So if men have to be the ones to correct feminist rebellion so that we can have functional families and maintain civilization, what do we do? I’ve spoken about ways we can improve our odds of succeeding at marriage. I’ve also written about some of the things Christian men in various stations can do to help one-another succeed. And there are a whole lot of other people who point out various aspects of Game and whatnot that can be successfully employed. We absolutely need to do those things. We should also look for even more little adjustments like that and employ them for all they’re worth because we need every advantage we can get in present circumstances.
But that still leaves the issue of actually convincing women to change course alongside of us, which is why I want to address that question the commenter posed about my kayak experience: How did we get my wife to stop steering from the front?
The truth is, it’s a pretty underwhelming answer. The guide had explained things at the beginning. I subsequently re-explained things and told her to stop steering. But what finally made the difference was that the guide, who saw what was going on, openly and bluntly told her, “He’s right; you need to knock it off.” (I can’t remember the exact words anymore, but that was the gist of it.) That was the end of the issue.
What made the difference was social pressure catalyzed by a recognized group authority on my behalf. I couldn’t convince her on my own. But at the same time, the guide might not have had much success if I hadn’t already been telling her the problem (or worse, if I had been undermining him by “honorably” taking all the blame, telling her not to worry about the instructions, and other facets of white-knighting.) It worked because we backed one-another up.
In the end, it wasn’t a reasoned argument that did the trick, though I did argue reasonably. Neither was it an appeal to legitimate authority, though I did say to trust the guide’s instructions. What tipped the scales was the prospect of her error becoming, for lack of a better term, “official” in a sense that I don’t fully understand. Women don’t seem to care that much about being wrong–but the threat of social shame or isolation (even in ways men would consider trivial) by being officially recognized as wrong in certain contexts is another matter.
That’s why husbands/boyfriends/friendzoned/etc need to show backbone to women. That’s why men in leadership positions need to support those men with backbones instead of undercutting them. And that, in turn, is why disengaging from society is so counter-productive. Going your own way isn’t going to populate either social sphere with men who are willing to do these things. (And please don’t sink into despair by thinking of “leadership position” or “recognized authority” as something grandiose and unattainable for ordinary men—we were talking about a tour guide here.)
So yeah, women instinctively seek out male approval–which is to be expected if headship and submission are part of divine ordinance in creation. While feminism of course rejects that ordinance and twists those instincts, men have played their own role in subverting the natural dynamic by promiscuously granting our approval to women in order to gain approval from them. It’s a pattern of male submission that both facilitates feminism while making ordinary men unattractive. We inherited that pattern from previous generations who responded to feminist rebellion by trying to buy off discontented women with male approval, and it’s only snowballed since because approval won through nagging isn’t really satisfying. Feminists will have to answer to God for their sins, but when they rose up, they didn’t seize power; men gave it to them. We undermined our own authority.
I know this isn’t exactly a “eureka” moment. It’s nothing that hasn’t been noticed in a billion blogs, and truthfully, it’s not really why I’m writing this. Men have been passing these kinds of ideas around the internet for awhile now. What really concerns me here is the question of why so many men who hear these ideas are disengaging from society instead of actually learning to leverage them for success. Why do they claim its impossible for them to succeed because women won’t allow it?
I think the answer is ultimately simpler than we think, and it comes back to despair. Men are having a hard time forging a new path because we’re stuck on old paths that simply don’t work no matter how hard we try. And as we bang our heads against the wall in futility, we come to believe that women are just incorrigible, and we might as well give up until that changes. But even amidst all the repugnant evil that comes from feminist women, I nevertheless think there are ways men end up doing women something of an injustice in our assessment of incorrigibility and shoot ourselves in the foot as a result.
