The sexual revolution was caused by cowardly men
April 26, 2018 § 137 Comments
The sexual revolution is largely a product of the failure, and in particular the cowardice, of men. But this is true in a particular way.
It is easy (and entirely appropriate) to morally condemn the behavior of sexually loose men. It is difficult (and entirely appropriate) to morally condemn the behavior of sexually loose women. Cowards who condemn sexually loose men while making excuses for sexually loose women are “bravely facing the applause”.
The conflation of rape and fornication is just the kind of rhetorical shield from responsibility that craven cowards need. Cowards and sluts go together as the engines driving the sexual revolution. The cowardice runs so deep that conservatives who supposedly oppose the sexual revolution will readily (and appropriately) condemn a man for trashy talk while making excuses for women who deliberately murder their own children.
So a more complete picture is that the sexual revolution is a product of the cowardice of men and the sluttiness of women, working together.
If you really want to turn back the sexual revolution, the place to start is with yourself. Don’t be a coward or a slut.
Zippy Catholic 
This makes little sense. The sexual revolution had many causes, but the main one was horny men trying to evade responsibility (no-fault divorce). Blaming slutty women while letting slutty men off the hook is absurd, and everyone knows that due to the way hormones work, men on average tend to be quite a bit more slutty than women. The typical teenage back-seat situation is the boy pushing on the girl to go farther.
This by no means absolves women of blame, but it is a different blame. Perceiving their position of strength with hormone-driven men, they typically “drove a bargain” of I’ll do what you want if you do me some favor, whether cash or career. This brings sex into the realm of “free-market economics” which leads to the logical conclusion of cutting our children up to sell their organs. Thus we get loveless horror for everyone – the modern situation. Read “The Accidental Marriage” by Roger Thomas.
Of course you are right about the cowardice of men who do not want to get cut off from their source of hot stuff by openly opposing abortion (but a lot of men feel quite conflicted about this – an opportunity for our side). Men need to accept frustration as a fact of life. DOWN WITH THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION!
LarryDickson:
Thanks for proving my point, Little Buddy.
Zippy,
This post goes very well with JMSmith’s recent Orthosphere offering.
Rather than cowardice, we should (usually) call it concupiscence, the same spirit that motivates gamblers. The distinction being that concupiscence involves the same yielding consistency as cowardice, but from a different cause.
Rhetocrates:
It is important to make the point though that the cowardice I am talking about is not rooted in the desire for sex.
It is rooted in fear of criticizing women.
Modern conservatives are absolutely terrified of criticizing women, to the point where they constantly make excuses for women committing deliberate murder.
> The typical teenage back-seat situation is the boy pushing on the girl to go farther.
When was the last time you interacted with a 16-29 year old female? Most of them want sex just as much as guys do. When they talk among themselves, whether in a food court or an online forum, sex is a constant topic of discussion. At colleges, they seek out no-strings-attached drunken hookups *constantly*. When I was in college just a few years ago, the uniform for the ladies during the warmer months was a tight fitting top paired with either stretch “pants” or shorts cut off about two inches below the crotch (and this was at an engineering school full of nerds!). Neither sex is inherently virtuous in this regard, the fall hit all of us.
Zippy:
I think we’re talking about two different sets of people. You’re talking about modern conservatives; I’m talking about how we got here from where we were, as regards the great mass of male response. (Of course there were avaricious drivers who sought to destroy to acquire power. I’m not talking about them.)
Put another way: what you ascribe to cowardice, I ascribe to insensitivity.
Cowardice to me means “I know something is wrong, but I’m mastered by my fear, so I will not take steps to correct it.” Concupiscence, by contrast, means, “I don’t know anything’s wrong; I sought out sin because I wanted it.”
Rhetocrates:
I am talking about men who enabled and continue to enable the sexual revolution because they are too cowardly to criticize or say no to women.
Have to agree with peasant; my own observations and experiences are simillar. It is probably true that there aren’t an insignificant number of cases where it really is the guy pushing the girl to go further, but the number of cases where either there is no resistance or the woman is doing the pushing are surprisingly high.
“Fear of criticizing women” seems a poor frame to me, not just because it is the enemy’s. Maybe fear of upholding a standard that you can imagine someone you care about one day falling afoul of one day, or just fear of seeming hard-hearted, which is really just the absurd modern horror of hypocrisy.
This reminds me of the only time I’ve ever really disagreed with you about something that I can recall, the case of the Catholic grade school teacher who was dismissed when she became a single mom. I’m still not completely certain you’re right about that case, but I am certainly the kind of person you’re talking about here.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you’re talking like there’s symmetry between the situation of both promiscuous men and women, and that is not true biologically or socially.
I’m not going to get into the hormone/consent/manipulation debate. Just talking about social attitudes, promiscuous women will have their value in the eyes of the median normie diminished more than that of promiscuous men (if it is diminished at all). This was true even in less woke times.
What has changed since less woke times is the social response to the biological asymmetry. I’m not totally convinced this is a bad thing (aside from mind-blowing body count, that is). You say it’s easy to condemn promiscuous men, and that’s true, but your censure of the cad is not much comfort to the woman who has to figure out how to support an illegitimate child.
Gabe Ruth:
Good; but also actual, not just imagined. Fear of holding particular women accountable for the actual wrong things those particular women actually do wrong.
It isn’t just a modern phenomenon. Men have always been tempted to just play along with female sins. Look at Adam.
But the sexual revolution in particular was fueled in particular by female sexual emancipation. And the two sides of that coin are female sluttiness[*] and male cowardice.
———–
[*] The extent to which that female sluttiness is instrumental may be an interesting question, but is irrelevant to the point. See this post.
Gabe Ruth:
Change “promiscuous” to “incontinent” and you might be closer. The besetting sins of women tend to be sexual sins, whereas the besetting sins of men tend to be violent sins, precisely because women have more sexual power than men while men have more power to commit violence than women.
Policing female sexuality is every bit as important as policing male violence. (It is also appropriate to police male sexuality and female violence, but not symmetrically so from the standpoint of the common good, since the besetting sins of women are sexual while the besetting sins of men are violent).
This makes little sense. The sexual revolution had many causes, but the main one was horny men trying to evade responsibility (no-fault divorce).
No fault divorce was sold to the public as a mechanism to liberate abused wives from abusive men.
Gabe Ruth:
She wouldn’t have that challenge if she had kept her legs together, and she’d be more likely to have done so if she’d learned from a young age that slutty behavior is despicable and destructive. And her younger sisters certainly won’t learn to avoid single motherhood when everyone treats single motherhood as some sort of heroism.
Mike T:
The typical conservative mindset has to blame “horny men” for the feminism – with all of its concomitants – which their own cowardice produced.
Zippy, as usual, failed to address the points I brought up and adduced an irrelevant post by “Little Buddy”. I read it, and it was just more jabber, making the weird assumption that there are far more promiscuous women than men.
Mike T, it does not matter how no-fault divorce was sold to the suckers. It matters what its real purpose was, which was to liberate powerful and sexually promiscuous men (the Harvey Weinsteins and Hugh Hefners) from consequences. This is just like corporations buying up the feminists in the “Torches of Freedom” cigarette campaign. In the Godless context, the winner was certainly not the female sexual worker bees.
The goal you seem to be getting at is “beat up the girls and they will learn to say no to the boys.” That is deadly functionalism – the careful devil – and completely abandons all hope of love. At bottom, it rests on the assumption that God screwed up the design of sexuality, and the only hope is for us to take up the slack by the more practical approach of enforcing injustice. Even the Torah said punish them both.
Have to say, just read that Dalrock poast and it is quite excellent. Thank you for linking it, and I’ll stop being Gilligan for as long as I can remember.
LarryDickson:
At least you did us the courtesy of clearly demonstrating that you didn’t even try to grasp the point of that post. Do you really find it inconceivable that in a sexually promiscuous society like ours, 80% of the women are being passed around by 20% of the men?
Also, isn’t that perfectly consistent with your own contention that ” [the] real purpose [of no fault divorce] was … to liberate powerful and sexually promiscuous men (the Harvey Weinsteins and Hugh Hefners) from consequences.” ?
If so, isn’t it possible that your understanding has some truth to it, but is deficient?
As long as that Real Purpose[tm] doesn’t cast aspersions on the women who actually file them 70%-80% of the time.
considering that coming from a single mother family is one of the biggest indicator of violence for male (and also poverty), not punishing female sexual sin, leads to having to punish even more male violent sin.
This title reminded me of my theory that the main theme of the movie “back to the future” is that the sexual revolution was the fault of cowardly men. Marty needs to go back and teach his dad to be a man which includes both standing up to biff and tellin his mom not to be a drunken slut. The nostalgia that the vox readers of the world have for this movie is baffling.
Mike T, it does not matter how no-fault divorce was sold to the suckers. It matters what its real purpose was, which was to liberate powerful and sexually promiscuous men (the Harvey Weinsteins and Hugh Hefners) from consequences.
I would love to know how that works since what no fault divorce did was make it possible for the wife of a Weinstein or Hefner to go from divorcing with proof of adultery to divorcing on hearsay of adultery. And they got the alimony, kids, child support, house, etc. So tell us, Larry, how were these rich men liberating themselves from the consequences by making it easier for their wives to divorce them?
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
Remember, the real point here is that the sexual revolution is terrible for everybody but it’s the men’s fault.
promiscuous women will have their value in the eyes of the median normie diminished more than that of promiscuous men
Perhaps, but that is because women are supposed to be more valuable than men (so say the feminists) and therefore have more value to be diminished.
Is this really what men are afraid of? I don’t think it is, as is evident by the fact that even celibate priests are afraid to remark on things like female modesty and the full Ephesians 5 reading. What they are really afraid of (I think) is that calling out the sins of others does really cause temporal suffering. It is easy for men to cause other men suffering for the purposes of making them better: men are used to pushing each other and being pushed by each other for their own benefit.
Being the direct cause of a woman suffering though is something that men have a primal aversion to, and it is something for which men can easily be shamed by other men. So I think the fear is two-fold: directly causing a woman’s suffering, and the shame which (at least some) men will put on you for directly causing a woman’s suffering.
That should be “for their own and for each other’s benefit.”
@TimFinnegan
I suspect the greater fear is being socially ostracized because it is impolite, rude and down right scandalous to say such things.
It is the sort of cowardice illustrated in Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale.
@Semioticanimal
That was my first thought, but it wasn’t always the case that slut-shaming was considered scandalous or whatever, and yet it has always been difficult to do (except for those habituated in the courage to do it). So I thought that there had to be a different explanation. I do think that now the overriding fear is being ostracized/considered a fool, but I don’t think that it is the first one. It’s not as if Adam would’ve been socially ostracized for telling Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit.
Is it cowardice?
Or is it simply that they’ve sincerely bought into the oppressor-oppressed narrative in which women are always the victims of men?
@ Ian:
I don’t think those categories are mutually exclusive. It’s both/and, not either/or.
I feel so bad for the sad virgin who wrote this
@TimFinnegan
The first one was men’s fear of displeasing women, as women are the sex with more biological scarcity and, hence, their being in good terms with a man is key for the propagation of his genes. This is why men are programmed to go along with women and be cowards towards their bad behavior. See the Adam and Eve story.
Drive by trolls are the most fun trolls.
This particular troll is also illustrative of the modern attitude that virginity = bad/sad/pitiable. But that very attitude is what is really evil, sad, and pitiable.
She also demonstrates the tendency of moderns to attempt to psychoanalyse people over the internet from a few short words. While I generally try to avoid sharing personal details, I’m willing to admit that I know Zippy and his family personally, and am thus in a particularly good position to appreciate just how hilariously wrong she is. It serves as a good reminder to be vigilant against psychoanalysis in my own thought; it shows just how cartoonish and unreal the results tend to be.
malcolmthecynic:
It isn’t just trolling, it is also confirmation. Incontinent (therefore violent) men tend to lash out with their violence-power. Incontinent (therefore slutty) women tend to lash out with their whore-power.
Both of these primal powers are highly attenuated over the Internet. So we get the phenomena of Internet tough guys and Internet town mattresses.
imnobody:
That sounds basically like the theory that men are afraid of being cut off, which I don’t think is true. Men who have already given up on procreating (by vowing celibacy for the Kingdom of God) have already overcome the fear of not procreating, so why would they still be afraid of displeasing women?
JustSomeGuy,
Well, if they’ve sincerely bought in to the narrative, then it wouldn’t necessarily occur to them to be terrified of criticizing women. It would just come naturally to them not to criticize women.
I suppose it might still be cowardice, but it wouldn’t register as such: like the soldier who’s become so habituated to cowardice that he really thinks running away from battle is the right thing to do.
I agree with semioticanimal. Any motivation that comes from fear is more likely to be from fear of society and being branded as a reactionary and theocrat rather than from fear of displeasing women.
When I was a liberal, I was much more conscious of this sort of phenomenon, when for example, I would suggest that maybe governments should proscribe the selling of artificial contraception. I didn’t think of myself as being a theocrat or reactionary then, so I didn’t particularly relish being thought of as those things by others. I don’t recall ever being conscious of a fear of displeasing women specifically.
On the other hand, I might just be projecting.
It’s important to keep in mind that internet personas and real people are often very different. I met John C. Wright and his lovely wife in person. Both were very nice, witty people who I’m convinced most of the people who post here especially would get along well with.
Zippy is right.
Men will do anything to not get kicked off the pussy train.
Chooo-chooooo….
Ian,
I can completely agree with your first comment, but I would merely add that habitation doesn’t change vice into virtue. Many people sincerely believe and feel that wrong is right and evil is good, but that doesn’t alter the intrinsic nature of the vice. Cowardly actions remain cowardly in nature no matter how sincerely the actor believes them to be courageous.
Men will do anything to not get kicked off the pussy train.
This is why it is important for Christian men to want to be more like Gideon and David, and not Ned Flanders. Men like the former could stand up in front of a bunch of women, call it like it is, and still have plenty of women DTF* because the ZFG, alpha smell would be that strong.
* Not that those guys would act on it.
MikeT writes:
Being ruled by one’s lower chakra (flesh) makes it easy to deny not only the Gospel truths, but to engage in the present-day pervasive idolatry of women via promoting their hypoagency.
As such, what you permit, you promote.
And to your point, whenever I tell women to their faces that they are full of shit, I have yet to get the eye-rolling, neck swinging responses* that one might expect from the women of my community of origin, but more the deer-in-headlights look.
My ZFG game is veddy good. And no sweetie, I’m not feeling particularly amorous today; why do you ask? LOL
*At least not to my face
Something akin to Godwin’s law ensures that this subject always takes an ironic turn.
There are all sorts of natural consequences which stem from cowardice toward women, of course. Inevitably this leads some men to try to rid themselves of the appearance of cowardice — as a way of currying favor with women.
Inevitably this leads some men to try to rid themselves of the appearance of cowardice — as a way of currying favor with women.
A lot of men do that, but that’s not relevant to my point. A lot of Christian men really do act as though they are channeling Ned Flanders, the great appeaser of Edna Krabappel. For them, I think it absolutely would be better to try to fake it until they make it on being unafraid to call women on their bull#$%^ instead of “yes, dear”ing them.
Beyond that, there are plenty of hard men of God in the Bible who are great role models. As a Catholic, I’m sure there are plenty of equivalent saints who’d also stand with manly confidence and call such women on their bull#$%^ as well. That is what men should idolize on that particular issue.
Mike:
But if the ZFG approach literally doesn’t lead to the consequences supposedly feared, and men take this approach because they realize this, then they aren’t actually behaving courageously. Even cowards can call women out if they understand that they have nothing to fear by doing so. Not being a coward entails doing these things even though the things feared will probably result.
Being David because this won’t actually lead to loss of favor with women is just cowardice disguised. Fortitude is to do this even though loss of favor with women will probably obtain.
Tim,
I think you completely missed the point. The whole point of emulating the strong men of the Bible and Christian history is to first and foremost not be afraid of losing out with women. The thought that a slut would think less of him for telling her the truth would probably be genuinely amusing to David.
Even cowards can call women out if they understand that they have nothing to fear by doing so.
A man who is essentially defined as a coward won’t even try to emulate the behavior of a “hard man” of the Bible or Christian history. He will, by default, go the Ned Flanders route and call a rank slut his sweetheart instead. Because that is what cowardly men tend to do.
Being David because this won’t actually lead to loss of favor with women is just cowardice disguised.
A man who actually tries to be like a David, Gideon, etc. as opposed to a Ned Flanders is choosing to actually not live in fear of such things. He is thus no more of a coward than a man who is terrified of the battlefield, but consciously chooses to advance and carry out his orders.
Tim,
ZFG means you GZF about the consequence, does it not?
@JustSomeGuy
It’s easier than that. Many women use shame to control men. This “shaming language” is meant to get men to be embarassed and stop talking. It’s always an “ad hominem attack”: you’re a loser, you’re creepy, you’re ignorant, you’re evil. But this does not work as well on the Internet.
https://exposingfeminism.wordpress.com/shaming-tactics/
JustSomeGuy,
Good point, I agree.
Uh, David? As in the David in the Bible of Bathsheba fame?
The David who was so alpha he got a hot chick to agree that he was so much better than her husband the husband was better off dead?
And when the prophet Nathan took him to task, he repented.
Not disputing that King David was ‘alpha’, just disputing the idea that he wouldn’t act on ‘women DTF’, which is something we don’t exactly have to speculate on.
(Don’t know what ZFG means, but thinking maybe it better if I remain ignorant).
“I feel so bad for the sad virgin who wrote this”
I’ve met the writer in person along with his wife and children. Nothing sad about it.
(Don’t know what ZFG means
Zero f#$%s given.
The equivalent of shouting “I don’t care!!!” vehemently.
I’m pretty sure that’s a sign you still have a few f#$%s to give…
I love the smell of irony in the morning. It smells like napalm.
On a different note, Bill Cosby shows that one thing the sexual revolution left untouched was the ability of white women with sketchy stories to get a black man lynched by a small mob. The fact that it happened in an ostensibly court of law just makes it a gussied up version of the time-honored practice of skanks to save their reputations by turning a black man into a tree ornament.
(I am not closed to the possibility that he is in fact a rapist, but anyone born outside a cabbage patch should note the similarity between his accusers and campus accusers who roll out of bed, shriek “ewwww” at the guy next to them and call the campus sexual war crimes tribunal for closure)
Or even at the guy not next to them, who has never been next to them, but on whose coattails they can falsely ride to 5 minutes of fame and perhaps some of his fortune by claiming to have slept with/been raped by him.
In this case, I know where I’ve put my money.
I feel like there should be speculation market there like there is for betting on political outcomes. Seems like a good wealth transfer opportunity for targeting feminists and white knights.
I remember that article of Dalrock’s. I only stopped going to his sight because some of his commenters were very inappropriate (as in discuss past sexual sins inappropriate).
I think it’s funny how ‘white knight’ is intended as an insult. I think it was Bonald once who remarked that being a white knight is something Christian men ought to aspire to.
A lot of modern “reaction” involves mockery of Christianity.
I would be curious to know if that is an aspiration of just attitude or whole lifestyle (ie includes rigorous combat training). If the former, it’s worthless as you are, to paraphrase an old Japanese saying, just a gardener caught in the middle of a war.
This is from memory (and my memory could be faulty) but Thomas Fleming of the Rockford Institute (not exactly a conventional conservative) used to say that the Sexual Revolution was engineered by a small group of elite men to gain sexual access to lots of women. So it was men who were responsible for the origins of the Revolution but, accurately, a small minority of men (presumably not the same 20% that allegedly now pass around the 80%). I am not learned enough in the this subject to know if he’s right or wrong.
Mike T.,
I take it as simply referring to the general idea of a masculine duty to protect the weaker sex, defend the helpless, etc.
What I find most repellant about “white knights” is that to the extent that any of them just aren’t trying to use the posturing to have a better chance of getting laid (so they think), they are more concerned about physically protecting women than spiritually protecting them. They would rather run into a burning building to save a woman than risk the same woman’s ire by telling her things that she needs to hear to keep her out of Hell.
Mike T.,
I’m not objecting to the substance of your criticism against ‘white knights’.
I’m objecting to the use of the term ‘white knight’ to characterize the phenomenon you rightly deplore.
‘White knight’ should refer to something praiseworthy.
A good example of a real white knight: Mr. Knightley (heh) in Emma. He loves her, but calls her out on her selfish and capricious behavior and refuses to indulge her. He does this precisely because he loves her.
bruce:
We can think about two kinds of proposed causes.
One kind of proposed cause involves particular named or at least theoretically nameable individuals executing a pre-thought-out and specific plan. This kind of cause doesn’t do much explanatory work, in my view: even when it ‘looks like’ this kind of thing happens, it only happens because all of the context which made it possible. “The Jews and the Frankfurt School ruined Western Civilization” is this sort of proposed explanation, I guess.
Other causes – the sort which really fuel the engines of change – represent forces well beyond the control or foresight of any particular, named group of individuals. Very generally speaking we can think of these as vices. And of course the vice of lust is well understood as a contributing cause of the sexual revolution. Only a very foolish person would deny this.
Less well understood though is the also-crucial (in my view) vice of cowardice, which is the focus of the OP: specifically cowardice in the face of the (apparently, for whatever reasons) terrifying prospect of criticizing women or actually holding women accountable for their specific choices, attitudes, etc.
In fact it is often the worst cowards – those who are most terrified of pointing out where the failures of women specifically have driven and continue to drive the sexual revolution, with its mountains of corpses and oceans of corrupted souls – who bravely face the applause by fixating on those bad men in that bad conspiracy, and wet themselves at the merest suggestion that women are moral agents and should be held accountable as well.
Ian:
The adoption of “white knight” as a term of ridicule and opprobrium is of a piece with adoption of “The Cathedral” as a description of modernism’s hegemony: jargon construction by secularists who gained an inkling last tuesday that there might be something wrong with modernism, but who are terrified that once this is acknowledged the only thing they’ll ultimately be left with is to bend their knee to Christ.
It’s my observation that the majority of folks who talk about “chivalry” today are neither knightly nor ladylike to any meaningful degree. In fact, I would say that it’s my observation that they tend to be rather vehement opponents of the objective truth on these issues in their own right. So the rhetorical value of “white knight” is going to stick since most of the men are probably not even fit to serve in a feudal peasant levy, let alone be truly dangerous and capable professional warriors like knights who actually need a serious code of conduct to keep them grounded.
More to the point, I have yet to meet a woman who bemoans the loss of chivalry who, when confronted, is willing to reform her behavior to be what the “age of chivalry” would consider a proper lady. It’s self-sacrifice for the men, equality for the women almost 100% of the time.
Anyone here who actually doubts this (I don’t expect many hands) can test it by finding a “socially conservative” site talking about women in the military and suggest that women simultaneously be excluded from military service (volunteer and draft) and be prohibited from voting since only those who can be called to defend the state should be allowed to vote.
Selective adherence to moral codes of all kinds is endemic to modernity, and chivalry is no exception. Generally, folks will cling to their principles like a lifeline when those principles are empowering them to do what they want to do. This measure of adherence, however small, also allows them to sincerely believe themselves righteous. But then, when those same principles imply something they do not want, the rationalizations and the cries of “oppression!” kick in.
Same old non serviam, it just comes along with a pretence to justice.
As an aside, though (I think) I agree with the point Mike T is trying to make, I don’t really like the voting example, because I don’t think there’s good justification for mass-market voting in general, even for just men. Alternatively, I might be more inclined to suggest that they take Ephesians 5 a little more seriously, and see if the result is shrieking.
I think Dalrock has the right of this, and Lewis before him.
This cowardice isn’t of criticism of women or their reactions in general. Rather, it is the poison of courtly love brought to its lowest pitch (combined, I think, with the highly convoluted forms of English social reticence and maneuver). The loss of the Church to England resulted in the loss of Christ, and we ended up with the Victorian era, where, because of the survival of the ideals of courtly love, love of Christ was replaced with love of woman.
All this means it isn’t fear of women pure and simple, but rather a social system, rigidly enforced by other men, where in order to be a man of a certain class, you must act publically as though the motives of women are above reproach.
The low classes are excused from and distinctly marked by lack of this behaviour (Blacks or Hispanics for example, have no problems putting their women in their places), but American society is probably the most class-conscious society that has ever existed to date, with its paired nice distinctions tied with moral worth and its rabid insistence on destruction of all obvious class markers.
“I have yet to meet a woman who bemoans the loss of chivalry who, when confronted, is willing to reform her behavior to be what the “age of chivalry” would consider a proper lady.”
What I have run into time and time again is women who think they are entitled to be treated like they are “precious” or “a princess” but don’t behave like either (foul language coming out of their mouths, unchaste, loud and confrontational, etc.)
My own perspective is that most modern people – men and women – form their sexual moral standards out of a dangerous mixture of “what makes me feel good,” “what can I get away with,” and “what does the greater (insane) culture tell me is OK behavior.”
And I don’t see any of that changing until, as the OP says, individually and as a society we repent. It truly is a work of evangelization – which can be tough – because a lot of modern people don’t realize they even need to repent.
I agree with JustSomeGuy that mass voting is a bad idea in general.
But supposing we’re talking about a situation where voting makes sense (maybe in a much smaller polity), it’s not clear to me why the franchise should be restricted only to those who can be called to defend the state. (Or are you just trying to troll these people?)
In my view, a much better justification for excluding women from the franchise is that it undermines the idea of patriarchal authority. Stipulating that we’re talking about a polity where voting might make sense, I might favor restricting the franchise to married fathers, for example.
Zippy,
Good connection. Do you think these terms were adopted consciously to ridicule Christianity?
Ian:
There are degrees of “consciously”, and I imagine it varies. Some people no doubt consciously use these terms to “troll” Christianity, out of explicit rejection of Christianity and a belief that Christianity is part of or even the source of the problem.
But I expect that more significant numbers who accept and use these sorts of terms do so because it “feels right” given their world view, nonexplicit social status concerns, etc.
It would be possible to use a term like “white knight” as ironic, that is, as implying that the person mocked is anything but a “white knight”. But that isn’t the sense in which it is being used: it is being used quite precisely to mock the Christian value of the strong protecting the weak.
Any genuine irony arises because coddling female vice is in fact anything but an example of the strong protecting the weak: it is in fact a specific kind of weak-kneed cowardice.
Is that really irony, though? Consider the white knight Lancelot and his (murderous) defense of Guinivere against the (accurate) charges of adultery leveled against her.
“White knights” tend to channel that side of Lancelot to a large extent in their discussions of men and women. Dalrock has noted how some of the more prominent ones like Matt Chandler almost take a murderous glee in discussing how they’d like to harm men who they feel are mistreating women. Most of them would probably even say to Arthur (in a highly self-righteous tone) “well what did you do to make her want to cheat on you?” after they see the pile of bodies in Lancelot’s wake.
In general, I don’t think you can separate the image of the white knight from courtly love. It’s not even really a Christian character because of the extent to which it is almost downright Marxist in its assumption “men strong, women weak; from each man according to his ability to protect to each woman according to her need for protection.” It has virtually no room for dealing with the wicked woman who deeply harms men or children.
I think “White Knight” is used in the manosphere to denote a sort of childish cartoonishness. As if they’ve been reading too many children’s books. Christians like Dalrock use thsi phrase.
My own background is technology and business, not the humanities. So I don’t really have a good read on the “great books” perspective on Lancelot, if you will. Nor am I particularly steeped in Arthurian legend.
But my own impression was never that Lancelot was a white knight (or the cowboy version, a “white hat”). My impression was that he was an adulterous traitor.
Many Christian men idolize Lancelot the adulterous traitor who by a twist of fate escaped the king’s justice due to the king dying in war before he could have his head on a pike. I have yet to meet any that idolize the monastic military orders that pledged themselves to celibacy. Probably because choosing to not get some isn’t a sexy fantasy.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the term ‘white knight’ is supposed to encompass a comprehensive vision of morality. It’s referring to a archetype or ideal that describes a certain aspect of masculine duty.
It’s like referring to a ‘pure woman’: the term points to a certain ideal of feminine virtue, but it doesn’t really tell us how a woman should deal with the wicked man who deeply harms women or children.
By the way, I’ve always considered Sir Galahad as the white knight of the bunch. (I don’t think I know any men – Christian or otherwise – who talk about Lancelot, so it would be impossible for me to know if they idolize him).
I am not familiar with any traditional Christian treatment of Lancelot as anything other than terribly flawed. He isn’t the “white knight” ideal, he is an adulterer and traitor.
A further irony is that Lancelot makes a better idol for the PUA/Game sort who have adopted “white knight” as a pejorative. “Alpha” for these folks is explicitly measured by female approval, in the form of sexual favors granted to supplicant men who exhibit sufficiently “alpha” behaviors.
You don’t hang around enough Christians. Step away from the Evangelicals.
“Alpha” for these folks is explicitly measured by female approval
It would be far more accurate to say that they claim the degree you are perceived as an alpha by others can be measured in female approval. Men don’t have the final word on masculinity, just like women don’t have the final word on what is attractive and feminine in women. If most women are repulsed by your behavior (and I don’t mean by being crude, but by perceiving you as a weak little creep no matter how much you might be a “good man”), you need to do some serious introspection no matter what your bros tell you.
Where Lancelot fits many of them better is in their amoral willingness to screw women outside of marriage, even to the point of many being willing to cuckold another man.
Two things:
First, I have been saying for many years (including in the comments of this blog once or twice, I believe) that in the end Feminists, SJWs, etc. never have any more power than men are willing to give them. The simple thing to do is to simply ignore them, or confront them properly as needed.
There is a military truism: “important things are simple; simple things are hard”.
Being a parent is simple – do the proper things consistently. Doing the proper things when you are tired, distracted, etc. is hard.
Being a husband is simple – remember that you are morally responsible for your wife and children and that you are obligated to lead them.
On a Friday night when you are exhausted and your sister-in-law is over and encouraging your wife to pressure you and all you want is quiet leading can be hard.
Fortitude is constance in the pursuit of the Good.
so, shorter – I agree with Zippy.
Second, Lancelot was originally a mockery and cautionary tale. The first appearance of Lancelot was in La Chevalier de la Charette and he’s portrayed as a suicidally-dim. Even in Mallory’s work (which was a critique of the factions in the War of the Roses) Lancelot is a fool, a womanizer, and a cat’s paw to any pretty girl.
A story I found enlightening: http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/2018/05/04/teen-accused-slut-shaming-his-girlfriend-over-her-prom-dress-says-it-wasnt-him.html
Executive summary: Boy meets girl, boy asks girl to prom, girl shows boy the dress she intends to wear, boy says it looks too slutty, girl dumps boy, girl posts the tale and internet loses its shit.
Well, boy denies he had a problem with the dress, so this could be yet another case of triumphant sexual revolutionaries having to invent enemies out of whole cloth, but all that is not what interested me. Rather, I’ve always been mystified by the “white knight” charge. Then I read this Twitter comment to the girl:
“If you need someone to give you a great night and treat you the way you deserve let me know. You deserve better than that. Respect”
Gamers, I owe you an apology. I get it now and concede the point.
Scott W:
As with “the Cathedral”, the phenomenon described is real enough; whereas the choice of label is deceptive and anti-Christian.
I always thought that the term “The Cathedral” came from the open source environment, as in the title of the book “The Cathedral and The Bazaar”. The book describes a process where a few individuals engineer a complete solution, akin to a cathedral, big and expensive, but impressive. I might be wrong and probably are.
“Cathedral” I got from Mencius Moldbug who is (was, maybe having a child softened him) an atheist, but not militant. In fact, he would get grief from the militants for freely using biblical imagery in his analogies. His schtick was not so much anti-christians as against what he dubbed hyper-Calvinism. To wit: the Left took everything obnoxious about Puritanism and just dumped the God stuff in order to spread easier.
But I digress. Indeed the alt-right is so anti-Christian that they can never be more than useful idiots to me.
King Richard,
Second, Lancelot was originally a mockery and cautionary tale. The first appearance of Lancelot was in La Chevalier de la Charette and he’s portrayed as a suicidally-dim. Even in Mallory’s work (which was a critique of the factions in the War of the Roses) Lancelot is a fool, a womanizer, and a cat’s paw to any pretty girl.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. In fact, I saw a humorous take on Shakespeare on Facebook that is similar, mentioning how if he were alive today Shakespeare might very well laugh his ass off at the idea that his plays are considered high brow literature when in his day they were meant for commoners and were filled with “dick jokes and sword fights.” In 300 years, conservatives might be saying the same things about Michael Bay movies.
Mike T.,
Relevant:
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-symptom-of-deteriorating-artistic.html
Ian,
Yep. There is something ironic about the elites there in that in refining their tastes they often simply train their senses to find repellant things pleasing. Case in point, a lot of “craft beer” out there. It is somehow more disgusting than cheap prole beer, but many a hipster will tell you it is wonderful.
I like to think of it as an indirect way that God makes the elites look ridiculous.
Dalrock’s latest post is great for showing what a quandary the white knights are in:
1. Must not make a woman feel bad.
2. Telling women to not invade male spaces makes them feel bad.
3. Woman invades a male space, the infantry.
4. Corporal must not make her feel bad by excluding her as a recruit.
5. Corporal must also not make her feel bad by telling her she sucks at what she’s doing and has no energy for it.
6. Corporal must empower he to be the Strong Woman She Already Is(tm).
7. Corporal cannot bark at her to behave like a shield maiden.
All because no one would tell princess and her daddy she belongs at home married off to a soldier, not being one.
I don’t think the phenomenon is all that limited to elites. I think the music that people listen to nowadays is a much better example. Pop and rap music is extremely popular, and yet quite hideous. Wrt craft beer, ive found that if you stick with the normal styles (Pilsner, pale ale, Belgian white, etc.) you can find a lot of quite enjoyable beers. The success rate for craft beer I’ve found to be much higher than the success rate for popular music.
Mike T.:
I object to point 6, based on first-hand experience. More accurately, “strong woman” bypasses chain of command, taking her complaint straight to the top. Commander issues directive to corporal to rectify situation with said woman/women, whom the corporal called “Jerry’s Kids” for their inability to march in a military manner – the basis of strong woman’s complaint. Corporal, in obedience to his superior’s command, calls strong woman and the sisterhood into conference on the matter. Cry and blubber fest immediately ensues, leaving only one set of dry eyes in the room, namely the corporal’s, who is very happy to be re-assigned to a more appropriate set of recruits.
But that was back in the mid-80’s, so…
Would it be wrong to guess you were the corporal?
Zippy said:
Change “promiscuous” to “incontinent” and you might be closer. The besetting sins of women tend to be sexual sins, whereas the besetting sins of men tend to be violent sins, precisely because women have more sexual power than men while men have more power to commit violence than women.
and
Incontinent (therefore violent) men tend to lash out with their violence-power. Incontinent (therefore slutty) women tend to lash out with their whore-power.
Pedat says
Zippy is right.
Men will do anything to not get kicked off the pussy train.
Both sets of comments assume a picture in which a woman has the capacity to decide who to admit to her bed. Either in full, or primarily.
This condition largely holds in the (formerly) Christian West. It does not and has never held in other places or cultures. For example, in the Bible it clearly did not hold in regard to the women of the cities knocked over by the Israelite men who then took the women as slaves / concubines. Those women had no choice about whether to accept the man in bed. The condition also does not hold in societies where fathers sell their daughters into marriage, (i.e. for the bride-price, in arranged marriages).
The condition also does not hold if the society does not proscribe rape, or not enough to suppress it. Some American Indian societies before the coming of white men appear to have had little in the way of consequence for a man for taking a woman without her being willing, if my memory of the accounts of the early Jesuit fathers is accurate. In some Muslim countries, and especially in ISIS, a woman raped is generally viewed as the woman’s fault for escaping her father’s household unaccompanied.
In other words, it is only forms of society that have been structured to allow women to express a choice about who they will have in bed that have “power” over men like that, and back that up with legal or social punishments for violations. In other societies, they don’t have that power. Thus the power comes from the social form, not from nature itself. The dis-similarity is that the ability of men to behave violently is not dependent on approval or support of society, it is a natural attribute. So what Zippy is identifying are two traits, but not traits that are equally natural in men and women.
This explains why Rhetocrates and Gabe Ruth were led to see that other factors are also necessary to explain the behaviors, such as concupiscence. In a society where men are not punished for taking a woman outside of marriage and without her willingness, the concupiscence of the man is more or less sufficient to explain the sexual encounter without bringing in actual violent force explicitly, because the woman has little to gain by trying (and failing) to repel his actions given his strength: the violence often remains an implied threat, but the concupiscence is active. There need be no willingness of the woman at all.
It is unlikely that the besetting sin of women lies in the direction sins of sex with the same generality as men are given to sins of violence, because their power over sex depends on social forms, not merely nature damaged by original sin.
It is also true that with women, the driving motive for the degenerate forms in which they exercise “control” over men through admitting them to their bed (or not) is not only with regard to the women’s desire for sexual pleasure, but also to exercise control over their economic, social, and emotional lives as well. When the latter are the primary motives, the sexual sins are incidentally concupiscent but primarily have other sins as their true nature. But it’s not as if such sins fail to be concupiscent – a sinful act can be evil in many ways, because it can be deformed with regard to many parts of the ordered good.
It is true that men have been cowards about sexual degeneracy in our society. So have women. Both have, also, wanted sex with out-of-control concupiscence.
Pilgrim:
I think I’d take a somewhat different tack, myself. I think it’s true that women hold the power of sex as their power, by which I mean it is the woman’s remit to wield sex as a tool, because women are members of the fairer sex – by which I mean quite simply that men lust after women in a way quite different from how women lust after men.
Furthermore, we see this near universally, regardless of the political or social status of women: Helen of Troy and Cleopatra are famous examples, but there are numerous accounts of women wielding this power throughout history, often from very politically disadvantageous positions – Roman house slaves, Visigothic women in the harems and fleshpits of al Andalus, and so forth.
The rest of what you rightly point out as the imbalance between men and women comes down to the fact that man’s power over violence is a more direct route to results than woman’s power over sex. Reductively, violence trumps sex – this is why rape is seen as violent*, rather than sexual.
Both forms of power are about getting a mannerbund to go do something. Men have more immediate access to this power, as they are the primary material of it and form manly bonds naturally. Women manipulate it from the outside, and so their abilities are, finally, weaker (case in point: bros before hos) but also liable to route around defenses and manly power structures in unforeseen ways (i.e., devious).
This is what Homer is getting at when he says that a man’s armament is spear and shield, whereas a woman’s is poison and the dagger.
I think it’s also the source of a lot of erstwhile disagreement around the place of men and women in both traditional and modern societies and their moral structures: people see one aspect and not the whole. We get a picture of women being de facto reduced from moral agents at all to mere slaves to the moral force of a man (or men corporately) or Girl Power or the like from various misapprehensions on this point.
*Yeah, yeah, I know.
Even in many of the societies that pilgrim describes, there are plenty of men for whom violence is not an acceptable option. Anyone who’s been around Indian men a lot has surely noticed the schizophrenia of their culture in that it produces so many “nice guys” while also producing men who can literally “rape women to death” on public transportation.
Curious about your take on this. It seems to me, as an outsider, that the Catholic Church has reached a point where the corruption caused by cowardly men meekly accepting the whining of corrupt men (“but homosexual inclinations should not keep you out of the priesthood!”) has reached a point where the Pope may be forced to ask the laity in some of these countries to burn the hierarchy to the ground and start over.
Mike T, the pope was probably very close to correct in identifying the entire set of Chilean bishops as at fault: in MOST countries, a pretty large percentage of the bishops have been either directly involved in wrongdoing, or at least failing to point out the problems to the Vatican that they had strong reason to believe was happening. On the other hand, the Vatican itself is at fault for refusing to believe and accept what they were told by the rare individual bishop who mentioned the problems, and thus for the result that the rare bishop who was willing to “rat out” on his confreres not being supported or even listened to. Not surprisingly, the good bishops stopped bothering to tell – what was the point?
So, while if I were pope I would take up the Chilean bishops on their offer to resign, accept the resignations, and appoint good bishops in their places, I strongly doubt that Francis will appoint good bishops. His track record is quite wretched.
Their problem is that they kept following up the chain of command. Sometimes you need to grab the chain of command whip the person above you, and cases like this would be one of them. I would love to see a Pope go “herp derp muh authoriteh” to Jesus Christ explaining retaliation against a bishop who refused the Pope’s pro-wolf policies.
Heck, steal the idea of orcposting and launch a full meme war against Francis. You can always do something to bring the noise and raise awareness to their shame.
In criticizing a Pope, both the content and the manner are important. He is the Holy Father after all, and just as with a natural father who is abusing his authority it is not acceptable to use just any means in criticizing him or calling him to account; even for the most egregious abuses a certain level of respect is required.
The whole Chilean fiasco is I think a great example of the things that Zippy has pointed out with the #metoo business. While it does seem that Pope Francis was right in not taking accusations against Barros as proof he was guilty, he acted quite imprudently by accusing the accusers of calumny and ignoring the other Bishop’s recommendation that he not be appointed the Ordinary of Osorno.
But one thing is sure: burning the hierarchy to the ground will have a terrible impact on the souls of the Faithful. It is difficult enough to achieve sanctity with the help of the Sacraments (even if they are administered by the corrupt and the cowardly), let alone to try without them. I think a previously predominantly Catholic country being entirely without an episcopate would be unprecedented and have a terrible effect on the Faith in that country. It takes a long time to replace just one Bishop, let alone trying to replace over 30.
When you are covering up for pedophiles or abusing children, you should be defrocked, laicized, and shown to the authorities.
I get what you’re saying about a gutting of the hierarchy being harmful. But more harmful than condoning, passively or actively, pedophilia?
What sin must you commit to be defrocked?
If the Church is reduced to 20 Bishops then all the better for it. Allowing this abuse to continue is evil, pure evil, and if it hurts the faithful that damage was already done.
The Church has failed the world. The first step to fixing things is to admit it.
The synthesis of clericalism and liberalism is breathtakingly evil.
Malcolm:
Yes those who covered up these behaviors should be punished, and punished severely, even if it was an entire episcopal conference that was guilty. But it wasn’t (it seems) the entire episcopal conference, and many of the Bishops who offered their resignation were outspoken, and didn’t even show up to Barros’ initiation. I don’t think there is any episcopal conference which is literally bereft of a single Bishop who did not take sexual abuse by clergy seriously.
In many ways yes the Church has failed. And I think you’re right about the effect of condoning pederasty and pedophilia. However, maybe it’s naive or unreasonably optimistic, but there seems to be at least a few Bishops in Chile who aren’t complicit, and even a few is better than none.
It’s also the case that the Pope shouldn’t be asking the people to “burn the hierarchy to the ground” because the only one with the authority to do it is the Pope.
But it wasn’t (it seems) the entire episcopal conference, and many of the Bishops who offered their resignation were outspoken, and didn’t even show up to Barros’ initiation.
Then the outspoken bishops should have gone to the police every day and demanded charges be brought against their criminal colleagues until either they end up in jail themselves as martyrs or they compel the secular authorities to act.
Mike T is quite correct, but besides that –
Read Peter Grant on the subject. He left the Priesthood due to the Church’s response to the scandal. And as he has pointed out almost everything done since it broke has been a kabuki theatre show, with next to no long term effects or consequences.
The response by the Church hierarchy would look much more dramatic if they actually cared about protecting children.
Relevant:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Goodbye_Good_Men.html?id=MYipBgAAQBAJ&hl=en
The priest that oversaw my FIL’s boy scout troop back in the 60s was known to “do things” on camping trips, and yet the faithful even in those ostensibly better times did nothing. As a Protestant it simply boggles my mind that a church body can be so enthralled to authority that such a thing can be common knowledge and parents would still submit to that authority. When do you rise and up throw the table over? When cannibalism is what they’re covering up?
** That was a serious question, and not meant to be a defense of a general rejection of authority. It’s a question of precisely what does an authority have to do before people declare the authority too monstrous to go unchallenged? Authorities are human just like us and deserve our understanding when they act imperfectly, but there are categories of sin where one would think that even the most submissive Christian would sooner hoist the Jolly Roger and go rogue than submit.
Mike T:
There you go again: confusing cowardice with deference to authority.
The liberalism is strong with this one.
You keep using the word authority, but it is obvious that you don’t know what it means. You do realize that when priests diddle children and bishops cover it up, both are acting against both ecclesial and secular authority, right?
Mike T:
Have you seen the movie 13 Assassins? Which flag do you feel would better represent the heroes of that movie, the Jolly Roger or St. George’s Cross?
Would you mind expanding on this thought, or sharing links to where you have already expanded on it?
Not Zippy, but check out Puritan’s Empire. https://www.amazon.com/Puritans-Empire-Charles-Coulombe/dp/0979160057/
You do realize that when priests diddle children and bishops cover it up, both are acting against both ecclesial and secular authority, right?
Yes, I do. I also realize that something like that example or the one in Chile cannot happen without much of the authority structure being in on it. At that point, either submission to evil or conflict are the only two real choices.
If, per pilgrim’s point about the Vatican ignoring the bishops reporting to them is true, then at some point those bishops might have been better calling for open holy war to be waged by those on their side than to let it fester.
“If, per pilgrim’s point about the Vatican ignoring the bishops reporting to them is true, then at some point those bishops might have been better calling for open holy war to be waged by those on their side than to let it fester.”
That was already done 500 years ago. It’s an ongoing Protest.
That was already done 500 years ago. It’s an ongoing Protest.
I think it’s a lot simpler:
1. The good bishops or their agents steal the evidence of the coverups by their corrupt peers.
2. They put it online.
3. Tell the state that they have 30 days to open criminal investigations or they’ll call on the faithful to hold the worst offenders directly accountable at gun point.
Mike T, I have little to say about your point 3 except that it’s laughably naive at best.
Mike T’s prescriptive recommendations often have a kind of Larpy fantastic quality to them, I’ve noticed.
’cause the best thing to do with the sin of scandal is to make it worse, as if the last 500 years of European history hasn’t be an exercise in doing exactly that and hoping for the best.
Was there some kind of massive backlash in Chile against the situation with the bishops? Because if there was, I can’t help but think it would have been much better directed at the law permitting abortion they approved last year.
Is the problem really one of being so enthralled to authority?
From what I’ve read, certain Protestant churches as well as secular institutions (e.g., the American public school system) have the same problem with pederasty occurring at similar rates that the Catholic Church does.
Mike T’s prescriptive recommendations often have a kind of Larpy fantastic quality to them, I’ve noticed.
You’re talking about a region of the world known for revolutionary violence and turmoil, not England.
Of course, the flip side of that is that it’s probably much like the problem of violence in Islam. The same people who will riot at the mere rumor that a Christian rolled his eyes at the Koran won’t go Allahu Akbar on people blowing up children (allegedly in egregious violation of Islam’s laws of wars) in the name of their religion. Even if it’s their children being targeted.
I’m not least bit surprised that Americans and Irish aren’t engaging in revolutionary violence against Catholic officials who have deliberately swept all of this under the rug, but I am surprised that a region known for hot-headed political violence has no one willing to bust a cap in a bishop’s ass over this.
So we’re pretending that this and this and this never happened? Or are you talking about some different England of which I’m not aware?
As for your prescriptions for the layfolk of the Church, they reek of sulfur.