Saturday, October 5, 2013

Why I Support Patriarchy

Below is a guest post written by Jesse Powell

I am an atheist man living in the United States and I support patriarchy, I support traditional gender roles, in particular I support the traditional non-working wife.  To many in the West today “patriarchy” is a scary word; in particular among those not in a religious setting (such as myself) the idea of supporting patriarchy is just plain bizarre.  Still I am who I am; an atheist man in the West supporting patriarchy.  So why have I come to this point; how did I arrive at this radical counter-cultural perspective?

Going into a bit of my personal history; I found that the feminism I was raised in, that I was immersed in since birth, prepared me for the adult world, particularly my romantic purpose as a man, very poorly.  Basically as a feminist man I had no drive to offer support to women or contribute anything substantial to a woman’s life.  This led women to not be interested in me romantically so that a great barrier between me and women developed; a barrier I desperately wanted to overcome but didn’t know how to overcome.  So finally I came to the conclusion that it was my feminism and the inertia and apathy towards women my feminism led to that was causing my failure in the romantic sphere.  With this realization my attachment to feminism ended once and for all and I embraced patriarchy.

That is the personal side of how I came to support patriarchy but in addition to this there was also the social developments in my country that led me to the realization that I was not alone in my troubles; that difficulties between men and women were widespread and that they had grown tremendously over time.  My rejection of feminism came around 1995 and at that time in my country there was a great concern going on about rising out-of-wedlock births, rising crime and a drug epidemic among the black population, growing welfare dependency among single mothers, and social breakdown in general.  I was able to see that my personal troubles were part of a much broader breakdown in the family and in relations between men and women.  The cause of this breakdown I saw to be feminism as it was feminism that told me to not be a man; to shun and feel ashamed of my natural manly characteristics and drives and sense of purpose; that in effect told me I had no special purpose in women’s lives which is what led me to not seek an important role in a woman’s life in the first place thereby causing my romantic failure with women.

Family breakdown problems are happening all throughout the Western World (and actually globally if one looks carefully).  For example in the Netherlands, home of the author of this blog, the out-of-wedlock birth ratio was only 2.2% in 1975; this ratio rising to 15.5% in 1995 and up to 44.3% in 2010.  Looking at the divorce rate in the Netherlands it was 5.7% in 1965, 20.1% in 1975, 41.9% in 1995, and 44.7% in 2010.  Additionally the fertility rate in the Netherlands went below replacement level in 1973 and has been continuously below replacement level ever since.

Feminists will try to tell you this disaster in family life is simply women’s liberation; women free at long last to pursue their dreams no longer being “forced” to be only good wives and mothers as if being “only” a good wife and a good mother is beneath them.  Feminists further claim that patriarchy, the social system that existed when divorce and out-of-wedlock births were shockingly low by today’s standards, was a time of brutal and unending oppression of women and women should be oh so glad those dark days of the past are behind them.  Don’t be fooled by these lies and distortions.

Keep in mind here what patriarchy actually is.  Patriarchy is Chivalry; Chivalry defined as the male duty to provide for and protect women according to the collective judgment of men as a community and according to the conscience and sense of purpose of each individual man ultimately under the authority of God.  Yes patriarchy does have male domination as a component but the male domination serves a purpose; to protect the man’s investment in the woman so that the man will feel secure and motivated to invest in the woman.  Without male domination there cannot be high male investment in women as a man will not invest in a woman who uses the man’s investment in her in a way he does not intend.  If you look at feminism in practice you will see that as women become “empowered” and “more equal to” men male investment in women disappears as can be seen by soaring births outside marriage, soaring divorce, and soaring numbers of married women working.  No more male power means no more male support. 

Also it should be remembered that in a patriarchal social system each individual man is always under men collectively; under the law; and that the man always is considered to be under God, obligated to use his authority for the Godly purpose of supporting and guiding his family overall.  Patriarchy has never been based on male selfishness; it has always been based on male sacrifice and male service.

So I am not ashamed to openly advocate for patriarchy.  Patriarchy is exactly what society needs to undue the great damage feminism has done.  I am part of a group called the TWRAs or Traditional Women’s Rights Activists.  My blog is at Secular Patriarchy.  In particular I recommend the following article at my blog exploring some of the themes mentioned in this essay:


The statistics mentioned regarding the Netherlands come from Eurostat.

16 comments:

  1. Thank you for this post, Jesse. Feminists definitely give bad advice to men on how to deal with women! As for patriarchy giving men power, I would argue that patriarchy simply recognizes the power that men have over women, a power that in most cases feminism cannot take away. So many women these days are consenting to things that they don't really want-premarital sex, abortion, working motherhood, because the men in their lives are pressuring them into it. And because feminists are claiming that the patriarchy has been overthrown, the irresponsible men who pressure women into destructive behaviors cannot be held to account: they supposedly have no power, and everything is supposedly totally up to the woman. Which means, in reality, that women have been abandoned by men, at the behest of feminists.

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  2. That was a very interesting post, Jesse, thanks for writing it.

    Judithann, welcome to the blog!

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  3. Thank you, Sanne, it is nice to meet you :)

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  4. Chivalry on the part of all men, without simultaneous submissiveness on the part of all women, is unworkable, and irrational; moreover, men being chivalrous towards all women, whether deserving or not, just makes you a chump; a social contract requires both parties to adhere to the terms; one side holding up their side of a broken contract while the other side has broken it and doesn't abide by the terms of their side in the least, just makes you an idiot, a doormat to be trampled upon in life by the other side, which will hold you in contempt for being so 'noble' and 'old-fashioned'.

    Might as well instead 'enjoy the decline', as they say. Watch the fireworks, as the young women who support feminism get what they deserve, good and hard, as they deserve, for stupidly buying into the lies they were taught.

    How can you appeal to 'duty', when as an atheist, you have no transcendent frame of reference to appeal to, in terms of rational support for moral absolutes? With no god - and evolution is not god, merely, if real, a process - there are no moral absolutes, and one is free to do whatever one wishes; how can you expect to appeal to fellow atheists to act sacrificially (which one-sided chivalry certainly is, BTW), against what they perceive, rightly or not, are their own interests? You cannot, and will not.

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  5. Jesse must speak for himself, I'll just say that he seems to also support default father custody in the case of divorce, and coverture. In the light of this, his chivalry ideas make sense

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  6. I prefer default father custody, but I have an even better idea (in my humble opinion): the choice of the wronged party, whether the man or woman, whichever was cheated upon, as to what kind of custody arrangement they wish for: either complete custody, or shared custody, or zero custody. That way, a would-be cheater can't be guaranteed that they'll not have to look after the kids if they break up their marriage thru infidelity, and so can't know that to count on it, and be able to even abuse that to run away from marriage without the children.

    No; the problem with default father custody is precisely that it is abusable by a wife who just wants to run away and end her responsibilities.

    By giving the decision entirely to the wronged party, this disincentivizes anyone from potentially abusing a default custody scenario to their perceived advantage.

    It's true that the children can be seen as pawns in this scenario. But what it really does is disincentivize both parents from cheating, since they can't guarantee they'll either get the kids at all OR be burdened with complete custody. Only way to prevent either scenario is for both to not cheat, because if one does, the other gets all the cards.

    Thus the superiority of my system, if I say so myself. :)

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  7. Will, I have read your post and it was very interesting but I don't have time for reply right now, I'll try to write my thoughts on the issue tomorrow.

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  8. I had a very hectic weekend, after a very hectic week, so it took me some time to get to your comment. I have read your post and I see your point, and to say the truth, I'm undecided on default father custody; however, this being said, I see rationale behind it, inside the system which Jesse seems to propose. BTW, I doubt he is still following this thread, so if you want to debate him, you'll have to do it on his blog.

    Now back to the custody topic, you wrote on your blog about the guilty party paying child support to the innocent party. This is a thoroughly modern view, as for the woman to pay child support to the man, she has to have a job. Under coverture laws, which Jesse apparently wants to restore, a woman was not supposed to support herself, she was to be provided for by her husband or male relatives. In this situation, in the case of divorce, even adulterous wives got alimony (a small one), so that they wouldn't starve, as mentioned in one of Jane Austen's books (Sense And Sensibility), to be precise.

    Of course, in old times there still were woman in the workforce, mostly driven by necessity, but it was hardly considered ideal. I think Thomas Fleming of Chronicles had a series of articles on this topic, I'll try to find the relevant one. It was a totally different world from now and some people seek to restore it. It's just how far in the past you want to go, that's all. I hope it makes sense.

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  9. There were indeed women working; only middle class to wealthy families could afford to have only one breadwinner.

    Sometimes, I think in our remembrances of the past, we can fail to remember such things, and think that women didn't work, in general.

    I don't think it was right that adulterous women received alimony; there should be consequences for wicked behaviour, and if starvation is a potential result, that prospect can be used to motivate to NOT engage in the behaviour in the first place.

    I do think it best for an unmarried woman to stay at home, and be supported by her family.

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  10. was a housewife for close to three years. absolutely LOVED it. as soon as i had left the workforce, i lost 10% of my body weight and kept it off for the whole time i was home cooking and keeping house. when i went back to work (had to, no money) those lost pounds found me - and brought along their friends.

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  11. Well, according to the statistics I read, in the year 1870 in USA only 2.2.% of married (white) women worked. Unless 97.8% of the population qualified as middle and upper class, we can draw the conclusion that even a working class family could generally afford for the wife to stay home. Working class women usually worked before they married, but not afterwards unless the husband was disabled, or a good-for-nothing, and many widows were supported by their families.

    Also about alimony, if the husband didn't pay it, it simply meant that her male relatives would provide for her as no father or brother would want to see his daughter starve, even if she was adulterous. Probably male relatives (and their wives, imagine your husband having to provide for his sister as well till death do us part), found the alimony laws just and proper.

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