Molly on love

I recently wrote a post on duality between men and women, pointing out a basic way that the instincts of men and women fit together in a complementary union. However, I was careful as well to note that relationships between the sexes aren't always simple to navigate. Take, as an example, the following tweets from an American woman named Molly. She begins with this:

She elaborates with the following:

Her base impulse was to associate love with an intensity of feeling, and this intensity of feeling was brought on by the thrill of uncertainty, of being left on the edge of her seat not knowing if the person would stay or go, of not knowing securely what the other person felt, of chaos and pain and so on.

This attitude has been recognised in the manosphere for some time, with young men being advised not to give away commitment too easily but to make a woman work for it; to remain something of a mystery; to keep excitement in the relationship and so on.

Even so, it's not an attitude that fits well with marriage. In marriage a man makes a firm and clear commitment to a woman - she is not meant to feel uncertain whether he will stay or not. Similarly, in marriage a man vows to protect and provide - he is not meant to make her experience chaos and pain.

So what's the solution? Well, at least part of the strategy is the one that Molly herself suggests, which is to try to overcome base impulse with something more elevated, namely a love that is settled in the will, that wills the good of the other person, that is willing to self-sacrifice for the larger good of the marriage and the family, and that aims to cultivate, as best we can, the finer qualities of our masculinity and femininity (as Molly puts it both for ourselves and for our spouse).

But this more elevated concept of love doesn't come to all people readily. It helps if it is part of the culture, of the ground within which people grow and form character. It cannot be taken for granted, but needs to be deliberately fostered generation by generation.

Stacey's feminism

I saw the following tweet this morning:

It was followed by this exchange:

Stacey seems to be pushing the idea that women should pursue their collective self-interests whilst men should also pursue women's collective self-interests. I replied:

And that's where feminism is at. There is an assumption, a remarkable assumption, that men in the past pursued their collective self-interests at the expense of women. So that it can now be justified as "equality" if the reverse is true and we have a society in which both sexes pursue the material self-interests of women.

This ideology helps to explain why there is so little gratitude for the sacrifices of men, past and present, within a feminist culture. How can there be gratitude when feminists assume that men did not make sacrifices, but instead acted out of a collective self-interest?

I think Stacey and other feminists are in for a shock. If feminists were to succeed in convincing people that the point of life is to pursue our self-interests, then relationships between men and women would degrade very quickly. Stacey is trying to circumvent this by requiring men to follow women's self-interests, rather than their own. But that just sets up an ideological tension. She is, in effect arguing:

1. The point in life is a pursuit of one's own material self-interests.
2. Men should pursue women's self-interests.

The second part of the argument contradicts the first. Therefore, it's not likely to hold in the longer term.

Stacey is wrong about Western culture. I've been reading Our Borders, Ourselves by the late Lawrence Auster. In the chapter "What is the West" Auster observes that "one of the characteristic features of Western culture is the drive toward self-transcendence". He elaborates by describing this as "the idea that man attains the true order of his being only by being united with a truth outside his own being." Auster complains that this aspect of Western culture has been undermined:

On the Left, the reduction of the human being to the power-seeking and resentful self not only denies the spirit but by doing so denies the balance of earthly and spiritual that is the essence of the West.

Young Western men have been drawn historically to family life for many reasons. Obviously the sex instinct played a part, as did a desire to have children and to fulfil masculine aspects of self related to being a father and husband. In the past, too, there was a social function to marriage, as sex roles were more differentiated than they are today. Men who wanted to preserve their own family and national traditions would also have sought out marriage.

But added to all this was the drive that Lawrence Auster describes. A man's love for a woman can, at its best, focus a man on a good outside of his own self that (hopefully) balances both the earthly (a flesh and blood woman/carnal desire) and the spiritual (the good of love/a transcendent sense of the feminine/mystery in the unity and drawing together and attraction of the masculine & feminine). This then can powerfully inspire a man toward sacrificial love and toward deeper loyalties and commitments.

But it only works if a man keeps the balance right (e.g. does not idolise & remains aware of human infirmities & works within the limits of human nature) and if women inspire this kind of love by embodying feminine virtue sufficiently.

And here's the thing. Whereas Western women were once raised toward habits of feminine virtue, they are now encouraged to rebel against it. Lawrence Auster writes about this in his book, in a section titled "The Rebellion against the Father":

In all its forms, the phenomenon we've been discussing represents the loss of authority in a father image. Symbolically, the father is the structuring source of our existence, whether we are speaking of male authority, of the law, of right and wrong, of our nation, of our heritage, of our civilization, of our biological nature, of our God. All these structuring principles of human life, in their different ways, are symbolically the father. The rebellion we've discussed is...a rebellion against the father. The belief that the universe is structured, intelligible, and fundamentally good, and that one can participate in this universe - this is the experience of having a father, which is the opposite of the experience of alienation that drives contemporary culture. (p.12)

We live in a culture shaped by intellectuals who have rebelled against the "structuring sources of our existence" and who prefer to stand, instead, within their own individual orbit, as beings defiantly organised by their own will and desires and choices alone.

There is an element of this mindset, it seems to me, in the aggressive way that some women promote abortion, or refigure their bodies with tattoos, or speak gracelessly or dress immodestly. The same kind of women will often hate male authority figures (commonly identified these days as old white men), but will believe at the same time in a diffuse, universal ethic of care. The latter is the go to version of morality because it is not a structuring principle of reality - it doesn't judge right or wrong and nor does it direct our loves and loyalties in any given direction (hence the apparent contradiction of leftist women hating conservative men with a passion whilst at the same time claiming universal benevolence).

Lawrence Auster wrote about the effect of feminism on men and women that,

All that's left to attract them to each other is their bodies, their bare utility, or their power, with the further result that...the love, sympathy, and friendship that used to prevail between men and women is reduced to jungle combat. (p.134)

You can see this in Stacey's feminism. Men exist for utility (serving women's purposes). What matters is a contest for power and material self-interest.

It's not difficult to predict that women will get far less out of men this way than under the old culture, in which men thought of marital love as one aspect of attaining "the true order of their being".

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

A change of heart?

Six years ago Chrissy Stockton (writing as Amy Glass) wrote a piece titled "I look down on young women with husbands and kids and I'm not sorry".

The argument is one that crops up every now and then in feminist circles. The problem to be addressed is this:

1. Liberalism wants maximum individual autonomy. This means that each individual is to be free to choose as they wish without restraint, unless it limits the choice of others.

2. This presents a conundrum if a woman chooses to be a stay at home mother. On the one hand this choice does not maximise her autonomy as she is choosing to be interdependent within a family rather than an independent individual focusing on solo development. This fails the liberal principle. On the other hand, if she cannot choose to be a stay at home mother the liberal principle is also denied.

Chrissy Stockton argues in her piece that the stay at home option is the one that fails the test:

Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit.

Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself?

Here she is clearly advancing the argument that what matters is independence. She goes on to draw out the argument that motherhood, being something common to women, is not a uniquely self-determined achievement - it is not "exceptional":

Having kids and getting married are considered life milestones. We have baby showers and wedding parties as if it’s a huge accomplishment and cause for celebration to be able to get knocked up or find someone to walk down the aisle with. These aren’t accomplishments, they are actually super easy tasks, literally anyone can do them. They are the most common thing, ever, in the history of the world.

...I want to have a shower for a woman when she backpacks on her own through Asia, gets a promotion, or lands a dream job not when she stays inside the box and does the house and kids thing...

...You will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional if you have a husband and kids.

So in this worldview showing your independence by backpacking alone in a foreign country is a greater achievement than getting married and having children. (Which may help explain those articles encouraging women to journey solo to those parts of the world most dangerous to women - this being the realm of liberal female accomplishment.)

Chrissy Stockton wrote another piece at around the same time titled "Successful women do not fall in love". Again, this is one of those opinions that appears in feminist thought from time to time. The argument is that if what matters is a uniquely self-determined accomplishment, and if this accomplishment is our career, that love distracts us from our career goals and should be suppressed. Alexandra Kollontai, writing in the early twentieth century, put it this way:

this motive was a leading force in my life ... to shape my personal, intimate life as a woman according to my own will ... Above all, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life ...

I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love ... still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy ... utterly worthless ... We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labour power.

A century later Chrissy Stockton followed suit by arguing that it is important for a woman to guard against the impulse toward self-sacrificing love:

We’re kind of brainwashed to take care of other people, and make them happy and for me, being single is kind of an armor guarding against whatever cultural or biological intuitions are telling me, as a woman, to be self-sacrificial.

...I am in love with myself, in love with building my work, which will outlive me, and in love with proving people wrong, the ones who told me what I couldn’t do– be happy and secure and the center of my own world.

There were criticisms of Chrissy Stockton's attitude toward mothers. She defended herself by writing:

If we were convinced that motherhood and being a wife was a freely made goal that did not in any way encumber women, my post wouldn’t have over 200k social shares, I wouldn’t have received hundreds of emails in the span of a few days...

That's a revealing comment. It shows how much Chrissy Stockton based her ideas on a liberal worldview. Note that being a wife and mother are put in question because they are not "freely made goals" (i.e. not self-determined) and because they "encumber women". The dictionary definition of encumber is "restrict or impede (someone or something) in such a way that free action or movement is difficult." Liberals often use the term "encumbered self" in a disparaging way.

This is highly significant for what comes next. To this point in time, Chrissy Stockton's ideal is a world in which we are not restricted, in which our free action or movement is not impeded. It is also a world in which self-sacrificing love is a barrier to achievement and in which relationships are too ordinary to matter. And it is a world in which we are to develop solo, in denial of the longstanding belief that we are fundamentally social creatures.

Fast forward to the present day. Has Chrissy Stockton proved her critics wrong and become "happy and secure and the center of my own world"? Well, no. She does have an interesting job as an editor of an online magazine. She admits, though, that she has an anxiety disorder and that she is frustrated in love. She has also come around to the view that love is a fundamental human need. Most interestingly, she acknowledges that an unrestrained dating culture undermines her own ability to form loving relationships - an illustration of why restraint can work toward the human good (and should not always be sacrificed to the liberal aim of maximising individual autonomy).

Here she is, for instance, describing how a hook up culture can leave people jaded and less able to pair bond:

I don’t have an infinite reservoir inside me of love and affection and self-confidence. When a guy ghosts me...it has a cost. I have to spend months getting over this.

Instead of viewing marriage and motherhood as being "super easy" to achieve, she now worries that they won't happen for her:

Men and women seem so different. There are so many ways we don’t speak the same language and yet there’s this overwhelming sense that I should one day find complete partnership with a dude. It seems like such an unlikely thing that we understand each other’s needs and are free enough from baggage and emotional dis-ease that this will become a reality.

It feels very disorienting to be asking for someone to at least be polite when they decide they don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t think these guys would behave rudely to a stranger they met off the street, but they are rude to me and it is sad and confusing.

Men lose interest when they’ve slept with you. It’s not the beginning of anything for them, it’s the end.

I just want to be full-time adored.

It’s scary that it’s [getting married] supposed to be so important but also that it’s so hard

It’s scary to be worn down. There are many things that get better with aging but you have to work purposefully at not getting bitter and the more tired I get the harder it is to frame my dating life as something other than failing. What is going to happen if I fail for another 10 years? I think it would be just fine to be single for 10 years or the rest of my life but I’m not sure I can take the pressure of knowing that I failed at something that is so fundamental to our humanity.

She is now complaining not of being encumbered by marriage but of men's fear of commitment. She writes to one such man as follows:

Maybe you’re afraid of commitment. The way someone runs from a scary monster or a man with an axe. But I’m a girl with a cozy bed and a full heart and a hand to hold. I want to love you...

Maybe you’re just busy. Though we all know “busy” means something like “I have a lot I’d rather do” and like I told you when we were in bed with our whole bodies touching: I just don’t know what else there is, besides this.

From previously having diminished the importance of relationships with men, she now utters the line "I just don't know what else there is, besides this."

She wrote this about another man who would not commit:

I spent a lot of nights that spring touching his skin and playing him music and telling him how great he was. In retrospect every feeling I was trying to hold in was completely called for, natural, and appropriate for the situation.

Nothing about the act of caring for someone makes you crazy. It’s human to care. It’s human to have a relationship with the people who touch us and play music for us and tell us how great we are. But we were in a silent competition to care less than the other person, to keep it more casual, to act more indifferent. Which is a pretty gross way to go through life.

She had once commended the suppression of love as a way of staying free to focus on career. Now an indifference to love is described as "a pretty gross way to go through life".

Here is a poem she wrote idealising love for a man:

We sit under cedar rafters
Cross legged and
Palms pressed
Together
I say that I will make you the best person you can be
And
You will make me
Too
And
I trust you completely
And
Everything in our lives together will be good and beautiful
And
With my eyes big like
Saucers
In the Cancerian full moon
(Imagine that light on your skin in your bedroom at night)
I confess
(Light a candle with a wooden match)
Each
(Wrap each arm around your body and
Compress
And
Soften)
And
(Exhale deeply)
Every
(Soften)
Way that I love him.
(Soften).

Her strident views on solo development and achievement also seem to have mellowed:

I don’t think I’m a particularly strong woman...And here’s the thing: I shouldn’t have to be strong. Why should I have to possess every single positive quality?...

...Here’s another thing: we need each other. We need each other to be different.

It’s so easy to see this with parenting. It’s not very controversial to say it seems ideal for kids to be raised by two parents. We acknowledge that mothers and fathers generally bring something different (and valuable) to the table

...The gift of community is that we don’t have to be uniform. We don’t have to do everything on our own, our gifts serve the collective and our weaknesses are balanced by it.

I don’t want to have to be strong when I think the ways I am weak are a price I pay for the other valuable assets I bring to my community. I am good at making people feel loved. I don’t care if it makes me too vulnerable sometimes. I’m okay with that. When people tell me all women are strong, there is a way I hear “it’s not okay for you not to be strong.” There is a way that this devalues characteristics that have long been associated with women.

Instead of promoting solo achievement along tough masculine lines, she is now defending what is brought by the feminine to a community.

Chrissy Stockton's story illustrates some of the weaknesses in the liberal worldview that is currently our state ideology. Her younger self was wrong to believe that it is only a uniquely self-determined achievement that brings meaning. There are experiences "fundamental to our humanity" that we do not uniquely self-determine but that still bring fulfilment, including loving relationships with the opposite sex. Nor are all women suited by nature to a lone wolf life of personal ambition or rugged individualism; Chrissy Stockton acknowledges that her own gifts as a woman are more relational.

The liberal belief that we should liberate people from restraints has also failed women like Chrissy Stockton. Some of the restraints on behaviour in traditional societies were aimed at fostering family formation and preserving the ability of people to pair bond. Without them men and women increasingly lose trust in and admiration for the opposite sex. In theory Chrissy Stockton has been sexually liberated, but it has left her working "purposefully at not getting bitter".

Chrissy Stockton does seem to have had something of a change of heart over the past six years. Perhaps others will do likewise and there will be a better chance to open up a conversation about the place of liberalism within Western culture.

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

Houellebecq & Liberal Modernity

Michel Houellebecq

There's an interesting review at American Affairs of Sérotonine, the latest novel by French author Michel Houellebecq.

The reviewer is none other than Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch party Forum for Democracy, which made significant gains in the elections in The Netherlands earlier this year.

Baudet notes that the characters in Houellebecq's novels are portrayed as grappling with the alienating effects of liberal modernity - of a society which is focused on maximising individual autonomy to a degree that dissolves traditional forms of identity and belonging and which also makes stable, enduring relationships difficult to maintain:

At some point in the course of their lives, all of Houellebecq’s characters are forced to acknowledge that their romantic ideals have be­come untenable in the modern age, since individualism has made profound, long-term relationships impossible. This simple idea forms the fundamental conviction of Houellebecq’s work. It echoes, in certain ways, Marxist Verelendungstheorie: as technological inno­vations have made jobs boring and interchangeable, and as free trade has destroyed traditional farm life and honest labor, we now pass through life as atomized wage slaves in the service of incomprehensible, unfathomable government organizations and overwhelmingly powerful multinational corporations. Erratic consumer preferences, capricious fashions, and an unpredictable herd instinct dictate the opinions (or the whims and fancies) of most of us who no longer have a family, a home, a church, and a nation to reinforce our sense of identity. Unable to chart a course for ourselves, we are floating around in an empty sea. Rudderless. All control of life—andof who we are—is lost.

The fault lies on both sides of the mainstream political spectrum. As a European, Baudet labels these the social democrats on the left and the liberals (classical liberals) on the right:

Now this fundamental point which Houellebecq makes time and again deserves further reflection, because it challenges the very fun­damentals of both the contemporary “Left” and the “Right.” It challenges modern anthropology as such. Both the social-dem­ocratic and the liberal wing of the modern political spectrum (re­spectively advocating the welfare state and the free market) wish to maximize individual autonomy. Liberalism and socialism differ when it comes to the most effective way to achieve that objective, but they do not differ in the objective itself. They are both liberation movements; they both want the complete emancipation of the indi­vidual.

And both base their vision of society on the (unfounded but supposedly “self-evident”) principle that every individual enjoys certain “inalienable rights,” which by definition eclipse all other claims, and to which all other ties, loyalties, and connections must ultimately be subordinated. Over time, all such institutions that the individual requires to fully actualize a meaningful existence—such as a family and a connection to generations past and future, a nation, a tradition, perhaps a church—will weaken and eventually disappear. Today, even new life (in the womb) may be extinguished to avoid disturbing the individual’s freedom. In the Netherlands (where I live), suicide is facilitated to ensure that here, too, no constraints—such as the duty to care for your parents—are placed on the indi­vidual.

It is this fundamental assumption of the modern age—that individual autonomy (be it through free markets or welfarism) leads to happiness—which Michel Houellebecq challenges.

The weakness that Baudet identifies in Houellebecq's writing is defeatism. Houellebecq captures the descent skillfully but cannot see a way out.

There is much more in the review - I recommend clicking on the link and reading it in full.

The Bible, nations & migration

Scott Greer makes a good point in this tweet:

As an example, when an American Catholic priest, Fr Frank Pavone, announced his support for border protection he was roundly condemned by people who assumed that this was unChristian:

It seems to me that there is an important issue to be resolved here when it comes to Christianity. I'm going to try to explain what the issue is and how it might be resolved, but I want to make it clear at the outset that I do so without claiming theological expertise, so I am very much open to listening to other points of view.

The issue is that there seem, at least on the surface, to be two principles in the Bible that run against each other. Those who think that the Bible is supportive of open borders can point to some passages in the New Testament. The most powerful one is Matthew 25:31. In this passage, Matthew writes of the second coming of Jesus and of Judgement Day. He writes that Jesus says "I was a stranger and you took me in" as one criterion of who will be judged righteous.

Another is the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke. In this parable, the "good neighbour" is a Samaritan who has mercy for an Israelite, despite the two groups being in opposition. The field of mercy, benevolence and compassion is here defined as extending even to our enemies (which fits with the "love thy enemy" principle).

Unsurprisingly, there are liberal Christians who, on the basis of such passages, argue for open borders or for large scale refugee programs. An example:

The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office bases its support for immigration and refugee programs on the ground that:

In the Gospel, Jesus compels us to welcome the stranger (Matthew 25:35)

Is it, then, an open and shut case? Does Christianity compel us to accept a borderless, nationless, one world philosophy?

Well, no. There are other passages in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, which clearly indicate that it is part of God's design for people to live in nations. The aim is not to dissolve such distinctions.

Even the Matthew quote, about the second coming, begins with the natural division of mankind into distinct communities: "All the nations will be gathered before him." This suggests that Matthew himself thought that the "take in the stranger" message was not to be understood in a way that would undermine the existence of unique nations of people.

From Paul (Acts 17:26) "From one man he made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth, fixing the seasons of the year and the national boundaries within which they live."

From Deuteronomy 32:8 - "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples."

Remember, too, the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). This describes humanity attempting to defy God's plan for people to live in separate nations, with different languages, which then displeases God. God punishes those who seek to erase national distinctions.

There is more, which I will try to explain shortly. But I'd like to return to Matthew. How can you reconcile the principle of hospitality that Matthew sets out ("I was a stranger and you took me in") with the Biblical principle of a humanity divided into distinct nations with borders established by God?

I think it helps to consider how hospitality might have been understood within the existing Hebraic tradition and culture. Here is how one professor describes the background to New Testament hospitality:

The terrain surrounding Jerusalem is rugged and unforgiving: rocky hills with little water to the west, forbidding desert to the east, scorching temperatures most of the year. Travel could be dangerous, so hospitality to the traveller was an ongoing need and a sacred duty. The New Testament is full of images and stories of guests received, both those already known as friends and those strangers who are taken in and transformed into guests. Among nomadic tribes, the guest comes under the protection of the host, who guarantees inviolable safety. The important elements of hospitality include the opportunity for cleansing dusty feet, scented oil to soften dried skin and mask odors of the road, food, shelter, security, and companionship.

It should be noted too that there had been, historically, a custom of nomadic pastoralism among the Jews:

A nomadic camp consisted of about 25 to 50 members. Any less and it would be difficult to protect the family and any more would be difficult to feed. Usually the oldest member of the family was the head, or chief, of the tribe. The remainder of the clan would consist of his brothers, sons, nephews and grandsons as well as their wives and children. Each clan was an independent entity with the chief as judge and ruler. He had the ultimate authority in all manners including where they go, discipline, management of the flocks and herds and the daily tasks of the camp.

When a clan became too large to support, it was divided and separated with all of the clans belonging to one tribe. The name of the tribe was generally that of the original family patriarch and each clan of the tribe carried the name of its original patriarch.

...One of the major responsibilities of the clan is to provide hospitality to anyone who comes to them. This may be a member of a related clan or even an enemy of another tribe. In both cases it was the responsibility of the clan to provide food, shelter and protection as long as they were within their camp.

You can see from this:

1. Hospitality is especially important when conditions of travel are difficult. You have to imagine a time before modern transport and communications systems.

2. There was already a well-developed culture of hospitality existing at that time, in which protection was to be afforded the traveller.

You can see why Matthew would not have thought it a contradiction to accept hospitality as a test of benevolence whilst at the same time accepting nations as a divinely ordained plan for humanity.

Hospitality was embedded within the culture, to the point that it had rituals that were observed. There was likely to be a single guest who would be temporarily hosted before continuing his travels. The guest might be known already to the clan (lowest level of benevolence) or be a stranger (higher level) or even from a hostile tribe (highest). However, most guests would have been fellow Jews.

Given that a patriarch ruled the clan, that guests were mostly travellers, and that most guests were fellow Jews, it's not the case that the culture of hospitality would have ceded either political power or cultural dominance to a radically different population.

In other words, hospitality as a test of benevolence would not have led to many millions of permanent residents arriving suddenly from a different continent.

The problem is that there are some Christians today who want a form of hospitality that does have this outcome, i.e. one that would lead the host nation to be subsumed under the weight of mass immigration. For instance, the female pastor quoted above claims that there are no limits on immigration allowed by the Bible:

This seems to me to be taking the letter of the law rather than its underlying principle.

Earlier I wrote that there were other reasons for doubting that the Bible compels us to have open borders. One of them is that there are multiple defences of "storge" in the New Testament, the type of love that is generally associated with love of family and nation.

The use of terms like "agape" and "storge" to describe different kinds of love is not always clear cut, but one scholar describes "storge" in the New Testament as denoting "a natural affection, a sentiment innate and peculiar to men as men...Hence of the natural love of kindred, of people and king (the relation being regarded as founded in nature)".

Paul, in Acts 1:31, says of the unrighteous that they are without storge, translated usually as "without natural affection". This is part of a longer text in which Paul states that God reveals himself to man in the creation, but that the unrighteous choose to act nonetheless in a series of naturally disordered ways, one piece of evidence for this is that they lack "storge".

Then there is Paul's second epistle to Timothy, in which he writes "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love [without storge], unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous."

That Paul regarded such natural kinship relations, and the duties flowing from them, as being part of a rightly ordered community is evident from other passages. Paul writes for instance, in 1 Timothy 5:8, that "if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever." Similarly (1 Timothy 5:4) "But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God."

This idea of love of kin and country as a naturally ordered affection survived into the culture of Christian countries. Metternich in 1820 wrote of "one of the sentiments most natural to man, that of nationality." And in 1828 Eliza Fenton, on a sea journey to Australia, was unsettled to find that one of the crew was an Englishman turned Arab. She observed that,

His taste seems to lie in laying bare the unsightly movements of the human heart and crushing its better feelings, or dwelling on them with bitterness and ridicule...Poor fellow! though it always makes me nervous to hear him speak, I pity him too; he may not always have been what he now is; has he been made this [way] by disappointment or alienation from the humanising relationships of life?

The significant point in all this is that the loves that we have for family and people, i.e. the natural affections (and duties) that flow from kinship, are not alien to New Testament thought, and their absence is considered proof of unrighteousness and of the fall of society and social relationships in the end days.

Finally, I'd like to look at some of the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on the question of both patriotism and immigration.

The Catechism (2241) is supportive of secure borders: "The second duty is to secure one's border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good." As the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it (in the entry on "justice"): "It is the function of the State to protect its subjects in their rights and to govern the whole body for the common good."

Also from the Catholic Encyclopedia (on "migration"): "The justification [for restriction] is to be found in the right of a nation to control the variations of its own population....Restrictive measures are also justified...on the general ground that a national family has a right to say who shall join it."

From Catholicism.org:

Patriotism is a great virtue. To be a patriot is to love one’s fatherland. This means that it is to love the land of the people that sired you. Patriotism is a natural overflow of the virtue of piety — that is, the virtue of the home. As piety would have us rendering what is due in justice to parents and other family members, patriotism would have us render the same to our nation, its government, and our fellow citizens. Both of these are a matter of justice, for the virtues of piety and patriotism are parts of that cardinal virtue. Over and above justice is the theological virtue of charity, which also enters into a consideration of Catholic piety and patriotism. After God, we love our neighbors, that is, those who are “nigh” to us, meaning near us. Those most near to us are our parents and our siblings.

Our charity, as well as the just demands of piety and patriotism, spread out in broadening concentric circles from the family home to the neighborhood, to the town or city, to the state, to the region, to the nation (or empire), of which we are a resident, citizen, or subject. If we see our country as “our people” — something much more possible in homogeneous, non-pluralistic societies — it is much easier to see how piety quite naturally becomes patriotism...Thus patriotism is a rootedness in the land and its people.

Does love discriminate?

In my last post I criticised a newspaper column written by Nicole Ferrie. She didn't like Senator Cory Bernardi arguing that the traditional family is an ideal to aim for. Instead, she believes that all family types are equal, on the basis that all that a family needs is love and respect.

One thing I missed in that post was the headline to Nicole Ferrie's column: "Love does not discriminate." It's the sort of nice sounding comment that's easy to gloss over.

But then the thought struck me that, hey, love actually does discriminate and in obvious ways. For instance, if you say that love doesn't discriminate then you are denying the possibility of heterosexual love, in which we love only those of the opposite sex and discriminate against those of the same sex. Similarly, you are denying the possibility of monogamous love in which we discriminate against all others in favour of just one person.

Marital love is discriminatory - we love our spouse in a preferential way. Patriotic love likewise is directed at one country and discriminates against others. And what about friendship? If love doesn't discriminate, then isn't friendship a bit meaningless? Doesn't feeling friendship with another person mean that you love them in a different way than you love others?

What about paternal love and maternal love? Aren't these directed at our own children, thereby discriminating against other children?

Even when it comes to feeling love for a stranger, this is at least partly directed at those strangers we meet or have some potential connection with. The Good Samaritan, after all, didn't help out all strangers equally; he tended to the injured man he met on the road. He didn't give his money to all strangers equally.

I think it's worth pointing this out, as obvious as it is, because it is an important criticism to raise against liberalism in general. If you are a liberal, and you want individuals to be able to self-define their own goods, then any kind of "supporting goods" that you raise in an argument have to be either vaguely universal and abstract or else aimed at promoting an equal choice.

For instance, if Nicole Ferrie wants people to be able to choose whatever family type they want, then it helps her to argue that "all that you need to make this work is vaguely universal and abstract quality x"  - which she lists as love and respect. If "all you need is love" (in a vague and abstract way) then the way is clear for people to be free to choose in any direction as autonomous individuals. A vaguely universal love doesn't stand in the way of anything.

But what if women need marital love? What if a child needs (optimally) paternal and maternal love? Then suddenly some choices become more objectively moral than others, which then contradicts the liberal idea that we can self-define our own goods however we want.

Hanna Rosin celebrates loveless youth

Confused about the state of relationships? Well, if you're not now you will be after reading Hanna Rosin's latest piece, "Boys on the side" (warning: it's crude in parts)

Rosin's essay is a clumsy attempt to reconcile the conflict between the liberal demand for an autonomous, independent, single person lifestyle based on career and casual relationships, and the normal human desires for love and family.

Rosin begins by celebrating a coarse hook up culture, which she believes is used by young women to avoid serious relationships with men so that women can dedicate themselves to career and independence:

The sexual culture may be more coarse these days, but young women are more than adequately equipped to handle it, because unlike the women in earlier ages, they have more-important things on their minds, such as good grades and intern­ships and job interviews and a financial future of their own. The most patient and thorough research about the hookup culture shows that over the long run, women benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or all that much shame, and where they can enter into temporary relation­ships that don’t get in the way of future success.

OK, that makes it sound as if success in life is measured by career and independence. The message is repeated in this passage:

Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-­school party—are for the first time in history more success­ful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.

You would think that a woman's sexual prime would be the most logical time for a woman to try to attract a serious suitor - but Hanna Rosin doesn't see it this way. It's only when a woman is past her sexual prime that a serious suitor might be considered - before then he is "a danger to be avoided at all costs" as he might "get in the way of a promising future".

Now if what really matters is career and independence then why not give up on marriage altogether? Marriage, after all, requires a commitment to others. And Hanna Rosin does at times run down the idea of marriage. She writes:

There is no retreating from the hookup culture to an earlier age, when a young man showed up at the front door with a box of chocolates for his sweetheart, and her father eyed him warily. Even the women most frustrated by the hookup culture don’t really want that. The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself.

Women want a hookup culture, she writes. It's fabulous. It represents freedom and self-reliance. She goes on to claim that,

Young men and women have discovered a sexual freedom unbridled by the conventions of marriage, or any conventions.

So it's all clear to this point. The hookup culture, whatever distress it might cause to young women, is a source of freedom and progress for women. A lack of conventions is held to be a good thing. Best not for women to have serious or lasting relationships with men. Flings with unsuitable men are the way to go.

But then the clarity fades away. All of a sudden we get this conclusion:

But that’s not how the story ends...Ultimately, the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women. Even for those business-school women, their hookup years are likely to end up as a series of photographs, buried somewhere on their Facebook page, that they do or don’t share with their husband—a memory that they recall fondly or sourly, but that hardly defines them.

Oh, really? So women are to spend ages 15 to 35 rejecting a deeper human connection in favour of independence and freedom, and then at the very last gasping breath of their youthful fertility, they are suddenly to change and decide that human connection matters after all.

Come on Hanna. You can't justify wasting a woman's sexual prime on independence and freedom from convention if a deeper human connection as experienced in marriage proves to be the stronger value in the long run anyway.

If independence and sexual freedom really are the higher values to live our lives by, then we shouldn't marry at any age. We should be like the Swedes and live alone. But if a deeper human connection as expressed in marriage is the higher value, as Hanna Rosin seems to believe it ultimately proves to be, then we shouldn't waste it - we should marry in a timely way that allows us to share our sexual prime with our spouse.

Hanna Rosin seems to expect otherwise intelligent people to engage in a kind of self-sabotage - deliberately rejecting serious suitors when in our prime, only to seek them out when we're past it.

P.S. Something I missed is the significance of Rosin's final words "but that hardly defines them". The implication is that women don't want to define themselves when they're married the same way they might when they're in their 20s and hooking up. Which means that even Rosin recognises that the two identities don't go together well. She seems to be trying to reassure her female readers that they can bury the younger self that doesn't fit with being a wife and mother - the self that they might potentially be ashamed to let their husbands know about.

Feminists for polygamy

OK, so Kate Bolick writes a lengthy article confessing that she cannot make up her mind between autonomy and intimacy - leaving her single in her late 30s.

I've posted a couple of traditionalist replies to this, but how would a feminist respond to Kate Bolick?

Jessica Mack is a feminist who is critical of Kate Bolick for suggesting that women can't have it all: Mack insists that you can have intimacy without compromising autonomy. But what exactly does this mean? How can you retain a freedom to choose however you like whilst still committing yourself to a relationship?

Mack offers several suggestions. First, she thinks one option is to have open relationships:

Sex columnist Dan Savage has written for decades about the pragmatism of non-monogamy in making marriages work. Feminists often, and rightly, decry the double standard that men can sleep around, while women cannot. Savage suggests that rectifying this is not about confining men to fidelity, but rather encouraging women to break out and explore. I may be out on a licentious limb here, but I would argue that the concept of non-monogamy will be the biggest relationship issue we will grapple with in our time.

I wonder if Jessica Mack would suggest this if she weren't 28 and childless. If she were 38 with a few children in tow she might not think giving her husband/partner free rein to roam such a good idea. Anyway, open relationships might well preserve a measure of choice, but most likely at the expense of intimacy.

Jessica Mack's second suggestion is even more noteworthy. She thinks that polygamy might extend autonomous choice, presumably by not limiting us to just one spouse:

Disruption is also afoot in the west of the US where Kody Brown, a friendly polygamist, is filming a reality show about his life with four wives and 16 children. Brown recently launched an historic lawsuit to challenge Utah's bigamy laws. Earlier this summer the Browns' lawyer penned a stellar op-ed laying out a logical and nearly irresistible argument for polygamy as a viable relationship model.

So Jessica Mack the feminist believes that the argument for polygamy as a viable relationship model is "nearly irresistible". I wonder what the average married woman thinks of this and whether feminists like Mack really represent their interests.

You can see why polygamy is connected to autonomy - it means that we aren't limited to marrying one person. But from reading feminist commentary elsewhere, there's possibly another reason why polygamy appeals to some feminists. If you aren't committed to being a wife and mother, then those roles might seem too demanding. You might think that having more than one woman in the house to share the role would lessen the burden and allow you to do other things. But here too greater autonomy is still at the expense of intimacy - it is motivated by a lesser commitment to the relationship.

Her third suggestion is the usual liberal one of replacing a single form of marriage with a plurality or diversity of forms, so that you get to autonomously choose which one to participate in. Each form is thought to be equally valid:

Young women need to know that intimacy doesn't have to be a casualty of autonomy, and that sometimes it actually develops as a result...In order to move forward constructively, we need a multiplicity of relationship models to inspire and reassure us. We need trans couples on TV, we need non-monogamy champions, we need people married 40-plus years like my parents, and we need Stevie Nicks who, at 62, is purposefully single so that she can "always be free".

Note though that it's the purposefully single Stevie Nicks who gets to claim the mantle of freedom fighter. I wonder too if Jessica Mack really understands the commitment it takes from a husband to remain monogamous. A traditional marriage like her parents isn't a likely outcome in a society which champions non-monogamy. Chances are that Jessica Mack is helping to take away the one choice that most women really want to have.

Kate Bolick tells us why

Kate Bolick

Kate Bolick is the latest in a spate of women to regret leaving marriage to so late in life. Her explanation of what went wrong is well worth reading.

She begins by noting that she had a terrific chance to marry in her late 20s, which she turned down:

In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered.

Why would she do that? Her answer is twofold: the autonomy theory she was brought up on led her to prioritise independence over relationships, and she assumed that there would always be men for her to partner with.

Let's begin with the assumption that there would always be eligible men seeking her out. Kate Bolick is a very physically attractive woman. She describes how in her 20s she managed easily to pursue serial long-term relationships with men:

Today I am 39, with too many ex-boyfriends to count and, I am told, two grim-seeming options to face down: either stay single or settle for a “good enough” mate. At this point, certainly, falling in love and getting married may be less a matter of choice than a stroke of wild great luck. A decade ago, luck didn’t even cross my mind. I’d been in love before, and I’d be in love again. This wasn’t hubris so much as naïveté; I’d had serious, long-term boyfriends since my freshman year of high school, and simply couldn’t envision my life any differently.

...That we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith.

Despite the advantage of her good looks, she now doesn't have the pick of men but feels she must settle. Where have all the "good men" gone? She observes:

...as women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.

Most of the men have already married, others have dropped out. And fewer suitable man are available anyway as women have pushed up the career ladder, with many of their male peers losing the motivation to do likewise. (Note the language Kate Bolick uses: "finally ready to start our lives". In her mind her 20s were just a kind of play life - a wait until her real life could finally begin in her 30s. But why delay your real life for so long?)

Bolick does recognise here the major issue that as women do increasingly better in education and careers than men that it becomes more difficult for women to marry up:

the decline of males has obviously been ... bad news for marriage. For all the changes the institution has undergone, American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity ... the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever. At the rate things are going, the next generation’s pool of good men will be significantly smaller. What does this portend for the future of the American family?

Bolick is aware, too, that as her youth and fertility decline that she is losing ground in the dating market to younger women:

I am fully aware that with each passing year, I become less attractive to the men in my peer group, who have plenty of younger, more fertile women to pick from.

All of these are important and meaty issues which are covered very well at various sites on the net. But the other part of Kate Bolick's explanation is rarely dealt with, perhaps because it requires a more fundamental rethink of modern values.

Kate Bolick tells us very clearly that she was raised to prioritise individual autonomy. And the logic of autonomy was that she should remain independent for as long as possible.

...the elevation of independence over coupling (“I wasn’t ready to settle down”) is a second-wave feminist idea I’d acquired from my mother...

I was her first and only recruit, marching off to third grade in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle, or: A Woman’s Place Is in the House—and the Senate, and bellowing along to Gloria Steinem & Co.’s feminist-minded children’s album, Free to Be...You and Me...

...my future was to be one of limitless possibilities...This unfettered future was the promise of my time and place...We took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30.

Limitless possibilities. An unfettered future. No restrictions on what can be autonomously chosen. Someone brought up to believe in this isn't going to think seriously about how our choices need to be ordered and about how a workable framework to society needs to be organised and maintained.

Here again Kate Bolick writes about her prioritising of independence over love:

When I embarked on my own sojourn as a single woman in New York City...it wasn’t dating I was after. I was seeking something more vague and, in my mind, more noble, having to do with finding my own way, and independence.

She continues later by praising the Mosuo in China for their matrilineal culture in which there is no stable marriage commitment:

The matrilineal Mosuo are worth pausing on, as a reminder of how complex family systems can be, and how rigid ours are...For centuries, the Mosuo have lived in households that revolve around the women...

Sexual relations are kept separate from family. At night, a Mosuo woman invites her lover to visit her babahuago (flower room)...there are no expectations or rules. As Cai Hua, a Chinese anthropologist, explains, these relationships, which are known as açia, are founded on each individual’s autonomy, and last only as long as each person is in the other’s company. Every goodbye is taken to be the end of the açia relationship, even if it resumes the following night. “There is no concept of açia that applies to the future,” Hua says.

But the really important quote is this one:

In the months leading to my breakup with Allan, my problem, as I saw it, lay in wanting two incompatible states of being—autonomy and intimacy...

This is what she sees as her problem. This is why she dropped the man she might have married and had children with. And she is right - autonomy and intimacy (i.e. autonomy and committed love) are incompatible. You have to decide on how to order them: do you sacrifice a measure of your autonomy to enjoy the good of marital love? Or do you reject a stable relationship to maintain autonomy?

Most of us decide that the fulfilment of a good marriage and having children is the higher good. But Kate Bolick, having been raised from girlhood to value autonomy above all else, has never been able to come to this decision decisively.

She is still caught in a kind of limbo in wanting both things. This is clear in her writing in which she jumps from regrets about not having married and her missed opportunities to ideas about marriage being a false historical construct to be replaced by more flexible living arrangements.

Her current compromise appears to be a desire to find a community of women to find companionship with. That is probably one of the worst options she could take.

Anyway, the larger lesson is that there are losses in making autonomy the overriding good in society. We can certainly value autonomy, but it's wrong to think of it as the highest, ordering principle of society.

Kia Abdullah: competitive womanhood

Kia Abdullah is in the news because of comments she wrote on Twitter. She wrote that she felt no sympathy for three British teenage boys who died in a bus crash in Thailand whilst on a "gap yaar" and that she smiled when she learned two of the boys had double barrelled surnames:

Is it really awful that I don't feel sympathy for anyone killed on a gap yaar? That's awful, right? Yes, I'm a terrible person ... I actually smiled when I saw that they had double-barrelled surnames. Sociopathic?

So who is Kia Abdullah? She's a 29-year-old twice divorced writer who grew up in a Bangladeshi family in Tower Hamlets in London.


Kia Abdullah

Why so callous? She has written that although she is proud of her working-class origins she nonetheless has a chip on her shoulder and that she regrets never having applied to Oxford or Cambridge. Her writing is also peppered with the belief that Bangladeshis like herself are held back in their aspirations by racism. So perhaps she thinks that students with double barrelled names who can afford a gap year are privileged white people whom she can feel no empathy toward.

But she's hardly done too badly out of Britain. She graduated from the University of London, has had two novels published, was appointed an editor of Asian Woman magazine, was then appointed a columnist for Asiana magazine and has recently been a columnist for the left-liberal Guardian newspaper. It's difficult to see exactly how she has been held back, whether by being working-class or Bangladeshi or female.

Here's something else that's interesting about Kia Abdullah. Despite growing up in a Bangladeshi family, she absorbed the modern girl ethos just as thoroughly as any middle-class white girl. In one column she engaged in some self-reflection on why she and other women like her feel the need to be in competition with their boyfriends and husbands:

....a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly prevalent among my circle of friends and acquaintances: ambitious, successful and talented women suffering from an ever-diminishing sense of humour, and an unrelenting need to prove that they are equal, if not superior to, the men in their lives. It seems that showing signs of need, weakness, dependence or sometimes even personality, somehow compromises our quest for gender equality.

This type of behaviour is perhaps necessary in some arenas. When there is still a substantial pay gap between the sexes and people feel comfortable expressing sentiments such as "woman + ambition = bitch" in a public, albeit anonymous, forum, women need their armour of cold tenacity and competitiveness, but professional battles seem to be increasingly spilling over into personal lives.

It's what I refer to as the superwoman complex. So many modern women have fought so hard for freedom and independence that even when we have careers, homes and husbands, we still can't take a back seat and stop trying to prove ourselves. I may be wrong about the wider community of British women, but it's certainly something I see in my generation of British-Asian women who arguably have had to fight harder and longer for independence.

I am certainly guilty of this type of truculence. I react against all forms of dependence, stressing time and time again that I am independent and autonomous. During the course of my most recent relationship, I felt a constant need to prove that I was smart, secure, strong and self-sufficient. I was fiercely competitive and felt a relentless need to prove that I was right: a need that almost emasculated the man closest to me. In short, I couldn't stop fighting. I, like most women, want financial security, comfort, love and warmth, but for those of us who have grown up fighting patriarchy, it's difficult to allow a man to guide and support us, be it a father, lover or a boss.

It's a significant confession. She's saying that women are brought up to value being independent and autonomous and so become competitive with men not only in the workforce ("armour of cold tenacity") but even in their personal lives ("I felt a constant need to prove that I was smart, secure, strong and self-sufficient. I was fiercely competitive and felt a relentless need to prove that I was right"). She understands that this is at odds with her feminine need for financial security, comfort, love and warmth but that if you have grown up "fighting patriarchy" it's "difficult to allow a man to guide and support us, be it a father, lover or a boss."

You get some idea from this how Kia Abdullah managed to be divorced twice by the age of 29. It's also an insight into the mindset of a certain kind of modern girl; it shows how once women are persuaded that they should be independent and autonomous that relationships then become competitive as women won't allow themselves to admit to needing men and become determined to show that they are equal or superior to men in all fields of life. Hence the "harshness" that men sometimes intuit about a certain kind of modern woman.

We are bringing young women up with a set of political values that doesn't allow much of their natural femininity to be freely expressed - and this is particularly true of those young women who spend the longest in the education system and who are best able to discipline themselves to serve abstract ideals.

Was free love really so free?

Have you ever heard of the Oneida Community? It was founded in the 1840s by the American John Humphrey Noyes.

Noyes started out as a theologian. He recognised that the Bible was strong on marriage, but thought that believers were called upon to live in a "resurrection state", i.e. to live posthumously, as if in the afterlife. And in the afterlife there were no laws regarding marriage or divorce. Instead, there was openness and service to all, equally.

Noyes therefore held that believers should reject monogamous marriage and replace it with pantogamy, in which there would be no "selfish possession" when it came to sexual relations. As the Oneida Handbook put it,

In the resurrection, marriage was to be superseded by universal unity ... We have thus far carefully traced the doctrine of Christ and Paul on the subject of marriage ... We have found them not in favor of divorce, and not polygamists, but pressing toward the cessation of marriage itself ...

pantogamy ... recognizes the continued existence of the sexual relation, but excludes ownership, and replaces human beings where they were as children - in friendship and freedom, without selfish possession.

... in that posthumous state which we are taught to pray for and expect on earth, the relation of the sexes will be that described in Christ's prayer - "that they may all be one, even as I and my Father are one" - which we call pantogamy.

It seems that if you were an American radical in the 1830s you still had to find justification for your views in the Bible. But this wasn't Noyes's only source of authority. He mixed the Bible with scientism - his aim was to achieve "scientific" forms of social organisation (rather than "sentimental" ones).

And he often sounded something like a radical left-liberal, believing in feminism, freedom, equality and progress to human perfection.

It was Noyes who coined the term "free love" to denote the abolition of marriage and its replacement by non-possessive, multiple sexual relationships. He founded a community of several hundred people on this basis that lasted for 30 years. So how did it work out in practice?

The commune

The commune had a conception of itself as being "free, open and democratic," as "enlightened," and as practising "sexual freedom".

It also saw itself as feminist, with women there pioneering the wearing of pants and working alongside the men:

Always concerned for the plight of women in modern society, under Noyes' belief in the equality of the sexes, the group went in for communal cooking and housekeeping as well as group farming, the men and women sharing in all the work.

But the "free love" practised at Oneida was in reality not so free and not so loving. The community was highly regulated, with "a complex bureaucracy of 27 standing committees and 48 administrative sections" for just 300 people.

One of these committees, headed by Noyes himself, decided who would be allowed to embark on a sexual relationship. There was a principle of Ascending Fellowship, which meant that older members of the community were paired up with younger members. This meant that Noyes and a few of the other older men were paired up with very young girls (twelve or thirteen years old). Noyes at times used his power to determine relationships to maintain control over the community.

So relationships weren't really so free. And there were limitations on love as well. Couples weren't supposed to get too attached to each other, as this was thought to be too exclusive and detrimental to a commitment to the community. It was condemned as "idolatrous worship".

Nor was there much opportunity for maternal or paternal love. In the early years of the community, Noyes sought to prevent children being born. Men were supposed to practise "continence" as a form of birth control (i.e. withdrawal). Later on, Noyes became interested in the science of eugenics. He set up another committee, with himself at the head, to decide on applications from those wishing to conceive.

The children born from this system of stirpiculture were allowed to stay with their mothers, for breastfeeding purposes, for 15 months. Afterwards, they were removed to be raised communally by those considered expert at the job. The children were rotated at night between different members of the community according to a principle of "non-attachment".

So there was sex and work but a repression of marital love and maternal love. In this, the Oneida communists (a term they used themselves) were strikingly similar to later radical moderns. I'm reminded of the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s who passed a resolution stating that for those comrades suffering from "the sickness of love ... a change of commune will be recommended". Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian Bolshevik of the 1920s, wrote similarly that love was,

an expenditure of precious time and energy ... utterly worthless ... We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labour power.

It is certainly true that we ... were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center...

For those who wish to control or manage people according to a perfectionist ideology, love and marriage will often be looked on as a threat - as binding people to each other and creating independent sources of loyalty and commitment.

It's interesting too that Noyes promoted mediocrity as best suited to life in an egalitarian commune:

We must all be mediocre and avoid abnormal or excessive development in the individual, since forms of excellence are at the expense of other individuals who are less endowed.

How did it end?

Two factors led to the demise of the Oneida community. First, there were younger men who did not accept that the older men should have the rights over the younger women. So an oppositional faction to Noyes emerged.

Second, when the women were finally allowed to have children, they then started to want to marry for the purposes of security. There is possibly an insight into the nature of women here. When women are young and childless they are possibly more accepting of acting from sexual impulse alone. But when they have young children, the instinct for the security provided by a husband is at its strongest. Women at this point in their life can develop the qualities associated with the "loving wife and mother".

Perhaps that's one reason I'm troubled by the advent in Australia of paid maternity schemes. At just the time that a woman might look to her husband for security and develop the qualities in herself that are likely to ground a lifelong marriage, the government steps in to provide security instead.

Anyway, an ageing Noyes did finally concede and allowed the women to marry. By the 1880s, the Oneida experiment went into decline.

There are many conclusions to be drawn from the Oneida Community. But perhaps one of the most significant is that attacking traditional marriage is unlikely to lead to a "sexual utopia" in which people freely and equally exchange partners.

At Oneida, in spite of the idealism and the rhetoric about free love, once the traditional restraints were gone the older men used their power in the community to win sexual access for themselves to very young women (to girls). They were in effect reverting to the customs of more primitive societies: they were enacting a civilisational regress rather than a progress.

Whatever its faults, traditional marriage is more egalitarian than the alternatives (allowing everyone a strong chance to partner, to have a sexual relationship and to bear children); it avoids generational conflict (in which fathers and sons are set against each other in competition for women); it is pro-natalist (as the emphasis is not on keeping all women available for sexual purposes); it provides protection for women from more primitive customs of pairing girls with much older men; and it also forms an independent unit of society that helps to prevent total power over individuals by those governing society.

She found him handsome?

You may be aware of the story of Katie Piper. An English girl blessed with good looks, she worked as a TV presenter and model. Then she met a man on the internet, Daniel Lynch, and embarked on a relationship with him.

Two weeks into the affair, he attacked her, raping and beating her. She didn't report him, and even agreed later to go to an internet cafe to read an email he had sent her.

Lynch, though, had arranged for a friend to throw acid on her face. She has since courageously gone through 30 operations to overcome her injuries, but is permanently disfigured.

Lawrence Auster has commented on the story, noting that liberalism leaves some young women naive and vulnerable:

What is there to say? Women have basic weaknesses built into their nature. Traditional society provides girls and women with an upbringing, a formation, that gives them the ability not to give into those weaknesses, for example, to fend off alluring but dangerous men. But in liberal society, they have no formation, no guidance, no upbringing, except for the liberal message to be open, to pursue your desires, and not to judge people.

One thing that struck me about the story is Katie Piper's description of her first encounters with Daniel Lynch:

when 33-year-old Daniel Lynch, a martial arts enthusiast, emailed Katie to say he’d been following her career, she admits she was instantly attracted.

‘He was wearing a martial arts suit in his picture and I’d been doing some promotional work for martial arts in the UK,’ she explains.

‘We seemed to have a lot in common and, to be honest, looking at his picture, I fancied him.’

A few days later Lynch turned up at a promotional event in Reading where Katie was working.

‘He seemed quite shy and nervous when we first met,’ she says. ‘We just had a nice, normal chat. He was 6ft 4in, quite macho-looking and handsome. I liked what I saw.’

Handsome? I don't think there is an iota of handsome in the face below.

He looks like the thug that he is. Prior to attacking Katie Piper he had convictions for violence and had been jailed for throwing boiling water on the face of another man.

But Katie Piper, a well-spoken English woman from a comfortable home, thought him macho looking and handsome and liked what she saw. She was sexually attracted to thuggish features in a man.

This relates, I think, to something I wrote about in a recent post. In most societies sex, romantic love and marriage are integrated so that each influences the culture of relationships between men and women.

Feminists have demanded, though, that women be "sexually liberated", meaning that they are to pursue relationships without regard to romantic love or marriage.

If a woman like Katie Piper had been influenced by a culture of marriage, it's highly unlikely she would have selected a man like Daniel Lynch. A culture of marriage makes for a well-considered and forward looking choice of mate. A woman will want a man who will be emotionally stable, loyal, and a good provider. She'll want a good role model for her children. She'll want someone with whom she can create intelligent and attractive children. She might, too, prefer a man of similar background, so that she can see herself in her own children and perpetuate her own lineage and culture.

If a woman like Katie Piper had been influenced instead by a culture of romantic love, she may have acted more impetuously, without thinking about the larger consequences of her choices. Even so, she still would probably not have chosen a man like Daniel Lynch. She might have preferred to look for a man who cut a dashing figure, who had wit and intelligence, who had achieved some prominent position in society, who was confident and popular with women and so on.

But what if a woman like Katie Piper is "sexually liberated" in the feminist sense? Then none of the above matters as much. It no longer matters if a man like Daniel Lynch is low IQ, emotionally unstable and unconfident in his dealings with women. What he does have is a raw display of high testosterone in his thuggish features and his propensity toward violence. This is what makes him sexually appealing and even "handsome" to a well-bred Englishwoman.

In the past, it was more likely to be the lowest socio-economic class which pursued relationships crudely through such basic sexual markers, without regard for a culture of romantic love or marriage. Perhaps England has now reached the point at which a middle-class culture is failing and giving way to lower-class mores.

So what's to be done? One thing to consider is that returning to a culture of romantic love isn't enough. You can believe in love and still be terribly naive about relationships. If all that matters is falling in love, then why would your culture provide you with any guidance? It wouldn't need to, as it's all based on feelings in the moment.

The balance between sex, romantic love and marriage matters. All three need to influence us in the "internal culture" of our minds when we relate to the opposite sex.

But the mainstream culture is increasingly losing the romantic love and marriage aspects. What can we as individuals do in response to this?

We can't completely overcome the influence of the mainstream culture. However, if a man maintains a loving and functional relationship with his wife and a close relationship with his daughters, then I think it's more likely that his daughters will continue to select for men in a more traditional way.

I think it's true too that young women who are less exposed to the influence of feminism in higher education (and who therefore don't make a feminist "sexual liberation" a kind of personal belief system) are also more likely to select for men more traditionally.

Whether talking openly to daughters about these issues helps or not, I'm not sure. But parents could at least try to point to the dangers of certain choices and behaviours. We could try to make our daughters aware that openness and non-judgementalism can have tragic consequences in real life and that they need to act prudently in their relationships with men.

Can feminists set the terms of sexual liberation?

One thing that feminists stand for is sexual liberation. But sexual liberation from what?

Relationships can be oriented to sex, to romantic love and to marriage. In most cultures, there is an element of each, but the balance can change.

For much of Western history, culture was directed primarily toward marriage. A man in such a culture will be looking for a woman to be his life partner and a mother for his children. He is therefore likely to value a woman for her beauty, her intelligence and her good nature. In upper class culture it was also important for a wife to be of equal social standing, of good reputation and to be suitably accomplished.

If you read Jane Austen's novels (from the early 1800s), you notice a change in the mix. Austen continues to disapprove of relationships oriented primarily to sex; there is a condemnation of flighty younger sisters who pursue sexual flings with men of doubtful character. Propriety and family honour do still count for something in the Austen novels.

But Austen also portrays as villains (or as figures of fun or pity) those who marry in the interests of their families. We are to act more in terms of our own individual emotions and not be swayed so much by issues of family connections.

By the end of the 1800s, Western culture was more oriented to romantic love than it had previously been. What does a man focused on romantic love look for in a woman? An idealised feminine beauty, grace and goodness.

By the 1970s, second wave feminists began to demand sexual liberation. What this meant, in its historical context, was the pursuit of relationships by women without regard to marriage or to male expectations of romantic love.

It's not surprising, therefore, that feminist women often spoke negatively of women being put on a pedestal (idealised) and of marriage being an oppressive feature of a patriarchy.

And so feminism helped to usher in (with the help of male sexual liberationists like Hugh Hefner) the modern culture we have now, in which many young people are oriented to casual sexual relationships.

But there's a catch. What do men who are oriented to one night stands look for in a woman? One thing: hotness. That's what matters most if all you are looking for is sex.

And this enrages the feminists who helped usher in the sexual revolution. They complain unceasingly about women being sexually objectified. Just recently I read an article by a feminist woman on the theme of "what I want in a man". She wrote:

I want men who don't bet on sleeping with women, who don't rate women on their appearance on a scale of one to ten. I want a man who ... doesn't base his treatment of me on how hawt I am.

Feminists seem to expect men to value them for their intelligence, their accomplishments, their character, their status and so on. But to get this they would need to support a culture more oriented to marriage, in which men are selecting a life partner. This they can't do as they want to be liberated from such a culture. But it is inevitable that men who only want sex from women will mostly value sex appeal, i.e. "hawtness".

Little wonder that feminists get so angry and frustrated. They're caught in a trap and it's only likely to get worse. There is a growth in the "game" or "seduction" movement, in which men are adapting to a culture based on casual sex and picking up. Although it's possible for men who want a longer-term relationship to use these seduction techniques, those men leading it tend to be very "sexually liberated", which means that what they value in women is hotness. It doesn't matter so much to them if a woman is kindly natured, good with children, admired socially or compatible in her personality. Why should it if what they are looking for is sex alone?

Feminists aren't getting what they want. Yet, as full-blooded moderns this is what they think they are owed. They have the modern technological mindset that things should be arranged so that their own will and desire are sovereign.

What specifically do they want? Women who are oriented to marriage will be looking for men who will make good husbands and fathers. They will want men who are stable, conscientious, hard-working, loyal and family oriented. But a "sexually liberated" feminist has set herself against all this. She wants to pursue relationships without regard to marriage.

This leaves her freer to pursue socially dominant men or to seek out drama in relationships. So there are modernist women who keep pinning their hopes on a "Mr Big", even if such men never commit to them and there are women who select edgy kind of men, the bad boys who take risks or who are untrustworthy or who are capable of violence or who break the law.

The problem is that these preferences do not give women control. Pursuing casual relationships with socially dominant men or risky men puts women in a weaker, vulnerable position.

So there are feminists who seek various social technologies to give them the upper hand, so that it is they and not men who have "agency" in the relationship. They want to ensure that sexually liberated relationships ultimately play out on their terms.

What have been some key policies of second and third wave feminism? Abortion on demand has been one and this is predictable if you are a woman who wants to technologically manage a culture of casual relationships.

And then there is the issue of rape, which is an obsession with some feminist women. What's important to note here is that the obsession is not with criminal rape - with the few men who act against the law to violently attack women. Feminist women are far more interested in "date rape" - with some feminists openly advocating the idea that women could be given absolute power in relationships through date rape legislation.

Here's how one feminist woman believes she could get 100% personal sovereignty in sexual relationships via date rape laws:

Imagine that all women are considered by the courts to abide in a perpetual state of non-consent. “No” becomes the default position, and does not require re-stating at any time. In fact, “consent” would not apply to women at all; we would exist as inviolable entities, 100% human beings with full personal sovereignty, the way men do now. We could, if the idea didn’t gag us with a spoon, have as much heterosex as we want, but the instant we don’t want, the dude becomes, in the eyes of the law, a rapist. This shifts the onus onto the dude not to be a barbarian. He can reduce his risk of being sent to the gulag by ceasing to rape, dominate, prod, cajole, shame, nag, or act like a prick. He can avoid it altogether merely by keeping it in his Dockers.

But, again to the frustration of feminists, the date rape tactic isn't working. In part, this is because most people still think of rape as a serious criminal offence rather than as a social technology. Therefore, most people are inclined to defend men who unfairly suffer the accusation. So there are feminists who want to tone down the criminal aspect of a rape accusation. Catherine MacKinnon, for instance, once wrote that,

Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated. You might think that's too broad. I'm not talking about sending all of you men to jail for that. ["A rally against rape" Feminism Unmodified]

Note that it is a woman's feelings or will, rather than any clearly defined act, which defines rape, thereby giving women the ultimate power and control in a relationship and that MacKinnon seeks to downplay the idea that all men would suffer criminal sanctions.

Here's another example:

I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire. [Robin Morgan 1974]

Rape here is redefined in terms of female agency; what matters is not a lack of consent but that what happens is a product of female, not male, desire.

Most women, it should be said, do not follow feminists in rejecting marriage in principle. It's common, though, for women to think of their 20s as being "sexually liberated" and then to finally orient themselves toward marriage in their 30s. This means that they seek different qualities in men, or perhaps even different kinds of men, at different times of their life.

Consider this online advice to men about what women look for:

Forget about the theory that women like bad boys. While this may be the case with some women in their twenties, most mature women have had their fill of bad boys. Monroe women and any other women are now looking for a nice, kind, caring and thoughtful man.

This switching of preferences in a woman's 30s won't always work. It means that when men are in their youthful prime (ages 15 to 35), they will be asked to adapt to women who aren't oriented to marriage and who are looking for casual relationships with bad boys. By the time women are ready to switch it will often be too late. Many men will have grown out of their instinct to be husbands and fathers and some might harbour resentments towards women. Women who have spent a decade or more pursuing the drama of casual relationships might find it difficult to settle into a more predictable pattern of married life.

And it represents too a waste; the person we are supposed to have the most significant connection to, our spouse, will not be the person we share our youthful passions with.

Should we then return to the situation of the 1980s in which culture was oriented more strongly to romantic love? No doubt this was a more spiritualised and less crude culture of relationships, but it was inadequate in its own way. What kind of wisdom or foresight does a man require for romantic love? What kind of concern will he have in his relationships for his family, his community or his tradition? None. He can be a fool for love.

There's an English film, Love Actually, which even celebrates this aspect of a romantic culture. It portrays couples who fall romantically in love in ways which dissolve all other considerations. The Prime Minister falls in love with the tea lady. An English writer falls in love with, and commits his life to, a Portuguese woman he cannot speak to. One couple fall in love whilst acting in a pornographic film.

The evidence seems to be that it's difficult to integrate the romantic and sexual lives of men and women outside a culture that has a serious orientation to family. Feminists thought that they could control the outcomes of the sexual revolution in favour of female agency, but many seem to be angrier than ever about a culture of relationships that they themselves largely instigated.