Tag Archives: Chivalry

How feminism is opposed to chivalry, marriage and fathers

Feminism makes women unable to relate to men in healthy ways

Here are two non-negotiable beliefs of third-wave feminists.

  1. Feminists want women to believe and act exactly like men because they think there are no sex differences
  2. Feminists believe that romantic love, chivalry and motherhood are all bad because they involve sex differences

Consider this post on how men perceive feminism as being opposed chivalry, (which is a prerequisite for romantic love).

Last summer I polled college guys from across the country and abroad at the National Young America’s Foundation Conference in Washington, D.C. Ninety-three percent of them said that chivalry has decreased in current times, and 84 percent of that group attribute this decline primarily or at least partly to the rise of radical feminism in society.

One man stated that feminism “devalued chivalry and made it seem sexist.” Another man proposed that the “‘I-don’t-need-a-man culture has crippled chivalry in the public sphere.” Yet another said that it was “difficult” to be chivalrous because some women portray chivalry as “subordinating, disrespecting, and devaluing.”

It seems that men are lodged between a rock and a hard place. If they try to be chivalrous, feminists call them sexist. Yet if they treat us the way the feminists say we want to be treated—the same as a man—we complain of not getting enough respect.

How do guys define chivalry? Three out of four responded that it had to do with respect, honor, and courtesy towards women. One man spoke openly: “Chivalry is the notion that a man has the duty to respect and serve women.”

Another man affirmed: “It is a set of manners and respect a man should show to a woman as a demonstration of respect towards her.” Another guy said women “need to understand that chivalry isn’t being put down like feminism would like you to believe, but rather is a way a woman can command respect from a man.”

Too often, however, these same men lamented that their efforts to be chivalrous were met with scorn.

If you’re wondering where all the “good men” went, and why men are so “unromantic”, blame feminism. Women in the secular feminist West have been taught to rush into physical activity, (like men), instead of being taught how to judge a good man, and how to recognize and relate to good men. This leads to fewer good men because men respond to women’s expectations of them. Today, women don’t know how to evaluate a man to see if he is capable of marriage and parenting. Feminism’s strategy of “act like a man” is an epic fail – it just produces a lot of guilt and hurt for young women.

In Theodore Dalrymple’s book “Life at the Bottom”, he explains how nurses in his hospital pursue violent men because they are physically attracted to them, only to be beaten, impregnated and abandoned by them, again and again. When he asks the women why they cannot recognize bad men, they explain that its wrong to make moral judgments about men. One nurse believed that men were all the same, and that she could not know in advance if the relationship would “work out”.

Women learn how to relate to men by watching how their father treats their mother. Are men encouraged to marry and to become involved fathers by the secular feminist state?

Feminism has resulted in children being raised without fathers

Feminists favor socialism because the higher taxes force women to leave their children and home to work, and because a massive government reduces the need for women to marry a good man. Big government is there with social programs to cover up the choice of a bad man, so that choosing a good man becomes unnecessary. Women no longer value men for their ability to protect and provide, so men stop exhibiting those behaviors and instead become lazy and aggressive. Children are born out-of-wedlock and are raised without fathers, which has terrible effects on children.

Consider this research paper from the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

For decades, radical feminists depicted marriage as an oppressive institution that was injurious to women and children. In reality, facts show exactly the opposite: In general, marriage has profoundly beneficial effects on women, children, and men.

Foremost is the positive impact of marriage in alleviating poverty among mothers and children. On average, a mother who gives birth and raises a child outside of marriage is seven times more likely to live in poverty than is a mother who raises her children within a stable married family.70 Over 80 percent of long-term child poverty in the United States (where a child is poor for more than half of his or her life) occurs in never-married or broken households.71 Moreover, the economic benefits of marriage are not limited to the middle class; some 70 percent of never-married mothers would be able to escape poverty if they were married to the father of their children.72

The erosion of marriage is also a principal factor behind the growth of the current welfare state. A child born and raised outside marriage is six times more likely to receive welfare aid than is a child raised in an intact, married family. Each year, federal and state governments spend over $200 billion on means-tested aid for low-income families with children through programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, public housing, the earned income tax credit, and Medicaid. Of this total, some 75 percent ($150 billion) goes to single-parent families.73

Marriage has profound positive effects on the well-being of children. Children raised by single mothers are 14 times more likely to suffer serious physical abuse than children raised in intact, married families. Children raised in single-parent homes are much more likely to be depressed and to have developmental, behavioral, and emotional problems; such children are more likely to fail in school, use drugs, and engage in early sexual activity. They are also more likely to become involved in crime and to end up in jail as adults.74

While radical feminists condemn marriage as an institution that foments domestic violence against women, in fact, the opposite is true. Domestic violence is most common in the transitory, free-form, cohabitational relationships that feminists have long celebrated as replacements for traditional marriage. Specifically, never-married mothers are more than twice as likely to suffer from domestic violence than mothers who are or have been married.

Early sexual activity and criminal behavior are serious problems.

The rules for friendship and courtship between Christian men and women

This post will probably be changing as time passes and I learn more about relationships.

The goal

The goal of my opposite-sex friendships (hereafter just “friendships”) is for me to build up the skills of Christian women by exchanging training materials to work through, and monitoring progress. The training materials for friendship are centered around apologetics, with some conservative policy, as well. The friendships are beneficial to God because we are building each other up, and it also provides a context for us to evaluate changing to a courtship.

Most of my relationships with Christian women will never enter into the friendship phase because virtually none of them even care for apologetics. But some Christian women have shown an interest in apologetics and conservative policy and that’s what gets the friendship going.

I basically think about this friendship-courtship distinction as a continuum where passing through the gate from friendship to courtship is dependent on progress in sharing my vision with her and having her take appropriate steps to recognize and contribute to my vision. When a female Christian friend begins to contribute to my overall life vision, that’s the point at which we consider changing to a courtship.

Marriage

I am open to marrying any chaste female Christian. The grounds for the decision to marry are that the marriage would provide a better benefit to God in terms of his purposes in the world than if we continued to work separately. In particular, I am looking for my prospective mate to demonstrate her commitment to my four-pronged vision for serving God in the most effective ways. (See below)

I am also interested in whether she understands the challenges facing men and male needs, especially in areas like feminism, big government, no-fault divorce, child custody, etc. But I am also interested in her views in areas like chastity, modesty, grooming, physical fitness and expected frequency of marital sex. She must also recognize standards of chastity, chivalry and romance and participate in standard activities like letter-writing.

My vision

My vision involves operations in 4 areas:

The university:

  • get a PhD and teach in the university as a publicly-identified Christian OR no PhD, but teach in a community college
  • fund Christian scholars to lecture and debate at the university
  • fund research by intelligent design scholars
  • raise brilliant home-schooled children who can get PhDs and go on to impact the university

The church

  • bring scholars in to lecture and especially to debate in the church, and sponsor these events
  • teach adult Sunday school classes in apologetics (i.e. – show debates and discuss them, read books and discuss them)
  • find a wife who can help with these goals

The workplace

  • study apologetics and engage co-workers in discussions at lunch if they are interested
  • operate a library to lend out lectures and debates to those who are interested
  • give co-workers gifts at Christmas like DVDs on intelligent design or debates
  • put things in my office to declare myself as a thoughtful Christian
  • find a wife who can be hospitable, prepare meals and host discussions in our home

The public square

  • blog: inform and educate Christians about economic and public policies that affect our liberty
  • donate to Christian politicians who reflect my priorities
  • donate to other Christians who engage in debates on abortion, Islam, etc.
  • run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage wife to run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage kids to run for office after they retire from teaching at the universities

If a Christian woman is interested in having me assist her with learning apologetics and stuff, so she can serve God better, that’s called a friendship. If she starts to inquire about my vision and begins to show real recognition and support for it, that’s called a courtship.

The main thing is that God’s goals are always the center of our interactions. Marriage is not the end goal of the relationship. God’s goals in the world are the end. Marriage is just a possible means to that end. Being a good husband is a means to that end. Even being a good father is a means to that end.

The rules

Here are my rules for dealing with Christian women:

  1. No touching during friendship or courtship. This rule holds until the engagement day, where a kiss is permitted, but nothing more. The reason for this rule is to avoid losing 1) the ability to focus on my plan instead of women, and 2) the ability to evaluate Christian women objectively and dispassionately. (Note: I now think that hand-holding and hugging is OK once the initial evaluation of her is complete, and she starts to put in effort on the things that you care about, that are related to your plan)
  2. No being together by ourselves in non-public places without a chaperone. This applies to friendship and courtship.
  3. The friendship advances by exchanging and executing tasks that help us both to be more effective Christians. For example, listening to lectures together and stopping the lecture to discuss things, and then writing about the lecture afterward.
  4. The courtship advances by exchanging and executing tasks related to my vision. For example, we arrange a viewing of a debate or lecture DVD at her church and then jointly take questions from the audience.
  5. Gifts exchange is allowed during the friendship, but no tokens can be given to me.
  6. Token exchange (e.g. – a lady’s handkerchief with her colors), is reserved to mark the beginning of courtship. I have to carry it with me whenever I fight, and give reports to her on how I did. She can withdraw it, ending the courtship. I can also return it, ending the courtship. I can only carry one token at a time.
  7. Parents should be kept informed about the progress of friendships and courtships.
  8. Her parents have the right to engage me in discussions about my views on apologetics, etc. at any time during the friendship or courtship, but they do not have the right to override my vision with their vision.
  9. It helps me if women dress modestly, because I am more comfortable when a woman tries to attract me using non-physical approaches, like words. I resent it when women try to attract me using sex appeal instead of words. I like being in control of myself. Sex appeal is strictly for after the wedding. There are a million ways for a Christian woman to knock a Christian man off his feet just by taking an interest in things like apologetics and economics. The trick is to find a man who cares about being friends with God.
  10. I am looking to court someone who already has the skills to assist me with my vision, or who demonstrates a willingness to develop them, or who is able to persuade me that other skills are an even better match for my vision.

These are guidelines that I try to communicate to women to help us to constrain our relationship to serve God’s goals. These are all subject to discussion and debate, of course.

I think that one of the effects of these rules is to take the pressure to be “sexy” off of women. And to remove sex from the equation entirely – there is no room for clumsy groping in the back seat of a car in this operation. Instead, a woman wins the heart of a man if she is willing to listen to him, learn about his needs as a man, and his vision to serve God, and then work hard to recognize and support all that.

Sample activities

In a friendship, the first steps are going to involve a lot of studying and talking. For example, it is not uncommon for me to spend 2-6 hours just talking to a Christian woman about spiritual things. We do independent studies around things like reading the same books, listening to the same lectures, or even doing the political compass or resurrection questionnaires together. Individual tasks for me from her might include Bible reading, church attending, bringing her resources that she asks for, writing about my feelings and experiences, etc.

I believe in exchanging tasks so that the woman gets into the pattern of getting outside her own needs and thinking about her obligations to me. My concern is that a lot of women have a fairy tale view of marriage. She picks a man for superficial reasons and hopes to change him later. This leads women to ignore male needs and the man’s vision prior to marriage. The man is tricked into the marriage by pre-marital sexual activity.

Unfortunately choosing a bad man and then tricking him with sex doesn’t work to keep that man as her appearance fades. This is particularly bad for women whose self-esteem is tied to appearance. And I think that is a major reason why women are so interested in no-fault divorce and massive government social programs – to relieve them of the burden of having to choose the right man and having to work to win him and having to work to keep him.

Real men find big government very discouraging, which is why men are not interested in marriage any more. The prospect of facing activist family courts run by feminists is too much for thoughtful men to contemplate. Men can’t support a family on a salary that is highly taxed to pay for things like VAWA or welfare programs, or single-payer health care. Men also don’t want to lose access to their kids based on fake charges of domestic violence.

I know that these rules and procedures are going to strike a lot of you as odd, and some of you are going to stop reading my blog because I am just too weird. Well, I think you should just snicker at me and keep reading. After all, someone has to be different. The only people really in a position to judge whether this is working are my female Christian friends, and God. I myself am very happy with these rules because they help me to put God first.

Building Christian women up

One last thing. The man’s role in the relationship is to love his wife all the time, and to do it intelligently. It’s therefore imperative for him to read about how women understand love. I recommend the book “The Five Love Languages” for learning about how to love women well. Also, it’s a great idea to read all about how women think and feel about what they do in a marriage, so that you can support them after first understanding them. A good book to read on that is “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women: and similar books. It’s a good idea to think about how to become better at leading by persuasion – by convincing women to grow upward. For example, I convinced one girl I was courting to go back to school and do a degree in economics. Another one went back to school get her law degree. And this not to even mention the basic stuff that women I court do – like organizing public debates, apologetics conferences, teaching apologetics in the church, finding summer jobs, getting top grades in school, giving public speeches, and so on. Courting is the time where you intentionally lead women to become stronger.

In the 2012 the Presidential election, I supported Michele Bachmann as my first choice for the office of President. Her husband Marcus is very traditional about courtship and marriage, just like me. He actually asked her to go back to school at one point to specialize in tax law, in order to help the family business and be better at pushing the children upward through school. That was a smart decision, to grow his wife up like that so that she could be better. So whatever you do in the courtship, your goal should always be to push women up, up, up. And that applies whether she is for you or for someone else or for no one else. Make her better than she used to be so that she can serve God better – to be a better wife and mother, and to have more of an influence in the world for Christ and his Kingdom. Never, ever bring her down or minimize the impact she can have for good. She is a partner in serving God, after all.

Related posts

Neil has a related post on complementarian marriage (which is my view).

Mona Charen explains how individual initiative is dying in America

Mona Charen writing in the National Review Online. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A plucky teller foiled a robbery attempt at Key Bank in Seattle. But the story does not end happily. When a small man in a beanie cap, dark clothing, and sunglasses pushed a backpack across the counter and announced, “This is a ransom. Fill the bag with money,” teller Jim Nicholson ignored his training and “instinct took over.” He lunged across the counter and attempted to grab the thief by the throat, or at least to pull his glasses off. The nonplussed would-be robber bolted for the door with Nicholson on his heels. A couple of blocks away, with the help of others, Nicholson tackled the guy and held him until police arrived.

Two days later, Key Bank got in touch with Nicholson. A bonus, perhaps? A commendation? Not quite. He was fired. It seems he had violated the bank’s strict policy that tellers should always comply with robber demands. A Key Bank spokesman has not returned a call asking for comment.

It gets worse, though. OK, everyone know s that I absolutely adore birds. All kinds of birds, but especially cockatiels. Birds are the most cuddly and adorable creatures in the world and I want to make friends with all of them whenever I see them. We have Canadian geese that walk around my building and I whistle to them. They stop, lift up their heads and stare at me. Sometimes, they honk back, if I honked at them first.

Look at this tragedy:

We see Canadian geese crossing roadways all the time here in Fairfax County. Usually it’s an adult goose followed by four to six fuzzy gray goslings with another adult goose bringing up the rear. One assumes it is a family unit. Jozsef Vamosi was driving to work around 9:30 a.m. when he saw such a family assembling to cross a busy thoroughfare. “They were walking like gentlemen,” Vamosi told the Washington Post. “Like the Beatles on ‘Abbey Road.’” Vamosi got out of his car, held up a hand to stop traffic and escorted the birds to the median. He then did the same thing on the other side of the road. The geese went safely on their way. “Everything came out fantastic,” the Hungarian immigrant explained. That is, until a Fairfax County police officer arrived on the scene berating Vamosi and questioning his sanity. Vamosi was issued a ticket for jaywalking. A police spokesman advised, “We can appreciate the citizen’s response and compassion for wildlife. But a more prudent response would be to pull off the road and use their cellphone. Call the police, and have them respond.”

By the time even the most responsive police could have arrived for such a call (and don’t they have more important matters to attend to?) the geese would have been pâté. Nicholson and Vamosi acted on impulse — and I for one would not like to live in a country where such instincts have been ironed out of us.

Stop taking away all of our chances to be heroic, you stupid bureaucracy!

Oh – speaking of that, I was talking on my cell phone outside the office last week when one of our female Democrats came out. It had just started to rain really hard. So I asked her for her car keys and brought the car around for her so she would not get wet. (I got soaked!) I suppose that if the feminists find out, I would be sued. This is what men are supposed to do for women.

This is also why men (and women) should be allowed to own firearms and carry them. We should not be calling the cops when a crime can be prevented just by brandishing a firearm.