to practical use to benefit the woman concretely and materially. This material support of the woman then allows for the woman to care for her children effectively since the woman is not being burdened with having to take care of herself. In this way patriarchy is necessary both for good relations between men and women and also for good relations between parents and their children.
Patriarchy is the means by which resources are transferred from men to women. Under feminism the transfer of resources from men to women stops because “empowering” women makes it dangerous for a man to provide for a woman as the man will not be able to control how his investment in the woman will be used. The stopping of the resource transfer from the man to the woman is effectively theft from the woman or abandonment of the woman. The woman then responds to this abandonment inflicted on her by the feminist man by in turn withdrawing resources and investment from her children so that the woman then effectively steals from the child to make up for the loss inflicted on her by the man stealing from her. In this way feminism ultimately is based on adults stealing from children and this is why children under feminism always end up being worse off than their parents in terms of their ability to form relationships and family units as adults. The ever worsening social indicators that characterize feminism are the result of this process of intergenerational deterioration.
So patriarchy is about the family and the maintenance of social skills and human relationships from generation to generation. Feminism is not at all stable over time and is always accompanied by deterioration and decline.
It is this never ending deterioration in human relationships and psychological well being that makes returning to patriarchy vitally necessary. It is also this intrinsic quality of feminism where feminism is always stealing from the future to satisfy its needs today that will lead to the death of feminism and the inevitable return of the natural order in human affairs that we call patriarchy. Feminism is not fun, it leads to much heart ache and suffering among those trapped in its grasp. This harm caused by feminism then leads eventually to revolt and a searching for a better way. This revolt against feminism can be seen concretely in the rise of conservative forms of religion that emphasize traditional gender roles. It is the Christian Complementarian and Christian Patriarchy churches that are growing the fastest right now. Christianity overall is in decline but Christian Patriarchy is rising fast; there is a hunger for alternative communities where gender roles are taught and encouraged. Such conservative forms of Christianity are particularly popular among the young; often college aged men and women.
What is happening among the Jews is particularly fascinating as far as cultural revival and the return of patriarchy is concerned. Historically Jews have often been atheist and liberal but it is precisely among this atheist and liberal population that the strongest patriarchal revival of them all took off. I am referring to the rise of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism here. The patriarchal revival among Jews got started around 1955 when the fertility rate of Ultra-Orthodox Jews started to rise. Before 1955 there was not much difference between the lifestyles of Ultra-Orthodox Jews and other Jews; after 1955 however fertility started increasing specifically within the Ultra-Orthodox population and other changes occurred to such as the age of marriage decreasing and the number of men dedicating themselves to full-time religious study increasing. Now conservative religious practice among Jews is so widespread that 74% of Jewish children in New York City in 2011 lived in Orthodox homes. The indicators of social disorder in Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods is amazingly low, similar to what the United States overall was like 100 years ago.
It is true that atheism is fast on the rise in the United States but judging from the Jewish experience mass atheism may simply be a prelude to mass religious revival. Atheism as a community has shown no evidence of being able to put together a sensible social system or ethical rules of behavior; particularly regarding the role and purpose of men and women; that work within a community context. Atheism will probably become more patriarchal over time just like religious communities are in the process of becoming more patriarchal in their teachings over time but usually in practice the return of traditional gender roles is something that develops within a religious context. God is a very important and useful concept for organizing community life into a sensible overall plan. In terms of the fundamental foundation of family life; the man and woman together in a romantic union; God is essential as the overall idealistic purpose that both the man and the woman are meant to serve and obey.
To address some of the specific arguments brought up by Homer Edward Price as he was making the argument that a return to patriarchy is neither possible nor desirable; his first assertion was:
“The problem is that patriarchy is impossible in the contemporary American capitalist economy. The median real wages of men have been declining for the last 40 years, and women have had to join the labor market to support their children, with or without husbands to share the burden.”
I have always found the claim that women need to be in the workforce because men don’t make enough money to support a family by themselves very strange. The participation of women in the workforce increased precisely during the time overall material prosperity increased. As wages for men went up that is when women started working more; increased women working is therefore definitely a cultural phenomenon rather than something that was driven by economic necessity. The contemporary American economy can support women not working much more easily than was the case 100 years ago and 100 years ago very few women, particularly married women, worked compared to today. Also men’s median wages have not been falling for the past 40 years; they have remained flat for the past 40 years. The huge wage gains for men from 1870 to 1970 however are still in place even for the ordinary man. It is also entirely possible that feminism itself is the cause of the sudden end in wage increases for the ordinary man and that a return to patriarchy would reestablish the prior existing trend of ever higher earning power for men.
Homer then said:
“Prior to that, patriarchy was undermined by the admission of women to higher education, which left them totally unsatisfied with the full-time mother-housewife role.”
I know early on many women did get a college degree in teaching or some other female friendly field but usually these were women who intended on pursuing a career and not getting married or having children. In other words their college education and future career was meant as an alternative life path, it was not meant as something that would be combined with home life. The rule was married women do not work so it would not make much sense for a woman who planned to get married to also prepare for a career since a career would be in conflict with her role as a wife. As far as educated women not desiring the full-time mother / housewife role; it is interesting to note that there is actually a resurgence of stay-at-home motherhood among college educated women today so I am not sure that education by itself extinguishes the maternal drive or the desire for domesticity in women.
Homer also threw in:
“To add to the perfect storm which swept away patriarchy, the invention of The Pill enabled women to minimize the number of children they bore and free themselves from that traditional role. Evolution never gave them such a choice.”
Ah yes, “The Pill” as the death knell of patriarchy! One thing that is not so well understood is that having large numbers of children was not universal among women in the past. Among white women born in the United States in 1870 the Total Fertility Rate was 3.803 but 20.3% of the women in this birth cohort never had children at all, 10.7% had exactly 1 child, 12.3% had exactly 2 children, and 11.1% had exactly 3 children (45.6% of the women in this birth cohort having 4 or more children in their lifetimes). So fully 40% of women even in a patriarchal traditional culture had 2 or fewer children historically. It is not true that “all women” had lots of children in the past. The traditional role of the wife as being provided for by her husband and being under the authority of her husband was always maintained regardless of whether the woman had any children or whether the children were young or had already grown into adults. The role of the woman under patriarchy is not dependent upon her having children first, it is simply an attribute of her characteristics and role as a woman; motherhood being just one of the many ways a woman could contribute her feminine strengths as a woman to others.
The last point Homer brought up that I would like to address is the issue of overpopulation. As Homer said:
“Would it be possible to restore patriarchy? Would it be desirable? I will defer answering the first question since I am certain that the answer to the second one is no. The goal of patriarchs, as correctly explained in the essay, is to maximize their number of living offspring. But the human population has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth and is stripping away its resources and destabilizing its climate in the race to maximize human material consumption. The earth cannot bear many more human consumers.”
From the point of view of evolution the purpose of patriarchy is to maximize the number of living offspring; this being the basis for success in any animal species. However patriarchy is necessary simply to make family life work and be sustainable regardless of whether lots of children are being produced or not. In the past before the arrival of the great economic expansion of the past 500 years or so humans had a very difficult time sustaining their population and population growth was very slow. In such harsh environmental circumstances patriarchy was indeed necessary just to maintain the population. Now today population growth is very easy and has been very fast the past 100 years or so; now a couple can be a reproductive success simply as a matter of will, simply based on the choice of having more than two children who will all almost certainly survive to adulthood simply because of the material abundance of the wider environment. Feminism by destroying the family unit and creating insecurity for women and in general devaluing children does indeed lead to falling fertility and therefore serves as a means of population control. This however is population control through means of a kind of disease that kills off the desire for children and not only leads to less children being born but also leads to the children who are born being treated less well with poorer family prospects for themselves as adults in the future. I don’t deny that population control will likely be a serious concern at some point in the future after patriarchy has become widespread again in the Western World but I would much prefer a rational government imposed solution such as incentives or laws to limit the average family size to two children rather than just letting the disease of feminism run amok as the means of limiting the population.
Source of Statistics:
New York City Jewish Population Over 1 Million Again
Fertility Tables for Birth Cohorts by Color: United States, 1917 – 1973
Secular Patriarchy 
Some combination of the Chinese Communist policy of government-imposed compulsory limitation on the number children each couple is allowed to have and Orthodox Judaism–or fundamentalist Christianity–as the formula for restoring patriarchy? I would rather do without patriarchy! (Not that I have ever been a patriarch anyway.)
The only desirable way to restore the family, be it patriarchal or egalitarian, is to improve the incomes of low-wage men, perhaps through a revival of the labor union movement, though that looks unlikely. I stand corrected on the median wage question; the real problem is the increasing inequality of income among men. More of them fall far below the median as more rise well above the median. Men and women in the top 10% of earners are the most likely to get married–to each other–and stay married. They also voluntarily limit the number of the children that they have. Women below the top, feminist or not, are unwilling to marry low-earning men who have few resources to contribute to the family.
This issue is much more fully developed in a Salon blog post:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/how_income_inequality_is_ruining_marriage_partner/
I am a traditionalist as well, but disagree with your anti-MRA stance. Just as I disagree with the anti-traditionalist stance of the MRA. What is critical is the feminism is the enemy, and that all opposition to it are good. We would do best to win the fight, then squabble amongst ourselves later over what comes next. I would include in this MGTOW and even some portion of the PUA groups.
The anti-MRA traditionalists criticize them for contributing to the downfall of non feminist society. The MRA criticize traditionalists for actually contributing to the feminist onslaught. Both are right, in part. It is valuable for each to point out to the other, where their well meaning tactics actually contribute to the enemy rather than fight it. That is a much different thing than seeing ourselves as enemy’s. We are not and should not be.
To my traditionalists brothers, I ask you to see clearly. That which you think you defend no longer exists. 98% of our women are feminist. They are divided in two camps, the FEMEN feminist, and the Tradcon feminist. Both seek the same menu of privileges both personally and socially. They just emphasize different selections at various stages of life. Both seek the disability and disenfranchisement of men. Both view children as tools or weapons in the acquisition of female privilege.
Once you concede that we have lost the battle for the minds of our women, the picture becomes clearer. Once you understand that feminism makes women psychotic it becomes clearer. What they actually want is the benefits of traditional female privileges, and the continued provisions and protection of men, without any corresponding female obligation. They want in addition, access to all the privileges claimed for them by feminism, without any corresponding obligation of equality. And of course for men to renounce any claim to traditional privileges, or to a new status of equality.
The most effective way to get women to see the damage they are causing, and to see the big lies underlying feminism is to insist that women accept the equality they disingenuously claim to want. That is the mission of MRA. It says, if women are to be equal, then men must be also.
The mission of MGTOW says that unless and until women accept a true equality, they offer nothing of value to men, and that relationships with these women (Tradcon and FEMEN alike) is dangerous to a man’s wellbeing and happiness. This is undeniably true. They also see a return to traditionalism as being unhealthy for men. In light of feminism, this is also true. What feminists call patriarchy was a system that disproportionality rewarded women at the cost of male disposability. Although it would be more accurate to say that it disproportionately benefited women as seen in the nexus of women/children.
It is undeniable that the MGTOW response to feminist women in a feminist state is the only logical choice for men. Acquiescing to tradcon feminist demands in the context of a relationship with an essentially feminist woman in traditionalist drag, in a feminist society is insane and self destructive. On a social level, it only empowers feminism.
What I say to MRA is that in reality, there is no “next” step. Women will not ever accept equality. There is no “next” relationship between “equals”. No social or political “equality” that can sustain a civilization. Forcing women to accept equality, personally, socially, legally, only asks the question: “What next.” Because it will be so hateful to them, that we will either have to go our separate ways (MGTOW) or return to traditionalism. The existential danger at that point will be allowing us to drift back to the real desire of feminism for a female dominated society. Which is what we have now. It will only be a new war by women on men, with them fighting to shuck equality, and return to dominance.
In the end, the existential danger to us as a civilization is can we end feminism before our civilization dissolves and is replaced by another. In that fight, all anti-feminists must be allies. Otherwise, there is no “next” for anyone.
From your comment here you don’t seem like a traditionalist at all to me; you very much seem like an MRA (Men’s Rights Activist). As far as I know only MRAs talk about “Tradcon Feminists” and praising MGTOWs is definitely not traditionalist. Also talking about imposing “true equality” on women is not traditionalist. Traditionalism is very much opposed to gender equality on principle.
My rule of thumb is that you have to be in favor of unconditional Chivalry by men on behalf of women in order to not be an MRA, in order to be a traditionalist. I doubt very much that you are willing to support unconditional Chivalry on behalf of women.
I do not see MRAs as being opposed to feminism; MRAs are just a new variant of feminism even more radical in their anti-social agenda than the feminists. Feminists at least have the good sense to be hypocritical in their claims of “gender equality” wanting female privileges and “gender equality” at the same time. This is better than the “true equality” MRAs seek. Gender equality is a bad idea; the real gender equality MRAs seek being worse than the fake half-hearted gender equality feminism seeks.
I am not on the same side as MRAs by any stretch of the imagination. In order to be an ally of mine you have to accept that the needs and interests of women come first; that Chivalry is an unconditional duty that men owe on behalf of women.
My allies are primarily religious people at this time; the Christian Patriarchy and Christian Complementarian types. I try to be a kind of secular version of Christian Patriarchy type beliefs. The new rising Christian Patriarchy is actually a lot bigger than the MRA world though on the secular side of things that is hard to see. MRAs are big on the secular side but overall it is the Christian expression of anti-feminism that is truly making a cultural impact.
I don’t need MRAs as allies and I don’t want MRAs as allies. Christian Patriarchy is the main show and I am a kind of offshoot trying to introduce and promote Christian Patriarchy type cultural beliefs in secular language people not tied to religion can understand.
I do not want to criticize the ideal of patriarchy on its own terms. I maintain my position that it is not feasible for most people in an economy where jobs and income are unequal and insecure for men and women both. But I am really disappointed in the misrepresentation and hypocrisy of the blog title, “Secular Patriarchy.” No one who writes that “Obedience to the Superior Power of God is a very important value for TFAs.” is a secularist.
Where did you find that quote from me that you are citing? Which web page? I suspect you are paraphrasing me but not quoting from what I have said directly. Also I would not say “the Superior Power of God” I would instead say “the Superior Power or God” equating God and the Superior Power as being two different names for the same thing.
Definitely an atheist should be obedient to the Superior Power; the Superior Power being objective reality or truth.
The idea of the title of my blog, Secular Patriarchy, is that here one can find an explanation of patriarchy and support for patriarchy from a secular non-religious point of view. I am an atheist myself and the explanations I offer are 100% based on logical thinking and rational explanations. I do not think the title of my blog is misleading in the slightest.
The quotation was taken from the introductory page of your blog.
I admit that I did not catch the use of the word “or” instead of “of” and I agree that it makes all the difference. I also agree that you are very reasonable and are making utilitarian arguments rather than religious ones. I retract my erroneous conclusion that you are not a secularist.
But I disagree with you on the power of objective reality or truth. There is a fundamental gap among scientists, among other rationalists, and between you and me, over the question of whether human beings have access to absolute truth. I am a humanist, since I believe that “man is the measure of all things.” (I use “man” here in its generic sense, as a synonym for “human,” and as including women.) Different people have different perspectives on reality and use different concepts to analyze it, no matter how rational they are. We can approach the truth via rational discussions among each other and testing of the evidence, but we can reach neither total agreement nor objective truth. I think that our dialogue is a good example of that. This process of approaching the truth is a long one and will never end, as long as humans maintain a civilization that can support educational and scientific institutions.
Regarding objective reality or truth; I assert that there is such a thing “out there” but definitely we mere mortals don’t have direct access to it and so fight among each other constantly and forever regarding what exactly “the truth” is. Still there is such a thing as “the truth” regardless of our opinions about the subject and regardless of “the truth” not being completely knowable by us.
To me it seems like atheists have a strong tendency to claim that “the truth” is whatever they proclaim it to be or whatever they want it to be; almost as if human beings can create any kind of reality they want simply as an act of will or assertion. I don’t agree with this mindset. To me the religious concept of “God” actually aligns with “the truth” much more closely than the atheist idea that “truth” is whatever people want it to be or declare it to be. Just because there is no literal supernatural God that doesn’t mean there is no natural order. Evolution is a perfectly good mechanism to explain the emergence of a natural order. Also men and women really truly being different is perfectly consistent with what evolution would produce and division of labor and gender based specialization and stuff like that.
There is a lot of statistical evidence that the patriarchy of the past worked better regarding gender relationships and family relationships; divorce and out-of-wedlock births and married women working among whites is roughly 20 times greater today than it was before feminism got started. One would think that atheists would be impressed by these statistics to show that what I am advocating for here is more than “just my opinion” but strangely when I offer statistics to back up my arguments my statistical evidence just seems to be ignored.
Anyways, I am quite convinced that patriarchy is indeed the “natural order” of how human beings are supposed to live and that the modern experiment we call feminism has proven itself to be a complete disaster. I have the statistics to prove it! (If anyone is willing to listen.) Hence my website, Secular Patriarchy.
I find it highly ironic that Darwinists and Christians essentially advocate the same thing: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Even the most sophisticated of Darwinists, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, in their book, “Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution,” express their bafflement by their female graduate students’ and colleagues’ decisions to postpone having children in order to establish academic careers.
You do not agree with either Darwinists or Christians on this point, however. You acknowledge that population growth must be limited by public policy. This would be more difficult in a patriarchal society. Women need to find a fulfilling role in life. Being a childless housewife in the age of modern appliances is not fulfilling, however. Wives of wealthy men have no need to earn an income or do housework or care for children, so they have traditionally devoted themselves to volunteer work. This is certainly an option for women in not-so-rich patriarchal families as well.
But how would you get women who could use the money to work for no pay? To maintain patriarchy, women would somehow have to be prohibited from earning an income or getting an education that could qualify them for a career. Perhaps Orthodox Judaism can do this for its adherents. But even fundamentalist evangelical Christians no longer object to women working. They only object to women getting abortions in order to pursue education and careers–or simply to limit their family size. Could you implement laws against education or employment for women in this country? No way. Could you spread a new religion of one-child patriarchy? You are not even trying to do that.
The only way that anything like a patriarchal family could be restored on a large scale would be through a new “industrial policy” that would shut off imports, ban automation, and promote heavy manufacturing to create large numbers of physically demanding jobs that most women would avoid. Men would fill these jobs, and if they were allowed to form labor unions, they could earn “family wages” and support their wives. But this is a fantasy for restoring the economic and social realities of the 1950s.