MY claim is that the explanation for the correlation between female emancipation and cultural decline and collapse does not relate to any lack of intelligence by women, nor that women cannot be as competent as men (subject always to the sexes’ differing natural aptitudes). No, it’s about social style and social sympathies.
Under widespread feminisation, policies favouring women are driven by women’s in-group preference, while those men still in authority are happy to go along with it because they have no countervailing preference for men (rather the opposite).
The result is that the ‘external’ (non-domestic) world – politics, education, media, charities, the judiciary and the establishment church – all become oriented towards preferencing women at the expense of men. This is then amplified by a demonisation of men that arises partly as the natural corollary of their in-group preference and partly as a result of women’s increasing (ostensible) independence from men, coupled with the destruction of marriage and endemic fatherlessness.
This is not a sustainable societal condition because, as men are alienated from society by force, the main driver of the economy and social protection shrivels and dies.
The reason why the bad-old gendered society, with men dominating in the ‘external’ world, was stable is that it avoids this social pathology due to men’s lack of in-group preference. Thus, the paradox that it is the less obviously social, individualist, status-seeking men who provide the foundations of culture is resolved and found to be a negative factor: they lack the in-group preference that renders a culture unstable when overtaken by a group with in-group preference.
I would argue that the pre-emancipation days were not the horror show for women that the feminists make out. The overwhelming majority of women in the past had very tough lives. That is true. But so did men. There was no envying men’s ‘rewarding careers’ when that was mining or building the canals and railroads largely by hand – or horse-drawn ploughing. And men’s strong instinct to provide for women and to defer to women in the domestic arena secured women’s natural dominance in that world.
Notwithstanding that, like Unwin I do not believe that the emancipation of women need unavoidably lead to societal collapse, but it will do so if women’s tendency to in-group preference – and the related denigration and suppression of men – is not recognised and effectively countered.
Nothing is certain in human affairs, but the likelihood of a return by the Western culture to the gendered approach seems remote. History is against it. It is unlikely that the potential cure for our ills suggested above will receive widespread acceptance and still less that effective action will be taken to counter it. But any more vigorous culture which replaces it will be gendered in some way, and not necessarily very nice.
When I talk of these matters I tend to be accused of having taken the black pill of despair. Not so, but a realistic optimism must start by squarely facing up to the truth. Having done that let us now turn in a positive direction to what may be the way forward.
I claim no great wisdom but I’m sure of one thing: the antidote to division is not more division.
Let us start with that emotive, and I would say, misleading word ‘emancipation’. The internet returned this definition: ‘Emancipation – the fact or process of being set free from legal, social, or political restrictions; liberation’.
Taken literally that definition is preposterous. Would anyone want to see men ‘set free from legal, social, or political restrictions’? I think not. That would be synonymous with complete social collapse and the rule of armed thugs.
What it means, of course, is setting women free from any restrictions not imposed on men. Legal, social, political and moral restrictions are the price we all pay for communal living – and communal living is not optional. What emancipation really means is equality of opportunity.
Why should equality of opportunity imply the denigration of motherhood, the inculcation of an attitude of career-over-family in young women, the denigration of men, the destruction of marriage, and equanimity at endemic fatherlessness? No logical reason at all.
It has done so thus far only because equality of opportunity has failed to suppress the excesses which result from women’s in-group preference once social, legal, educational and political equality has been attained. Suppression of that tendency is the price of emancipation.
Beyond that there is a world of positives to explore. And even if the dominant Western culture fades away to be replaced by another dominant culture, remnants of Western values may live on in small local communities. These will thrive and grow if they adopt the social mores identified by Unwin, and this does not preclude emancipation provided the right precautions are taken.
