The ascendancy of women has vastly changed our society. Among other things, women’s taking over traditional male redoubts has deprived two generations of men of a lot of their meaning in life. White men are dying deaths of despair.
Female empowerment has vastly impacted our fertility. It is hard to simultaneously work and raise children. The compromises lead to stress in the marriage and shortchanging the children.
I have been nurturing thoughts on the subject for a long time. Men and women are yen and yang, meant to complement one another. As Devlin points out, in all sexual species one sex, usually the female, produces few gametes. She must be selective, accepting only the highest quality male gametes. Men, on the other hand, achieve evolutionary success through multiple, even if indiscriminate matings.
To put it succinctly, men display, women choose. A woman should choose a man who can offer the best genetic material and material support for her children as they grow. It takes judgment to make the tradeoff between male quality and the probability of fidelity. The woman’s choice used to be enforced by social norms: female modesty and fidelity in return for ongoing support.
I would like to expand on a theme that Devlin only touches on. Men and women differ in physical characteristics, temperament and even intellect. The physical differences need no explanation. The differences are measurable and obvious. Temperament is not measurable but equally obvious. Women evolved to bear and nurture children, men to strive for dominance in a man's world and compete against other men and other tribes. David Geary's masterful book Male/Female: The Evolution of Human Sexual Differences described the differences and explains how they can be attributed to evolution.
The difference in intellect is an explosive topic, forbidden for discussion today. Richard Lynn and Arthur Jensen put it at about 4 IQ points. IQ tests were of course designed by men to predict success in traditionally male domains: the workplace and academia. Men substantially outperform women on spatial and mathematical sub portions of the tests, less on verbal. One can assume that IQ tests could be composed on which women outperformed men. I suspect that the reason it has not been done is that nobody wants to know the results.
Women excel at nurturing and at tasks demanding meticulous attention, such as proofreading. Men are better endowed with spatial and strategic sense. There are no great female generals. There are substantially fewer outstanding woman financiers, inventors and entrepreneurs.
In general men establish life’s conditions. Women work within the given conditions to improve their situation. This would be an expected outcome of evolution. Throughout most of history men have led society and made the decisions. A woman’s opinion was often not sought in even the most intimate decision, selecting a mate.
Woman could not generally prevent arranged marriage. They learned to make the most of it. She could raise the children her way and influence the men who did make the decisions. A great example was Roxalana, captured in a slave raid in what is today Ukraine, she became Suleman the Great’s very influential wife.
In marriage, the constraints are established by societal norms and the realities of the husband's income, geography, connections and such. A smart woman optimizes her situation within the given constraints, using all of the tools God gave her. Charm, cunning, chastening, coercion… They possess many, which are usually more than equal to the task of overcoming men who have other things on their minds.
In the workplace, the cubicle world has been created by men. Women, once admitted made the rules: harassment, off-color . es, maternity leave, and equal pay. Men invented the machines that dominate our lives. Women's tastes shaped how they evolved: heated car seats, sensors to assist in parallel parking and so on. Men invented social media, but it has evolved to satisfy female preferences. The same thing has happened in the military. The institution has been reshaped, not to improve its fighting ability but to accommodate women.
Women have been granted equality in all things, on the assumption that they are the same as men. It is not so. Women remain the best suited to fulfill traditional women's roles, especially raising children. Men remain better at traditional male roles.
Committees are not effective at running things. Somebody has to be in charge. A ship can have but one captain. That has historically been the male head of the household. He should respect and listen to the mate, but he should be the ultimate decision maker, right or wrong.
That concludes a preamble. These are thoughts in development, which is why this post is in the form of a draft, available but without an email notification.
Notes and highlights for Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization
Devlin, F. Roger
1. Sexual Utopia in Power
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And like the French Revolution , it has gone through three phases : first , a libertarian or anarchic phase in which the utopia was supposed to occur spontaneously once old ways had been swept aside ; second , a reign of terror , in which one faction seized power and attempted to realize its schemes dictatorially ; and third , a “ reaction ” in which human nature gradually reasserted itself . We shall follow this order in the present essay .
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The universal law of nature is that males display and females choose . Male peacocks spread their tails , females choose . Male rams butt horns , females choose . Among humans , boys try to impress girls — and the girls choose . Nature dictates that in the mating dance , the male must wait to be chosen .
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itself . Men are incapable of bringing about fundamental changes in heterosexual relations without the cooperation — the famed “ consent ” — of women .
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It would be more accurate to say that the female sexual instinct is hypergamous . Men may have a tendency to seek sexual variety , but women have simple tastes in the manner of Oscar Wilde : they are always satisfied with the best .
Women are victims of fashion, in sex as all else. In the 50s it was fashionable to be chaste; in the 60s just do it. In the 00s Tinder. Some are hypergamous, but I do not see it as not a driving factor.
Women don't know what they want. They are hyper-social and want what they are told to want.
The male sex instinct is also societally learned. When most high school students had no opportunity in the 1950s, they lived with it. Only in the 1960s, when it appeared that everybody else was getting it on, did FOMO appear.
FOMO is present today in incels. They want what Chad is getting.
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The sexual revolution in America was an attempt by women to realize their own utopia , not that of men . Female utopians came forward publicly with plans a few years after Kinsey and Playboy . Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl appeared in 1962 , and she took over Cosmopolitan magazine three years later . Notoriously hostile to motherhood , she explicitly encouraged women to use men ( including married men ) for pleasure .
I do not recall feeling used by women. What I do recall is that they adopted the narratives of their time. In the 60s one woman turned down marriage to go in the Peace Corps. Another seemed happy to work.
Women likewise did not know to say no to drugs. A lot of the sex in the 60s was under the influence. Drugs made it easier to just go along.
Vietnamese women did want marriage. They used traditional female wiles to make it happen. They realized the benefit whereas American women were past that. And… they generally made pretty good wives. Mine not, but others, yes.
My conclusion is that women absorb the message with regard to how to behave from society. My former wife and daughters clearly acted out of indoctrination as much as instinct.
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The actual outbreak of the sexual revolution occurred when significant numbers of young women began acting on the new utopian plan . This seems to have occurred on many college campuses in the nineteen - sixties . Women who took birth - control pills and committed fornication with any man who caught their fancy claimed they were liberating
Yes they did. Coyly, but yes.
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[women tend to] practice monogamy ,
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In the first place , they tend to be better at it .
Devlin's point is that the female is not as highly sexed. Absolutely true. They have to be convinced. By the guy in question, and by the society around them.
Societal expectation worked well in traditional Asian societies. Desire did not matter as much as duty to family and society.
Certainly true of young prostitutes earning money for their own children or their mothers out of duty.
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Secondly , if women are all monogamous , the men will perforce be monogamous anyway :
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Thirdly , the private nature of the sexual act and the nine month human gestation period mean that , while there is not normally doubt as
How much does paternity matter? Among tribal Indians, Africans and African Americans, not as much.
Other writers posit that it started to matter with agriculture, when there was stuff to inherit. Marriage, monogamy, fidelity came into play.
Is this Geary? Duchesne? MacDonald?
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Fourthly , women are , next to children , the main beneficiaries of marriage .
"Beneficiary?" Nobody benefits financially because it is a net loss game. Both parents benefit in carrying on the genome.
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She is to make a home for him , return gratitude and loyalty for his support of her , and accept his position as head of the family .
Traditional view. Vietnam and Ukraine.
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women are attracted to men whom other women find attractive .
Yes, it is feast or famine for the guy in the middle, who sometimes has a woman and sometimes not. When he does, other women are interested.
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Wives in modern , two - income marriages , for example , typically assume that “ what I earn is mine ; what he earns is ours . ”
Yes, old patterns persist. Chivalry dies slowly, but it is going.
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She just isn’t sure whether she had really wanted this . In fact , the more she thinks about it , the more certain she feels that she hadn’t . But if she hadn’t wanted it , then it was against her will , wasn’t it ? And if it was against her will , that means . . . she’s been raped ?
Women don't know what they want.
Women evolved having choices made for them. They became good at adapting, not at making choices.
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This cultivated and socially reinforced sexual self - control was known as modesty . It required chiefly the duty of chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage ; secondarily , it involved maintaining a certain demeanor toward men — polite but reserved .
"The Rules." Still works. What I want to teach our daughters.
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Thus , a woman did indeed have the right to refuse the sexual advances of any man not her husband . But this was only because she was not understood to have any moral right to accept a proposal of fornication or adultery
Until we get back to this standard society will be chaotic and reproduction will be below replacement.
Muslim society has rules that work. Harsh, but effective.
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One effect of this change was to eliminate the moral dignity of feminine modesty .
Yes. In dress, language, behavior, addictions, eating habits, aversion to chores….
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Young women cannot be expected to work out a personal system of sexual ethics in the manner of Descartes reconstructing the universe in his own mind . If you cease to prepare them for marriage , they will seek guidance wherever they can find it . In the past thirty years they have found it in feminism , simply because the feminists have out - shouted everyone else .
Wonderful. We have not been preparing our daughters for marriage.
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If women want to be free to do as they please with men , after all , why should not men be free to do as they please with women ? Indeed , the date rape campaign owes its success only to the lingering effect of older views . Feminists themselves are not confused about this ; they write openly of “ redefining rape . ”
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Feminism is a movement that thrives on its own failures ; hence , it is very difficult to reverse .
And this is because feminists accept explanations offered by others instead of thinking it through. They are easily led.
There must come a change at some point, when the easily influenced women have died childless and those who resisted indoctrination populate the earth.
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environment free from unwanted sexual advances . ” What sort of advances are unwanted ? In plain English , those made by unattractive men .
This is not what I see. I observe a world in which most men are reluctant to perform the traditional male role of initiating a conversation. They are content to sit back and watch.
Women have lost the knack of doing the small things that attract a man's attention. Their mothers and girlfriends don't give them as much useful advice on dress, behavior, or sly glances.
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reasons of public relations . No one will sign up for a campaign against women or children , but many men can easily be made to condemn other men .
There are male feminists, but they seem passé. Everybody has figured out, as Devlin notes in a later essay, that women don't want soy boys. Despite claims to the contrary, most want a man who will lead them. They test men. They push to see if they will get pushback, and respect the man who offers it.
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They might do better to ponder how many families have not formed and how many children have not been born due to overzealous attempts to protect young women from men who might have made good husbands and fathers .
Who cares? We should care as a society, but the USA is so diverse, diffused, that nobody does. Not government, and not any major institutions in the country.
Good question, but nobody is asking it.
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The brevity of a woman’s youthful bloom , combined with a mind not yet fully formed at that stage of life , always renders her vulnerable to unrealistic expectations . The
Absolutely. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, for old time she is a-flyin'
Girls need to hear the message from mothers and other elders in society, friends, the community.
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Girls were once brought up from childhood with the idea that they were going to be wives and mothers . They were taught the skills necessary to that end .
Yes. Married three times, I was a better cook than any of them. It is not a priority.
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This would help erode the superstitious belief in a universal right to participate in politics , and political life itself would be less affected by the feminine tendencies to value security over freedom and to base public policies on sentiment .
Women in politics have been a disaster. Angela Merkel's million immigrants. Van der Leyen's open borders, and shoving immigrants on the Visegrad countries, ignoring sovereignty and the wishes of the populations.
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Men , also , are most likely to marry when they do not understand women too well .
In traditional societies men and women usually keep their own company and never understand each other all that well. They get together for bearing and raising children. They join together for sex-typical activity: hunting, plowing, trade, gardening, cooking, tending children.
The West has been unique in its emphasis on the nuclear family, in which the necessity requires that man and wife cover each other by doing tasks outside their sex roles.
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Civilization has been defined as the partial victory of age over youth . After several decades of married life , a woman looks back and finds it inconceivable that she once considered a man’s facial features an important factor in mate selection . She tries to talk some sense into her granddaughter before it is too late . “ Don’t worry about what he looks like ; don’t worry about how he makes you feel ; that isn’t important . ” If the girl had a not especially glamorous but otherwise unexceptionable suitor ( the sort who would be charged with harassment today ) ,
The advice of the old for the young implores them to think ahead to their own old age.
My mother-in-law's meaning in life is her grandchildren. She grumbles and fusses, but stays with them rather than in her own home. She was faithful to a husband about whom she complained as long as they were married, and tended him in his final decline.
She is offering a model of duty, and also the fulfillment that comes with duty.
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In a deeper sense , though , humans necessarily want happiness , as the philosopher says . During most of history no one tried to figure out what young women wanted ; they were simply told what they wanted , viz . , a good husband . This was the correct approach . Sex is too important a matter to be left to the independent judgment of young women , because young women rarely possess good judgment . The
Absolutely right on. They did not evolve to articulate what they wanted. Instead, they learned to manipulate the situation in which they found themselves. Get the guy they were with, whether forced or not, to do things their way.
They are very good at engineering outcomes. Forcing them into a situation overcomes their inability to decide.
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Men are supposed to have authority over women ; that is part of what a marriage is . Equality of the sexes makes men less attractive to women ; it has probably contributed significantly
We have authority, but we have to smile and laugh at the myriad successful daily insurrections against that supposed authority. That's the eternal battle of the sexes. Somehow it brought us through the millennia.
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If the Occident does not restore marriage , we will be overwhelmed by those who continue to practice it .
However imperfect Islamic marriage may be, it is overwhelming us.
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An incentive to switch to Islam. Christianity does not seem viable. Maybe Amish?
4. Home Economics
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Among those obligations , marital fidelity was of supreme importance : so much so that in our language general terms such as virtue and morality have often been used to refer specifically to sexual fidelity in women . That is owing not to irrational prudery , as the apostles of sexual liberation imagined , but to the recognition that all which is necessary to destroy a race and civilization is for its women to refuse to be faithful wives and mothers .
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But to be frank , I suspect honor never was actually the primary determinant of women’s behavior . Good example ( especially from their mothers ) , habit , lack of opportunity , religious instruction , and , in the last instance , the prospect of social disgrace and financial ruin were probably always more effective with them .
Women have always been highly attuned to the society around them. They have not had the same level of agency as men, to act independently on their own behalf. On the other hand, they have learned how to adapt to choices made by others.
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The socially beneficial effects of the chivalrous view of womanhood are quite independent of its accuracy .
A society needs to perpetuate useful myths. Many have their origin in, or are associated with religion. We do not live up to the prescribed ideals, but their presence affects our thought and action.
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But whether based upon knowledge or pleasing illusion , the regard in which our civilization has held women depends utterly upon their practice of monogamy , and makes no sense apart from it .
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Our task today is not to “ safeguard ” or “ protect ” marriage but to rebuild it almost from scratch . The strategy for doing so will necessarily be different from the strategy for defending it when it was merely under threat .
Yes. Marriage used to involve the word "obey." Wives did not always obey, but it set the expectation that the head of the household knew what he was doing and his wife should follow his lead.
The wise scriptures (Proverbs, Psalms) also told the man to listen, pay attention and respect his wife.
A ship cannot have two captains.
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This means that their status cannot be maintained once complementarity is displaced by a normative ideal of sexual equivalence and competition .
Competition is deadly. The couple should work as a team to raise the children, not a competition of adult egos.
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Feminist “ theory , ” as it is grandiloquently called , is simply whatever the women in the movement come up with in post facto justification of their attitudes and emotions .
Devlin is spot on. Men should read feminist theory. I offer two book reviews from a couple of decades back.
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A feminist in the strict and proper sense may be defined as a woman who envies the male role .
Devlin notes accurately that almost no men want the female role. We are happy being who we are. Also mentioned is the fact that men almost always fail when they attempt to switch roles. Men are not temperamentally suited to children's constant demands for attention, and women do not respect men who do no more than attempt to emulate women. You can't fight evolution.
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Envy , however , is distinct from the sense of justice in being fundamentally unappeasable .
Complaining is part of feminine nature. Undoubtedly due to the fact that they evolved to deal with whatever situation men put them in, and to connive, complain and cajole to better that situation.
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What the appeasers actually do is grant women some of the external appearances and rewards of such achievement . That is the meaning of corporate hiring and promotional preferences .
Women, on average, do not do a good job with the responsibility they are given. They have been less than stellar performers at the helms of IBM, HP, Yahoo and many other tech companies. Shareholders should grimace when the board brings in a female CEO.
Women have been enthusiastic for claptrap such as DEI and ESG, which erode shareholder value. They tend to be too forgiving of other women, gays and trans employees. They do not hold subordinates to consistent standards as well as male bosses.
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( The situation with racial preferences , incidentally , is precisely analogous : thus , one book on black beneficiaries of “ affirmative action ” is aptly titled The Rage of a Privileged Class . )
Complaining is what they do best.
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The feminist either refuses to fulfill her natural role [of a mother] or at best does so resentfully , sullenly , and poorly .
The testament is a rising generation of girls raised by career women. They don't want marriage, and don't do it well when they do.
The tragedy is that there are few voices left in society to point this out.
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As nature made women to be the bearers and nurturers of children , so it made men to be the principal providers for families .
Right. Needs to be emphasized.
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the West’s current informal polygamy is in fact a product of women’s choices far more than men’s . In fact , viewed economically , the function of monogamy is not to improve the condition of women at all , but rather to ensure that relatively poor men are able to father children .
Devlin sees informal polygamy – moving from man to man. I saw it in my millennial daughters' lives. They could not make up their minds, and they were impossible to live with.
I sense that it has morphed again to incel culture. Not unsatisfactory and temporary pairings, but none at all.
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Civilization is very largely a matter of high - investment parenting , and that requires heavy and continuing paternal involvement .
Yes. Mothers and fathers have different temperaments. Mothers and grandmothers have the patience to be with children all day long, Talk to them. Clean them.
Fathers are episodic. Fun, but in bursts. Yin/yang. Different people. You need both.
Grandma says "not so much, not so hard". Kids love it. Run to her when they get hurt.
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men will gladly work , fight , and sacrifice for children provided they feel sure of their own paternity .
A bit optimistic, Devlin. That is our inclination, but we can be dissuaded by female opposition or disinterest. Don't count on it after divorce.
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Generally speaking , a woman marries a meal ticket ; a man marries trouble and expense .
That's true in the US. But she has her own job – does not need a meal ticket! Works better when he is a meal ticket.
Raising kids is trouble and expense. A childless marriage can be quite happy. Both partners' needs are taken care of without strife, and they have economies of scale.
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Sexual pleasure does not even enter into the matter .
Sexual pleasure is overrated. As social animals, we are intensely concerned with what we observe in others and what they think. High school again When nobody got any, we accepted our lot.
This appears doubly true of women, more influenced by other women.
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The reality , of course , is that the man assumes the principal burden in marriage . For women , it is an economic bonanza .
In the US, yes. Elsewhere she may be supporting a philandering alcoholic. And… those countries are more fertile.
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Most men eventually come to the melancholy realization that a woman’s choice of mate is largely , and often principally , motivated by economic considerations .
Everywhere. And as it should be, if she is to have time and energy to focus on the children and community.
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The female tendency to seek provider - mates evolved long before the dawn of history , when economic considerations meant hunting ability and bare survival
Absolutely. Per Baumeister, 60% of men have never left offspring. There is competition to be among the 40%. This competition improves the race - the best genetic material gets propagated.
Historically. See The Intelligence Paradox, At our Wits End, Breeding the Human Herd for what has happened in modern times, The best and brightest are gay, trans, uninterested, etc.
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When the feminist project is carried out , the majority of men do not get less - materialistic wives ; they simply do not get wives at all .
There needs to be societal reward for having children, as there has been in most religions and traditional societies.
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While people “ value ” both resources and children , the two classes of goods seem to be incommensurable . Families are in large part the purpose of wealth .
They are incommensurable. The problem is with our values. We no longer see it.
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The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies ( 1855 - 1936 ) famously distinguished two fundamental types of human connectedness : society and community . Of these , community is both conceptually and historically prior .
Yes, and community is essential to family. What is missing today as much as anything is community.
The white community has been taught to hate itself. Their kids are unwelcome by the community and propagandized against their own interests. There is little support from either community or extended family. Government support is a poisoned apple.
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Work within a community is understood in the Aristotelian sense of energeia , as the realization of a natural potency , the carrying out of a meaningful task or vocation .
Curious that in the days in which most men did manual labor they felt more job satisfaction than those with white-collar McJobs
Many are predicting a significant purge of "useless eaters." If it eliminates those with no skills and no inclination to have children, why not?
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The nobility of work. Contrast with below - a McJob.
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fail to appreciate that a return to community would necessarily entail a sacrifice in freedom of personal action — and possibly in material standard of living as well .
Without community we have been living beyond our means. All too willing to let the government borrow on our behalf permitting us to live beyond our means. A return to community would mean living within that community's ability to support us. People who offer the community nothing will certainly have a lower standard of living.
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Conversely , nothing has been a greater factor in the modern encroachment of society upon community than the emancipation of women from communal bonds and pursuits .
Yes! We pay government employees to do what we should do ourselves. Whereas we would use our judgment with regard to whom to support, once government does it, it becomes an entitlement. A right, not a privilege, and the civil servant doesn't care as long as he gets paid.
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the drudgery of marriage and its duties are , quite obviously , the indispensable basis of the family , the model and source for all real community .
Drudgery for both parties, if they see it that way. Changing light bulbs, cleaning up poop, mowing the lawn, fixing the sink….
It is the substance of life.
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Now , I am in favor of giving women all the choice they can stand . ( At present , I think they have rather more than that . )
Interesting turn of phrase. Better, as you put it elsewhere, choice within the constraints imposed on them by marriage and circumstance.
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A woman’s sexual choices are analogous to a man’s in regard to his calling . Inherently , they cannot be made as easy and reversible as choosing flavors of ice cream . But making them so is what feminism and sexual liberation attempt to do . The underlying motive seems to be precisely a fear of difficult choices and a desire to eliminate the need for them .
Go back to the point. Women did not evolve to make decisions. They evolved to make the best of the decisions that were made for them.
Hence the plague of indecision. And the poor appreciation of consequences of decisions.
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What we have here is not a clear gain in the amount of choice , but a shift from one sense of the word to another — from serious , reflective commitment to merely doing as one desires at any given time .
One of the greatest contradictions in feminine nature is the insistence on one hand that her man have a plan and her constant insistence on changing said plan. Desires of the moment.
Women have less appreciation of long-term consequence. In politics these are allowing unlimited numbers of immigrants, allowing the homeless to camp and crap on the streets, allowing disruptive students to remain in class, and allowing criminals back out on the streets.
In marriage it is failure to see the long term consequence of a failure of discipline. Accepting a child's lies, excuses, sloth and such. Both sexes are guilty, but prior to feminism discipline was harder. Now the courts will strip rights from a man who attempts to discipline his kids, and the neighbors will consider him worse than a child molester.
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aspirations . The price we pay for eliminating the dangers of intimacy is eliminating its seriousness .
Why intimacy needs to be confined to long-term, committed relationships.
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Principally , however , what they need protecting from is not men intent upon one - night stands — it is their own irrationality , irresponsibility , immaturity , and short - sightedness .
The men in the manosphere are a minority. Roosh V and the Kyle Danger. Not respected by their peers, and their conquests are seldom anything another man would envy.
Most men want a long-term committed relationship. An amazing observation from my time in wartime Vietnam, where sex was abundantly available, was the men's tendency to settle down with one woman.
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Understanding the marriage bond as an irreversible covenant similarly influences the way economic activity and property are understood .
Yes. The two become one, in flesh, in law, in purpose (raising a family) and in finances.
My idealistic generosity made me a two-time victim of divorce. Thank God for a third chance. Though she is all woman, as described elsewhere in this piece, she is a committed wife. The rest one can work around.
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“ The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it , and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself . It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue ; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice . ”
Burke? Look it up. This came with civilization, and the importance of recognizing paternity.
MacDonald notes that it made Western man almost as choosy as women when it came to picking a mate. Best bred with best in a monogamous system.
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People join together not simply to be together but to do things they cannot do alone . Traditionally , they have formed families to carry out the essential function of childrearing — along with various economic tasks subordinate to that end , and some secondary functions such as care of the elderly . Conversely , to remain strong , the family must retain some of those functions .
Well said.
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As its economic functions wither , the family’s sense of community fades : homes turn into warehouses for corporate “ human resources ” ( telling phrase ! ) and nurseries for public school system fodder . The ancestral hearth becomes a suburban tract house , a site for eating , sleeping , and — decreasingly — procreation .
Again, right on. Economic functions wither as government support increases.
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For men are not simply more productive than women ( although they are that as well ) ; they also have a natural provider role with social and familial meaning .
Devlin does not support this with a bibliography. See Richard Lynn "Sex Differences in Intelligence," Also sex differences in physical stamina. This is branded "toxic masculinity." No, it is inborn.
Search the business press for successful self-made women. Few and far between.
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We will eventually have to rediscover the forgotten concept of the “ family income ” — not only because men usually happen to be better providers than women , but also because the male role is vulnerable in the modern world , and must be shored up for the family to function properly .
Yes!
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The same psychological traits that once made women better at knitting than men , viz . , a high degree of tolerance for routine and repetition , today give them an edge in common forms of employment such as word processing and data entry .
Yes!
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Women are cunning and play their cards close to their chest : an evolutionary adaptation left over from the days when their survival and reproductive success depended on an ability to manipulate males physically stronger than themselves . Today , it makes them naturals at office politics .
Absolutely. This point should be one of the strongest in the book.
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“ Gender equity goals , ” direct preferences for women in hiring and promotions , are established by corporations in order to avoid being dragged into court by the EEOC . The public pretense is that women are “ advancing ” in the workplace ; in fact , they are being artificially hoisted on the backs of men . One of the most obnoxious aspects of the situation , to my mind , is the sugary rhetoric everywhere used to justify and conceal a
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Finally , one of the great suppressed realities of the contemporary workplace is the widespread existence of mother guilt in female employees : pangs of conscience brought on by leaving their children to the care of paid surrogates out of a misguided belief that they are “ supposed to ” keep up with men by holding down full - time jobs .
Not enough of this. Many seem able to ditch the kiddies with a clear conscience,
It is the kids who suffer. Nannies are usually not allowed to use their own judgment – if they have any – and are overruled by a mom who does not know the situation,
The result is indifferent discipline and the lack of a significant adult bond as the kids grow up.
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The demand schedule also explains why women will always have something to complain about . They complain “ at the margin , ” as economists say , that they do not have the next item down on their demand schedule . They tacitly assume they should be able to get this item without giving up anything they already have .
Complaining is baked in, evolutionarily speaking. Women have needed to wheedle, complain and charm to get what they needed.
Women have little sense of "enough". A man, or a male-driven system, has to say it.
A problem with career wives is that their money empowers them to buy more than the family needs, most notable big houses, expensive vacations and expensive therapies of all sorts.
Men are (if only marginally) more future oriented, preferring to save for future education, retirement and contingencies.
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Similarly , men are within their rights to tell their wife that keeping house is primarily a woman’s responsibility : a husband is a provider and protector , not a butler .
Likewise taking care of children. Women will offload whatever they can. They take it well, and may even increase their respect for a man who tells them what is fair.
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The linchpin of our family policy objectives must be the reestablishment of presumptive custody of children by their father . Women who wish to abandon their husband must forfeit their parental prerogatives and all claim to spousal support . That means dismantling the entire divorce industry . I have discussed these matters elsewhere .
The present system is governed by the tender-hearted pleas of women. The kids are not turning out as well as they used to.
I suspect that presumptive custody of the father would reduce the incidence of divorce. A single parent of either sex has a hard time doing a proper job of balancing work and children.
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But my position is that the economy exists for the family and not the family for the economy .
Absolutely.
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Our long - postponed day of financial reckoning appears finally to be at hand , and it may well turn out to be something we should not wish away .
We have been waiting a long time.
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When ordinary people are brought to understand that the state is unable to ensure their material well - being , children will again be perceived as long - term assets : necessary replacements for the Social Security swindle and state - seized or inflation - eroded private pension funds rather than obstacles to greater consumption .
This day is coming soon. Children are regarded solely as encumbrances, so there are fewer of them. Family will be important.
5. The Family Way
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Gunnar and Alva Myrdal's ’ pernicious influence on Swedish social policy commenced in the 1930s , but was effectively resisted for longer than many realize .
This power couple not only screwed up Sweden. Their misunderstanding of human differences contributed significantly to screwing up America.
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The family wage is by nature a compromise with industrial capitalism ; it turns one member of the family over to the labor market in exchange for keeping the rest insulated from it . Distributism , the economic platform advocated by Hilaire Belloc and G . K . Chesterton , went farther by seeking to counteract some of the inherent tendencies of capitalism directly . The Distributists
Well said.