You don’t actually understand an idea until you know its history. That lesson is one that most people have been doing their level best not to learn in recent years. Their unwillingness isn’t any kind of accident. Once you know where an idea came from and what kind of vagrant wanderings it’s been through on its way from its birthplace to the present day, it stops being possible to shove that idea into the simplistic straitjacket of “true or false.” You have to come to terms with who invented it, what causes they meant it to support or oppose, who picked it up and did other things with it, and so on. You have to see it in its actual context, not just in whatever context has been invented for it by the the culture or counterculture of today.
That principle’s going to get a workout this week. As most of my readers know, whenever there are five Wednesdays in a month, the readers of my blog get to nominate and vote for a topic for the fifth Wednesday post. Since I have not only the best but also the weirdest commentariat on the internet, the topics chosen for fifth Wednesday essays have strayed all over the map, and in some cases it’s been a hard-fought struggle between options. This month was different. By a large majority, my readers wanted me to follow up on a few stray comments I’d made a while back, and talk about matriarchy, patriarchy, and the fuss that’s been made about both concepts in and out of feminist Neopaganism over the last half century or so.
Most of the discussion of these concepts during that time has fitted neatly into the simplistic straitjacket mentioned above. On the one hand there are people who insist that, as a matter of historical fact, some, or most, or all societies before the dawn of recorded history were ruled by women, and that these matriarchies were overthrown by patriarchal invaders. On the other hand there are people who insist that there were no such prehistoric matriarchies. Around and around the debate has gone; since it’s all but impossible to know much of anything about the gender politics of societies that left no written records, there’s basically nothing to stop both sides from finding what they want to find in the equivocal traces turned up by archeologists.
This is where the perspectives offered by the history of ideas come in handy. Let’s set aside questions about prehistory for a moment, and ask some that are less trouble to resolve: where did this belief in ancient matriarchies come from? Who invented it, when and where did they do so, and what causes did they intend the concept to support?
The answers here are refreshingly straightforward. The concept of prehistoric matriarchy was invented by a man named Johann Jakob Bachofen, a Swiss philologist and professor, and it was introduced to the world of modern thought in his book Mutterrecht (Mother-Right), published in 1861. His ideas were taken up enthusiastically by leading anthropologists, and for a while were widely accepted in scholarly circles generally. What makes this particularly interesting is that not only Bachofen but nearly all the important names in the 19th-century literature on matriarchy were male—and the vast majority of them thought matriarchy was a very bad thing.
It’s important to put Bachofen’s work in its proper context. The idea of women-only societies, in which women occupied traditionally male social roles, goes back into antiquity; the Amazons of Greek legend are the most widely known example of the kind. What sets this trope apart from Bachofen’s invention is that the Amazons and their equivalents didn’t rule over societies of men as well as women. Their societies, according to legend, excluded men absolutely. Nor, of course, did anyone portray the Amazons as a universal stage in human history. Amazon societies were always pictured as exotic phenomena, far removed from the usual way of things.
This wasn’t at all what Bachofen was saying. He proposed that all of humanity passed through a series of evolutionary stages on the way from primitive savagery to the first settled civilizations. There were three main stages; since this was the 19th century, what defined those stages was, of course, sex. The first was the stage of primitive promiscuity, where everybody mated with everybody else and family ties didn’t exist yet. The second was the stage of matriarchy, when family ties focused entirely on the mother because nobody had yet figured out the connection between sex and pregnancy, and so women ruled society. The third was the stage of patriarchy, in which men took power away from women and established the family in its modern form.
It’s a nice simplistic scheme and so it inevitably became very popular in European thought for the next century or so, even in fields seemingly far removed from prehistoric gender studies. Read what Freud had to say about the oral, anal, and genital stages through which all children supposedly pass, for example, and it’s not hard to see Bachofen in the background. For that matter, currently fashionable notions about “evolutionary stages” borrow extensively from Bachofen’s scheme, usually at third or fourth hand. That happened as readily as it did because, like most revolutionary ideas, Bachofen’s was less original than it looked.
He took the idea of tracing human social forms back to current notions of primitive savagery and ignorance from Giambattista Vico, who wrote during the late 17th and early 18th centuries but whose ideas had come back into vogue a few decades before Bachofen wrote. He took the idea of chopping up historical development into three sequential stages from G.W.F. Hegel, whose ideas were wildly popular among European intellectuals in Bachofen’s time. Hovering over the whole enterprise was the work of Charles Darwin, who published The Origin of Species in 1859, and more broadly the Western world’s discovery of deep time. All across Europe and the European diaspora, people who’d grown up thinking of the world as just 6000 years old were flailing frantically as scientists forced them to start thinking of millions of years. (Billions were still a little while in the future then.) Nice neat stages made that a little easier.
But there was another specter at Bachofen’s feast. In 1848, a group of women met at Seneca Falls, New York, and held the convention that launched first wave feminism. That also had history behind it, since the first half of the 19th century had seen a dramatic loss of women’s rights across much of the Western world. That was when women lost the right to vote in some American states, which they’d had since colonial times, and when women in England lost the right to own property. Combine those historical trends with robust female involvement in the struggle against slavery, in which many of the early feminists learned the tools of political activism, and an explosion was inevitable. Well before 1861, as a result, male intellectuals in Europe were confronted by pushback from women who were profoundly dissatisfied with the roles in life that 19th century culture assigned them.
The invention of the concept of matriarchy by Bachofen, and its enthusiastic adoption by male anthropologists and scholars generally, was thus a counterblast to the rise of first wave feminism. The ink was hardly dry on Darwin’s theory when people started to use it as a way to prop up social hierarchies, by insisting that “more evolved” equalled “better.” (This isn’t at all what Darwin said, but then as now, too few people who use the word “evolution” bothered to read The Origin of Species.) With this in mind, Bachofen and his followers presented patriarchy as “more evolved”—that is, a later developmental stage in human evolution—than matriarchy, so that feminism could be denounced as a throwback to primitive, less evolved conditions.
Ah, but constructing a straw man along those lines carries with it a constant risk that it may be turned around and used against you. That was what happened with the concept of ancient matriarchies: a lot of people, not all of them female, read what Bachofen had to say about matriarchy and decided that it sounded a lot better than what 19th century Europe offered them. The crucial figure here was Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’s good friend and the co-inventor of Communism. In his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1888), Engels drew extensively on Bachofen’s heirs in the anthropological community but stood their theory on its head, insisting that primitive matriarchy had been a utopian arrangement free of poverty, war, and oppression, before the invention of private property—the equivalent of original sin in the Marxist rewrite of Christian theology—brought the whole thing crashing down.
Engels’ book signaled “game on” for radicals of many different stripes, who embraced the concept of ancient matriarchy and revised it for their own rhetorical purposes. Some first wave feminists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, adopted it and used it efficiently in propaganda for their side in the gender wars of that era. Many Marxists and anarchists took it up as well, with varying success. It’s doubtless no accident that the entire concept was dropped like a hot rock by academic anthropologists thereafter. That didn’t slow it down in the least. All through the twentieth century, the notion of ancient, peaceful, utopian matriarchies was a commonplace among cultural radicals on the left.
The difficulty these ventures faced, when they passed beyond simple dogma and tried to prove their case, was the same difficulty faced by their critics who tried to disprove the same thesis: the data concerning gender relations in prehistory is so sparse that almost any imaginable spin can be put on them, and conclusive evidence is essentially impossible to find. Thus Marija Gimbutas threw her considerable academic talents into the attempt to prove that prehistoric southeastern Europe had been a close equivalent to Engels’ matriarchal utopia, only to end up assuming what she meant to prove: decide that every drawing of an eye must by definition be a sacred icon of an otherwise undocumented Eye Goddess, as she did, and it’s not hard to find goddesses wherever you happen to look.
(Mind you, it’s also anything but safe to assume that a society that worships goddesses must be feminist. Feudal Japan, hardly a feminist utopia, revered the sun goddess Amaterasu above all other Shinto deities; ancient Athens, which kept married women locked up in harems, gave first place to Athena. Nothing is more difficult than trying to tease out the details of social relationships when all you have to go on are sparse archeological traces of material culture.)
It’s from this process that we ended up burdened with the claims that matriarchy and patriarchy are the basic organizing schemes of society. Those claims had another importance as the 20th century drew on, and the erasure of social class became a core element in the camouflage that the managerial class used to conceal and exploit its power over society. That’s why it became fashionable to talk about gender, race, and other notionally biological divisions, but never about class. That, in turn, how we ended up in a situation in which an African-American woman in suburban Maryland who makes six hefty figures plus benefits working in the federal bureaucracy can claim to be oppressed by a white man in West Virginia working three part time minimum wage jobs in a desperate effort to keep his children fed, when the policies she administers and the party she supports are directly responsible for his plight.
It’s past time to step away from that self-serving rhetoric and recognize the value of one of the few genuinely good concepts the modern left has come up with, the concept of intersectionality: the recognition that the rights and burdens allotted to you by society are not governed by sex alone, or by race alone, or by class alone, or by any other single factor, but by all these things and more. We do not live in a hierarchy—we live in a heterarchy, in which power is complex, nuanced, personal, and situational, varying along a galaxy of different metrics. It’s generally safe to assume that those who try to flatten that reality out into some kind of simplistic binary scheme are doing so in an attempt to claim unearned power for themselves and their allies.
Thus it’s long past time to admit that we do not know if there were ever societies in prehistory that were governed by women, and if academics weren’t so terrified of the words “we don’t know”—I think they’re afraid their noses will fall off if they say that—they’d doubtless agree. What we do know is that evolutionary schemes of fixed “developmental stages,” through which all societies pass, consistently fall to bits when tested against data from existing societies and written records from those that aren’t around any more. When Ken Wilber tried to revive that 19th-century habit in recent decades, in other words, he was barking up the wrong stump. Yet there’s an important sense in which the rhetorical construction of ancient matriarchies tells us something very useful, not about the ancient world, but about the present.
Let’s step back and talk a little about the nature of social power. By and large, there are two ways to exert power within a human community, which we can call formal and informal power. You can see this at work in most American Protestant churches. The formal power in the church is vested in the pastor and certain other individuals, usually male; depending on the denomination, these may be elected by the congregation, selected by a council of elders, or appointed by the local bishop, but all of them have specific offices with defined rights and duties.
Then there’s the informal power. In every church I’ve ever interacted with, this is possessed and exerted by a small group of old women—“the church ladies” is a common label for them. They may have nominal positions in the altar guild or what have you, but that’s irrelevant to their real power, which is exercised through gossip, networking, and other indirect means. That doesn’t make their power any less potent; for all practical purposes, they run the church, and nothing happens without their approval. Smart pastors flatter them, negotiate with them, and get them on board; weak pastors knuckle under to them, and generally get by tolerably well.
A pastor who irrevocably loses the support of his church ladies, however, is doomed. He will be tried and condemned by a court from which there is no appeal. Gossip, innuendoes, whispering campaigns, and a galaxy of similar tools come into play. If the estrangement is severe enough, unless he has the brains to flee from position at once, he can count on having his career destroyed, and quite possibly his marriage and his life into the bargain. Pastors in such situations generally get removed from their positions in disgrace if they don’t drink themselves to death first.
As in churches, so in societies more generally, there is a broad tendency—not universal, not without plenty of exceptions, but still more often true than not—for formal power to end up in the hands of male leaders and informal power to end up in the hands of female elders. This division by gender is by no means a perfect system, but it seems to work, and it may be hardwired into us. In traditionally male activities such as hunting and war, after all, there’s no time to seek a consensus and there needs to be no question about who has the right to make snap decisions. (“You three go that way, the rest of us’ll go this way, and we’ll hit the mammoth from both sides.”) In traditionally female occupations such as gathering, child care, and elder care, informal consensus is more workable, and in many cases more appropriate as well.
Most human societies make room for this twofold pattern, and some explicitly rely on it. One of the things that sets modern Western industrial societies apart from almost all other human societies in history, by contrast, is that they have gone out of their way to shut down every venue for informal power that women have relied on.
In the United States, though women’s informal power had been waning for many years, the breaking point came with the manufacture and mass marketing of suburbia. Before the Second World War, the vast majority of American women lived in neighborhoods where they had many opportunities to interact with other women and create the networks of stable interpersonal relationship that make informal power function. With homes, shops, schools, churches, and workplaces all close by, and geographical mobility very modest, informal power thrived, and provided women with ways to exercise power in their communities.
The coming of suburbia ended that. Suburbs were designed to leave their inmates isolated from one another, miles away from venues for interaction, while mass media drowned out other social activities and a rising tide of geographical mobility made it impossible for stable social bonds to form. Women were suddenly deprived of a mode of social power that had been central to many of their lives, and told by the media that they had no choice but to accept a condition of complete powerlessness in which they had lost their informal power but were shut out of access to formal power. That made second wave feminism inevitable, as women responded by seeking the one variety of power left to them: formal power, exercised in competition with men. The rhetoric of ancient matriarchies served as an effective symbolic language for them to talk about a very real sense of deprivation of power.
As what James Howard Kunstler wryly calls “the paradise of happy motoring” slides down into history’s trash can, and suburbs collapse back into more viable settlement patterns, informal power will doubtless resume its normal place in our society. In the meantime, though, certain social changes being pursued by some elements of society need to keep the reality of women’s informal power well in mind. A significant number of younger women these days are embracing the “tradwife” movement, abandoning careers in the business world and taking up roles as housewives and mothers instead. That will only become a lasting phenomenon if they can also establish and maintain their own informal power in something like the traditional pattern.
That depends, in turn, on whether young conservative men have the brains the gods gave geese, and recognize that it’s essential to step back and not even try to interfere as their wives begin to weave the old networks of informal power back together again. That’s going to involve some inconveniences, because that informal power will tolerably often be deployed in ways that men don’t like. Still, that’s the nature of power; all human beings, irrespective of gender, will find ways to exercise power, and if you don’t like what your wives are doing with it, gentlemen, just recall the history of the last two centuries and be aware that the alternative could be much, much less to your taste.
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current only to 7/14). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May 12 year old Sebastian Greco of Rhode Island, who recently suffered a head injury, make a prompt and complete recovery with no lasting problems.
May MindWinds’ father Clem be healed of his spinal, blood and cardio infections and returned to good health and wholeness; and may he and his family keep up a robust sense of humor and joy in each others’ continued company.
May Marko’s newborn son Noah, who has been in the hospital for a cold, and Noah’s mother Viktoria, who is recovering from her c-section, both be blessed with good health, strength, endurance, and protection, and may they swiftly they make a full recovery.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis‘s fistula heal, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Jack H.’s father John continue to heal from his ailments, including alcohol dependency and breathing difficulties, as much as Providence allows, to be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Audrey’s friend’s daughter Katie, who died in a tragic accident June 2nd, orphaning her two children, be blessed and aided in her soul’s onward journey; and may her family be comforted.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Fabulous article Mr. Greer. I was aware of Engels use of the word “patriarchy” but had no idea that the very concept of “matriarchy” was originally a derogatory term invented by a man to describe an originally less “evolved” mode of existence.
Yes, often in history women in domestic roles are less like June Cleaver and more like Hyacinth Bucket (see the picture below)!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HenpeckedHusband
That was apparently the case in my mother’s neighbourhood in the Toronto area as late as the 1970s.
Would another good example of female informal power be how cheerleaders, or at least “mean girls”, often rule an entire high school making the nerds do their homework, their jock boyfriends become their submissive puppies, and often even making the (especially male) teachers give them better grades. The idea of primitive societies run by informal networks akin to a ruling clique of girls in high school was provactively explored in this article from a few years ago.
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-gossip-trap
This has a lot of interesting twists, I’m going to have to read it again and ponder. I’m particularly intrigued by the Ken Wilber smack talk. I’ve been reading his work for years, and I’d be interested to hear more of your critique if you ever are so moved. Maybe another subject for a longer essay!
Great post. I try to learn and establish views from different sources, but direct observation is weighted most. By a long ways. Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I developed a view mostly in line with the informal power that women held, and that was the case in my family. On the best day, I could only achieve a distant third in the hierarchy of the household, with my parents (on even terms) well ahead of me and my three siblings.
Over time it became apparent our culture was dishing out propaganda intended to influence women much more often vs. men, and polarize us for gains of the upper crust in society. When Billie Jean King crushed Booby Riggs in an exhibition match in 1973, I had no clue to the status of gender wars, but that event hardly settled any question about equal abilities.
While it would be nice to have a system that allowed for trad wives, feminists, passage of the ERA, equal pay in sports, etc., it appears we’re not wired for that by default. Power vacuums and such. Humans have to keep in mind we’re really not that far advanced from the Good Old Days, which quite a few guys I know would be defined as:
“The first was the stage of primitive promiscuity, where everybody mated with everybody else and family ties didn’t exist yet.”
Since being diagnosed with breast cancer in December, I have been awed by the power of groups of women. Singular men have helped too, but in individual ways. The women have brought meals, driven me to and sat with me during appointments, held my hands in scary moments, and cheered every tiny victory. I have been deeply thankful for this demonstration of community. The men have offered physical help – gardening, repairs, yard work. It’s a microcosm of your description, to my eyes.
In great news, I had my last infusion yesterday and rang the heck out of the “I’M FINISHED” bell, which was, aptly, a ship’s style bell. This Sailor appreciated that!
Just a bit of informal power in action. My great grandmother was born in 1883 and lived to be 106. She was a large part of my life. When I got to what ever point it was that we discussed Women’s Sufferage at school, I asked her what it was like to get the right to vote. She said, “It was nice, of course, but we never felt excluded. The women’s club gathered for luncheon on Wednesday afternoons. We decided what needed doing and told our husbands. Believe me! When the president of the College Park Women’s Club sneezed, the Mayor caught a cold!” Of course, those were upper class white women, but they did have the interest of the community at heart. At one point she chaired a PTA committee that went out to do the research and made a presentation to the Board of Regents that got hot lunches served in public schools.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
David, in healthy human societies, formal and informal power balance each other out, and there are often formal-power roles available to women and informal-power roles available to men. It’s when that breaks down that we end up with unchecked power on both sides, with the “mean girls” as one example of toxic informal power.
Corvid, I’ve discussed some of the problems with Wilber’s rehash of the 19th-century rhetoric of developmental stages here:
https://www.ecosophia.net/against-enchantment-i-ken-wilber/
I may revisit him, if the press of current events lets me get back to my discussion of enchantment.
Drhooves, the wish-fulfillment dimension of all these schemes is of course very strong!
Michelle, delighted to hear that those networks are still strong where you are. Best wishes for a prompt and complete recovery, btw!
Bruce, that’s a classic example of what suburbanization destroyed. It will have to be rebuilt in the generations to come.
What I can remember from my grandparents generation is that the male formal power and female informal power do not excise on the same spectrum. Male formal power is mainly on external matters and execution of things and female informal power is on internal matters and long term planning. So my grandfather and other male relatives had to deal with carrying out day to day tasks and dealing with external parties. Running the house and long term guidance of young ones, there education marriage all were strictly came under family female members. So the two systems do not conflict with one another and coexist harmonically.
Nice post. I have had many discussions with friends about the breakdown of community that has followed from the extraordinary mobility made possible by modern transportation and communication systems. An often-heard mantra in our community is “those with get-up-and-go got up and left”. Virtually the only organizations that promote community here now are the churches, and even these have congregations that come and go, leaving them in constant, fragmented flux. What is left is a town that has been brain-drained, a main street with thrift shops, dollar stores, closed computer stores, and flea-market antique stores that no one patronizes. Everyone heads to cities 45 minutes (=40 miles) away to shop for anything but groceries and prescription drugs.
There is some community in our local neighborhood as the men help each other with hay harvesting and the like. But even here there has been about a 30% turnover in the last 10 years. Most of these people are older now and have day jobs. Agriculture here now is uncompetitive with 45,000 dairy operations in the mid-west and the beef industry has been destroyed by cheap imports form Argentina. The main industry in our county now is timber, the former agricultural fields having reverted to forest.
So in addition to women having less opportunity for the kind of soft power described in this essay, I would add the powerlessness of small family-oriented commercial enterprises such as farming and shop-keeping. The mass closure of these stores during Covid while the big box stores remained open and the demise of family farms as they fall to agricultural conglomerates succinctly illustrates the powerlessness of these enterprises.
I never understood what neo-pagan women meant by the patriarchy and how men kept them down. I realized that part of their ideas was because they themselves did not like men. The ones I knew usually had an absent or distant father and a mother from hell. They would tell stories about their bad mothers but reserved their hate for men.
One woman discussed the domestication of women by men. I.e. they were like raising cows – kill off the ornery ones and keep the docile ones. I have heard this theory at various times. The idea that men rose up and killed their friends’ wives, sisters, and daughters, who were creating trouble. This way, women were docile.
Of course the punch line, was the teller of the theory was usually a special woman who made it through.
Question: Have you ever heard of this theory? Where does it come from.
As for me, I never experienced any of that living in Northern Maine. Yes, we had hard men but we had hard women. My grandmother was the town treasure and ran the local phone service. Her mother was the town mayor. And so forth. They were not exceptions but were a part of the norm.
In my neighborhood a large portion of he households are from India. Nearly all of these households would fit in well in 1950’s America ( race aside). Married couples ( arranged) , two kids, one car, one wage earner etc.
And as far as I can see the informal power structure is without a doubt with the women. They run the household, set and implement the social schedule etc. I assume this is the household power dynamic back in India and it has just been transplanted here aided by a compact walkable neighborhood, very close grade school.
Marvelous article, as always. Your analysis of the ‘church ladies’ is also spot on (as someone who has worked as a church musician for 50 years now), except that you missed a key figure: the church secretary. Always female. (Hmm.) She wields enormous power behind the scenes, knows where all the skeletons are buried, who’s doing what to/with whom, etc. Pastors/priests come and go, but the church secretary keeps the wheels turning. The church ladies’ ‘First Lady’?
>That depends, in turn, on whether young conservative men have the brains the gods gave geese, and recognize that it’s essential to step back and not even try to interfere as their wives
Most young men aren’t even dating, much less thinking about marriage. There was a recent rectangle girl talking about how girls are resorting to stealing men’s food at lunchtime in some Cluster B Hive, er, big city, just to get them to talk. In any case, you’re talking about a hypothetical, we’re not even there anymore.
>The coming of suburbia ended that. Suburbs were designed to leave their inmates isolated from one another, miles away from venues for interaction, while mass media drowned out other social activities and a rising tide of geographical mobility made it impossible for stable social bonds to form. Women were suddenly deprived of a mode of social power
I think back to some early Saturday Night Live skits, about housewives being on tranquilizers, to cope with their empty lives. Drugs are a way of dealing with stress. Not a great way, but a way. Nowadays, I guess they spend all their time pawing their phone, until they go mad and destroy it all.
Shiva was a man, right, that destroyer of worlds? Maybe he should’ve been a woman.
Fascinating and grounding. Thank you, Papa.
X
>I’m particularly intrigued by the Ken Wilber smack talk. I’ve been reading his work for years
Hoe_math, is that you?
A lot of the tradwives on social media are actually just grifters that portray an idealized lifestyle that has no connection to the realities of traditional lifestyles. Here’s a particularly humorous example:
https://ibb.co/0yTrNXSW
I think the most important thing to come out of the modern tradwife movement is that it acknowledges that there’s a yearning among many women for a kind of life that is different from the one that third-wave feminism tells them they should want, even if there’s no clear consensus on what the alternative to modernity is. It’s going to take a while for that alternative to become a real future rather than a pantomimed performance of an idealized past.
Dear JMG,
This was, as always, an interesting and thought-provoking post.
In discussing the traditional formal vs. informal power of women in society, wherein women generally held the latter, is it your belief that women tend to perform less well than men when in positions of formal power? (And perhaps conversely, that men tend to do less well in positions of informal power?)
Your post reminds me of a phenomenon that I have observed many times in the past, and just observed yesterday. I had gone on a rather long hike on a local mountain trail, and encountered several groups of people, three I think that consisted of either two or three men, and two that consisted of either four or five women. Due to the switchbacked nature of this trail, I was within ear shot of each group for some time. And far from the first time, I noticed that the groups of men were mostly silent, with just occasional conversation, whereas the groups of women were constantly speaking, with it seemed never a break (my thoughts were along the lines of “Do they EVER shut up?”). More than that, the men, when they did talk, were speaking of various matters, whereas the women were all speaking about other people, and the relationships between them, or their feelings regarding those other people. I must admit that as a man, I would find this tiresome in the extreme.
I’ve seen some analysis of the “tradwife influencer” phenomenon including a satire in which a woman made a Cocoa Puffs type cereal from scratch, forming each little puff by hand. The analysts tagged tradwife videos as a new flavor of “If I were rich” fantasy, pointing out not just the obvious (most of today’s young women, even if they have husbands and children, will have to have jobs just to keep their families from sliding down the socioeconomic ladder; I’ve also seen a third-hand quotation from some MRA/trad Christian type expressing dismay that most men, given the choice between an obedient wife whom they must fully support and one who has her own income and insists on being treated as an equal within the marriage, would rather have the money) but also the presence in these videos of, for instance, a stove that cost more than the average new car. The one advantageous thing about the whole phenomenon is that, by emphasizing cooking from scratch and sometimes even keeping a kitchen garden, the trend is encourageing young women to pick up skills that will continue to be useful after the jobs go away.
In that photo of the three women cooking with their hair down, I can’t help imagining the trad husband at the dinner table picking strand of hair out of his food.
Some recent, as of last few decades, developments I am having trouble understanding:
Post 2nd wave feminism, the women taking up powerful roles formerly reserved for men all too often seem to be either mean girls, such as Hillary Clinton and Kathy Hochul, or shallow “lookers”, like AG Blondie. That is the result of the social movement which was supposed to give hard working, intelligent girls a chance at something other than teacher, librarian, secretary. (I know the helping professions are necessary and important, but not all women, or men, are temperamentally suited for them.)
I read a conservative commentator say that beauty is part of women’s “virtue”. Huh? I wonder what he even means by that word. People can, of course, date and marry whom they like, but why the intrusion of sexual choice into other parts of life? Especially by the allegedly more “rational” gender?
As for the Trad wives; it looks to me like that is a lifestyle which requires at least middle or upper middle-class affluence, and which displays the typical conservative/liberal PMC disdain and contempt for working people and the poor.
TS, thanks for this. Some such arrangement seems very sensible.
Helix, that’s an important point. The destruction of small businesses also contributed massively to the abolition of informal power, and thus to the ascendancy of formal power in the form of the three-headed monster of corporations, bureaucracies, and (notionally) nonprofit organizations.
Neptunesdolphins, that theory is a straightforward inversion of one of the commonplaces of the old matriarchal rhetoric, which you’ll find in Robert Graves among other places: the notion that the best and brightest of the young men in each tribe was sacrificed to the Goddess every year. I once wrote a short story from the point of view of a young man who didn’t get picked, and in the process, realized how efficiently his matriarchal society used that custom of annual murder to keep men subservient. At the end of the story, he starts walking east, toward a rumored place where men ride horses and don’t get sacrificed: the land of the Horsemen. (That’s spelled “evil Kurgan patriarchal invaders” in modern Goddess-speak.) Of course I never tried to get it published; I was still making nice with Neopagans in those days.
Clay, that’s good to know. I hope it catches on.
William, well, that shows you that I haven’t belonged to a traditional church, or I’d have known that. Thanks for the data point!
Other Owen, (1) I saw that. What I took from it is that the current gender divide is nearing the breaking point, and a reset is imminent. (2) Doctors in the 1950s and 1960s called it “the housewife problem,” and handed out fantastic quantities of tranquilizers to treat it. (3) Er, you’ve heard of Kali, haven’t you?
Erika, you’re most welcome.
Nephite, sure, but today’s media pseudoculture is so pervaded with fakery that there’s no other way the concept could surface. Give it time.
Alan, (1) I wouldn’t generalize that way. I’d say that women in positions of formal power tend to use that power in more informal ways, and men in positions of informal power tend to seek to formalize it. (2) That’s one of the reasons why it’s important for men and women to have venues where they can go be with members of their own sex. Men and women have different styles of interaction, and trying to make them spend all their time in each other’s company isn’t good for either one.
Joan, the fascinating thing is that most couples, if you factor in the cost of maintaining two jobs and the amount of nonfinancial wealth that one stay-at-home member can produce in the household economy, will be better off with one cash income than with two. I’m not just shoveling theory here; for more than half of my 40 years of married life Sara and I had one income between us–I was a househusband for quite a few years while trying to break into print, and then she stopped working outside the home once I could support us. Even in her last years, when there were sharp limits on what she could do, we lived rather more comfortably than two-income couples I know. The problem is that the two-income family has been so heavily pushed by corporate propaganda for so long that few people can see past it.
Mary, (1) well, of course. Look back further in history and you’ll find the same thing — while there were exceptions, mostly via hereditary monarchy, mean girls and cute fluffballs make up a very large share of the politically important women in history. (2) It would be interesting to ask him what he meant by that. Jezebel and Delilah, two of the wickedest women in the Bible, were both very beautiful. (3) The online-influencer version, sure; as I noted to Joan, there are other options.
I have mixed feelings about the whole women and informal power thing. I am female, have aspergers or something like it, and find informal power systems extremely confusing to navigate. I still end up in them sometimes – like running the music at church or taking on assorted other roles at church. Be helpful and friendly and you tend to get roped in, especially in smaller churches with too few people who are willing to do the assorted things that need doing. I still am bad at navigating or understanding informal power networks and gossip related stuff, and they stress me out and exhaust me even though I can mask and pass most of the time if I really try. I’ve kind of had to learn how to cope.
Being bad at networking also affects formal stuff like access to jobs. I think my failure at networking was a big issue when trying to transition from university to jobs.
The wargaming I’ve been doing is very heavily male, and the feel of the group is very different. Its a relief not to worry about the sort of backbiting you get in the soprano or alto section of a choir, for an example.
JMG,
It is my understanding that there are some indigenous cultures that are not exactly a matriarchies , but in them land or possessions are owned and passed down by the women. I could see some advantages to this if men were frequently killed In battle this would provide a much more stable social structure. Are there good examples of these, or an example of wishful thinking by some?
“the current gender divide is nearing the breaking point, and a reset is imminent”
What do you think that looks like? How do you think it might happen & play out? Any tips for surviving the break or the culture wars in general?
Here are two posts by Yves Smith at the Naked Capitalism website:
“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”: Why Are Young Men Giving Up on Sex?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/youve-lost-that-lovin-feeling-why-are-young-men-giving-up-on-sex.html
Reverse Lysistrata: More on Men Cooling on Dating, Sex and the Role of Societal Denigration
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/reverse-lysistrata-more-on-men-cooling-on-dating-sex-and-the-role-of-societal-denigration.html
None of this is news to anyone on this comment board. What I find remarkable (and hopeful) is that Smith, a prototypical Affluent White Female Liberal (AWFL), is actually willing to honestly engage this subject, and seriously ask whether or not young men have a legitimate source of complaint. She avoids the schoolyard bullying and kindergarten name-calling so typical of the feminists of my lifetime.
A drop in the bucket, to be sure. Nonetheless, I encourage any such good-faith efforts when I see them.
Lord Byron had something to say about female power:
“But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?”
As to disempowering women by moving them to the suburbs, Alexander Graham Bell had to go and spoil it all by inventing the telephone. And anyway, didn’t women demand to move to the suburbs? It was seen as superior to staying in town. It is women’s drive for status that shapes society.
Fascinating as always!
I wonder how much of the current turmoil in men/women relationships is due to the rewriting of behavior standards so they no longer parallel what’s hardwired into our species.
Wanting children in a culture that no longer assumes everyone will marry and have them comes to mind.
An odd, large offshoot of “I was the alien’s love slave” subgenre is “I want you because I want lots of children.” Yep, alien men need human wives not just because Earth Girls Are Easy but to propagate their species because for various reasons their own alien women no longer bear children. They want children. Badly. This subgenre is popular! I don’t know how many cat moms adore it but I’d guess more than a few.
Thanks for this article. I spent much of 2024 investigating the premise that the advent of the potter’s wheel forced women out of the manufacture of ceramics and demonstrates the triumph of technology over nature. The genealogy of this idea (at least the European line to the US Studio Potter movement) travels through Bernard Leach –> Engels and Marx –> Lewis H Morgan (US) –> Bachofen –> Hegel. Seeing my old pal Bachofen at the head of your post made me smile. I had never heard of him before I made this deep dive and I am much the better for it. I agree with you that we cannot know the “truth” about the power dynamics based solely on material culture. But, after my study, I must conclude that the idealized, peaceful matriarchy Gimbutas and others imagine and aspire a return to is a myth. Worse, it reinforces present tensions between the genders. Anyway, if there is any interest in the subject: https://brandichase.com/before-and-after-the-potters-wheel/
On another note, Michelle #5, congratulations on your milestone! I know that ring!
And yes, The Other Owen #13, do find Kali and Durga.
About Suburban isolation: a certain wicked Russian-expat witch, now dead, had a useful touchstone. I’m going to substitute her “don’t” with “*Before* you examine a folly, ask yourself what it accomplishes. ” What did cutting women off from their sources of informal power accomplish? The same thing as a hut tax imposed on a subsistence society – to force the inhabitants into the money economy.”
I’ve noticed that postwar attempts to reform society, end looseness and corruption etc, seem to include a crackdown on women’s rights and on the freedom of “the lower orders,” and of course, cracking down on youth as well. Frex, what were the juvenile delinquents of the 1950s doing? smoking cigarettes, racing hotrods, and listening to rock’n’roll, even dancing to it. Oh, and sometimes riding motorcycles. The crackdown of the early 1800s involved putting people back in their places, tightening racial laws in the South, etc. Wanting everything neat, logical, orderly, “a place for everything and everything in its place.”
As for Bachhofen et. al. –he obviously didn’t know a thing about other cultures present or past, nor even those of our hairy cousins the chimpanzees, but like a lot of Victorians, thought he and his like were the crowns of creation and the culmination of evolution. Shakes head….
Folks – an old folks home like the one I live is a de facto matriarchy; we are most of the volunteer committees, though the resident garden is run by a man, and believe me, the men here are not oppressed, but valued as table companions and for whatever else they have to contribute. (Well, there are certain old goats – and – complaints queens here. Show me a community without them.)
I do believe in a world where everyone can be what they’re called to be, but for the love of Athena, why should being in a high position of power necessitate wearing 5-inch heels?
>whereas the groups of women were constantly speaking, with it seemed never a break (my thoughts were along the lines of “Do they EVER shut up?”)
The Japanese have two characters. https://imgur.com/NgmoLdL
How much of the crazy sexual behavior these days is due to the collapse of more traditional male/female power structures?
I ask because I walked today with Sheri. She told me that her niece’s baby might not be her husband’s but instead her lover’s and that the niece’s husband also had an affair with his female squadron mate. She’s got a nephew in his early 40s with three young children by three different baby mamas. It’s apparently fine because the purpose of life is finding your bliss and maximizing your own pleasure.
Closer to home, my sister-in-law’s nephew’s mother has four children by four different baby daddies. No marriage of course and no paid employment for anyone. Nephew’s mother named her newest baby Abraxus. She lives with her mother, all the children, AND two of the baby daddies who … well, I don’t know what they do and I don’t ask.
I keep hearing these stories, along with the ones where grandparents raise their grandchildren because the parents and their baby partners are completely incapable of functioning as adults.
Could this be related to our distorted male/female power structure?
@neophyte #16
Lol, strawberry trees. There’s a lot of people these days who are just “playing one on TV”, now that it’s possible for everyone to have their very own TV show if they want it. They say a politician is someone who tells you what you want to hear. What do you call someone who portrays what you want to be? Maybe the proper term is indeed “youtube grifter” but there may be some nuance there that is getting ignored.
People talk about RETVRN, but I would say less romantically that “last known good” lies somewhere between 1920-1950. In any case, the current arrangement of things – does. not. work. Show me something that works and I’ll get behind it.
>What I took from it is that the current gender divide is nearing the breaking point, and a reset is imminent.
I don’t know why but after hearing about this, I started humming the jingle to “Salad Shooter” but replaced it with “Salad Stealer”.
pygmycory @ 21, I also have difficulties, to put it mildly, with navigating informal power arrangements. I don’t think I have aspergers, being rather bad at math, for one thing, but I do suffer from a quite serious case of what has recently been designated as CPTSD–to make a long story short, let me just say many of the Greatest Generation were not so great at raising children. Before anyone asks, no, folks like me neither request nor expect Special Victim Status but being left alone to figure things out for ourselves would have been nice over the years.
What I found particularly frustrating was the female supervisors who could not or would not give explicit instructions. One such lady even said she should not have to, her staff should “just know”. I do think that in a formal structure, like a workplace, formal instructions of the here is what we need variety, are necessary.
Martin Back @25, the suburbs were heavily subsidized, for commercial reasons. Think of the industries who benefitted, from auto to construction to insurance to real estate to purveyors of all kinds of household goods.
Fascinating article JMG.
Here’s a data point from my personal experience: I attend quite a few planning and zoning meetings, in which the discussion revolves around land use for proposed projects. Most–but not all–of the citizens speaking at these meetings are women, and they are generally there to object to the proposed projects. Because current planning and zoning rules essentially require suburban development, this means that these women are campaigning against the traditional, walkable development pattern you talk about in the post.
There are a number of things going on here, including generational conflict between baby boomers and younger generations, but it is interesting that women would lead the charge in opposing the forums for women’s soft power you are writing about. I’ve also noticed that it is women who most vociferously attack: 1) breast feeding 2) natural childbirth 3) home schooling and 4) traditional women’s roles such as the stay-at-home mom.
Interestingly, even in the appropriately rigid hierarchy of the military, there apparently is (or perhaps used to be) a quiet awareness of the utility of the twofold formal/informal pattern. In the 1950’s novel “Alas, Babylon,” a character refers to a common saying regarding rising through military ranks: “Anyone can make Colonel on their own, but it takes a wife to make a General.”
I get the tentative feeling that, among at least some subset of what’s sometimes called “generation alpha,” that there’s a rising affinity for genuinely re-examining and reclaiming some of these lost patterns, precisely because they were sacrificed on the altar of dying liberalism. I regard it as a hopeful sign.
As Elrond said to Frodo, you will find friendship on the way, secret and unlooked-for.
Excellent analysis…and in our neighborhood, there is still a powerful female collective which decides most things, of which my wife is a powerful member, and I am a humble advisor, being the only attorney…And sometimes they have actual nominal power, but it all comes down to the same thing…If the collective decides something, it happens…
There sure was a lot of claptrap flying around in the 19th century…There are still hunter-gatherer bands in places like the Amazon and Philippines which date back tens of thousands of years, and none of them function as matriarchal..But that fact was ignored by these theoreticians…Like Rousseau, they simply made up a theory…and the right people pushed the theory….In fact, .men are genetically suited to hunting, war, and toolmaking, while women are suited to child rearing, light gardening, and creating society and culture…that has never changed….
Chimpanzees are our close cousins, and we have much in common with them:
https://releasechimps.org/chimpanzees/chimpanzee-society
Excerpts:
“Chimpanzees search for food communally when foraging or hunting prey. A group of males will chase, corner, and kill small monkeys for meat. (…)
Chimpanzees acknowledge and respect the hierarchy within their group. Within chimpanzee politics, dominance relationships are influenced by alliances, and males form coalitions. They will attack trespassing males from another territory to defend their own.
Social groups consist of a dominant male, adult females, subordinate males, and juveniles.”
Bands of chimpanzees sometimes wage war against other bands of chimpanzees, to protect or gain control of territory (and therefore, of the resources necessary to their survival). Like hunting, war (which is in our DNA) is a male activity. War is dangerous, but the reward is that successful warriors are very attractive to female, and therefore more likely to pass on their genes than weak or cowardly males.
This looks like patriarchy, but who decides if and when the tribe will move to a more bountiful place? This is the most important decision a tribe can make. The dominant male, or the adult females? I guess that the dominant male takes the initiative, but the adult females have an informal right of veto… like the “church ladies”? It seems to me to be the most likely hypothesis.
The Iroquois Confederacy had strong matriarchal features – see below but were quite warlike and even could be considered genocidal in their treatment of non Iroquois tribes.
“ Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars
So much for the peaceful influences of matriarchy.
According to Google AI
Key Aspects of Iroquois Matriarchy:
Matrilineal Descent:
.Family lineage and clan membership were determined by the mother’s line.
Clan Mothers:
.The oldest women in each clan held the power to choose and remove chiefs, oversee the well-being of the clan, and name children.
Political Power:
.Women’s influence extended to the Grand Council, where their chosen chiefs represented their nations, and they could remove chiefs who were not fulfilling their duties.
Economic Control:
.Women controlled the agricultural production, distribution of food, and the provisioning of warriors, granting them significant economic power
“… it’s all but impossible to know much of anything about the gender politics of societies that left no written records, there’s basically nothing to stop both sides from finding what they want to find in the equivocal traces turned up by archeologists.”
I feel sorry for archeologists; it must be stressful to squeeze pottery shards so hard to get papers out of them that it cuts their thoughts into shreds.
“… if academics weren’t so terrified of the words ‘we don’t know’—I think they’re afraid their noses will fall off if they say that…”
I think it’s because they’re afraid that their funding will be cut off if they say that.
Thank you for this post; it makes sense of the subject. As a woman who has often found herself in mostly male spaces – often enough in my younger years as the only woman – and knowing that men speak differently if there is even one woman present, I have had plenty of opportunities to notice how differently men speak with each other, even when I am around, than I speak with the women I know in women-only spaces. For me the difficult part is that I generally find mostly-men spaces more intellectually stimulating and enjoyable than all-women spaces, but that may have a lot to do with my not having raised any children.
@Teresa Peschel: Some of us actually come from families where we have siblings by multiple fathers and mothers. The sexual instinct starts young. At least it did in traditional societies. People couldn’t afford to wait around when they might day just a few decades in. So that part is hardwired into us. This is also a class thing. Of course it happens in the upper class, they just don’t talk about it so much, while in the lower class, its de rigeur to have multiple partners. Not so strange to think that a young woman might have a few partners before settling down with one. Babies might just be a result of that. I don’t think that is an excuse to not take responsibility though. What you noticed does happen, but I don’t see the hang up about people having multiple kids with multiple people. That’s why, as Clay Dennis noted, a lot of societies were matrilineal in their genetic Benne Gesserit genealogies. Matrilineal doesn’t equate to matriarchy though.
Bravo, John Michael. You did not disappoint.
Plenty to think about here. I have a few thoughts, and will have more as I think about this weeks post. That is one of the great things about this community: You can read the post multiple times during the week, and integrate the thoughts of the commentariat into your reading. It’s marvelous, a true forum, and I for one am eternally grateful to our host for providing this space for us to all get together. It makes me seriously consider Erica’s idea of a get together.
As I apply this thinking to my own relationships/marriage/partnership(s) I recall my upbringing. By the time I came along, the fourth child separated from my nearest sibling by a decade, my parents had already weathered a decade and a half of hardship, learning, economic downturns, and the stress of providing for a family by working in the timber industry. My sister says I grew up in a different family than her and our brothers. The model that was portrayed to me was of equals, who had arrived at an equilibrium of relationship and working together. My father would get home from work, and converse with my mother while she prepared dinner. Her role as a stay at home mother was recognized for what it was: essential labor that made the partnership work.
Not that they were hippies, my mother was an old world catholic lady, and my father was driven to provide for his family, it’s just that the household was based on communication and sharing. Just a working class lumbering family.
JMG: “Then there’s the informal power. In every church I’ve ever interacted with, this is possessed and exerted by a small group of old women—“the church ladies” is a common label for them.”
Back in the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church when there were still lots of nuns, they often wielded a lot of power. Of course it was often abused (see mean nuns and Magdalen Sisters), as power often is, but religious orders often attracted forceful women who did a lot of good (see Mother Cabrini, and teachers who educated the children of impoverished European immigrants).
Ironically, since the Church is technically patriarchal, priests were often afraid of the nuns. I recall an old-school priest saying (in reference to a novena, a nine-day prayer): “Never argue with the nuns – they go down to the convent, and nine days later you’re dead!”
Hi JMG,
I loved that article. A lot of the stuff they teach in Universities is such horseshit. I remember when Mitochondrial Eve was the Mother of us all. Don’t hear so much about her now.
About the subjugation of women, I think a lot of it is assumed from ignorance. When I was a young woman, I was speaking with an English man who was an Arabic speaker and entomologist so he was good at observation. I said something about the Gulf Arabs treating their women little better than slaves.
My friend corrected me with this story. As a young man, he was in Saudi Arabia at his usual coffee shop and his male companions began to take of shooting and how good they were at it. One old gentleman invited the group back to his place and they would have a shooting match to see who was the most skilled.
They group got back to his place and he told his wife to give them all a dozen rounds from their storeroom. She flat out refused. She had the right to do that because she ran the stores. Her husband was in a position to lose face over this so she eventually, and with bad grace, gave each man one round and told them to go off and play.
I never forgot that story.
Maxine
@JMG @Alan
Masculine and feminine styles of interaction are learned. This has been studied. Mothers speak to their daughters more than to their sons from birth, and boys are told to hush more often than girls. My brother and his wife were told by a social worker they knew, when their son was (I think) around eight, that the kid had the level of articulateness that was more typical of girls, and specified that this was because his parents had talked to him in a way more typical of parents with a girl.
This learning tends to stick around. Two friends of mine, both trans, both early trans-rights activists, now married to each other, bought a house in the country some decades ago. For the first few years, they would host big house parties a few times a year, lasting a whole weekend, inviting all their friends from the city. I attended enough of these parties to notice a pattern. After lunch on Saturday, the group would split. Everyone who was raised male, no matter what their current gender, would do some activity together such as sledding or archery or, if the weather did not permit, watching TV. Meanwhile everyone who was raised female, no matter what their current gender, would get hot beverages and sit around the dining room drinking them and talking about relationships. The one exception was the hosts’ daughter, who had as close to a gender-free upbringing as this society allows. She had the flavor of ADHD that hates to sit still and loves physical activity. She always went with the raised-male group.
You precisely described what happened to my father, a mainline protestant denomination pastor at a rural long-established church in South Carolina. It was during the mid-1960s and his views with respect to civil rights did not comport with the views of the membership. As to the ladies of the church, my mother (with three elementary aged children in tow) did not meet their expectations and became the subject of malicious gossip. Everyone in our family ended up with psychological scars to one extent or another. We stayed there less than 3 years and my dad decided to change careers.
>most couples, if you factor in the cost of maintaining two jobs and the amount of nonfinancial wealth that one stay-at-home member can produce in the household economy, will be better off with one cash income than with two.<
Nowadays I think this is a statement whose accuracy waxes and wanes with the cost of housing relative to income. Housing costs are inevitably financial. You need income to stay housed. When the price of housing is reasonable, then household production (that nonfinancial wealth) can make a big enough difference to tip the balance. When the price of housing is insane (e. g., now) then continual grubbing for cash is the first order of business.
The other consideration is that people who are locked into a fixed-rate mortgage can use household production to stave off foreclosure. This is how my farming grandfather did it. When the Great Depression was beginning to really bite, he sold off all the motorized equipment on the place, including the car, and went back to horses because the motors burned fossil fuel, which had to be bought, while the horses ate fodder, which could be grown.
I recall a story, from a Maori leader in New Zealand (it’s a common enough story), born into a rangatira family (i.e. Maori aristocracy). He was young, and had probably been told at some point, he would become a tribal leader, although (then as now), that didn’t mean special rights as much as constant, exhausting hard work of ceremonies. He was later ushered into a tribal meeting, told to sit quiet down the back, whilst a committee of vaguely terrifying elderly Maori women up the front did the real work – and was told, these kuia (respected, elderly Maori women) run the tribe, annoy them at your peril. It’s much the same in most rural societies.
In another context, I’ll never fail to laugh at the third, or fourth, or as I now call it x-wave feminists, who, upon landing in a female dominated office culture after obtaining some degree, get relentlessly bullied by their female bosses who are somehow smashing the patriarchy, and quietly express, it would be better with a male boss. Not perfect, but better. Any modern office bureaucracy, public or private sector, is living proof that no, a matriarchy is not utopia 🙂
JMG: Please publish the story about the young man fleeing his matriarchal society to join the horse lords.
This Texas girl usually has to read your posts a few times — you’ve got some rich word swagger, Greer — but I’ve been wanting to chime in on a few, and this one? Yeah, this one’s fun for me.
Coming from a woman — one who unfortunately knows her gender’s inner workings far too well — let me say this:
You’d be better off putting a tiara on female power and letting it take the stage than pretending it’s harmless running the lights and fog machine. I learned early that manipulation is the go-to tool for far too many women, and I don’t find it clever — I find it pathetic. Whether it’s a conference room or a Bible study, I’ve watched entire conversations get hijacked by “kind” remarks and passive digs dressed up as wisdom. It’s worse than a velociraptor — at least those don’t smile while circling. Women know exactly when and what to exploit. You men stay sharp.
Now, I don’t have time to research who’s already said this — but when you create life, it’s a big deal. And at some point, you’re faced with a choice:
… Do you create a dependent fan club of cloned heirs, or do you release and let them become their own?
That’s lesson one of motherhood. Do you hold… or release?
Brave women have nothing to prove. They’re okay with untraveled terrain. And here’s the truth: when a woman releases control — truly releases — that’s when she’s at her most powerful.
If someone mistakes that for weakness… well, let the story play out when they cross paths with a woman perfectly capable of the trained-velociraptor response.
Also — as a mom to two sons — I’ve told them straight: Don’t hold back with women. Say what’s real. Secure women won’t flinch — they’ll lean in. Maybe even kiss the truth. But if she defaults to sidebars, whispers, and triangulation? She’s not mature enough for keys — she needs a curfew. Besides public restrooms, we need to stop dividing up folks. This gender, age sectors shows such a maturity gap. Keep people on the same field, it encourages accountability and real growth.
And by the way? Tiaras are dumb.
Where did that even enter the gene pool — was there a shortage of ideas that century?
Mission-minded women don’t need material bling or precious metals. The underwire bra is all the metal I can tolerate. Presence — not sparkle — should carry her truth.
It would be a more balanced world if this dance finally adjusted — not with dominance or retreat — but with a steady meld instead of constant ebb and flow. Maybe one day there will be daring men and brave women, even if it’s one.single.day.
Great post. It had honestly never occurred to me to suburbia caused a loss of women’s circles of influence and power. Much to chew on with that.
For one thing, it’s changed the way I think of something that happened recently (which I’m surprised no one’s commented on): an app named Tea became the #1 app on the iOS App Store. The app is a women’s-only app for discussing men they have dated or are considering dating, including sharing red flags and identifying men who are dating multiple women behind their backs.
Upon hitting the #1 spot, the app drew a lot of hostility, mostly from men but some women joined in to voice their concerns. The fear was that the app would be used by bad actors to spread malicious gossip (“tea” is slang for “gossip” after all) against men. Others joked that it would be used as a dating app by women who were into creeps.
FWIW, I think the concerns are valid. As several people pointed out, if you flip the sexes the problem is obvious: an app to let men secretly gossip about women would be abused immediately.
On the other hand, I now see that the app is in its own way an attempt by women to rebuild the kind of circles that used to be their social domain. In a probably dysfunctional way but such is the way of things when the Internet gets involved. So I’m a lot more sympathetic to it than I was when the news broke.
Anyway, the app was hacked less than 24 hours after hitting #1 (where by “hacked” I mean they somehow forgot to secure their data in any way whatsoever and someone just grabbed it from a public API), doxxing thousands of women and making thousands of private messages public. So it’s not clear the app has a future.
I admit to having some smug schadenfreude about the hack at the time, but in light of this post I’ve changed my mind. Now I think the whole thing is just kind of sad.
Yes, it’s hard for a girl with Asperger’s, who has trouble navigating the informal power structure. On top of that , you get the double bind of “the girls don’t like me because I’m a geek. The geeks don’t like me because I’m a girl.” There should be room for the exceptions to the norm – and the “50s (roughly, the late 40s – through the Kennedy administration) were pretty stifling, even in the cities. And my family lived in cities for the most part.
In ancient Greece, a strongly patriarchal culture, there were the Little Bears of Artemis, little girls who lived in the temple and ran wild in the woods. IIRC, the idea as to get that out of them before they were of marriageable age. But wives didn’t live in harems! Multiple wives were not part of the picture at all.
Their houses did have women’s quarters upstairs, which were the center of the wives’ biggest job, weaving for the household, and they stayed there when their menfolk were entertaining other men downstairs, but don’t take Xenophon for a spokesman for the norm; he was an ultraconservative in his day, before he was caught behind enemy lines in Persia and had to lead his men out. Edith Hamilton has some interesting things to say on that subject. Also, a book called, IIRC, “Slaves, wives, whores, and priestesses,”
But yes, the only independent women in that culture were courtesans, generally foreigners.
interesting essay JMG. what you referred to in the beginning is called “gossiping, shaming, and rallying” by evolutionary psychologists. there was a now deceased youtuber, Kevin Samuels who called this “SIGN language.” Shame, Insults, Guilt, the Need to be right.
i appreciate the historical context, especially the point on what purpose an idea serves the person. but what i think was left out, and hopefully followed up on, is the exploration of the hypothesis, that young women, under 45, are for the most part the biggest victims to the egregore of social media. and how this and 100 years of feminism and leftist universities have women spellbound to a lifestyle and modality of thinking that is in fact ruining their own innate female gifts of empathy, kindness, child rearing, and the ability to give birth. and on top of that, is bringing down the world because all of those wonderful traits have been completely weaponized against them.
thanks
@pygmycory #21
Thank you for sharing this! As an autistic male, you’ve described my own feelings about dealing with informal power structures to a T.
I’m glad you’ve found refuge in war games; I may have to finally dip my toe into that space. (One of my big problems is that I just don’t like Warhammer at all, either fantasy or 40K, which together seem to take up 90%+ of the wargaming mindshare.)
I’m mainly into old-school tabletop roleplaying games (TSR D&D, Classic Traveller, etc.), and unfortunately that space is very much not devoid of informal power structures and high school level drama. Backbiting and malicious gossip have become rampant.
“We do not live in a hierarchy—we live in a heterarchy”
I’ll probably quote this line in the future!
I’ve generally encouraged and been pleased by the informal networks my wife and other feminine relatives have established and have continued to establish. It’s as incredible to see in action as it is incomprehensible. Many struggling modern young men would find their lives rapidly improved by befriending a couple of church ladies, more rapidly and thoroughly than they would by just following redpill advice.
About trad wives – I never knew anyone who had a stay at home mother. Everyone worked since rent had to be paid and food had to be eaten. I think it is a class thing that as someone outside classes – very rural did not have. I was raised to have a job skill since you never know when something bad may happened to the family. Having only one income earner was asking for trouble since the man could be sick. The one aunt that I had did not work but she watched the children of everyone else.
So for me the whole trad wife is well some sort of fairy tale that certain classes tell each other. You had to be very well-off to have people not work. Is that the implication of a non-working wife – wealth?
What we did in our free time – was if female – sew, etc usually while waiting for something or chatting. If male, chopping wood, keeping up the home and hunting. So we did segregate by sex as to what we did for chores.
When formal power and informal power get a bit muddled up in Suburbia, the result is Homeowners Associations (HOAs).
I did note one thing though as an adult – the idea of working women was foreign if you became a mother. I was living in cities then, and later D.C. I believe it was a class thing again of wealthier people had stay-at-home mothers. I remember in my new mother class the amount of guilt people had for working. Not me. Nada.
What I had was a husband who was struggling with jobs until he could get treatment for his rage seizures. I was the main breadwinner. He cared for our children. Later, we were a team with child raising. Both parents went to the school, surprising people excepting only the mother. Having a father along changed things.
I did run into the “you make more than your husband” stuff. I just shrugged it off. I believe all these things came out the suburbs and the culture they endorsed.
Pygmycory, this is one of the reasons that I stressed that you find men and women alike on both sides of fhe formal-informal power divide. My late wife was the same way — she was on the autism spectrum, and from late childhood on preferred to hang with boys (and then men) rather than girls (and then women) because she disliked the informal-power realm and never could do it well. That’s one of the reasons why she became the first female presiding officer of an Odd Fellows lodge in Washington state; when the Odd Fellows decided to let women join, the brothers of my lodge (who all knew her via social and charitable activities) asked her to join and then voted her into the big chair because they all knew her, liked her, and knew she’d follow the rules of formal power rather than trying to twist them into comformity with the ways of informal power.
Clay, control of wealth by women is tolerably common in world societies, partly for that reason and partly for others. The crucial point is that the property in question cannot convey formal power — as it did, for example, in the British aristocracy.
Dijon, my guess is that if women are resorting to stealing salads to try to attract the attention of men, the next step for them is to figure out why men aren’t interested in dating, and abandon those habits that drive them away. It’s not exactly hard to figure out what those are. You’ll know it’s happening when left-adjacent media outlets start howling in outrage. In terms of survival strategies, depends on your current situation and needs; it’s a complex landscape — and, er, asking an autist for advice on interpersonal relationships may not be your best move. 😉
Michael, good heavens. Yeah, I think the wind is changing in a big way. The second article is particularly good, as it begins to talk about the extremely toxic double-binds that today’s female culture imposes on men who might be interested in dating.
Martin, if you use saturation propaganda on any population, you can get them to demand something, no matter how disastrous it turns out to be.
Teresa, good heavens. That was a theme in men’s SF back in the day — either aliens kidnapping earth women to produce offspring for them (cue the camp classic movie Mars Needs Women) or alien cuties cuddling up to human men with the same goal in mind (cue the Roger Zelazny short story “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”). Then it became a theme in UFO-themed hypnagogic fantasies (aka “alien abduction”); now it’s buff alien men playing romantic lead in romance fiction (aka emotional pornography) for American middle-class cat ladies. Quite a trajectory…
Brandi, hmm! Thanks for this — a fascinating light on the whole process. I’m inclined to agree that the utopian matriarchy of Old Europe is a myth, but then its factual nature is irrelevant to its mythic status — a myth is any story people use as a template for making sense of the world, whether or not it has anything to do with the world of observable fact.
Patricia M, don’t ask me about the heels. I have no idea why women put up with those at all.
Teresa, doubtless, and it’s also a function of culture death. There’s a sense in which Bachofen got things the wrong way around: the age of polymorphous perversity happens in the twilight of a society, not in its dawn.
Other Owen, funny! I’d like to see “salad stealer” turn into slang for a salary class woman who wants a boyfriend but isn’t willing to change her own behavior, even in the slightest, in order to attract one.
Samurai_47, of course. In most societies women are the conservative sex, and informal power serves as a brake on social change. Having fully embraced the roles assigned them by corporate pseudoculture, the Karenocracy is now filling its time-honored role as the enforcement arm of the conventional wisdom.
RaabSilco, here’s hoping. What we have certainly isn’t working.
Pyrrhus, so the old patterns are reestablishing themselves. That’s probably for the best.
Horzabky, if you know the habits of social primates you can predict the behavior of most human social structures at a glance. Yes, the dominant male chimp has the formal power, the older adult females have the informal power, and the balance between them varies from band to band depending on the personalities of the individual chimps.
BeardTree, the Iroquois are among the societies I had in mind when I mentioned that some cultures institutionalize the informal power of women. Notice that here again it’s female elders, who are selected by informal processes among the female population, balanced against male chiefs, selected by more formal means.
SLClaire, I may have to do a post sometime soon about the fear academics so often have of having their noses fall off. It really does explain a lot!
John, thanks for this. That’s a good example of how that kind of marriage can work well; I wish I’d had the chance to experience something like it in this life.
Yavanna, the priest wasn’t joking. The Catholic church has a long and very curious traditions of clerical black magic among its religious orders, and novenas in particular have been used for some very dark purposes down through the years.
Maxine, a good example of the interface between formal and informal power!
Joan, I’d want to see those studies and check for bias. Given the sheer scale of the replication crisis these days, any study that conforms to current cultural prejudices needs to be given the bent eye and examined for biased design and statistical manipulation.
JIG, I’m sorry to hear that, but not at all surprised. Anyone who thinks that matriarchy would be kind, peaceful, and benevolent has never spent time around old women who have power.
Joan, it’s certainly true that the corporate economy has made every effort to force people into subservience to the money system. Nonetheless my point stands; especially if there are children, having one parent stay home erases so many expenses, and replaces so many purchased products with homemade ones, that in many cases housing becomes more affordable, not less.
Peter, yep. There’s a reason why formal male leadership attracts support from many younger women: rule by female elders can be unbearable, and there are no checks and balances to restrain the abuse of informal power.
Raymond, I know of no venue that would accept it for publication. It’s not a long piece, but these days it would require an introduction of a couple of pages to explain what it’s talking about — and even now, a story like “The Horsemen” (that’s its title) would be rejected with shrieks of outrage by every fiction venue I know of.
Sabrina, thanks for this! I don’t know if there’s much hope of that steady meld in my lifetime or that of anyone breathing today, but here’s hoping.
Slithy, I considered including that in my discussion, because yes, it’s relevant. Of course it’s going to be abused — power, formal or informal, always is. The question is how men will respond to it. The young men who are simply refusing to have anything to do with dating have chosen a powerful tactic; we’ll see how it plays out.
Patricia M, by “harem” I mean a separate women’s quarter in each house to which they were restricted — the Greek word was gynoecion. Since men under Greek law had free sexual access to all female slaves, the resemblance to a harem with one principal wife was fairly close…
R, I don’t think it’s fair to say that young women are the biggest victims — it’s young people of both genders. Other than that, yeah, your point stands.
SirusTalCelion, I’ll be expanding on the concept of heterarchy in a later post. Glad you found it useful.
Neptunesdolphins, growing up, I knew several one-income family, and my mother didn’t go into the workforce until my sister and I were both in school. So it did, and still does, happen.
Walt, and then it’s the worst of both worlds!
My mom was Director of Christian Education at a very large mainline Protestant church in my formative years. To her credit, she ran a PK-12 and a community college on a shoestring with a volunteer staff every Sunday for thirteen years. Her role was an amalgam of hard and soft power, though it may have been as much a product of suburbia as second wave feminism. She did a rather good job until a couple of ex-hippies (both male and ascended into titular pillar of the community roles, btw) shouldered their way onto the board, turned the dial to the All-Liberal-All-Day station and ripped the knob off – which drove her away and killed the institution in short order. (My disgust caused me to go looking for other options, but that’s a different story.)
My observations of said church suggest that your division of labor into masculine and feminine spheres is correct, but the groups are neither monolithic nor self-aware. As a primer, observing a large troop of baboons in the wild sub-group, squabble and reform before moving one’s blind and camera to a church would make for time well spent.
I concur with William Zeitler about the role of the secretary, but they are not inviolate, though they do tend to hang around well past their pull-by dates. Her inevitable take-down makes a far worse and longer lasting mess than tossing a disposable pastor.
That the same behaviors caused me to exit a prominent neopagan organization bears mention here, I think, if only to point out that baboonery is omnipresent, while the Age of Happy Motoring leaves us poorly equipped to cope with our hardwired selves.
Many thanks for the opportunity to speak here.
I remember reading in one of Jason Miller’s books that the most effective group of witches he ever met was a group of church ladies who prayed together. They of course don’t think of themselves as witches, but that doesn’t diminish their effectiveness.
This pattern of formal / informal power is so pervasive it even replicates itself in female-only groups.
I was the President of a textile arts guild for three years, with a board of directors. When we came into conflict with the Old Ladies, we lost as often as we won. Early in my tenure we had to change the locks on the office – necessary, because twelve people had keys to it, and it also contained members’ personal and credit card information, but offensive. I completely underestimated the symbolic value of those keys to the twelve sub-group leaders. (There were actually twelve, this is starting to sound symbolic.)
In retrospect, Removing The Keys from The Twelve was something I got punished for , but I was socially tone-deaf enough not to connect the two for a while. Which is what I was doing in the formal power structure in the first place, but I deeply resented Those Women for getting in my way while I was trying to keep the bills paid, the lights on and us from getting sued.
Of course, Those Women had their own role in keeping the organisation alive and mentoring new members, and those times I flattered them I was rewarded.
“a conservative commentator [said] that beauty is part of women’s “virtue”. Huh? I wonder what he even means by that word. “
Maybe he meant it in the sense of what a thing is good for? Like an herb’s virtue might be its utility in preventing infection, for instance.
I’ve also often encountered the idea that via their beauty and charm, women are able to exert a civilizing and pro-social influence on men and motivate them to excellence for the betterment of society; thus it is a virtue to be beautiful, since ugly women do little to motivate men to their best efforts or behavior.
Oops, that last comment was meant to be addressed to Mary Bennett.
I witnessed the informal power many times as a grade school kid in the early 60s. The moms had complete control over the local school, stores and government. If they didn’t like a teacher, that teacher was gone pretty quick. They got stop signs moved, police patrols rescheduled and parks upgraded. They were present in every school room, as “helpers” and room mothers, monitoring what was going on also.
Their network was amazing! Everyone knew everything almost instantly. A vocal crowd could be in the principal’s office in an hour.
They also had power over the children, teaching them wrong from right and directing they way their kids would think and act in the world.
I often wonder why moms gave up all their power for equal rights. Maybe they were “played” by the system to become workers, commuters and consumers.
@Joan,
I was thinking that about housing prices changing the calculus of two incomes vs 1 income plus home production too. I think you’re right. Among other things, it’s hard to do as much home production in a small apartment as you can in a house with garden space and space to set up a workshop/craft space, and if housing prices are nuts and you’re struggling with them, well, a lot of people are living in little apartments.
Other Owen,
“Most young men aren’t even dating, much less thinking about marriage.”
Is it really most? I know the marriage-rejection thing gets talked about a lot, but what surveys I’ve seen seem to suggest that while marriage and kids are on a downward trend, most people (including and maybe even especially men) still want to get married and have kids.
For instance:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/
Totally and absolutely off topic!
If anyone here is interested in traditional Pennsylvania Dutch Magic, aka powwowing,
our library just bought the new book:
“Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei & the Ritual of Everyday Life” by Patrick J. Donmoyer.
343 pages of densely written text, indexes, appendices, pictures, footnotes, and such. It also features Dr. Helfenstein’s “Secrets of Sympathy: A New & Improved Translation.”
Mr. Donmoyer is the director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. He’s published similar books on Pennsylvania Dutch magic.
If I didn’t tell you and the commentariat about this book right away, I’d forget.
It would be just like the movie ‘The Wicker man’.
Men would be held in permanent menial jobs and once a year they would sacrifice an unsuspecting man for their fertility offering
No thanks
@ Indigo Crotchety Peacock #40
The issue the families have with these fine folks having plenty of babies with numerous partners they have no legal obligation to is their utter irresponsibility.
Who pays the bills? The state or grandma.
Who cleans the house and takes care of the kids? Grandma or relatives who step in to see the kids get their headlice seen to, they take their meds, make it to school, and wear clean clothes.
Do these fine folks indulge in recreational pharmaceuticals? You need to ask? Of course they do, you narrow-minded prig. They know how to have fun.
Eventually, when things get too bad (abuse, child endangerment, and so forth) child social services gets called.
If everyone involved were responsible, job-holding, bill-paying adults, fear and concern over the wellbeing of the kids would drop down dramatically.
As for the name “Abraxus.” I remember vividly a child from my student teaching days in Sussex County, DE in 1982. Her name was Lasagna. She was in first grade. As you can imagine from the relentless teasing, she already had a thick file with the school’s guidance counselor for fighting. Giving your kid a really weird name, when your family is already in shambles, isn’t doing them any favors. It’s just another handicap.
@slithy toves,
there is a bit of an informal power structure in the wargaming club I’m in, but it seems to be mostly based on who organized games, set up the tables, brought the terrain, knows the rules and is willing to teach others. Being able to win games, and paint and build minis and terrain well is also important. So basically its a case of put the time in and don’t be a jerk. I haven’t run into the kind of stuff I’ve run into in mostly female groups of musicians (which also varies by instrument. Flute and voice is terrible for catty behavior, but recorder players are usually much more laid back and harpists are delighted to find anyone else who plays their instrument YMMV).
Warhammer does take up a lot of the oxygen and attention, but there’s a lot of other games out there and people playing them. The problem is finding them. Facebook or discord wargaming groups for your city are a good place to ask around what other people are playing. Also independent local gaming stores. Out of curiosity, what are you looking for in your tabletop wargaming? Giant armies? Small warbands with strong narrative? Historical accuracy vs fantasy vs science fiction? Because there’s almost certainly something out there you’d love.
While we are in the subject of the alleged nature of ancient matriarchies, I have found it strange the common notion among neopagan women and the like that it was Christianity of all things that re-introduced patriarchy into the world. This is story arc in the Da Vinci Code, whereby the Edenic goddess-worshipping Classical world is torn apart by patriarchal Christians.
Clearly, such people haven’t heard of “pater familias” whereby a Roman man had the power of death over descendents who displeased him!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias
Or how in Classical Athens, the most beautiful thing was considered to be a man’s body (there’s a good reason for all those strong, well-endowed statues) and females were often considered little more than vessels with which to bear children.
I find the adherents of the views outlined in the first paragraph particularly amusing given how the Theodosian Dynasty, which did more than any other to make the Roman Empire into a Christian theocracy, had a large number of highly influential females (perhaps to make up for the relative lack of competence of its males).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galla_Placidia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aelia_Eudoxia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulcheria
Or how the Franks who would become some of the most ardent enforcers of Christianity in the 8th and 9th Centuries initially saw their leadership convert in the 5th Century thanks to the wife of their King Clovis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotilde
Even the Crusader State of Jerusalem had one respected queen at one point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisende,_Queen_of_Jerusalem
It was ironically the Reformation that really saw steps back for women as Martin Luther and his disciples interpreted the Bible in a manner that saw a woman’s main role as the wife of a man (for that matter, unmarried men were also stigmatized under Protestantism). This lead to the closure of nunneries and smashing of icons of female saints among other things.
Interesting considerations. Thanks.
Especially this distinction between formal and informal power and their gender implication. I never really though about it this way. But it makes a lot of sense.
Incidentally, many traditional societies, if not matriarchal, are organized according to the matrilineal principle: membership of the clan or group, and ultimately inheritance, comes from the mother, and children tend to be raised not by their father, but by their uncles (i.e. their mother’s brothers) whose own biological kids stay in their mother’s clan. This can even go as far as women being quite free to have sex with whoever they want, because that’s how they bring new babies into the clan.
With such arrangements, women’s informal power can probably take a more important place than in patrilineal societies.
If anyone would like to begin exploring the vast world of “I was the alien’s love slave,” specifically the subgenre about Earth girls being needed to be baby mamas, look for
Ruby Dixon and her “Ice Planet Barbarians” series.
Ms. Dixon envisions a group of human women kidnapped by aliens for the galactic sex trade but the space ship crash lands on an ice planet. The surviving women are rescued by said ice planet barbarians (seven feet tall, blue, furry, horns, interesting added appendages) and the fun ensues. It’s a large series, 24 books (I think) and each lady gets a story of how she meets and is wooed by her very own barbarian.
Ms. Dixon can really tell a story but my lord does she need an editor. I stopped after book four. I think, eventually, the ladies discover who kidnapped them in the first place but I don’t know.
Here’s her book page with covers! https://rubydixon.com/series/ice-planet-barbarians/
I’d include the covers, especially the ones with furry blue babies with horns but I’m unsure how to add them.
These books sell like crazy.
Regarding the dual income trap – I think one reason why many women work is that it offers the opportunity for them to socialize with other women every day, and I expect that if things were a little different, men would do the same thing. There’s certainly no economic explanation for my mother working once my siblings and I were old enough to be left at home alone – my father did quite well and my parents always lived well within their means. Her first post-motherhood job was a volunteer one at a charity, which paid nothing (and in fact required a second car for her to get to it). That became unpleasant for various reasons, so she switched to low-paid government work, which at least paid for the car she used to get there.
The ’50s model of marriage, where the man works with other men and the woman is isolated at home in a suburban luxury prison is completely incompatible with people in general and it is good that it is being abolished whether we like it or not.
Another part of modern work/sex dynamics that doesn’t get discussed enough is the corporate harem – which might be kept under wraps at huge companies by lawyers and HR reps, but at the small companies I’ve worked for over the course of my career absolutely is alive and well. The corporate harem is where underqualified but attractive women are hired, and then fired or promoted based on them having sex with the right men.
@jennifer
It isn’t so much “do not want” as it is, not enough economic opportunities (DEI), unaffordable housing and an absolutely broken dating market. The young men, if you’re willing to listen to them, will tell you. They’re out there, posting away. And I do think in the Cluster B Hive, the risks and the costs have gotten so out of whack, that the idea of just keeping your head down and going home is more appealing than the other choices. Especially the more successful of those “finance bros” they’re stealing salads from, they have some idea of risk/reward.
Pardon me if I perceive professional pollsters as primarily goalseeking propagandists.
Jennifer Kobernik @ 66, Here I thought you do what is right because it is the right thing to do, not because you have been cajoled into it.
What I read from you and the commentator I mentioned seems very close to the George Gissing social philosophy of the 1980s. Gissing claimed that if criminally inclined young men had someone at home they could mistreat, they would not be inclined to be a danger to the rest of society.
If someone wants to advance the notion that “via their beauty and charm, women are able to exert a civilizing and pro-social influence on men and motivate them to excellence for the betterment of society; thus it is a virtue to be beautiful, since ugly women do little to motivate men to their best efforts or behavior.” they can do so, but let us please not call it a virtue.
No wonder not much of use gets done in our society anymore. In between silly women having to talk over how they feel about some necessary task, and the men who are waiting for the girl of their dreams to make them want to be productive trash can’t be picked up, empty housing can’t be rehabilitated, folks in need can’t be fed, all tasks which one would think are fairly simple.
#25 I think America did suburbs in a more thorough way than any of the other countries that adopted them, they did things on a bigger scale so that there was much less within reach, in a way there probably would be in most suburbs outside the USA.
#33 I don’t see this as a specifically female thing, but you get some bosses who will give you explicit instructions, but ones that are mixed messages, up to the point of being contradictory. This can take the form of saying your goal should be X, but you must do Y and Z urgently which leaves you no time to do X and maybe these things actually work against achieving X in some way. This can be simply the important but not urgent category conflicting with the urgent but not important, where you don’t have people under you to delegate tasks to.
It can be however a situation where the explicitly stated goal, is not really the actual priority but there is some kind of reason why this actual priority is either not mentioned or downplayed.
#34 of the 4 things you mention, I can sort of see why some women would be wary of them, because people could be on a continuum from choosing those things for themselves, and then being evangelical about it, and then maybe even pushing that onto other people whether they want it or not if they had the power to. Therefore they will overreact to some of these things because it activates these fears.
drhooves,
“Humans have to keep in mind we’re really not that far advanced from the Good Old Days, which quite a few guys I know would be defined as:
“The first was the stage of primitive promiscuity, where everybody mated with everybody else and family ties didn’t exist yet.””
Arguably, this has become standard operating procedure in the underclasses of America and Great Britain (and probably other nations I’m less familiar with). Alas, not as good as many supposed it would be (or pretended to suppose, anyway).
Dear JMG,
I have the impression that M. Giambutas’s analysis is considerably more complex than the one proposed in this post, which confuses his contribution. It is perfectly possible to discern, based on archaeological remains, whether a culture is hierarchical and warlike or not. Giambutas’s analysis, at its core, speaks of the replacement of a non-hierarchical and non-warlike culture by one that is, probably the product of invasions rather than cultural drift resulting from technological developments.
With this, your analysis of matriarchy, in my opinion, is correct since, as part of a hierarchical and competitive (warlike) system, it is indistinguishable from the patriarchal system as two sides of the same coin in the administration of power, something that is correctly articulated in your article as informal and formal networks of power.
But this leaves aside the most important aspect of Giambutas’s analysis, or what can be gleaned from his research: unarticulated systems in the administration of power, that is, systems that are not patriarchal/matriarchal.
And which, from my perspective, will be fundamental in a deindustrialized future where the possibility of exercising power will be very limited or, downright, questioned.
I’ve noticed men tend to abandon work fields and educational spaces when the female to male ratio gets to a certain point and female informal power structures have come to dominate.
“He proposed that all of humanity passed through a series of evolutionary stages on the way from primitive savagery to the first settled civilizations. There were three main stages…”
I chuckled to myself when I read this. I thought to myself: We’ve heard this song before, a number of times. How many western brain farts have this origin story?
Also, it appears western elites have a long history of confronting unwelcome changes and politics by cooking up a narriative that undercuts those groups or interests. Which works in the short run, but since it does nothing to address the issue at hand it all but guarentees that it will come boiling over later and elsewhere.
When I was working in a corporate environment, 1984 to 1992, secretaries were still common. They were all women, and they had the important informal power of controlling access to their bosses, nearly all of whom were men. A good secretary’s power to control access was so strong and beneficial to her boss that everyone at director level or above had a secretary who stayed with him when he moved laterally or up in the corporate hierarchy. But that was before computers became ubiquitous and everyone, no matter how high up in the hierarchy, was expected to use them to do their own report writing, meeting scheduling, and so forth. I have no idea who, if anyone, exercises that kind of informal power these days.
Rhydlyd, thanks for the data points! These days, I’m impressed when anybody shows signs of self-awareness, and “monolithic” is never a term that describes any group of human beings greater than 0.
Moonwolf8, I’ve seen the same thing. It takes some degree of competence to sidestep an evil spell cast by a group of people who think they’re just virtuously asking Jesus to smite the wicked.
Kfish, thanks for this! Yeah, that makes sense.
Uncle G, they were indeed played. One of the weaknesses of informal power is that, being manipulative, it’s vulnerable to manipulation.
Teresa, thanks for this!
Workdove, that’s where the ideas for The Wicker Man came from!
David, you must know some unusually clueless neopagans. (I admit they’re out there!) The ones I know always push matriarchy conveniently back just before the dawn of recorded history.
Tris, the interesting thing is that anthropological studies suggest that in matrilineal societies, power tends to gravitate to the mother’s brother or brothers. There are traces through that all through mythology — look how often the main conflict is between uncle and nephew.
Teresa, okay, that sounds so awful that I may have to hold my nose and read one.
Justin, that’s a good point!
Gustavo, Gimbutas was demonstrably wrong about the supposedly peaceful nature of the Corded Ware culture (her “Old Europe”) — there are archeological sites in that culture that show fortifications and mass killings of the kind found in war. You might look up the sites of Herxheim, Schletz, Schöneck-Kilianstädten, and Talheim, for starters. May I point out also that your notion that power will be limited or questioned in a deindustrial future flies in the face of all historical evidence? In every previous case on record, the decline of a civilization leads to widespread violence and the rise of charismatic warlords, and this continues straight through the four or five centuries of dark age conditions that follow.
PumpkinScone, I’ve noticed the same thing.
Team10tim, yes, it’s a very old song. As for manufacturing narratives to undercut insurgent groups, that’s what ruling elites do!
SLClaire, that’s another good example of the abolition of women’s informal power — thank you.
JMG, I hadn’t considered women as the conservative guardians of the social order but of course you are correct. Karenocracy is a great term! It is a strange situation because suburbia is a totally unsustainable, radical experiment that is doomed to fail…but if you assume the values of post WWII corporate and industrial society it becomes the orthodox, conservative pattern.
Joan, there has been some interesting research on bankruptcy that shows that two-income households are actually more fragile than one-income households. I was surprised by this because I assumed that bankruptcy was due to gambling, drugs, speculative investments or what have you. Apparently no. The most common scenario for US bankruptcy is a middle class two-income household that buys too much house in order to get into a better school district. When one spouse loses their job for whatever reason, the mortgage–which requires two incomes–eats them alive.
As a side note, the best book on the subject is The Two Income Trap by one Elizabeth A. Warren. She published the book while she was an academic researching bankruptcy law and it is fascinating to read her takedown of the political class’ subservience to the financial industry. In particular she takes Hillary Clinton to the woodshed over credit card regulations. Of course once she became an elected politician she quickly dropped all these talking points down the memory hole…
A great essay JMG, thank you.
One area that I am familiar with, is with Tarot and Oracle cards. So many ‘Goddess’ and ‘Divine Feminine’ decks!
Sorry, but I want my Emperor, King, Knight, Hanged Man, Hermit etc to be men! There’s a reason why they are!
As you can tell by the exclamation points I find it very annoying.
Don’t these creators understand the concept of balance? One can only hope we’re on the down side of the peak.
While you were at Glastonbury, if you went into any shops did you notice many lumpy little Goddess / Mother statues? Although to be fair there are lots of Green Man / Horned One’s too, haha.
Don’t ask me how I know (no never been, but would love too).
For Mary Bennet, firstly may I say I always enjoy reading you comments.
You mentioned recently the closing of Joannes – I believe that private equity was probably to blame for its demise?
Can I just say that i think P.E. to be one of the great scourges of Western Society.
Anyway, on a lighter note, as a sewist, you may find this young man’s channel interesting?
He hand makes and wears period clothing, and has done since about age 14 I believe.
I think he is a walking talking embodiment of the case for reincarnation!
https://www.youtube.com/@pinsenttailoring
Kind Regards,
Helen in Oz, where the first teeny, tiny glimpses of spring are happening. Yay!
Re: Informal Power. I work for a large police organization. The high ranking officers running the various sites tend to have a very high turnover, as they are ambitious. Every site has between one and five civilian “admins” who are receptionist/secretary hybrids, except they can’t be called that.
They maintain continuity between the ever changing brass, and wield a lot of informal power. They pay bills, know what is whose responsibility at any given time, and hold the keys.
I stay on the good side of these ladies, ( I have yet to see a male in the job), and they make things happen for me when needed.
Hi JMG- Synchronistically – I happen to be slogging through ” Freud and Psychoanalysis” by Carl Jung right now, and I just realized that psychoanalysis contains the word anal – Ha!
Other Owen,
I do see a lot of posts about it from young men, but I see a lot of posts about a lot of things. Those men represent a numerator without a denominator, if you see what I mean. I do agree with you about the pollsters, but most people by a large margin have gotten married for a very long time, and most of the people I know are still getting married, and all the surveys (however dubious) that I have seen do show an increase but by no means a majority of abstainers—so saying that most young men currently aren’t planning to marry seems unlikely to me. Although certainly they seem increasingly less enthused, which is not hard to understand. As a married mother aged 37, I don’t socialize with many teenage or young adult men, but I do hear terrible things about the dating scene. I do have one friend in his early 20s who sometimes talks to me about girls he’s dating, and the phrase “TikTok brain rot” features prominently. Not long ago the girl he was seeing—the first apparently without the brain rot that he had encountered in a while—was a single mother. He assumed she had accidentally gotten pregnant, but then found out she had actually gotten pregnant deliberately—essentially on a whim, to see what the child would look like, amazingly enough. Her angry ex also started showing up screaming outside her apartment periodically when my friend was there. This gave my friend an inkling that perhaps the girl’s judgment left something to be desired. However, the astonishing thing to me was that everyone else he talked to encouraged him to keep dating her and frowned on the idea of breaking up with her for such a reason. Still, a doubt lingered, and he decided to talk to me. I of course told him to run fast and not look back, which thankfully he did. It amazes me that numerous people who liked and in some cases cared deeply about him were so ready to cast him into the flames—or didn’t see the flames, apparently considering the girl’s behavior more or less normal.
What a wonderful history lesson, JMG. Thanks for doing the research!
As a person who read a lot of cultural anthropology books in my youth and seriously considered going into anthropology professionally for a while (good that I didn’t – ‘cuz I would have committed the cardinal sin of ‘going native’ pretty darn quickly!), I encountered quite a lot of the whole matriarchy/patriarchy malarkey in my day. It was intellectually stimulating but very unconvincing ‘on the ground’. I recall claims that the people of the state of Kerala (extreme southwest corner of India) were traditionally matriarchal as evidenced by the fact that a woman could divorce her husband by simply leaving his slippers outside the house! As a matter of fact, the “matriarchy” of Kerala was pretty much limited to the warrior cast (“Nayars” in the local language, Malayalam) due to the fact that the men-folk often spent so much time away from home doing war-stuff. And even so, the brother of the “matriarch” had legal ownership of the matriarchal household.
Regarding the informal power of “church women” and their equivalents. I recall a funny story from an ashram in India in which the leader was pretty much treated as a god in human form. The ashram was run very efficiently by a large contingency of resident-volunteers, most of whom were stern old women. In the story, a visitor had an audience with the spiritual leader and said to him, “Swami, I am scared of the lady volunteers here” and his reply was, “I know – I’m afraid of them too!”
Beardtree mentioned the role women played in the Iroquois Confederacy. My understanding is that in much of the Native American world, chiefs were traditionally selected by groups of female elders as they had watched the candidates grow up and knew all the details of their lives. No political process is ideal, but I see a lot of value in a system like this in which a leader’s character is so closely scrutinized (certainly very few political ‘leaders’ these days would pass a character test like this). Of course, this has gone by the wayside in Canada, courtesy of the 19th century Indian Act (still in effect) which imposed Western-style elections and two-year terms on chiefs, so most communities are divided into two opposing factions and whoever gets elected chief has only a short period to hire his relatives to positions of power and together loot the federal government moneys while the going is good. Meanwhile, some “nations” maintain a parallel system of traditional hereditary chiefs who do not recognize the Western-imposed political process and clash with the Indian Act-approved chiefs. Quite the mess!
Maybe some people will label me a misogynist but part of the reason that I left the corporate world early was the encroachment of female indirect power politics in the workplace. Both the direct and indirect means of exerting power have their bad sides, but I just find the female-preferred indirect style infuriating. In the male/direct power workplace, one could call a spade a spade (and a jerk a jerk) and that was OK. Kinda like if a guy crosses a social red line, you deck him and then give him your hand to help him back on his feet – and both move on. Nowadays one has to walk on eggshells worrying about “hurting peoples feelings”. And if said feelings get hurt, the retribution is savage and relentless until one is either destroyed or gets the hell out. I wasn’t willing to wait around to suffer either fate, so I bowed out early.
JMG, you, yourself have said in more than one or two podcasts and written on more than one occasion that in the 1950s, one working class salary could enable a family with children to live in comfort with house, not apartment, vacations, and education for the kids. You have said that in present conditions such is no longer possible. In at least some places, even two working-class full-time wage earners can only just barely afford rent plus utilities, which yearly become more expensive, and put food on the table. (Which of them will have time for cooking?). Costs like rent, utilities, and transportation are fixed costs which cannot be lowered by in home production, however helpful that might be in other ways. Expanding households makes the utility expenses go up. Someone has asthma and must have the air conditioning on. Someone else takes half hour showers. Someone’s child has a cold and the heat must be turned up. And so on.
@samurai_47 @JMG re.: women as the conservative sex:
It sounds like the relevant factor here is money/class. I watched it happen to my mom as she approached retirement and the sale of the house in which she had raised us. She was counting on the resale value of the house to keep her independent in her old age. Any change to the neighborhood that made it seem less posh would send her into a tizzy because she was afraid it might reduce the amount of money she got for the house.
Posh neighborhoods aren’t walkable. One shows that one is posh by driving everywhere. Similarly, things that are available to people at all socioeconomic levels such as breast feeding, natural childbirth and home schooling are by definition not posh. Being a stay-at-home mom implies that one is not maximizing one’s income and status. It might even mean that one is on welfare.
@R
Empathy and kindness are human characteristics, not necessarily gendered. I suspect that it was the Brits who declared them to be feminine so that men would crush down and deny those aspects of their personalities, because the Empire needed men who could be cruel in battle and in the administration of colonies. You don’t get to rule a quarter of the Earth’s land surface without soldiers who will perpetrate atrocities on command. But I haven’t researched this. It could go all the way back to Classical times.
I believe congratulations are in order for the felicitous coinage (I have never heard before) of “barking up the wrong stump”. And who would take advice from a dude that looks and grins like that? At least without salt handy? Amen to the church ladies comments and observations….
Most of my neighbors marriages ( the ones from India) are of the arranged variety. This is still the majority of marriages there with what the Indians call ” love marriages” only account for 10-20%. In the west we think of this as detrimental to the women as images of child brides comes to the forefront. But it occurred to me that all the work and effort of arranging a marriage normally fall to the mothers of the bride and groom to be. In an old and intricately structured system of social classes like the ones in India this gives those women ( the mothers) a great deal of say in how the society will turn out over time. In some ways this may be the most important task the mothers will take on in that culture in their entire lives.
I do wonder if a lot of the attempts by men to get in the inner circle of women social circles is related to ‘know thy enemy’ and trying keep a hold of higher power?
Know thy enemy is a powerful tool, it is alleged that one of the ways the Nazis were over come was that the allies knew they were using astrology to make decisions. By follow astrology themselves, they could anticipate actions and work accordingly. This is also why we have had trouble getting ahead of China as they use the ‘I Ching’ for decision making and we don’t have privy to their readings.
Trad wife has become a little bit of a stereotype of itself as many grifters have latched onto it like barnacles and that has made it an easy target. I think that is done intentionally, ‘Trad wife’ and to a similar extent Cottagecore are both seen as attacks on the structures corporate power as it deprives them of mindless workers. Folks who follow that are favoring the slower more immediately beneficial life. This is probably why those that are trying to stop it label it as sexist, racist and indirectly idolizing slavery as they are the eras they stem from. You know the usual attacks that grow more weary every time they are brought up. As many folks here have a skill called ‘nuance’, you will understand just how paper thin and silly that argument is.
Many make the mistake of seeing it as a singular way of life rather than a spectrum of ideas.
Hi John,
This is interesting to say the least. Although I do not understand why it should be as controversial a topic as predicted months ago. Might be just me.
Speaking of informal power in churches, might a family run the same way. A weak, but diligent, father and a domineering wife. He is an engineer, but she sets up the local contacts, gets land permits from her father for use of an old chicken coop as premises for a company. He works his ass of and eventually she is the secretary in that company and he “runs” the show. And sets him up, trough the resulting capital and her church group as a mayor.
Let’s say in the mean time they have three children and the whole family runs on table gossip rounds.
Best regards,
V
“today’s media pseudoculture is so pervaded with fakery that there’s no other way the concept could surface. Give it time.”
Oh, agreed. Sustainable living and cottagecore is much the same. Eventually when conditions are right I’m sure it’ll ripen into something real. For the tradwife movement to gain momentum, I think a lot of the economic conditions need to be met. Young men are going to be able to have jobs that can support their family on one income again. I don’t know how long it’ll take for that to happen, though.
Thank you JMG, good insights . I knew there were all kinds of unseen powers aroind me 🙂
@Joan#18
On the topic of “tradwife” you are close to the truth. It is, or was to start with, largely fake. It was an social media artifice meant to sell advertising, products (e.g. the “Influencer” life) that people latched onto. Some latching on as a simulation to become their own “Influencer”, some because they thought it sounded fun. In general, real “tradwifes” (for lack of a better word) won’t have the time to frame, film, make-up, and produce themselves as social media content. The people you saw pushing and doing this were largely already well-off and found that it became an social media algorithm-friendly niche in which to peddle ads and products. It’s also not a coincidence that all the “original” social media tradwifes are all insanely hot and good looking. You won’t see obese, boils, pudgy faces, etc as the face of the “tradewife movement” on social media.
This whole topic could be it’s own full-length novel with the flattening of language, social media, algorithms, seeking identity in an age where people don’t have their own but exposed to the general internet morass, etc. I generally hesitate to use much of the French post-modern philosophy that came out of the S.I. era, but it is almost an perfect case study for Baudrillard’s hyperreality in a phenomenon that sort of manifest into being that was artificial but is now a thing thanks to Social Media algorithms by the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, and being talked about and then consumed and regurgitated as individual identities
Regarding dating, a few comments:
The toxic mean feminity is more prevalent among the upper middle classes. Working class girls less do.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if these issues are most prevalent in the upper end university colleges.
Lots of men i know have married foreign girls with more traditional and feminine values.
Its quite common now. The finance bros can easily do that in a multicultural city like NYC.
@ drhhoves and Jennifer Kobernik
“The first was the stage of primitive promiscuity, where everybody mated with everybody else and family ties didn’t exist yet.”
“Arguably, this has become standard operating procedure in the underclasses of America and Great Britain (and probably other nations I’m less familiar with). ”
Since our cousins the chimps don’t mate with everybody else (males don’t share their females with other males) and there are strong family ties (chimps’ social groups are extended families, and sons in particular are attached to their mothers for the duration of their lives), and the ancestors of the underclasses of America and Great Britain were family-oriented, it looks like the promiscuous stage you mention is not primitive in any way, but rather a sign of severe decadence and social decay.
Where did we find such promiscuity before? Maybe, in the slums of 19th century London and other great European cities, where many women turned to prostitution because they had no other way of feeding themselves and their children (if they had any), but this also looks like moral and social decay rather than a primeval condition. Their peasant ancestors were not promiscuous. As far as I know, people return to a more standard way of life as soon as their integration into mainstream society (regular employment, affordable and decent housing) improves.
JMG, good news on the replication crisis:
https://www.xkcd.com/3117/
Teresa Peschel wrote, “If anyone would like to begin exploring the vast world of ‘I was the alien’s love slave,’ specifically the subgenre about Earth girls being needed to be baby mamas, look for Ruby Dixon and her ‘Ice Planet Barbarians’ series.”
Ok, that is a hoot! I had no idea that the edgy field of alien/monster/bad-guy pornographic romance had so much overlap with low-budget Hallmark Christmas specials. “Ice Planet Holiday” had me chuckling, but “The Barbarian Before Christmas” must surely deserve a Hugo Award, if not a Pulitzer Prize, for the name alone.
I love that everyone runs around near naked on this freezing ice planet, and that those kidnapped damsels had the presence of mind to bring along enough gaudy slut makeup on their crashed spaceship to last through a whole 33 books. One even thought to pack some tight black-leather dominatrix wear, just in case she might run into a giant blue ram-man in need a little disciplined redeeming.
I’m picturing a future human civilization with no clear reckoning of our long-vanished empires, except for some strange myths passed down through the ages and one single preserved and treasured copy of an Ice Planet Barbarians novel to guide their understanding. I do hope it will be “The Barbarian Before Christmas” — with that relic in hand, they could well come away understanding us better than we do ourselves!
@ Mr Greer
” if you know the habits of social primates you can predict the behavior of most human social structures at a glance”
Exactly! When I was a student I read Desmond Morris’s book “The Naked Ape” in a French translation. In the book (or was it in the sequel? I read both books) Desmond Morris describes how a dominant ape behaves as a leader. Years later, when I worked in law enforcement and was in charge of a team, I, who am not by nature a dominant male, did exactly the same, and it worked.
Which makes me think that if chimps could speak, they could give lessons in leadership to some human leaders…
@Slithytoves #53 – welcome to the club! My youngest grandson, who is also ADHD, is an avid board gamer, especially the complicated problem-solving or civilization-building ones, and has even turned that into an advantage by saying so on his college essay.
@JMG – in the old Northern societies, women of high rank were given in marriage to men of other households and were expected to act as the ambassadors for their birth family. “Peace-weavers” was their official titles. Which put quite of few of them in a nasty double bind, of course.
Church secretaries and the old-fashioned secretary to the boss, as doorkeepers to his office, held a lot of power – as do experienced sergeants in the army – Sarge can make mincemeat of Lt. Fuzz.
@Teresa Peschel #69:
I agree that it is bad to have a bunch of kids from the same or multiple partners, then get into a druggie lifestyle of partying, and pawn them off on the grandparents. Living in America, I think most of us can come up with examples of having seen or heard about this first hand. And it is a stress on the entire system. I also agree that what you are describing is in part because of the overall collapse. Collapse of tradition, collapse of economy. Collapse of kids having something to do, so they go out and party and fornicate. I’m not condoning people having affairs and secret love children either… though history is ripe with plenty of examples, so I think that may be baked somewhat into the human condition. As the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun. These kind of things aren’t first time something like that happened. Who knows what kind of stress these people doing these things are under, from the system, from their own families. That might be why they are seeking release from drugs and sex in the first place after all…
I’d add that doing your best to live a interpersonal drama free life is probably a good insulation for the stresses collapse already induces! Of course you can’t control other people, and who knows what kind of situations they may thrust you into if, say, you have empathy for grandkids who are in a bind.
What I took issue with was the moral judgment I felt coming from you about anybody who has kids with more than one father or mother. Living in America, I think we can all find examples of plenty of blended families where someone had kid when they were young with one “baby mamma” or “baby daddy” -maybe at age 18,19, 20… that situation didn’t work out for whatever reason… the people split and went on to have other kids with other people. All the while still taking care of those kids and doing their best to integrate families. That is a situation too, and not terribly uncommon. If these people are working and taking care of their kids, I see these situations as something closer to the way things really are in reality. Especially in working and middle class families. It happens too, among the rich, but there it gets swept under the rug and situations cleaned up with money.
Then there is the issue that the ideal (suburban) family of the 1950s mythos of progress is two parents and three kids, all by the same two parents. There are other family situations, including extended families, which that mythos and corporate intervention in life did its best to sublimate.
JMG: David, you must know some unusually clueless neopagans. (I admit they’re out there!) The ones I know always push matriarchy conveniently back just before the dawn of recorded history.
—-
Me: I was reading Christine Hoff Kraemer’s book about Paganism where she addresses this issue. She calls it a myth well-loved by Goddess Worshippers and others. However, she stresses it is a myth that only offers limited comfort to believers. She believes that they want a religion that is ancient and venerable. Instead, they should focus on creating their new religion.
I always wondered about that domestication of women theory that many of them espoused. I wonder where that came from. From my limited view, I believe they were from the upper classes who had strict gender norms. I am beginning to see that my upbringing in Northern New England is not a normal one as for gender norms.
One thing about the peaceful matriarchy and the warlike patriarchy. I was reading about the peaceful Maya, who turned out to be not so peaceful and bloodier than thought. The archeologists explained that it is common with people in their field to look at older civilizations to first say they are peaceful until some force changed that. It used to be Crete that was a peaceful matriarchy, until it was proven otherwise. Same with the Maya. I think that the whole thing speaks of a mythic past of peace and abundance that it seems every civilization has – a Golden Age.
@Joan Fascinating, As a man who “self-perceives” as “very-male”, and risk falling off the gay end of the Kinsey spectrum (and have ADHD) I’d be sitting talking with a coffee (can’t think of anything as tedious and frustrating as doing things WITH other people)!! All of which seems to fit with one of my mantras… The World is not Binary 🙂
A few remarks about the subject of matriarchy and patriarchy: The problems and pathologies of gender relations in modern Muslim societies, with which the West has to contend, and who are consequences of the colonial history of these countries and the disruption of traditional lifeways, are wholly another matter entirely, which additionally complicates the situation foe Europe, in addition to the schizophrenic policies of the European elites towards Near-Eastern peoples.
The concept of intersectionality is something which I first encountered in the context of wokeism and the Oppression Olymnpics, for which the concept of intersectionality is, among other things, used. So I didn’t immediately think it to be an useful concept.
Phydlyd, had the Neopagan organization wchich you exited by chance an Irish name?
Hi John Michael,
Interesting. There’s a real push to treat people in the workforce as if they were units, and manipulating demand and supply produces some odd effects. One of the outcomes for this policy is that eventually it will reflect upon the folks pushing that agenda. Don’t you wonder why the elites would not realise this likely possibility?
Man, I grew up in a single parent household (my mother) who worked full time, and nowadays, that outcome would be a very economically precarious existence. Interestingly, most of my paid work involves interactions with women who are nowadays often left to administer small businesses, and you know, I modify my communication to suit. It’s no big deal, but my friends are all male.
Cheers
Chris
A question about these fantasy novels of dominance and/or submission that have been discussed here and last week in the open post: Is all this stuff strictly lower astral, or is there something more going on here?
JMG, this essay was a pleasure to read! I found it refreshing that you refused to enter into the debate about the existence of actual matriarchal societies in the past, since there really is not much hope to resolve that question. By the way, when I read archeological papers, I am more often frustrated by the authors’ not even mentioning some question than by their pretending to certainty. Few archeologists will speculate in their scientific papers about gender relations at the site of excavation unless they have very good pertinent data. Public-facing documents may be a different matter.
The commonly accepted story is: scientific and material progress (industrialization) -> moral progress (women’s rights). I think on the European continent women’s rights movements (especially for female vote) came more towards the end of the 19th century, when industrialization had made much more inroads. That is why I found your argument about the Seneca Falls conference so striking: women organized not because society had progressed so much materially, but because women had lost so many rights in the recent past!
Your point about suburbia is also very well taken. I am a man and not particularly given to gossip, so my dislike for suburbia is based on other reasons, but I can see how the imposed isolation makes it more difficult to talk in groups. Somebody mentioned telephones, but until very recently, phone calls usually involved only two partners. The dynamics are different when more people are all involved simultaneously in a discussion.
@Maxine #43: Are you referring to the scientific data on mitochondrial ancestry, or to some mythology? It is a simple fact that all mitochondrial lineages will converge at some point in the past, and since mitochondrial DNA is easiest to sequence, this convergence for all living humans was found already in the 1980s and estimated to lie less than two hundred thousand years in the past. The corresponding convergence for Y chromosomes is harder because chromosomes are much bigger, and because the Y chromosome is particularly hard to sequence. That is why reports about a “Y-chromosomal Adam” came much later.
The expression “Mitochondrial Eve” was chosen for impact and is rather misleading. The DNA data do not imply at all that the last common female ancestor of all living humans was the only woman at her time.
“Smart pastors flatter them, negotiate with them, and get them on board; weak pastors knuckle under to them, and generally get by tolerably well.”
In other words, formal male power is subservient to female soft power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Humanity is gynocentric; men are the servants of women.
I was looking for thoughts on surviving the culture wars more generally, as I am already in a long term relationship.
Luckily got there well before dating apps and all that BS.
I realize it is probably not a good thing to ask you or other autists for interpersonal advice, though. Its probably not good to ask you for advice on surviving the culture wars either, since you have a kind of natural immunity to that, but I could be wrong about that. To me all these culture wars can be stressful as they play out in family and friendships.
Well this essay produced a lively breakfast discussion on the nature of power, our experiences that do not align with official ‘Social Justice’ narratives which have become sacred tenets of reality for so many people, our experiences of isolated suburban living, the tendency of people to try to reduce a complex world into a simplistic vision, and my GF’s experience of the harsh judgement of The Church Ladies upon young tomboys. 😉
Beautifully illustrated by Norman Rockwell’s painting “Chain of Gossip”.
“Suburbs were designed to leave their inmates isolated from one another, miles away from venues for interaction, while mass media drowned out other social activities and a rising tide of geographical mobility made it impossible for stable social bonds to form.” I would argue that was not a consideration in the design at all. Cities, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, were noisome, dirty, polluted places that people wanted out of. The advent of the affordable motor car meant that people no longer had to live there, so they tried to live in the nice, clean country, or at least as country as they could. That created the suburban doughnut and Kunstler’s “cartoon version of country living”. That was what suburbia was supposed to be, a healthy place to own your own bit of green space, full of the latest modern conveniences, and the destruction of social networks, and the isolation was an unintended consequence that no one even though of. Women pressed for it as much as men did, because cars and owning a home were associated with prosperity and status. As Thomas Sowell repeatedly observes, people, especially intellectuals who fall in love with their ideas, almost never ask the follow up question, “…and then what happens?” If they did, about 90% of ideas would be dead before they ever left the drawing board.
@David Ritz #2
The hen-pecked husband is not just a TV trope, I’ve seen and met more than a few of them, some poor benighted souls even being abused in public. It is where Feminist rhetoric dies in shrill screams.
Bruce
@ Indigo Crotchety Peacock #105
My apologies if I sound judgmental to you. Having had my first child out of wedlock as the result of an affair, I am quite aware of how hormones overpower common sense.
That said, it’s the utter lack of responsibility. Of taking care of things. Of not just getting a job but showing up ON TIME and doing said job. Of the lack of understanding that if you give kids Mountain Dew as their standard beverage and don’t have them brush their teeth, they’ll have mouthfuls of rotting baby teeth. Of not giving your kids the medications they need. When we were in South Carolina — we lived in a poor area in a poor school district, according to the school nurse, I was one of the few parents they trusted to give my kid his medication. For many parents, the nurse did it when the kid got to school because the parental units were unreliable.
Those are the people we talk disapprovingly about. The people who your minister CANNOT give cash to to help them out because the cash instantly turns into mud-flaps for the pickup truck and not shoes for the kids. This is why ministers, at least in South Carolina, hand vouchers directly to utilities and provide paid for bags of groceries.
Money and social status can paper over a lot. So can education, a strong social structure, and being part of a community like a church family that looks out for everyone involved.
Take away the strong social structure — as stifling as it is! — and unintended consequences arise.
The telephone made it easier to gossip in private and have a lot more backbiting.
I’m with Teresa #69 on the issue of multiple children with multiple partners. I had five children with my Japanese husband while living in Japan. We were considered a big family. I was shocked after moving back to the states in 2001 to be asked if all my children had the same father! The US I left in the 80s was not the same. Of all the issues that Teresa gives for the “baby mama baby daddy” lifestyle the harm to the children is tragic. I taught many a child who was tired of the constant parade of different sex interests coming into their parents lives and by default their own life. Even though Grandma and/or Grandpa are there to help pick up the pieces, children need their parents, preferably, addiction free parents.
As for student names, I worked with a woman who taught the twins Lemonjello and Orangejello. One day our school secretary confided that she just enrolled a student with the name Shithead. The “th” was like th in thick and the “ea” was like the e sound in see. No lie.
WRT the peaceful, happy Neolithic past.
Read “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage” by Lawrence H. Keeley (Oxford University Press 1996) and you’ll come away with a very different view! It’s 245 pages of graduate level reading, with extensive tables, charts, footnotes, huge bibliography, appendices, and a detailed index.
If you want to look closer: https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Here’s the preface opening:
“This book had its genesis in two personal failures — one of a practical academic sort, the other intellectual. As a result of these, I realized that archeologists of the postwar period had artificially “pacified the past” and shared a pervasive bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare.”
@ Christophe #102
“Ice Planet Barbarians” is a very fast, fun, pornographic read. The overall storyline is actually a bit complicated once you get past the sex.
I’d never considered how close the stories hew to the Hallmark Channel but you’re right! They do!
Ms. Dixon has done so well with the series that you can buy several titles of “Ice Planet” in one big omnibus edition with sprayed edges in bookshops.
>I’ve noticed men tend to abandon work fields and educational spaces when the female to male ratio gets to a certain point and female informal power structures have come to dominate.
You’re not the only one. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/academia-is-womens-work
Again, I can’t help but think about TraumaZone Ep1 and the caption underneath that 100% womanned coal mine – “Vorkuta started to collapse”
>One thing about the peaceful matriarchy and the warlike patriarchy.
Men and women like to fight. Just in very different ways. I suppose when women are in charge, it always LOOKS peaceful.
>I do have one friend in his early 20s who sometimes talks to me about girls he’s dating, and the phrase “TikTok brain rot” features prominently
You’re talking about what I call “rectangle girls”. Avoid the rectangle. Doesn’t take too many punishments to figure that one out. I would extend it to smartphones in general, and not just single out one particular app on the smartphone. I call it “phone brain” myself. Avoid when you see it. Sometimes it’s hard to see at first but it’s almost impossible to hide.
A lot of this I’m perceiving to be “you say tomayto, I say tomahto”, we’re not really that far apart. I think we can agree it’s red and tasty when combined with basil and oregano.
Recently, my wife complained about a coworker – female – who maintained excellent relations with all her colleagues but basically did nothing. She left her work early right when anything big was coming, taking sick leaves frustratingly often right when a deliverable was due and everyone had to pitch in, all hands on deck. but she always made sure to keep the boss on her side with her considerable social skills.
This has often made me wonder if some women have found a great opportunity here to enjoy both the benefits of the formal and the informal dynamics of power, especially their intersection in the workplace. Not every woman does this of course – both me and my wife have seen competent and diligent women in the workplace, several of whom have sacrificed more than men in order to flourish in their careers. But there are the church-lady pastors, who can drink from two cups at once. My own wife has to live a double-life handling both the kitchen (I am a terrible cook) and the office. But both of us have encountered the so called “looker”, the women who know how to use emojis and greetings and be very cheerful and active during team meetings but quietly pull out when the work comes along.
@Horzabky: Using (common) chimpanzees as a model for human behaviour gives an incomplete picture. Bonobos are just as closely related to humans as common chimps are, and differ in many aspects. Notably, bonobos are the more promiscuous and less aggressive species, and female bonobos are more powerful than female chimps. I am not claiming human ancestors were like bonobos (and claiming even less that humans should behave like chimps, bonobos or any other species!), just that the behavior of human ancestors is quite undetermined. The common ancestor of humans, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orang utans and gibbons might have behaved like any of the 5 latter species, or like none of them.
JMG. I rarely comment and do not require a response. I just wanted to say that I felt you were getting up a good head of steam when the article came all too suddenly to an end. Please, continue this thought.
Mary Bennet,
That seems to me an excessively negative interpretation. Just because some might be inspired by beauty to do something better doesn’t mean they won’t do anything in the absence of beauty. Beauty in its natural, human, architectural, and artistic forms has always inspired and motivated mankind, and most people find it oppressive if not actually demoralizing to be surrounded by ugliness. If beauty in art or architecture is a virtue (which I think it is), why not in people? I wouldn’t say I usually think about it that way, but I don’t find the idea particularly absurd or offensive.
What about the books by the Jungian Erich Neumann “The Origins and History of Consciousness” and “The Great Mother.” He and Jung and others based a lot of their theories on mythology and the anthropological literature of their time. They cite a lot of the research that has been done on primitive societies. Neumann outlines his theory that individuation is a result of humans separating from the mother. And he refers to such practices as human sacrifice being characteristic of the primitive/evolving consciousness when the mother was primary. Neumann proposes an original state of undifferentiated consciousness which becomes the mother as it differentiates from the son. And that the archetypal differentiation between mother and father is a later development. Also that as the son differentiates himself from the mother, the mother archetype differentiates into the good mother and the terrible mother. Consciousness develops as the individual is able to break free from the mother. And that this is a long and ongoing process.
@ Michele7 and @ Indigo Peacock #118
Absolutely! As bad as the revolving bedroom door is for kids, being born drug addicted is worse.
My friend is raising her grandson. He spent two weeks after birth in the NICU detoxing from his mother’s heroin usage. The kid’s ten now and will always struggle.
My best friend’s cousin is raising her granddaughter because both baby daddy and baby mama were drug addicts. It was actually an improvement when the parents died of drug overdoses because huge, endless traumatic drama went away.
My sister’s sister-in-law adopted a baby boy. It turned out — they weren’t told — the baby had severe fetal alcohol abuse syndrome. He’s been in trouble since day one and, as an adult, is currently in and out of prison.
My sister-in-law, brother, and my sister-in-law’s sister all struggle trying to show sister-in-law’s sister’s grandson a normal life. His baby mama is the one with four children by four different men, and enjoying a polyamorous relationship that the kids witness and her mother condones. We can only hope the unrelated men are not abusing the children. That’s not uncommon.
I have a tiny social circle yet I’ve got four examples within that circle.
Do I feel strongly about this?
Why yes, I do.
A very good book on the subject from a boy who survived his insane upbringing is Rob K. Henderson’s “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.” Look for https://www.amazon.com/Troubled-Memoir-Foster-Family-Social/
His mother was a drug addict. He’s never met his father.
It wasn’t unlikely in ye olden days for kids to end up being raised by people they weren’t biologically related to: mom and dad marry. Mom dies (endless causes). Dad remarries. Kids are born. Dad dies (endless causes). Stepmom remarries. Life happens. Tragedies happen.
But you shouldn’t make it worse for the kids while you’re busily pursuing your pleasures!
@ Teresa Peschel and @ Indigo Crotchety – I’d like to congratulate ye for including the word “responsibility” in 3 of the 4 mentions of that word in this discusssion – at least at the present time. In comparison, the word power has been mentioned 151 times.
Personally I get nervous when we get talking about power, power, power, and the linked concept of responsibility gets so little of a look in. 😉
Thank you for this post, JMG, which I also voted for. It is an excellent post – in particular on the ways that people love to give their wishes a pedigree…
As for myself, in considering the words matriarchy and patriarchy, I reflect that we do need, and will always need, both mothers and fathers…. the problems begin when we add the suffix “-archy”…. and try to turn any type of human relationship into an abstract, ideal, system for legitimating power.
Of course, in the real world of continually shifting human social relationships, power will be wielded, contested and negotiated endlessly. In the concrete world of social relations in which we actually exist, we will all get some look in, we will all wield and contest and negotiate power in some way, and we will all have a range and a degree of choices about how to deal in real time…
But in the abstract world of concepts and ideals and “isms”, I have never, to date, found a single compelling theoretical justification for the entrenchment of any “-ocracy” or “archy”. I have never heard a compelling argument, ever, for why any sex, ethnicity, race, class, or any other grouping or personal human advantage (or even human disadvantage) should confer a right on anyone to be in charge of anyone else.
And to *earn* any specific, concrete power in any given here, and at any given now, is simple – it is to accept responsibility, to the extent that one honestly and competently can, for the consequences that will flow from its exercise.
Samurai_47, granted! Equally, it takes a leap to realize that at this point the Democrats are the conservative party — trying to maintain current arrangements, which is what conservatives do — while the Republicans are the radicals trying to change things. Still, that’s the case.
Helen, yes, Glastonbury was crawling with goddess statues, though not all of them were lumpy — some of them looked like characters in the romance novels Teresa’s been discussing. Yes, all the Horned Gods had six-pack abs, too.
Kloffus, a classic example! Thank you.
Dana, a very Freudian slip. 😉
Ron, informal power can be just as abusively used as formal power. Which is to say, yeah, when informal power relations get really thick, especially in the toxic environment of modern corporate life, it’s time to get a move on.
Mary, the tradwife phenomenon isn’t a working class thing. It’s almost entirely restricted to the salary class so far, and most people in the salary class can in fact improve their lives by avoiding the two-income trap.
Joan, while that’s true, it’s far from the only factor involved. I’ve had the chance to spend time with a lot of working class people over the years, as coworkers, neighbors, lodge brothers, etc., and even when money isn’t involved there’s a strong tendency for women to function, using informal power, as the defenders of the status quo.
Celadon, it’s not my coinage, though I couldn’t tell you where I first heard it. As for Wilber, granted — if I met someone who looked like that while exploring a dungeon, I’d assume the dungeon master had just rolled the dice, checked the wandering monster table, and come up with a lich.
Clay, I suspect one of the reasons that arranged marriages tend to work out tolerably well is that both sides go into it knowing that since they’ve just made a commitment to live their lives in the company of a complete stranger, they’ll probably have to put some work into making things tolerably happy. Too many people who marry for love never get that memo.
Michael, the tradwife and cottagecore movements attract grifters precisely because a lot of people are sick of the lifestyles assigned them by corporate pseudoculture and are turning to an alternative that gives them other options. Of course that scares the crap out of the corporate system, since anything that decreases the size of their labor pool makes it harder to abuse their work force.
Vitranc, I’m startled that there hasn’t been much more fussing about this week’s post. As for families — why, yes, it’s quite common. It all depends on the relative strength of the two spouses.
Nephite, depends on how soon the financial economy implodes. The reason why costs are so high compared to wages is that so huge a parasitic financial superstructure supports itself off people who do actual productive work.
Tony, I know the feeling!
Liquefaction, I’m far from sure that’s accurate. I freely grant that there’s a lot of fakery online, but that’s the nature of social media; what gives it the appeal is precisely that a significant number of young women in the salary class are opting out of corporate jobs and seeking more traditional lifestyles, and the social media marketing machine is trying to profit from that. It’s a mistake to fall for the corporate-culture notion that new ideas can only come from the laptop class!
Forecasting, so I gather. I have several male friends who are married to women from abroad, and seem to be doing very well.
Doug, ha! One of these days I’d like to find a good collection of unreplicated important experiments in physics. If you or anyone else know of one, I’d be delighted to hear of it.
Horzabky, I also read both books, and the lessons from them stood me in good stead when I ended up at the head of a Druid order.
Neptunesdolphins, I think the whole “golden age” thing is a projection of subconscious memories of infancy onto the blank slate of prehistory. Yeah, I remember when the Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered and all the “peaceful mystic Maya” types had to deal with the fact that the rulers of Mayan city-states boasted of slaughtering their enemies and sacrificing the other side’s leaders to Kukulcan.
Booklover, oh, intersectionality has to be pried loose from the frantic attempt to claim the prized status of Most Oppressed Person Evah, So Give Me Everything I Want. Once that’s done, it’s a highly useful concept.
Chris, one of the inevitable causes of elite failure is that after a certain number of generations, the ruling elite of every society becomes incapable of realizing much of anything.
Phutatorius, good question. It certainly reads to me like the slimier end of the Very Low Astral, but I’m not an infallible judge.
Aldarion, here in the US, in the early days of the telephone, there used to be “party lines” — phone lines where many people could talk at once. Yes, those went away as the suburbs came in…
Karalan, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Do you recognize the difference between the statements “women have some power, which has to be taken into account by other power centers” and “women have all the power and run everything”?
Shrimp, to the extent that I’m immune to the culture wars, it’s purely that peer pressure slides right by me without my noticing it, and so do other social cues. I still get to experience the effects of the culture wars. It’s a source of wry amusement to me, for example, that I’m persona non grata in both the left-wing and the right-wing science fiction convention circuits. The left can’t stand me because I wrote a book explaining why Donald Trump or somebody like him was made inevitable by the way the salary class has abused the wage class for so many decades; the right can’t stand me because I have plenty of sympathetically portrayed gay, lesbian, nonwhite, and mixed-race characters in my novels. Both convention circuits account for only a very small fraction of SF and fantasy readers, and most of those in the middle are so sick of the political wars that they’ll go out of their way to buy books by people that either side denounces — J.K. Rowling is another beneficiary of that habit, of course — so I’m not weeping…
Renaissance, delighted to hear it! If my posts succeed in starting conversations, they’ve done everything I hoped for.
Teresa, thanks for this.
Rajarshi, there’s a lot of that!
WhocanIbenow, hmm. I’d said all that I had in mind to say; if anything else occurs to me, however, I’ll consider another post.
Ruth, that is to say, Neumann was heavily influenced by Bachofen, and by the anthropologists that drew on Bachofen. His theories have not held up well in the light of more recent research.
Scotlyn, I wonder if it’s time to revisit the difference between the Greek words archeia and krateia. The former, of course, means “leadership,” and the latter means “brute force.” I’d be happy if we had more matriarchy and patriarchy in the strict Greek sense of the words, but far too often it’s matricracy and patricracy instead!
Perhaps men are the technologists and women are the civilizers, with a great deal of crossover of course.
I have always thought the great move of women into the paid workforce was more about increasing the customer base and the labour base (cheaper wages). How anyone can think having someone order your life all day is a great step into freedom has never made sense to me.
My grandmothers both always had a bit of cash stashed away from their families. Mind you they were both widowed with young children to raise so it made them think of rainy days etc.
Hey Teresa Peschel, Michele7, Indigo Peacock.
One of my favourite writers, a British doctor called Theodore Dalrymple, has written of his extensive experience with the British underclass that very often have the same family dynamics that you are all describing. He not only writes about what he has seen these people do, but also tries to explain why they act as they do. I wrote a review of one of his most famous essay compilation on the British underclass that I shall leave here.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/life-at-the-bottom-by-theodore-dalrymple?r=e0m1f
I haven’t read all the comments yet, I’m about halfway through. When I moved to San Francisco in the late 1970’s, I observed that among a vast number of the gay men I encountered there that so much seemed to be conducted in some sort of highly “female” socialization-via-nuance that I could understand at all. I had fled a home run by women ruling in this way (which as an Aspie I had a lot of trouble with) to being in the midst of a similar situation, run by (ostensibly) male type persons. I basically left the field of that world quite soon (likely saving myself from exposure to a popular disease of the period) because I couldn’t cope with so much “high school” highly social jockeying and gossip. College was just incomprehensible for me; the situation in SF was even more like rain on waxed paper. People sure are strange. Patriarchy? I sure enjoyed my several years in the Navy where there was little of the sorts of ambiguity mentioned here…
I’m somehow experiencing a weird superposition of fascination and boredom reading all these essays, the news, stuff. In one way, for example, formal and informal power might well provide a very useful tool to analyze and maybe even help to heal what’s going wrong in the school where I’m working. On the other hand – it’s somehow all the same. Be it climate change, matriarchy, health stuff, geopolitics , anything. Some fascination is still there, but It has become increasingly hard to stomach at the same time. Nobody’s fault, except maybe mine, of course.
That being said. … Engels and Bachofen … “Engels drew extensively on Bachofen’s heirs in the anthropological community but stood their theory on its head” … doesn’t that sound just like Greer and Lovecraft with the tentacles … ahem …. removed? And they’re even talking about salad… 😉
How does that work for you, I wonder? If I may ask – you’re much, much, much deeper into all this stuff than I probably could ever be dreaming of – does it sometimes happen that you are bored by all of this (outside of the tentacle business, I mean)?
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Wow. This is a topic the commentariat was really ready for. And well done, JMG.
About giving children odd names. My daughter, who we gave a nice normal name to, always said that she was glad we hadn’t named her something like Petunia Pumpkin Blossom.
I think Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything are correct that the primitive savages vs. primitive peacefuls (or Hobbes vs. Rousseau) misses the point. Human societes in all times have responded in very different ways to different conditions, sometimes in very different ways to the same circumstances. It is that flexibility and adaptability that is most important. Their diminishment, even in our thinking, is one of the major causes of our current predicaments and we will need to recover them going forward.
Helen @ 85, thank you for the lovely compliment and for the you tube referral. Joann was a family owned fabric store; I clothed my girls from Joann. The family became greedy and gobbled up a number of regional fabric store chains to the point where Joann was the only fabric option in many towns. Then, the family sold to a PE, as you surmised, or maybe it was to a conglomerate which then or later sold to the PE. Lots of money was extracted to pay inflated salaries to top management, and some spectacularly bad business decisions were made. One was to expand into crafts and another was to refuse to inhabit any shopping area which also had a Michaels, well-known crafts chain. No fun destination trips for crafters and sewers. Now, Joann is bankrupt and closed and only Hobby Lobby, which as of now is still not PE owned, offers some fabric. The clerk at Hobby Lobby told me they have more customers in their fabric department and are expanding. These developments, and the impending loss of the big 4 pattern companies, are, of course, but naturally, altogether unrelated to the bad press which the fast fashion industry has been receiving lately.
Rennaissance Man @ 115, some claim that the suburbs were deliberately intended to, among other things, break up ethnic neighborhoods, thereby diluting the voting strength of those neighborhoods. I think they were primarily intended to make fortunes for real estate developers and the auto and gas industries.
@95 Vitranc
What it likely means is that the woke left & traditionalist right have settled into echo chambers to bash caticatures of their enemies’ worldview. But most of this blog’s readers are open minded enough to handle nuance. A lot of people know deep down that there is a distinction between formal & informal power, and that women frequently wield the latter.
And the part about the history of the idea of ancient matriarchal socities is only controversial among people who are attached to the concept. Most people do not know or care, and JMG alienated Neopagan readers years ago.
I used to read Naked Cap. ,er, eligiously! .. until they went full-on with re. masking, not really questioning the official narrative.. buying into the whole vaxxine gaslight. Perhaps they have a better handle on the above subject, but that site has forever left a rather rancid taste for my liking.
*delete – if you must, Mr. Greer.
Great essay by Camille Paglia, a lesbian feminist academic and writer. The title- “It’s a Man’s World and Always Will Be”! A nortorious quote of hers – “If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.”
“If men are obsolete, then women will soon be extinct — unless we rush down that ominous Brave New World path where women clone themselves by parthenogenesis, as famously do Komodo dragons, hammerhead sharks and pit vipers.
A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.
Is it any wonder that so many high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success, find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life? When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.
From my long observation, which predates the sexual revolution, this remains a serious problem afflicting Anglo-American society, with its Puritan residue. In France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and Brazil, in contrast, many ambitious professional women seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamour. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences. In today’s punitive atmosphere of sentimental propaganda about gender, the sexual imagination has understandably fled into the alternate world of online pornography, where the rude but exhilarating forces of primitive nature rollick unconstrained by religious or feminist moralism.
It was always the proper mission of feminism to attack and reconstruct the ossified social practices that had led to wide-ranging discrimination against women. But surely it was and is possible for a progressive reform movement to achieve that without stereotyping, belittling or demonizing men. History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women but from the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was labor-saving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women from daily drudgery.
What is troubling in too many books and articles by feminist journalists in the U.S. is, despite their putative leftism, an implicit privileging of bourgeois values and culture. The particular focused, clerical and managerial skills of the upper-middle-class elite are presented as the highest desideratum, the ultimate evolutionary point of humanity. Yes, there has been a gradual transition from an industrial to a service-sector economy in which women, who generally prefer a safe, clean, quiet work environment thrive.
But the triumphalism among some — like Hanna Rosin in her book, The End of Men, about women’s gains — seems startlingly premature. For instance, Rosin says of the sagging fortunes of today’s working-class couples that they and we had “reached the end of a hundred thousand years of human history and the beginning of a new era, and there was no going back.” This sweeping appeal to history somehow overlooks history’s far darker lessons about the cyclic rise and fall of civilizations, which as they become more complex and interconnected also become more vulnerable to collapse. The earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.
After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf. Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.
Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!”
Jennifer Kobernic, @ 127, I think you are making a category mistake, in other words, comparing apples and oranges. The word ‘virtue’ can mean several rather different things, which are themselves different and distinct from the original virtus, virtutatis, f. 3rd declension. When used about people, it generally refers to admirable qualities of character like courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice (the four cardinal virtues) which anyone can and should seek to develop in themselves. Physical characteristics are a matter of genetic inheritance, and it is well known that what might be considered ugly in one society might be highly prized in another. There are many passages in the Arabian Nights in which fat or even what we would call obese women are praised for their beauty. Conservative pundits know that a large part of their reading or listening public is believing Christians. I think the particular guy I read was engaging in a bit of insolent sleight of hand, equating ‘virtue’, a word with positive meaning for many Christians in particular, with the indulging of his own personal preferences–see if I only hire or pay attention to great looking women, I am really rewarding virtue.
Works of art and architecture are made things. As I see it, saying they have virtues is a misuse of the word.
Teresa Peschel, Hah! You have been reading Henry James, have you? What Maisie Knew, to be specific, which describes that very situation.
Other Owen, if you must inflict your personal categories on the rest of us, I think you should explain what they mean. Rectangle girl? As for informal associations of women, middle class only are accepted, and strict conformity of views and lifestyle is enforced. I would far rather have the rights to vote, own property, sit on a jury, and open a bank account than be able to participate in driving a teacher out of employment.
JMG, this is totally off topic, but I just had a thought reading your reply to Shrimp – do you think Tom Bombadil was on the autism spectrum?
I really need to re-read LOTR – I am now triple the age that I last read the books at and am telling myself most mornings that I’ll pick up my copy of the Fellowship of the Ring again – but I don’t. Yet, on certain corners of the internet, I’m subject to vigorous debate about whether Bombadil’s inclusion the books was a good idea and whether or not Peter Jackson’s omission of Bombadil was a good or bad idea.
There is a notion on the online right that we autists are immune to propaganda because we are insensate to certain forms of social signaling and what is Tom Bombadil’s flakey indifference to the ring but being insensate to its power?
Dear JMG,
Thank you for the references to the archaeological sites of Neolithic massacres. They are quite informative, although Gimbutas’s underlying thesis—the possible existence of non-patriarchal, non-violent cultures—is not necessarily discredited, considering, for example, the existence of the Cretan civilization. I imagine that in North America there is also evidence of non-patriarchal/non-violent cultures. Just as here in South America, the Tiahuanaco culture or the Ancestral Mapuche Culture likely have a non-patriarchal profile.
This would suggest that there is no inexorable destiny for the local reproduction of patriarchal cultural dynamics. Although historically, as you rightly say, the articulation of dynamics following the fall of civilizations reproduces civilizational violence and reveals charismatic leaders, it must be understood that the context of the fall of these civilizations is usually the invasion of peoples led by charismatic leaders. It is, therefore, the small-scale and distributed reproduction of the very reason for civilization itself. That is, non-civilization is part of the civilizing package: thus, a civilization is the difference between civilization and non-civilization, and therefore, violence and leaders are shared.
The advantage of a deindustrialization process like the one we will experience is that, in this disintegration, the dynamics will open up spaces to allow for the exploration of forms of power administration, beyond the two you point out: formal (patriarchal) or informal (matriarchal). This will give rise to systems that, for example, do not administer power or that subordinate it to other dynamics.
Power is, as I see it ultimately, a consequence of the illusion of control that the domestication of plants and animals gives to humans. It is likely that the notion of power, as we know it, did not exist in the era of hunter-gatherer tribes.
Finally, a brief reference to Engels. Reading about the analysis of the Schöneck-Kilianstädten site, where the massacre hypothesis is linked to the kidnapping of young women, I can’t help but think of the concept of “human resources,” so fashionable in the 1980s. It’s clear that the definition of “human resources” probably began in the Neolithic. And it’s not unusual for private property to exist, either. What existed before? We’ll never know, although probably none of those concepts existed.
JMG,
I would argue that the k-12 public school system at the present time is a matriarchy. This is not surprising because school teacher was one of the first wage jobs a woman was able to have going back to the 1800’s. It is only natural that woman would eventually become the majority of teachers, administrators , school boards and union leaders.
I would also argue that the state of our present public school system reflects this in both good and bad ways.
JillN, that’s plausible enough; it’s been shown repeatedly, as I understand, that men are more likely to think in terms of objects and women in terms of people.
Nachtgurke, I don’t find tentacles boring. Or salad. Or, for that matter, the absurdity of human beings pretending that they can make sense of the inkblot patterns of the cosmos. Yes, Engels did to Bachofen what I did to Lovecraft — it’s a common move in the history of ideas, and one that can have interesting results.
Jessica, I have a distant cousin whose middle name is Brightmorning, for whatever that’s worth. As for Graeber and Wengrow, that was one of their solid points — it’s the height of stupidity to lump the wild diversity of tribal cultures into one stereotypical “Primitive Man.” There he is, sitting on a rhinoceros skin, wearing a feathered war bonnet, and playing a didgeridoo!
Polecat, I still read them daily; it’s good to know what people who disagree with me are thinking.
BeardTree, good heavens. I’ve avoided reading Paglia for years, mostly because she was so popular there for a while, but that’s both well written and very insightful.
Justin, that’s a fascinating hypothesis. I’ll have to keep it in mind when I next read Tolkien.
Gustavo, Gimbutas’s thesis is impossible to refute but it’s also impossible to prove, since anything one desires can be projected onto the inkblot patterns of the prehistoric past — or for that matter the posthistoric future. Equally, when you claim “This” (the decline of industrial civilization) “will give rise to systems that, for example, do not administer power or that subordinate it to other dynamics,” you’re simply engaging in fanciful political mythologizing, in the certainty that you’ll be dead before the matter is proved one way or another. It’s rather as though you predicted that on January 1, 2099, a bright pink rhinoceros will tapdance across Times Square in New York City. All the evidence suggests that you’re wrong, but we can’t be absolutely sure of that until long after you and I and everyone else taking part in this conversation is dead.
Clay, and yet it’s a structure very highly stratified by formal power…
@JMG (#132, replying to Samurai_47):
I’m old enough (and have relevant ancestral data from generations before me) to remember two such flip-flops between Republicans and Democrats vis-a-vis Left and Right. Here’s what I remember. (I’m no specialist in US history; this is just what I observed.)
When the Republican Party began in the middle 1800 it was radical and left-ward leaning (in terms of today’s Left/Right dichotomy), and it was created to challenge the much older, conservative and right-ward looking Democratic Party. (Lincoln, who seems to have been a Deist rather than any sort of Christian, was a relatively moderate and thoughtful Republican compared to some.) One of my great-great-grandfathers, a self-employed carpenter, gold prospector and sometime scam artist, whose party affiliations were recorded in the biennial published lists of California voters, registered alternatively as a Socialist and as a Republican. His grandson, my father, was that sort of old-style radical left-leaning Republican all his life.
A few decades later the Republicans (outside of the Deep South, where there were bitter Civil War memories) began to get pushed rightward as the Democratic Party began to seriously court the industrial wage-class workers, many of whom were also European recent immigrants exploited by the indistrialists. (In the Deep South Democrats remained relatively right-leaning.)
Then in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Republican party’s ingenious “Southern strategy” won over the allegiance of conservative Southern voters, who were dismayed by increasing power of Northern industrialization and the immigration that fueled it. This strategy, of course, moved the Republican Party even more to the right than it had been previously.
And so we got to the present situation.
My issues with those marketing the tradwife lifestyle are twofold:
1: If they don’t also include a very sharp look at finances. You will quit your job and your career progression for several years as you raise children. Do you have a plan for your own economic self-sufficiency should you need it? Do you have an emergency fund stashed away in case your situation gets violent? Do you have the money and earning potential that you could provide for yourself and your children on your own should your situation change?
and 2: If the tradwife lifestyle is pushed as the only acceptable lifestyle for women, because it’s definitely not for everyone, myself included. I like working and knowing that I can provide for myself.
Back in the late 1980s Marija Gimbutas spokes at Black Oak Books in Berkeley. The audience was full of feminists and Pagans of various types, and it was a standing room crowd. Almost everyone present appeared to be of European descent with maybe a few Asians. Gimbutas was expounding her theories about the destruction of the peaceful, matriarchal Old Europe by the invading, warlike, patriarchal Indo-Europeans. I joked to a friend later that if someone had pointed to a random man and yelled, “Get him, he’s an Indo-European” we might have had a riot. Which would have been ironic since we were all, basically, Indo-Europeans.
I was an undergraduate anthropology major and remember learning of some tribal peoples whose myths told of an era in which the women ruled. But the men seized power, and society became what it was when the tales were collected with that time being regarded as the way things should be. Sometimes the men got power by stealing a magical artefact, or the women lost power by violating a taboo (I think one was by being caught spying on the men’s sacred rituals.).
To Mary, You’re welcome!
Sorry about misspelling Joann, I just assumed it was spelt like the girls name that i’m familiar with.
Here in Oz we have a big craft retailer called Spotlight. It started out being a store that sold the ranges of fabric and accessories for dressmaking, curtaining, upholstery and the like.
Also, ready made curtaining, linen, bedding etc, and some craft.
Over the years, the range expanded to include kitchen / homewares and assorted other bits and pieces of junk.
There is so much stock and I don’t think they have ever upgraded their checkout software to accomodate it all. You can almost hear it groaning whenever you go to pay for your items.
It’s also hopelessly understaffed, another victim of the great god Shareholder Profits.
Have you noticed over the years, that when you get some fabric cut, it’s almost within a mm of what you asked for? I can remember the time when you always got at least a few extra inches…
Regards, Helen
I was rereading your essay on political magic, and it struck me that the influencer marketing around tradwives meets your criteria for potentially successful political magic: “formulat[e] an ideal as strongly, precisely, and vividly as possible, while completely ignoring the other guy.” Many women might take up the tradwife lifestyle because of this. Reality will inevitably fall short of the ideal, but that won’t prevent families from trying it out.
Of course, in the coming Dark Ages, most families will work on farms, and the rich families will have servants, so in the long run the suburban tradwife lifestyle will go in history’s dustbin.
RE Trad wife/cottage core grifters.
I completely forgot to mention, there is a spin off of Cottage core that is more resilient to grifting. Goblin Core! Similar ideals but with the aesthetics tweaked to be less main stream appealing. Best be thriving goods together and admire some mushrooms and moss while you are at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblincore
https://old.reddit.com/r/goblincore/
Mr. Greer, I meant no disrespect towards you in way with my above post. It’s just that I had earlier read an article on NC re. issues many people are having with ‘long covid’ where neither Ms. Smith, nor the article, mentioned anything about the role of the mRNA jabs in all this! I was a bit rankled by it all.
Any further comments by moi will remain on topic as per this week’s post. Apologies.
@148 cs2
Additionally, unmarried couples who live together should both work since there’s no real commitment for the couple to stay together and the boyfriend to financially support his girlfriend.
Also that last post it should be “Thrifting” not “thriving”. I am so sick of computers trying to “help” by doing what they think it should be.
“Karalan, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Do you recognize the difference between the statements “women have some power, which has to be taken into account by other power centers” and “women have all the power and run everything”?”
I’m not claiming women have all the power and run everything either. What I do see everywhere I look is that when male and female interests conflict, the ‘bias,’ if you will, leans towards female-preferred outcomes. It’s why we have Girl Scouts but not Boy Scouts. It’s why we have clearly abusive ‘family’ courts and their even more abusive enforcement bureaucracies. It’s why female basketball players are demanding to be paid what they’re ‘owed’ even though they’re subsidized by the NBA to the tune of $40 million annually. It’s why there are special courts and rules governing domestic violence against women even though women are in fact the greater offenders. It’s why prostitution is illegal for men only. It’s why a male surgeon who performed late-term abortions got imprisoned for hundreds of years while the women who hired him were not charged or even named. I could go on indefinitely.
There are arenas as well where interests coincide or where one side or the other has no interest. But in our modern era, women have both more soft and more hard power than men, regardless of which gender is actually holding any position. The yin and yang are unbalanced, and the long-term outcome is becoming more evident with each passing day.
1. I thought I should bring this up:
There has been a meme going around for a few years on dissident right social media called “The Longhouse.” This refers to any type of work or recreation that’s a co-ed space and gets taken over by women and run exactly according to how you describe women’s informal power. When something “gets longhoused” it seems to follow the classic pattern of entryism. You’ll get some workplace or activity that starts out as all (or mostly) male. Then women demand access or “representation” and then the men running the org give in and some sort of DEI initiative gets put in place. Then eventually women become a majority or dominant in some capacity and quickly get to work completely reorienting the purpose and culture of the organization. For the men remaining it becomes an intolerably-emasculating environment.
2. >>The young men who are simply refusing to have anything to do with dating have chosen a powerful tactic; we’ll see how it plays out.
Well, it seems the corporate media has caught onto this and (predictably) they’ve completely lost their shale . The reactions range from shrill condemnation to tone-deaf cluelessness like, “More men now lonely and giving up on dating; women most affected!”
The MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) and Incel (Involuntary Celibate) movements have gone mainstream among the younger generations. It’s especially bad for Gen Z men, whose only experience with dating has been in the dating app era.
What Gen Z “blackpill” men have come to believe (which I think is partially correct): Those dating apps have changed everything, as if you don’t post photos that convey at least a 9/10 appearance and maybe some signs of wealth or status (or a fun lifestyle), women are not going to swipe right (which means selecting “YES” on establishing a connection). The apps essentially function as a virtual sears catalog of men for women to pick from. What happens is the the vast majority of men using the apps get zero matches; the bulk of women are all picking the same small number of men in their town to hook up with. This given the successful men a superabundance of women who will sleep with them for very little effort on their part. In reality, it’s a lot of “mid-tier” (lookwise) women batting way out of their league and getting with hot guys who would otherwise never give them the time of day; these “mid women” are under the delusion that these very good looking men will actually commit to a real relationship with them instead of just using them for cheap sex a few times then discarding them and moving onto the next easy target. This is especially bad for women who are aging out of their prime and still haven’t secured a long-term relationship or marriage. The joke is that when they hit 35 and are still trying to date like they are 21, the men they desire stop noticing them and they progress to the next stage in life, which is that of the cat lady. At least in Japan the passed-over career women are a lot less delusional and end up going to “host clubs” and paying for that charming gigolo experience (Japanese seem to be a lot more realistic about what sort of human relationships are purely transactional).
I got all my dating out of the way back before the apps took over and to be honest it really wasn’t that hard to get girlfriends and hookups as long as you had some friends and went out at least occasionally at night and did stuff. They younger guys are complaining that “it’s all over” now. Many more young people now seem to be on the autism spectrum, so that can possibly be skewing things quite a bit as far as dating ineptitude is concerned. Though I think an even bigger factor is (1) how the plandemic era ended up shutting down so many third places and creating a culture of people staying cooped up in their homes instead of going out, (2) Inflation making the act of going out just too expensive for those without a lot of disposable money on hand.
3. A little correction about the Gimbutas discussion above. The Corded Ware Culture (CWC) were in-fact the Indo-European “Horse Lords” who came in off the steppes and up the Danube, and quickly curb-stomped all the Old Europe cultures remaining those areas. I wonder if the cultures she’s projecting matriarchal, pacifist fantasies onto are the Linear Pottery and Globular Amphora cultures. Of course those Neolithic European cultures were anything but peaceful, as you’ve pointed out. We know nothing about their social structures either. As a little aside, “Herxheim” and “Talheim Death Pit” both sound like excellent names for metal bands! (Any takers?)
Alright, I’ve yammered on enough. Finally I just want to say that I thought this article is brilliant and throws a tsunami of cold water onto the silly arguments that the proponents of both extremes on this issue tend to make. I think there’s always been concurrent Patriarchy and Matriarchy, it’s just now they’ve both been twisted and confused from their normal “trad” forms.
@Mary Bennet and Jennifer Kobernik, regarding superficial beauty,
I was cute enough in my younger days that I got at least a few opportunities that I otherwise would not have, and if I’d been much cuter I reckon I’d have gotten more, but it’s hard to say at what point the pawing (this is Japan, but it was just as bad in America) would become too oppressive. I suppose a savvy chick pays for body guards, but I never could afford it.
All along I felt like a kind of fraud, and looked forward to my old age, where I could get a sense of my actual worth. It was around the time my jowls emerged (which are nice because you can shake them around when angry) that I realized that beauty is, in fact, worth. I kept earning as much as could be expected in a rural environment. Any loss of income stemmed from my inability to tolerate urban environments asny longer. But I realized, especially watching older women around me and absorbing Oriental culture, that what you do to make yourself attractive is something you do primarily for others, unless you are a compliment hog or something. It makes social interactions more pleasant for others, unless you get carried away with it. If it inspires others (even lustful young men) toward higher achievements, you’ve contributed indirectly to society. Even those of us with modest or no beauty at all, can put forward a bit of effort and contribute,
I got my anthropology degree in the 1970s and even then the term “matriarchy” was scoffed at within the profession. The anthropological record showed exactly zero cultures in which men were enjoined to obey their wives in the way that women in numerous societies across the Old World were enjoined to obey their husbands, and I have no reason to believe that has changed.
Fascinating article!
Especially the bit about suburbia robbing women of a way to execute power. Having grown up in Germany, where we don’t have American suburbs, I can say it seems to be the over-fertilized, atomized, post-industrial living arrangement as a whole that has this effect. I suspect TV to play a huge role, too.
Anyway, it made me think of the following:
If informal power is much harder to execute in society, that means more people are forced to look for positions of formal power, which in turn makes those more attractive. I‘ve long wondered why so much of feminism glorifies masculine roles and denigrates femininity, but this sheds some light on that!
In a further step, I wonder if this lack of informal power structures, which would serve to represent the feminine in society, can help explain the rise of all the postmodern, neo-marxist craziness in society (to paraphrase Jordan Peterson), in that, as the feminine has been pushed into the shadow of collective consciousness, it now acts out and manifests in the destructive and feral of any repressed part of a psyche, just on a societal level.
Hey JMG
On the subject of fictional depictions of “Matriarchy”, one of the best I have read was Ursula K. Leguin’s short story “The matter of Seggri”. I think it was a good critique of the delusion that many feminists had about matriarchy necessarily being “nicer” than a patriarchy. Or maybe is was an attempt to show men how unfair patriarchy is to women by swapping which gender got the “short straw”? It could go either way really. The gist of the story is that the Ekumen rediscover a planet in which a genetic mutation has caused more than 90% of births to be female. Due to this all men are heavily sheltered and mollycoddled, though still forced to fight in gladiatorial games for women’s entertainment.
Also, on an unrelated note, I recently published a new essay on an interesting method of working in hexadecimal called Bibi-binary, that was developed by a 20th century French pop singer and amateur mathematician. It also explores something I noticed in my mathematical explorations, which is that not a single culture in recorded history ever used hexadecimal as their standard way to count, despite a handful of cultures that used even more exotic numeral-systems.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/a-exploration-of-bibi-binary-and?r=e0m1f
For Christian denominations that allow married clergy, I’d give a shout-out to the Pastor’s Wife as well. She may or may not be the leader of the Church Ladies, but she will definitely have a lot of influence in the group.
In the Philippines, men often refer to their wives – both cheekily and affectionally – as “The Commander”. Mine is “La Generalissima” just to one-up the other guys. 😉
The formal/informal power interaction can often be interesting. With my wife and I, she does a lot of things “in the background” without my official sign-off. If she (or we) have to make a decision that’s unpopular among our circles, she’s allowed to officially invoke my formal authority as “head of the household” so I can take the heat. Anyway, I’m the stupid idiot husband, eh? It helps that I don’t care much about what people think about me and playing games in social settings.
@Horzabky “the promiscuous stage… a sign of severe decadence and social decay”
Why would seeking connection and pleasure, that you characterise as promiscuous, indicate that?
Certainly the oppression of women through ensuring they have no agency over their lives, limiting their economic opportunities, which forces them into prostitution would indicate that, but that’s a very different thing from the number of sexual partners one chooses to have.
A few responses to comments I have read so far:
The Other Owen #13–Housewives’ dependence on prescription drugs (in a nuclear family home with no granny or servants) was the subject of the early Rolling Stones hit song “Mother’s Little Helper”. Jagger scolds the women for not embracing the role of homemaker with more enthusiasm.
Mary Bennet #19–I think the commenter you quote as saying that beauty is part of women’s virtue is using the word virtue in one of its older senses, an inherent quality or power. This meaning survives in the phrase, “by virtue of . . .” Virtue in the sense o what something is good for, not necessarily an ethical good.
Brandi #27–I had not heard that idea about the potter’s wheel, but it is true that new technology can affect women differently than men.
The introduction of the spinning wheel into Europe is an example.. Hand spinning thread with a drop spindle is ancient technology. Spinning fiber into thread with a drop spindle is slow work. Early spinning wheel designs required pushing or kicking the wheel to keep it moving, but they still spun thread faster than a drop spindle. When a treadle pedal was added, the spinning wheel became more productive.
A working wheel was a good deal more expensive than a drop spindle, but it was a woman’s personal property which could be (and is to this day) handed down from mother to daughter. It was portable. A skilled spinner could spin more thread than was needed for her personal clothing. If she were not also spinning for her family, she could sell the surplus to a weaver. According to Wikipedia, it took five spinners to supply one commercial weaver, so there was a demand.
Spinning could be done sitting down, equally well by a young maiden or a crone with failing eyesight. In the Low Countries there was a thriving trade in wool cloth. This meant that an unmarried woman or a widow without property was not stuck at home, dependent on her family. She could move to town and earn her living as a spinster.
Some European towns contained intentional communities of Christian women who chose not to marry, enter a convent, or ply their trade as sex workers. They made rules for their communities, and sometimes hired the services of clergy. They prayed, read and wrote in their vernacular languages. They were called Beguines.
Patricia Mathews #51–The book is “Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves” by Sarah Pomeroy.
I read a lot of biographies. Obviously one has to achieve a certain prominence in order to be biographized. A pattern I see quite frequently in such people is an ambitious mother married to a talented but under-achieving father. She seems to transfer her hopes and ambitions to the son and puts extra effort into building him up.
JMG, the discussion of formal and informal power in society is an interesting dimension of the situation. I’ve never considered the issue in that way.
Tangentially, I’m a little bit annoyed by those making fun of a series of sex-filled fantasy novels directed at women, without mentioning the Gor novels ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor ) which are set on a fantasy planet where all the female characters are scantily clad sex slaves. Please don’t insist on purity in women’s amusement, if you can’t be equally critical of men’s amusement.
(To be clear, I think everyone should read whatever they want! )
>Other Owen, if you must inflict your personal categories on the rest of us, I think you should explain what they mean. Rectangle girl?
I thought I did. But I’m glad to help. It’s when you see a rectangle on your screen containing a picture of a (usually youngish) girl (9 times out of 10, it’s a girl) with a play button in front and center. You click on the play button and 1-5 minutes later waves of regret wash over you for making that ill-advised decision. Or 20 seconds into it, you click on the rectangle to stop the cringe and move on. See the Rectangle, Avoid the Rectangle.
It’s a reference to Tik-tok and other (very) low-effort video publishing platforms, where all you need to be a (dim) star is a wal-mart phone, some wal-mart bandwidth and absolutely no sense of propriety or boundaries. Also see: Phone Brain, Cluster B Hive
Is there anything else I can help you with?
>I suspect one of the reasons that arranged marriages tend to work out tolerably well is that both sides go into it knowing that since they’ve just made a commitment to live their lives in the company of a complete stranger
I think another part of it is if I might wax cynical, if things go badly, you’re going to have BOTH sets of parents who made the initial decision up in your business and not climbing back down until it has been solved. They have an investment in this marriage. They signed their names to it. It’s the same sort of motivation in a typical Megacorp where both of you say “Let’s do what we must so this doesn’t get back to [big boss], we don’t want him getting involved with this”
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the 60s, it’s that love isn’t enough. Nowhere near enough. Not even close. Somehow people got on without arranged marriages though back in the early 20th c though. They made it work, so I consider arranged marriage to be overkill. I suspect arranged marriage is an over-response to the consequences of letting young naive girls do whatever they feel like doing, which in general is run everything right into the ground.
I always assumed that a hater of the opposite sex was an idiotic felo-de-se, since each sex is latently and literally half and half. But maybe that’s overly simplistic. Aesthetically hate makes women ugly and men weak. So there’s that too. So, I remember considering the bachofen mythos, but rejecting it because it seemed so sweepingly a generalization. Thanks for parsing all of that!! It’s always been clear to me that what was called patriarchy depended greatly if not crucially on subtle female support but I hadn’t clarified how that worked. Gee, I wonder what comes next?
I often think Naked Capitalism can be just as deranged as some of the posts on Zerohedge. Both seem to have reasonable articles at times, but frequently run to extremes. Naked Capitalism gets in on the RFK Jr. hating, as in a piece today, but then will also have good articles (IMO) about the genocide and child starvation, bombing of women and children in Gaza being supported by Israel and the west. Even though Zerohedge does round up some great articles, they are also fanning the equally problematic issue of antisemitism by having a zero regulation policy on moderating their comments. I don’t read those that often, but people hating on the Jewish really comes out strong in those comments. Unherd seems to have a more balanced selection of articles and Quillette has the occassional decent article, but they tend to boost for booster shots and nuclear energy. I guess it is good to surf around and pick and choose and balance it all inside our minds.
Meanwhile the center does not hold. The best lack all conviction, and the rest are filled with passionate intensity fed to them and amplified by the screen.
I haven’t investigated this very much, but I haven’t noticed too many tradhusband influencers. If they are out there, I guess they are just doing manly stuff on social media without calling themselves tradhusbands. Tradhubs would be a better word.
It seems that some janeboys might do well with informal power, and tomgirls do okay with some formal power. A number of commenters have shown themselves as tomgirls. I have known a lot of women like that, who are happier hanging out with the dudes than fem friends. Plenty of janeboys too, who would be happier sitting in a room full of women and gossiping.
Some of the most effeminate gay men I’ve met or worked with have also been the ones most likely to talk about you behind your back and stab you when you got the chance. Some of the biggest bull dykes I’ve known would be the first to help you tow your car or fix something in your house.
It’s a strange and vibrant world.
JMG,
Reciprocity makes the world go round and the tally keeping of who has done what for whom (and who hasn’t) is performed almost entirely by the women in your friend/family network. It’s a very effective informal power that operates on honor systems centered on exchanging gifts/services motivated by the necessity of identifying bad actors in your network and rewarding good actors in your network.
And… in a crisis the informal power of “reciprocity tally keeping” is something your going to need to sustain any/all labor and exchange of resources.
# 73 Teresa Peschel wrote: “The surviving women are rescued by said ice planet barbarians (seven feet tall, blue, furry, horns, interesting added appendages)”
Sound like consorting with demons to me. Which isn’t a new fantasy, either, but today it doesn’t get you burned at the stake, at least.
I think I heard it said by Leon J Podles. “Men may have the Priesthood but women has everything else”.
Despite worshipping a masculine trinity and an exclusively male priesthood. Ever since the practice of the individual soul being regarded as the “Bride of Christ” came into existence. As explained in chapter six of this pdf:
https://podles.org/church-impotent.htm
Christianity is an army of women. Especially since the 12th century. And arguably. It was since even that religion spread initially. The ban on infanticide and abortion balanced the sex ratio of male and female babies. In the ancient world as well as onwards. Disproportionately many girl babies who were to be exposed were saved and raised up by Christians.
There was a general balance in sex ratio just after the patristic age and before the 12th century in the church.
Although recently it’s the young men who disproportionately convert and women left the faith more than historically:
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-christianity-rise
Excellent!
You manage to talk about a sensible issue in a completely reasonable way, and giving some sense to the whole story.
Robert, thanks for this. One of the things that makes simplistic political mythologizing so awkward in US history is the flexibility of our categories and labels. How many people remember that William Jennings Bryan, the far-left rabblerouser whose campaigns for president on the Democratic ticket marked the high-water mark of late 19th century US radicalism, was also the prosecuting attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial? At the turn of the last century, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity was a left-wing movement…
Cs2, given that quite a few people on the left have been insisting for decades now that the tradwife lifestyle is utterly unacceptable for women, to the point of denouncing those who want it, it’s interesting to see the shoe ending up on the other foot. Myself, I’d like to see more acceptance of the idea that each person can choose the life that’s appropriate for them, but I know that’s unfashionable to both sides these days.
Rita, I’ve seen the same thing in other contexts. It’s really quite odd.
Patrick, an interesting point. Of course the current iteration is transitory — but then that’s true of every modern lifestyle.
Michael, thank you. I needed a belly laugh.
Karalan, and in other eras, it’s the other way around. The yin and yang are never balanced — it’s always swirling one way or the other.
Korax, thanks for this. Yes, I’ve noticed with wry amusement that feminists, who used their own equivalent of MGTOW to great effect in the 1970s and 1980s — I remember all those tee shirts and buttons that said “A Woman Without A Man Is Like A Fish Without A Bicycle” — are shrieking like gutshot banshees now that the same tactic is being used with equal effect against them. With regard to the Indo-European conquests, one very odd thing I discovered a while back — and am still trying to relocate — is evidence that all this may have been preceded by a pandemic of bubonic plague. I’ve wondered more than once if what happened was that Indo-European boys, who were secluded in the forests as part of their preparation for manhood (as I wrote about here), were nearly the only survivors when plague went through, and a few years later rode west and crashed into what was left of plague-shattered agricultural societies…
Joan, of course. As far as I know, the matriarchy theory didn’t survive the 1930s in the US academic scene, though it lingered a little longer in Britain. Like other social sciences, anthropology is profoundly fashion-conscious, so it makes perfect sense that you wouldn’t have been exposed even to the least traces of the older consensus.
Eike, hmm! I think you may well be right.
J.L.Mc12, “hexadecimal” makes me think of witches casting curses on base-10 mathematics. 😉
Carlos, that sounds highly traditional!
Martin, it’s an ancient pattern.
Sylvia, trust me, I make fun of everyone’s choice in literature, including my own. The Gor books are quite elderly these days, though, and really rather bland by modern standards. In the age of Chuck Tingle, they’re mostly good for a sort of satirical nostalgia along the lines of the famous “Weasels Ripped My Flesh!” men’s magazine:
Shrimp, ’twas ever thus. They’d get their passionate intensity from clay tablets if that was the latest hot communications technology. As for strangeness and diversity, of course.
GlassHammer, that’s one of the upsides of informal power.
Info, one of my favorite writers on Christian origins, Stevan L. Davies, pointed out in his book The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts that Christianity spread so effectively in the ancient world because it offered so many more options to women than the mainstream society of the time. It’s precisely because it worships a masculine trinity that it attracts (heterosexual) women — the religious impulse and the sexual impulse are much more tightly twined together than most people let themselves realize.
Abraham, thank you.
“Rectangle girl” had me puzzled too; I was wondering who I should growl at if I sensed one of them approaching my food. All of the above comments make the current dating scene seem like a veritable minefield. Maybe it signals a return to something more traditional, where in tight-knit communities (or churches) you just don’t meet all that many members of the opposite sex, and standards of behavior are well-defined. Violate them at the risk of being shunned.
Deborah Bender @ 164, your suggestion about one of the older meanings of the word ‘virtue’ maybe does explain what I read. Thank you for this. Mind, I still think the commentator was indulging in verbal trickery. I think, based on personal observation and experience, that photogenic appearance, in men or women, is no good guide to character or competence. If I were to see a plump, long bearded white male of late middle age, arrayed in nondescript, thrifted garb, riding a bus, would I guess that the man in question is the highly regarded author of some 80 and counting books, among many other achievements? Probably not. There are sharp limits to what can be deduced from external clues.
Corax @ 157, have you considered that the mid-tier women are making what is for them a rational decision to have themselves the odd fun evening without messy complications? If they support themselves, maybe they don’t want a long term commitment. The top tier guys can, I suppose, be relied on to behave like gentlemen, don’t whine about unfair life is to them, don’t expect the lady to support 15 of their indigent relatives, and don’t subject her to instant pop psychologizing on the basis of a half hour acquaintance.
Mary Bennett,
Ah, that makes sense. I usually think of virtue in the more Classical sense than in the Christian, which I would generalize as more functional than moralistic, and more inclusive of the physical as a manifestation of the ideal. I also don’t think of beauty as entirely inborn, but as something which is cultivated within natural limits. And while I might go so far as to say that it’s good to be pretty, I certainly don’t think being pretty makes someone good!
Wow. This morning’s Coffee and Covid provides an excellent example of the left right matriarchy/patriarchy conversation in full bloom. https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/thinkable-friday-august-1-2025-c
Jeff Childers criticizes a left wing podcaster who says of the conservative right “Sometimes I’m envious; I wish I believed in something that just told me how to live my life.” Jeff then describes the re-emergence of dominant men as though that is the only option. What if in instead people do the personal work necessary to develop healthy autonomy? I also see here how attractive religion appears to someone who links externally for how to live their life.
Joshua Stylman’s recent piece discusses the deep harm on children of our digital culture: “They never develop what psychologists call ‘internal locus of control’ because they never get to make real choices with real consequences—or even learn to perceive reality without technological filters.” https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-modern-slave Joshua is pointing to the lack of development of autonomy. Parents who fail to develop their own autonomy and agency have no idea how to foster it in their children. This really distorts power dynamics.
Info says: “Men may have the Priesthood but women have everything else…Despite worshipping a masculine trinity and an exclusively male priesthood.”
I once heard an interesting take on the “exclusively male priesthood” from a Catholic woman (married, mother of 10): she said “of course women are naturally more spiritual than men, and that’s why only men are called to be priests – they have a lot of catching up to do!”
That resonated with me; I’ve often thought that women have an innate, natural priesthood. Because of the way our bodies work, we have a profound connection with nature (our cycles are typically the same length as the phases of the moon, pregnancy is 10 lunar months, etc.). We also often have powerful instincts and intuition – symptoms of a natural connection to the spiritual realm. So my thought about women and priesthood is not so much “we shouldn’t have it” as “why do we need it?”
>the famous “Weasels Ripped My Flesh!” men’s magazine
I’d like to see someone draw another picture, of the artist sitting at his board who just drew that, deep in contemplation about his life choices that brought him to that place.
Sylvia,
Err, aren’t the Gor books notorious for how many women are fans of them? Maybe they’re not the majority of the fanbase but I’m not sure Gor is a good representative of men’s amusements. For what it’s worth, I can’t think of a single male nerd I know who has read them; the very premise is off-putting in my circles.
On the other hand, we all love the Conan stories, which are noted for the fairly high degree of agency Howard gives most of his female characters — relative to the time and medium, of course.
Michael X #163: “@Horzabky ‘the promiscuous stage… a sign of severe decadence and social decay’/ Why would seeking connection and pleasure, that you characterise as promiscuous, indicate that?”
JMG: Please correct me here if I’m mis-remembering, but I seem to remember you saying that the Druid teaching is that sex creates a bond with the other person that lasts for several years? (That seems like psychological common sense, actually.) If that’s the case, it makes sense to be selective about choosing sexual partners. It’s not a moral judgment to acknowledge that there’s an exchange of energy that happens there, and to be selective about what kind of energy you want to absorb and from whom.
>Housewives’ dependence on prescription drugs (in a nuclear family home with no granny or servants) was the subject of the early Rolling Stones hit song “Mother’s Little Helper”. Jagger scolds the women for not embracing the role of homemaker with more enthusiasm.
Finally found it – Angora Bouquet from SNL. Washes your brain as well as your face.
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/angora-bouquet/3007492
And if that one doesn’t work,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gX0AjkSUsm0
>What Gen Z “blackpill” men have come to believe (which I think is partially correct): Those dating apps have changed everything
I would just say “The dating market in 2025 is absolutely broken” and just leave it at that. You’re getting into how and why it’s broken. I’m not sure how or if it needs to be fixed, but I’d say the first step is to not play a rigged game. And those dating apps are rigged games. Phones in general are bad things that your exposure to should be minimized for several different reasons. This is one of them.
@JMG (#176):
You’re very welcome! It’s precisely that flexibility of categories and labels that made it easy to push our two major parties toward becoming a two-faced uniparty that scams us as voters. (This is not to say that we shouldn’t vote. Voting for the less damaging of two scams is still a thing worth doing.)
“It’s precisely because it worships a masculine trinity that it attracts (heterosexual) women — the religious impulse and the sexual impulse are much more tightly twined together than most people let themselves realize.”
It’s perhaps worth noting that Christ is usually depicted in surviving relics from Late Antiquity as a strong, buff, and Apollo-like figure! I imagine it’s also not a co-incidence that many historically patriarchal cultures would worship goddesses who are vivid and curvaceous.
I read an interesting tale of a 1970s feminist commune in Denmark that explicitly preached that women were smarter than men but admired the men by having them spend all their time shirtless, do all the manual labour, and sleep only in boxers!
Mr. Greer.. WOW! That Man’s Life cover art is quite an illustration to behold!
Humm.. ‘weasel’ rassling.. or are they otters – I’m not sure which, but that all looks pretty ‘hunky’dory to mine eyes. All that’s needed to complete the scene, is Sidney Sweeny look-a-like mermaiden .. with her accompanying golden eagles divingboobing overhead, each clutching fasces in one claw .. and a pack of Trojans, in the other!
Umm.. dive ‘bombing’….
Twas NOT a Freudian slippage .. I SWEAR, on a pack of camels.
GM All! After reading (wonderful ) post, I open the paper to see that a local retirement community now has first ever all-female city council. Albeit a more “formal” grouping, from the picture included they sure looked like “church ladies” to me😳😂
Yogaandthetarot
@Michele7
Not to detract from your personal experience, but I must point out that the Lemonjello, Orangejello, and Shithead anecdotes are urban legends popularized in the first publications of “Freakonomics”, but edited out in later, revised editions.
Phutatorius, though I haven’t ventured back into the dating scene yet, I’ve begun lurking on various venues where people talk about it. (In my defense, it’s been 43 years since I last went on a date with somebody to whom I wasn’t married.) The fascinating thing about it is that both sexes talk at great and impassioned length about how impossible it is to find a partner that way. Maybe there’s an economic niche opening up for matchmakers or something…
Angelica, I laughed a long, bitter, heartfelt laugh when I read that bit on Childer’s blog this morning. The monumental irony in that journalist who prattled about wishing somebody told her how to live her life is that the laptop class has been doing exactly that for decades — and quite often dumping savage penalties on anyone who dared to question their authority. Nothing is more threatening to both sides in the culture wars than the individual who makes up his or her own mind.
Other Owen, funny. There was once a whole industry of magazines like that, with equally absurd covers every month; the weasel cover is famous only because “Weasels ripped my flesh!” is so wonderfully absurd a sentence.
Yavanna, that’s standard occult teaching generally. Sexual interaction involves a temporary fusion between etheric bodies and leaves an enduring link. If you’ve ever noticed that people (of either sex, btw) who have had many sex partners have a distinctive energy around around them — it feels “sticky” and “ragged” to me, but perceptions vary — that’s why. (Many people are aware of this, at least subconsciously — it’s why people who want promiscuous sex gravitate toward each other, and why people who don’t want that tend to find people who do want it vaguely repellent, even if they know nothing about the other person’s activities or reputation.)
Robert, I also like to insert Discordian randomness into the system, and elections can sometimes be a good way to do that!
David, given the social acceptability of same-sex relationships in the classical world, I have my own suspicions about why Jesus was shown as a muscle boy in ancient imagery! You’re right about goddesses, of course.
Polecat, I think your original spelling was more accurate. Yeah, it’s a truly classic cover, and they’re supposed to be weasels.
Jill, I admit I’d avoid such a retirement community!
JMG, in addition to the atomization of suburbia, there is another diminishment of women’s power that likely led to second wave feminism. Years ago I realized that all the “labor-saving” appliances being sold to 20th century housewives robbed them of hard-won expertise gained through experience and knowledge. No one takes care of a home like the woman who works in in every day and has learned all its individuality and needs. Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, etc, turned women who had been powerful experts on the workings of their spaces into mindless button-pushers.
>have you considered that the mid-tier women are making what is for them a rational decision to have themselves the odd fun evening without messy complications?
The counter to this is the Situationship. It’s what those mids are complaining about. TL;DG – it’s the female equivalent of the Friendzone. There’s all kinds of details about how and why the dating market is broken and it’s broken for both sides of the market but in different ways.
“Weasels ripped my flesh!” is so wonderfully absurd a sentence.
It was picked up by Frank Zappa and used as the title of one of his albums. The cover art is especially tasteless, even for Zappa!
>All of the above comments make the current dating scene seem like a veritable minefield
That you must jog through. For some reason some guys think that’s more risk than it’s worth. And then you have salads getting stolen.
Athaia @ 173, indeed.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Reminds me of Wuthering Heights. Sorry, Bronte lovers, I am not a fan. It is a great pity that Anne died young.
I am, in a way, a direct beneficiary of the church ladies that run things…
…because when my father, a fresh-out-of-seminary minister, and my mother, a young registered nurse who had been working all hours since her graduation to put him through said seminary, arrived at their first posting – a congregationalist church in a small town in Maine – the ladies quickly discovered (by dint of discreet inquiries after my mother’s first “potluck supper” offering) that my mother had not yet had the time to acquire any cooking skills to speak of.
So, they basically took her under their very experienced wings, and over the course of two years taught her many useful recipes and methods, the results of which fed me and my sisters through out our growing up periods. I am delighted, and grateful, that they took this teaching route, instead the ridicule and titter route (which they might have)… 🙂
JMG & Aldarion
Party lines were a matter of lack of infrastructure, not designed for multi party conversations.. We had one in rural NJ in the 1940s.. A friend grew up with one in Ireland in the 50s..Our number was 4. I can remember my mother answering the phone, and saying ” Mrs. Wilson, you can hang up now” , as the woman would pick up and listen to other peoples’ conversations.It was a great system for snoops. It was replaced with individual lines as soon as the infrastructure went in.
stephen
@154 Patrick:
Oh yes of course. I’m a fan of marriage considering I’m married myself but we are DINKs. My husband out-earns me by 3x, so he does the housework while I work to upgrade my career so I’m not chronically under-earning.
@176 JMG:
Choice is what’s important; in that we both agree. If a woman in my life were considering the tradwife route, as her friend or relative I’d still ask her whether she has a financial plan so that she’s not rendered completely dependent and vulnerable. Tradwives end up in MLMs in part because it’s so difficult for them to get hired after leaving the workforce for so long. Does she have employable skills she can lean on if things go wrong? Does she have a support network she can grab the kids and run to if the situation gets violent and she can’t find a job?
>I suspect arranged marriage is an over-response to the consequences of letting young naive girls do whatever they feel like doing<
There's an anthropological profile for the sort of situation in which arranged marriage is likely to be instituted. This doesn't cover all instances, but it's a pretty widespread correlation. Broadly, in the aftermath of the collapse of an agrarian empire, the soil will be so played out that the population density will be very thin. Villages will not be large enough to provide an adequate gene pool, so local courtship and marriage within the village will be done away with, replaced by arranged marriages between people from different villages who've probably never set eyes on each other before, thus turning the whole region into one big gene pool.
This change is especially likely if the collapse was so sudden that the soldiers simply stopped getting paid and provisioned instead of being disbanded in some sort of orderly fashion. Any soldiers who have civilian families to go back to will go back to them, but there will be a core of men with no place to go and no skills but violence, who will form bandit gangs and prey on the peasantry, both stealing food and abducting women. In this situation, the movements of women will be intensely restricted. One marker of this stage in the archaeological record is fortification of civilian residences, ranging from the broken-glass-topped walls around extended family compounds that can be seen all around the Mediterranean to entire walled municipalities. Women are generally restricted to the walled area because that's the only place where they have any degree of safety.
Once this way of life is instituted, it is capable of enduring for centuries. In my youth I dated a man whose mother had come from a little mountain village in Calabria as a child in the 1930s. The family moved to an Italian immigrant neighborhood in Ohio, where the old country's way of life was still largely preserved. When she was in high school, she was offered an arranged marriage to a boy she had never met whose parents were from the same mountain valley as hers. The Roman Empire had been gone since the 5th century but the marriage customs instituted in its aftermath were still being followed in the 20th.
My daughter went through fairly alternative education and I worked in it in a small So Cal city. One encountered plenty of weird names; most seemed to be a reflection of their new age parents egos. It always seemed to me that it would have been a kindness to the child to give them a conventional middle name, so that the child could then use whichever one they wanted, but I suppose that would have worked against the principle of the child being a projection of the parents egos, and not an autonomous being.
Stephen
I read a few of Camille Paglia’s early books just to see what all the fuss was about and I came away disgusted with her. She flat-out said (this was before she was claiming to be a lesbian) that she was attracted to dangerous men. Apparently it never occurred to her that someone might tease out the implications of that statement. How do we know that some men are dangerous? Because some women have been abused by men in the past. So in a truly just society where nobody is ever abused, men will not be dangerous and therefore she’ll never have an orgasm again. So she was denouncing the very idea of a just society as both unattainable and bad, telling women to accept a world with a certain amount of abuse in it, and just generally grabbing onto any justification she could find for the continuation of the sexual status quo.
Most women who are sexually attracted to monsters are content to do things like read the Ice Barbarian series. Camille Paglia was hot for real-life monsters and therefore motivated to keep us a monster-producing society.
@JMG (#193):
I also admire discordian wisdom. The Principia Discordia is one of my favorite books.
On the “rectangle girls” complaining about how men never approach them, I’d accuse them of being attention mongers on social media since this is a major addiction for younger women these days, except that I have seen plenty of situations in real life that corroborate it. A very good example: a friend of mine alerted me to this back when he was in grad school in the later 2010s. He was telling me how because of college clubs he’s around younger women all the time, grad and undergrad, and even attractive women were baffled because absolutely no one would ask them out. I sometimes accompanied him to these places when he was nearing the end of his degree and I could see that it was so. It was a source of confusion for them and was not at all uncommon. He also described many of the younger men he knew as being “profoundly lost” – and this was the bright young contingent of the populace, generally speaking. And all of this was before the Covid situation made isolation and alienation even worse. So there has been a decline in the social fabric of the USA for some time, though it got worse. I hope JMG is right that this situation will reset.
The extremely restrictive life for women in the 20th century may be part of the reason so many younger women move to the city after growing up either in cities or small towns. Most do this at some point in their lives, even if some of them return to their suburban roots — usually those who do are the ones who started families, while the ones who stay single often stay in the city. It’s probably just a more congenial environment for them, with more opportunities for the socializing and informal networks they prefer, but like anything these days it’s not perfect: A lot of people get trapped in lives of dissipation and are no less disconnected and alienated than the suburbanites they left behind. I was unusual in that I refused to move to the city and stayed in the suburbs my whole life, because neither a desire for status or restlessness ever moved me to leave familiar surroundings. I feel that we Westerners have wandered enough in recent centuries and nothing other than necessity has compelled me to do it thus far. I don’t really see “tradwives” in my area, in the performative sense, but there are an awful lot of women around here who have chosen to raise children rather than work outside the house, and certainly do network with one another. It may be that the social fabric slow-motion repairs itself over the next century as some hard lessons are learned from this dark era we are slogging through.
i have so much to say as i’m in play right now— just went to the courthouse all day yesterday to file restraining order protections for me against 5 other tenants here—and even THAT was a huge adventure with the other people in line. one quit his petition and followed me to the library even though i kept saying i’m with someone and can’t talk to him because i’ll be working. i’m that mom in the ’70s!
but the comments this week are also amazing! it’s like we’ll need three weeks of conversations before the next post because it’ll be over so fast.
x
@ Scotlyn #130
Responsibility, duty, obligations, stability are all so boring and routine!
But boy howdy do they matter to keeping a family and a community going.
@ J.L.Mc12 #134
I’ve read, yet completely forgot my Theodore Dalrymple. We’ve been lucky enough to pick up his books (in hardcover no less) at library sales.
In particular, I noted his belief based on his real-world experience, which I will roughly paraphrase:
Being on the dole, with plenty of time, does not make the recipients poets, artists, musicians, or any other kind of creatives. They’ve got to already have it in them.
J.K. Rowling managed but she was an extreme outlier.
@ Mary Bennet #142
I’ve never read Henry James and I have no knowledge of “What Maisie Knew.”
Could you enlighten me please?
@ Athaia #173
No, no, no, no! Aliens are not demons!
Romancelandia is vast and contains within itself multitudes.
If you want demons, we’ve got libraries full of books starring demons (male and female) as hot lovers looking for loves. Or Hellhounds if you like mixing your shifters with demons. Angels (fallen or not) are very popular. So are demigods. Or gods! Or ghosts!
Shapeshifters come in every sexy possibility. That is, you don’t find hot men who shapeshift into anteaters. It’s always tigers, bears, wolves, dragons, sharks, etc.
Monsters too. There’s even a dedicated convention: https://monsteroticabookcon.com/
Indie authors are extremely inventive and open-minded. If it sells, someone’s going to write it.
Fortunately, as you say, nobody gets burned at the stake these days for reading these books and the authors (using pennames) can maintain plausible deniability if necessary.
Booklover @ 108 and JMG. The concept of “Intersectionality” is also applied in the opposite direction, though never acknowledged: The are many categories of which the woke disapprove. Male, masculine, straight, conservative, white, Christian? If a man checks off all those boxes, he’s won the oppressor olympics. This why I find the concept so loathsome.
—Lunar Apprentice.
Teresa Paschel @ 210, I don’t blame you; James can be a difficult slog. What Maisie Knew is, however, quite delightful. It has been several decades since I read it, but it does remain my favorite of what I have read by him. Maisie is a child of parents who separate when she is quite small. By the end of the novel, both parents are deceased, if I can remember accurately and Maisie has been handed to a series of relatives and partners thereof. By the novel’s end she has become a socially precocious 10 year old. BTW, you can give Princess Casamassima a miss, it is merely James’ retelling of Balzac’s Lost Illusions. Read the original.
MizBean, I’m glad you said that. If a man mentioned it, he could pretty much count on being crucified by women accusing him of trying to flog them back into drudgery et al.
Phutatorius, I know. That’s why I used the original.
Stephen, I know, but it also fostered group conversations — and snooping is also part of informal power, you know.
Cs2, keep in mind that this cuts both ways. Men considering marriage these days have to weigh the real possibility that their dearly beloved will pop a kid or two, demand divorce, and then use the children as a crowbar to help herself to his income for 18 years. That’s why I exist; my biological mother had my sister and me, got my father to pay for her college education and get her set up for her career, then divorced him, got a smart lawyer, and drove him into poverty with child support payments, of which my sister and I saw very, very little. The same thing happened more recently to two male friends of mine. Thus I think it’s very possible that men will be more interested in tradwives because they think there’s less risk that they’ll be taken to the cleaners in this way.
Joan, fascinating. Can you direct me to some literature on the historical origins of arranged marriage? As for Paglia, that’s an interesting interpretation. On the other hand, if you go to any lively singles bar, sit in a corner with good sight lines, sip a drink, watch and listen, you’ll find that a very considerable number of women are far from content to limit their fondness for dangerous men to romance novels. I know it’s considered ideologically inconvenient in some circles, but the attraction to bad boys is a real thing.
Erika, I hope the court visit went well for you! Yeah, it’s a lively one.
Lunar, granted, but there again it can be monkeywrenched and put to good use. Few concepts lack that capacity.
“Since I have not only the best but also the weirdest commentariat on the internet…”
PS JMG – just wanted to say I am so proud to be part of this best and weird commentariat : it’s been very liberating to let my freak-flag fly! Thank you!
Sincerely
Yogaandthetarot
Paglia is a not incompetent reporter who early in her career seems to have decided she was a Big Important Intellect, with distressing results. What I would like to know is who decided her books were worth publishing and for what reasons.
BTW, I like boring. Boring keeps me out of trouble.
>I suppose that would have worked against the principle of the child being a projection of the parents egos, and not an autonomous being.
What? Your kids aren’t just props to assist you in propagating pet narratives that you have in your head? And here I thought that was their only purpose all this time.
Mr. Greer, well .. !!ALRIGHT!! BOOBS it is. Whats not to like … except … if one is a multi-hued, grumpy, nose-ringed stonefish .. complete with a mud-smothering frown, sucking joy from the depths of woke hell ..no ‘matriarchy’ there.. especially when one steps upon a poisoned slime coated, uh, smashmouth .. because in Wokelandia .. EVERYTHING is an FN LANDMINE, am I right?
There’s salad and there are tentacles. And then there’s salad of tentacles. If I haven’t missed it, there’s no recipe in the WoH cookbook that makes use of squid? Was this intentional?
Hm. I guess being bored is my way to deal with the anxiety that can be caused by “the absurdity of human beings pretending that they can make sense of the inkblot patterns of the cosmos”. Living in or close to a potential focal point of the consequences of these absurdities may play a role.
But speaking of formal and informal power – do you think it can be problematic if people who are part of a system of informal power grow into positions of formal power in the same system? That would at least explain some of the problems my school has to deal with (and to some extend also the whole region I am living in). We have many colleagues who had been students at the school, then became teachers at the same school and then some have taken positions in the headship. Some also have their children in the same school. Students and parents wield a great amount of informal power, and so do teachers against the headship. I guess if you are grown up in and into this informal networks and then become, say, headmaster this can be very problematic because you will never get rid of the informal ties and are at the same time bound by your formal duties?
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@214 JMG,
A tradwife who is completely economically dependent is MORE likely to take her man to the cleaners in a divorce because she is unemployable and desperate. It’s better that she makes sure she has employable skills before she leaves the workforce; that way she has something to fall back on if she needs it.
What your mother did was cruel and I don’t blame you for not being a fan of her for it.
My mother was a stay-at-home tradwife, but in a brutal way. She was tyrannical and controlled my dad and the kids. We all lived in fear of her. She refused to work even when my dad was unemployed and struggling to get anything better than an entry-level night shift. I’m not a fan of her.
Rather than the methods of my mom or yours, it’s better that women have their own employability, even if they never end up needing it. That way the choices in a bad situation aren’t limited to vampirizing a man or being stuck.
Hey JMG
It’s funny that you not only made that joke AND included the classic 3 phases of the moon and goddess in the beginning of your article, because I pointed in my essay that in the Bibi-binary characters the hexadecimal number B03 looks almost exactly like the “DOC” symbol for the 3 phases of the moon.
Re: JOHN O’NEILL @ #41:
“You can read the post multiple times during the week, and integrate the thoughts of the commentariat into your reading. It’s marvelous, a true forum, and I for one am eternally grateful to our host for providing this space for us to all get together. It makes me seriously consider Erica’s idea of a get together.”
See why they like us separated apart and yelling at each other? when we come together we’re so much more interesting and powerful than we realize. I hope you show up at Adocentyn next year. I’m lazy and don’t want to go anywhere or do anything and my energy will look like Java the Hut, but as a FEMALE, i know how to wear bright colors so i have to step up to the attention they attract, fluff up my empathy and ability to dance and jujitsu energy a bit, and if i can force myself to get unstuck with Peter’s invitation, YOU can, too. I’m going cross country and am already solidifying someone to stay here while I’m gone.
okay i’m going back to being quiet because this week’s comments are more important than anything i might say right now. this has been an inspired week and my misogyny is toned way down now that i understand. that’s what i wanted. i knew as long as i feared women (whom i love) and thought we were the devil, i was in a blunt boring remedial binary position.
x
@JMG #132 – the proof of that is in the change of colors from blue to red and vice versa. Back in the day, red meant “communist” and blue meant “conservative.”. Pinpoint the day that color change took place and you’ve pinpointed the date those parties changed places.
JOAN:
i love Camille Paglia, as far as she goes. For such a supposed “free speech absolutist,” she punked out, and Naomi Wolf, the dog she kicked on picked on and bullied, ended up shining in the moment.
However, Camille made me see the complexity of my own perfect progressive dreams of a safe world, but by then white women gentrifying brooklyn felt safe enough to wear mini skirts and be drunk enough on a midnight train to vomit in her purse. true story. i was there.
but everything was boring by then and culture was dead.
yes.
LIFE and adventure IS dangerous and the danger makes things spark. so you have to use other skills when you’re prey on the serengeti.
but i loved how Camille Paglie made me even see the masculine traits in MYSELF that’d been squashed by my sisters who preferred safety a sense of constantly belonging or crushing others who don’t.
creativity art new ideas and building new things involves facing the terror of being The Only One or First, which are the antithesis of women’s worlds. /unless she’s weird, most women hate being alone, the only one, different, or first.
i get compared to a guy a lot but hardly: i crave belonging want to be in the clan warm safe welcomed. but the way i am, in this culture, it is not meant to be. it’s okay. everything has its consequences good or bad and i happily accept them because of all the magic.
JMG,
You know, the main way in which informal power and formal power settle the frequent disputes between themselves and within themselves typically is argumentation. An argumentation in which the parties come to realize how much informal power or formal power is going to brought to bear if certain choices are made. That a given argument is well reasoned or particularly witty matters little, what matters is that it conveys the stakes plainly and succinctly. You can see this play out in disputes amongst families, church members, friends, etc…. someone backs down because of either an informal power structure or a formal power structure was about to be activated and they knew what that would mean for them.
Today folks get way too wrapped up in argumentation and forget that it only ends disputes if it’s nested within a power structure and…. the person speaking it actually has some power.
Yes, Papa, I’m learning the bureaucratic system enough to figure out how to protect myself in a world where Generation X values of talking it out amongst each other isn’t even an IDEA.
i was in line with a lot of other people before the courthouse opened, and already some of us weren’t getting along just in LINE. the man in front of me was singing gospel songs to get through the stress and another woman was on her phone and he hated hearing her conversation.
anyone who caught my eyes would start trying out and pitching their case to me and more than a few times i had to smile and say, “NO! it’s too early to hear all this horror! tell the judge!” and they’d smile then start explaining WHY and i’d say, “Noooo!”
then the singing man started complaining about the loud phone talking lady and i just said, “yes, i understand. i understand.” and would laugh and change the conversation.
when he went out of the line, the loud talking woman said, “i love how you dealt with that. you just let it all float by and dissipated the energy.”
i laughed and said, “yeah, if we all could do that more we wouldn’t have to BE HERE!”
the guy who ended up quitting filing his case and following me to the library where i had to xerox / collate a 6″ stack of paper work to submit, he was there because this woman who’d been sorta his girlfriend wanted him to beat her up. she liked it rough. he was a sweet giggling laid back kind of brother but she said he wasn’t angry enough so she’d date other men and try to get him jealous enough to go off on her. she admitted she was trying to instigate him.
he didn’t understand. he said at first they got along but now she’s messing with him to try and make him mad or to get him beat up in a fight. that’s why the restraining order.
i’d seen this with lesbians when i first moved here in the 90s and then into the 2000s: girls would leave men and go with women saying it’s because they’d been abused. they might end up as exotic dancers, strippers, sex workers, which would make them hate men all the more.
a lot of these women i knew then would cajole convince and demand that their butch women beat them up during sex. the butches i knew would complain to me because they’d resent what hitting their beloveds did to THEM inside.
i used to think i liked things a little scary and rough myself because sex had kinda started out that way, with us kids playing and me being tied up at age 10 at a quaker conference on the back stage of a stage by a 13 year old guy all of us girls were crushed out on and i cannot tell you how hot that sweaty scary memory is even to this day.
adolescence and all through my teens was like running the sexual gauntlet. yes! someone said sex starts early in real life: IT DOES.
but now that i’ve been deeply and madly loved by James and even now, sex with eye contact honesty lots of giggling because intimacy and sex is hella FUNNY, now the intensity focus and all that honesty is intense enough. since my 20s, all my S/M fantasies have been playing out dealing with real life as myself in san francisco and this world, anyway.
and there’s just no room for hurt in my love or sex. James changed me because real love is difficult and meaty enough. so when i’m mistreated by beloveds of any kind, now i get enraged instead, like, “REALLY???” because it breaks the spell of secret specialness we made, because the real world is brutal enough and my personal life must be padded with kindness all around even if we screw up and must apologize and do something differently.
all that said, i do believe pain can be transcendent. but is it frivolous? pathological? or goal oriented? that’s why i try and face my fears. like going to court. my stomach was sick and stressed out and nauseous all day. i didn’t wanna go there i don’t like that place it’s like the pit of hell to me, these government buildings.
but i was getting agoraphobic and afraid to even get the mail or toss out the trash and as a 4X leo with August coming up (all of August is my birthday to me) and it being time to figure out what kind of Leo and woman and artist i wnt to be, so i knew I’d have to play it their way since talking face-to-face hasn’t seemed to work for the past 20 years and without James it’s even more dangerous than before when he was here.
i still have to go back and see if the judge accepted the case and i have to get them served by the sherriff’s office. but at least putting together this case—is over for me.–and now it’s on.
i’m using a lot of my former diabolical female plotting and scheming that i generally try to avoid, now that i am playing my bullying tenants, then soon my landlord. i haven’t plotted and schemed this much in DECADES but i figure if they’re gonna force me to defend myself with their creepy system and waste my life with this crap, then i’m going to use what i know about greed and other aspects of human nature to make my efforts explode like hollow point bullets.
yes. i can be verrrrry female.
(smile)
i can cackle but i’d rather not worry and just GIGGLE. but so be it. i’ll let you all know what happens.
i’m not writing personally about it because my substack is read by people around here, so i even use THAT strategically at times.
i understand Trump’s seeming “chaos” more than you know. i think it’s also old new york because it feels familiar. you wanna just shake hands and use eye contact and your word but… (shrug) …they won’t LET you. so you have to play a little bit. but it sucks because then you’re not thinking about sex art or ideas. you’re thinking of ugly enemies and that’s not sexy. it’s BORING. i don’t really cackle anymore. i just say i do to scare those who’d be scared.
cackling people are BORING. they’ve no interesting ideas and are no fun to hang with.
x
“Phutatorius, I know. That’s why I used the original.”
Up until today, I had been blissfully unaware of “the original.” Now I WAS aware of the Gor books back in the day. I read a couple of them (not being able to resist the cover art) and thought they were foul. I find that it doesn’t take much exposure to that stuff to set the imagination going, as the lower astral regions and the husks beckon.
The Irish epic “The Cattle Raid of Cooley,” starts with a bit of pillow talk between a royal couple, when hubby says “It was a good day when you married me,” and goes from there as to who got the better deal, to both parties taking inventory of their possessions … it’s either hilariously funny, or nail-biting suspense, depending on your mood. At any rate, it comes out even, except for one prize bull hubby owns, so wifey decides to do a bit of cattle rustling……which leads to war.
For a matrilineal culture in which women own the property, the one I’m most familiar with is the Navajo (Dineh.) You are form ‘to” your mother’s clan, but just as important, “for” your father’s, and members of both are considered too closely related to marry into. Men weave the rugs which bring in cash income; I don’t remember who owns the sheep. And there are both men and women Medicine People, “singers,” called by the same term, “haatali.” As for formal power as recognized by the outside world, that more of a tangle, since tribal relations with the outside powers-that-be can be messy. (So, what else is new?)
Dear Sabrina
I LOVE YOU ALREADY
keep talking I could listen to you forever
WOW and thank you
X
Hi John Michael,
Hmm, there is something in what you say regarding the brutalist economic side of a relationship. Just for example, if I were in your shoes, and my lady had passed away, well remarrying brings with it some serious theoretical economic risk. I’ve got a farm, and if the social arrangement imploded within a couple of years, I’d suddenly be homeless having had to hand over a chunky percentage of assets, or go into serious debt to pay the new ex-lady out. It’s a problem. The elites are often decrying the low birth rates, but on the other hand, there are an enormous number of hurdles placed in front of people. Individually all of the various rules and arrangements probably make a lot of sense, but collective there is a certain sort of absurd quality to the whole.
On the other hand, in relation to your dating concerns, a person merely but needs to: try.
In most cases, that’s usually the sticking point.
Which gets me to my next point, the mage and the mystic may see male-female relationships differently. Just my twenty cent opinion.
Dude, the weasels are freaking me out. What the frack? 😊 I just want it all to stop!!! The concept is completely nuts.
I was going to say something else, but those disturbing weasels…
Oh, that’s right. Similarly, in my own family, it was my mother who was the bad egg, and child support maintenance payments were always a triggering topic for her (this was the 1970’s / 1980’s) – she had a short fuse and the morals of a shark.
Cheers
Chris
I completely agree with you, JMG. Gimbutas’s thesis is impossible to refute. I also agree that the evidence goes against the thesis that power management systems can emerge that are distinct from the patriarchal/matriarchal one you propose.
But we can reflect. Our species evolved from the great apes, so our genetic relatives can give us clues about the power management systems that may be at the origin of our drift. If we look closely, none of them involve genocidal extermination interactions. According to Frans de Waal, among others, the opposite is true: altruism prevails. Chimpanzees are somewhat grumpy, unlike bonobos, who are much more peaceful in conflict resolution, for example.
Therefore, genocidal massacres against members of the same species, like those of the early Neolithic or those of today, do not seem to be part of the genetic or cultural heritage of species close to ours. That is to say, from this perspective, Gimbutas’s thesis has some basis. Therefore, there is a real possibility, not a desire, for the validity of power administration systems other than the patriarchal/matriarchal one.
If we extrapolate from the above, we can infer that the weakening of the dominant patriarchal/matriarchal culture, associated with industrial civilization, is likely to create spaces for the emergence of other power administration systems. In the same way that the weakening of, for example, the Catholic Church allowed the emergence of other forms of religious administration. We see the seeds of these forms of power administration in multiple examples around us, and in many cases, legislated, such as the different types of commercial companies, for example.
It is, therefore, a valid projection that, as civilization heads toward its catabolic self-destruction, different organizational systems will be articulated, not just the one that dominates the current civilization. And just as the undergrowth emerges in the clearing left by the fall of a large tree, those organizational systems will emerge, fueled by the need to effectively and efficiently utilize dwindling resources.
And in that sense, it should not be surprising if the leaders of this transition to a deindustrial future, who will exist as history shows, partially embrace theories like Gimbutas’s or others. Centuries will show which model ultimately proved useful.
We cannot deny that chimpanzees, bonobos, and Frank de Waal all have something to offer that may be quite different from what we understand as patriarchy/matriarchy.
Finally, we cannot deny the possibility that the very concept of power may dissolve, given that there is empirical evidence of the “uselessness of power.”
On the idea that bubonic plague devastated Neolithic Europe, I’d love to see what you had found. Meanwhile internet searches turn up quite a bit of evidence for this event; these could very well the same sources you are remembering:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/11/neolithic-population-collapse-may-have-been-caused-by-plague-researchers-say
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07651-2
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2439016-the-plague-may-have-wiped-out-most-northern-europeans-5000-years-ago/
Funny mention in that first article pointing to evidence that the men were sexually promiscuous but the women were generally monogamous. So much for the Neolithic free love sexual utopia for the ladies, and another hole in the prehistoric matriarchy plotline.
Anyway, I do wonder if this same plague was what finally did in the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture of Eastern Europe. They were the premier Neolithic culture of Old Europe and in its later stages, in addition to having a very geographically-expansive cultural horizon, it also had very dense and populous settlements, some of them upwards of 40,000 souls (modern academics dare not call these cities!).
If this culture’s settlements served as the main trade hub for the rest of Neolithic Europe it would have been an ideal source of dispersal vectors for the plague to reach the rest of Europe. Its eastward cultural expanse stretched all the way to the Dnieper river, likely encroaching into Yamnayaland. News would have spread fast to the Horse Lords that things were not going so well for their neighbors to the West. Also, there may have been some bands of Koryos Boyz camped out in the Carpathian forests overlooking the agricultural lowlands being devastated at the time.
Plague or not, it seems that the demise of the Cucuteni–Trypillia (c. 3000 BCE) is the main even that brought on the expansion of Indo-European tribes westward into Europe.
@Joan, @Mary Bennet
I think Camille Paglia was being intentionally provocative (in a hyperbolic sort of way) and as far as women’s sexual desires are concerned, she was simply saying the quiet part out loud: That women’s hindbrains (via evolutionary psychology) are attracted to the “bad boy” despite what their forebrains might have to say on the matter. Whenever women say they want a “nice guy” they’re just virtue-signalling or trying to give their female competitors bad advice. Of course, “bad boy” can manifest in different ways (like a rock star, darting business mogul, edgy artist, professional athlete, cheeky comedian, ect.), it doesn’t necessarily mean violent criminal, though some women do seem very into that. Look at all the gushing fanmail from the ladies incarcerated murderers and serial killers often receive.
Also I think her subtly mockery of the notion of a “just society” being any sort of attainable thing is right on point. There will never be a just society of human beings on this planet, because, to refer to our host’s occult wisdom, as the mature souls are graduating out of the need for continued human incarnation, new immature souls are coming in and doing all sorts of stupid n00bie human stuff until they gain maturity over the course of many many incarnations and finally get a clue about how to do things better. In this sense, complaining about the unjustness of the human condition is like complaining about how a 5th grade class isn’t performing like the 10th grade class it’s supposed to be! I think even non-spiritual people (who typically don’t believe in reincarnation and karma) often notice the reality of human nature on an intuitive level and rightly conclude that hoomans gonna hooman, regardless of locale or century.
As far as why she achieved so much intellectual acclaim, well just listen to her talk and it’s quite clear she has a stratospheric IQ. People that smart and bold tend to make normie conformies pearl clutch in agony.
@Other Owen
1. As you probably know already, there’s entire youtube channels devoted to showcasing and reacting to tiktok clips featuring clueless and clout-chasing young women saying the most stupid and abominable things possible. Superabundant roasting material. You mentioned hoe_math above, I think he’s among the more intelligent and principled of those youtubers, though his Ken Wilber fixation makes him overestimate his own wisdom about the human condition, IMHO. Also, he’s a good example of blue state laptop class types who have turned against the establishment orthodoxy and are using the nerdy intellects in service of fighting for the other side of the culture war.
2. On modern marriage, i.e. “love marriages” I think it’s total clownworld and came about as an extension of boomer narcissism. Modern marriages are glorified high school romances, no wonder the divorce rates are sky high! As mentioned above, arranged (i.e. political marriages) make for much more stable ones, since they tend to be about a lot more things than mere hormonal attraction (which is always fleeting and short-lived). Yes, sometimes unguided matched can work out very well, but most of the time they are a total crapshoot.
Speaking of Jesus. The image in the Shroud of Turin produced by intense light. Seems to indicate a well muscled man and quite masculine facial features as a result of his physical labor and probably higher than average testosterone levels of men at the time. As well as being being taller than average.
Alongside the injuries of the crown of thorns and crucifixion.
Quite a far cry from the more effete looking hippie like depictions of him in culture with well shampooed hair. Not exactly like an 80s action hero but closer to that than the opposite.
The Icon of Christ Pantocrator and the other eastern orthodox icons of him seem more accurate.
I think looking like that while displaying compassion,tenderness, high intellectual capacity and wisdom makes it quite striking. More of a role model for men in that case.
Truly well rounded.
@The Other Owen #29,
It is also interesting that the second ideogram is used in the term for “rape” as if it were primarily women committing it. But I know what they mean!
I was coming down a tall mountain once in the Southern Alps of Japan, where I go for solitude and communion with Nature, and all too often you get gaggles of ladies all chattering away, so I was hurrying like anything trying to stay out of earshot of one group that sounded like about ten very high decibel women. I caught the bus at the trailhead, and just as it pulled out along came the ladies, thank Heavens too late! There were three of them.
@Joan#44, and Pygmy Cory,
What Joan is saying here is fascinating for me. In my own case, I was constantly hushed as a child, afraid to make a peep. There were two reasons: Dad worked shifts, and any use of language by me highlighted the fact that my brother, his firstborn, was not talking. My mom was too distracted to listen to me, and my dad too galled at my prattling and later on, even more at my scribbling. I had no idea what was wrong.
Fast forward to today. We have three washing machines lined up because my husband, his brother and I are essentially like three bachelors cohabitating. Among the guys, I’m one of the guys. And just like Pygmy Cory, networking? Are you kidding? I was downright terrified of talking on the telephone into my adult life.
About a year ago, I learned that I have been ADHD all my life. No diagnosis–not in Japan (an extremely drug-happy place). I was looking into the phenomenon because I had so many obvious cases among my younger students, and lo and behold, there was my life. My first grade teacher picked me up and shook me because she was so frustrated by my inattention, and others declared me a daydreamer. I hang glided for years, and travel any way I can, on foot is fine.
I think there is a genetic component to all of this, in addition to treatment in young years. In my case, it clearly comes from my mom’s side. Without even knowing it, I repeated my grandfather’s education, graduating with a chemical engineering degree, but too bored with that, so finding something else that would let me work alone (he chose accountancy, I chose translation), but also travel. He moved off to Australia the minute his kids were old enough to be abandoned. I skipped kids entirely–at the age of five I already knew it was not for me–and went off to Japan.
@JMG and CS2
So a possible future demand as a result that as I have already saw online in other forums. Is a demand for a Dowry as a result of past employment. No dowry no marriage. But the family courts can possibly punish for that too.
Otherwise the woman is a parasite in the eyes of some men. And I generally object to that view because I do know there are women that who do pull their weight as SAHM.
Do they not by their non-monetary contributions use their skills to dramatically reduce the costs otherwise spent employing 3rd parties?
I think this “Girlboss” thing that many men object to. Is as much a mindset and personality trait more than simply being a career woman. Otherwise tyrannical stay at home task masters wouldn’t exist.
Our often dysfunctional legal system seems to contribute to gender problems in many ways. I have a male family member who paid dearly in child payments following divorce (even paying at times when unemployed, and briefly when also caring for the kids). The court was in a very conservative area, and each round of adjustments included expensive legal fees. I have other relatives and friends who are very long term “engaged” or have had to stay unmarried, so their kids can qualify for Medicaid (and really needed care), college tuition discounts, and child support. Working in healthcare, many parents were even told by social workers the only way to get medical care was to divorce. The woman almost always got the sickly child and poverty in the process, leaving assets and relative freedom to the man. I also worked with one whose ex-spouse married a much younger woman, had more kids, so then courts agreed to basically impoverish the older kids.. As decline accelerates, I wonder at what point community supports may return..
Not mentioned so much are the toxic effects of modernity – endocrine dysruptors, pesticides, PFAS, plastics, ultra-processed-food-unknowns and over medication. Malnutrition, secondary changes from metabolic/biome/immune and tech addictions likely also contribute to the increase in gender confusion and perhaps confused legal/social situations.
The informal/formal distinction makes good sense to me as a generalization.
I’ve notices several fellow autists, lady autists mostly, mentioning that they have trouble with the informal social structures. Weirdly as a guy I have often been to token straight guy in female social spaces; I think when I was a kid older women were most comfortable to be around than age mates or men (who were so gruff and scary) so I started decoding the norms before I learned to integrate in to adult male spaces. I know that developing the skill of hanging with female spaces has benefited me alot. Of course my bluntness can cause problems, big ones if I let myself get drawn into touchy topics in a group. But the technique is to reach out to important ladies one on one (where I am at my best in communication) and offer genuine personal support; what I lack in tact, I can make up for in candidness. It is my experience that a couple of good friends in good standing amidst the good women in a community can do wonders.
On a more theoretical note, I think that this kinda makes hash of the common uses of the idea of matriarchy vs patriarchy. In its wake their is a wild diversity of societies, each of which is more or less comparable with the various needs and interests of masculine and feminine folks. Which responcibilities officially fall on which genders probably gets worked out case by case with in the limits of the societies structure, and those limits can be more difficult for one both or neither side of that spectrum. Our society is reaching a point where it is completely out of wack with this entire spectrum of human experience, a very probably cause of the current trends among the youth to abandon traditional gender; without the levels of power to fix the mismatch they are adapting by trying to take on expressions of gender that can maybe escape the limits. This attempt is curtailed by the underlying history and power of sex, but I think that our own natures feel more accessible to change for most than the artifice of civilization we are caught in the gears of.
For me I like the ways that gender was sorted out in the lil subculture of the American west that I grew up in, it was a bit behind the times and many of the healthier aspects of earlier generations survived a few decades longer there than in most places I have seen; tough I hear good things about a variety of other small refugia around the country. I don’t see what I grew up around surviving as I knew it, but as my first paragraph about my personal experiences might vaguely imply, there are new modes emerging for folks to be able to fully express this aspect of human nature. The biggest limitation to the development of a new healthy modality is the lack of rootedness of folk today, but I try to take the long view; the current unrootedness is a massive cross pollination of influences, and as little pockets of stability form (maybe a handful of healthy couples who maintain friendships where they collaborate in their respective communities) those are like seeds waiting to germinate. The creative minority that big cultural forms grow from start life tiny indeed; imperceptibly small, in most cases, to the limited magnification of the lens of history.
Jill, you’re welcome and thank you.
Polecat, whether or not everything is a landmine in Wokistan depends on how officially oppressed you are. If you belong to an officially-oppressed-and-therefore-righteous diversity category, you can say anything at all and everyone’s just supposed to accept it. If you belong to an officially-oppressive-and-therefore-wicked category, the words “good morning” out of your mouth are a racist, sexist, homophobic microagression.
Nachtgurke, that’s a good point — the next time I meet some Deep Ones I’ll ask why. 😉 As for confusion between formal and informal power, yes, emphatically, that very often becomes extremely toxic.
Cs2, the interesting thing with that claim is that every woman I know who did that to a man had a career of her own, and most of them earned more than the man (formerly) in their lives. Thus I’m far from sure your argument holds water.
J.L.Mc12, synchronicity!
Patricia M, hmm! An excellent point. I wonder where that information could be found.
GlassHammer, a solid point.
Erika, delighted to hear it. Yeah, cackling is dull. Giggling is better, and a good belly laugh, at least to me, is best of all.
Phutatorius, I read one of the Gor books. I found it dreary, in much the same way that Harry Potter is dreary — the characters don’t talk or act or feel like people, they’re paper-cutout clichés made to jump around at the author’s whim.
Patricia M, thanks for this.
Chris, fortunately — at least in US law — there’s a thing called a prenuptial agreement. If I marry again, we’re going to have one to protect us both. As for the weasels, no argument there — it’s the underlying tone of creepiness that makes it so marvelously absurd.
Gustavo, chimpanzees routinely carry out campaigns of extermination against other chimpanzee bands. Here are two of many links:
https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/hostilities-began-in-an-extremely-violent-way-how-chimp-wars-taught-us-murder-and-cruelty-arent-just-human-traits
https://www.reuters.com/science/scientists-observe-chimpanzees-using-human-like-warfare-tactic-2023-11-02/
That’s a long way beyond “somewhat grumpy”! De Waal, like so many ideologically inclined academics (including Gimbutas), found what he wanted to find. The leaders of the transition to a deindustrial future, meanwhile, will rise to power in a setting in which the rule of law is breaking down and organized violence is an efficient way to take control of resources and eliminate rivals, just as their equivalents did in the fall of previous civilizations. It’s all very well to fantasize about postapocalyptic utopias but history has some very bad news for you.
Corax, thanks for these! It may be a while before I have the chance to look into this, but it casts a fascinating light on the coming of the Indo-Europeans. Imagine a Neolithic Europe ravaged by plague, in which small pockets of survivors struggle to piece their lives together — and imagine bands of boys and young men, confused, frightened, but trained in violence, riding west through a desolate landscape in search of anyone else at all who’s still alive…
Info, it’s certainly a fascinating image — the sort of thing you’d expect from a hardworking carpenter from hardscrabble Galilee. As for the “girlboss” thing, quite possibly so, because it’s almost always a matter of claiming unearned power. Those women I’ve known who were genuinely competent and had leadership ability didn’t have to swagger around being “girlbosses” — they had respect from men because they earned it.
Gardener, there’s that!
Ray, that’s an excellent point — get beyond the absurdly simplistic division between patriarchy and matriarcy, and yeah, you get a galaxy of different options.
I have a question, tangentially related to this topic.
I am a mid-cohort Boomer (70 as of next week) and a bachelor. When I was of “marriageable age” I dated a fair number of my contemporaries. One thing I noticed, from the start, is that all of the women I dated resented or detested their fathers. I cannot think of a single exception to this rule.
Even as young and “spergy”/dorky-clueless as I was, I had enough nous to figure out that any woman who has a bad relationship with her father is highly likely to take that out on her future husband. So, I dodged that bullet.
I strongly suspect that this is a generational issue with Boomer women in particular. I know that we have a number of such in our commentariat.
So, my question to any Boomer women here is: What was it about the G.I. “Greatest Generation” fathers that you resented so much? What did they do (or fail to do) that caused so much bitterness?
At my late age, it is a somewhat academic question. However, I ask, just to help me make sense of my life, and to make the Stoic distinction between “things I could have controlled” versus larger predicaments, over which I had no influence.
Karalan–the reason we currently have Girl Scouts but not Boy Scouts is that the Boy Scouts of America fairly recently imploded in the wake of numerous lawsuits over sexual abuse. These lawsuits drove the organization into bankruptcy. Details may be found in _Scout Camp: Sex, Death and Secret Societies inside the Boy Scouts of America_ by James Renner, Citadel Press, New York, 2025. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject. Girl Scouts USA, since both the paid staff and the volunteers who lead troops are mostly female, has not had such scandals. Not that women never commit sexual abuse, but the organization also has IMO, better safeguards. However, reliance on volunteers is a problem for the Girl Scouts since, with most mothers working outside the home it is difficult to recruit troop leaders. It is also the case that since the older levels of Boy Scouting opened to girls some girls prefer the camping and outdoor activities that are easier to find in Boy Scouting. Recently saw an article about a set of triplets, two sisters and a brother, who had all completed the Eagle Award, the highest attainment in Boy Scouting..
Part of the reason evolutionary schemes of human cultural development fell out of favor in American anthropology departments was the association with Marxism. Several liberal arts shied away from any such association after the McCarthy period. In English literature studies, for example the New Criticism dropped any concern for the biography of authors or the history or social conditions of the society in which they wrote, since such study might include class analysis or social criticism. Instead, close reading of the text and attention to literary techniques such as metaphor were emphasized.
In the absence of enough land for a garden the major contribution a stay-at-home mom can make to the budget is in planning and cooking meals and childcare. Sewing the family clothing doesn’t save much–with cheap imported garments costing less than the fabric, pattern and notions for a handsewn garment making clothing at home is confined to those who find difficulty buying clothing that fits and to costumers and cosplayers. My mother used to make most of her clothing as her mother had for all of us. My sister did likewise but they both gave up routine sewing sometime in the 1990s.
(just thinking out loud because of a few comments on autistic reactions to hierarchies. what if some autists are people with George P. Hansen’s description of people with that supernatural charisma? because he lists things like charismatic people tend to not CARE about traditional heirarchies, power, or money. and if a lot of autists are artists thinkers and creatives, that fits with my own earlier wonder whether they are in that LIMINAL space where the rest of us don’t even know exists. again, i’m questioning EVERYTHING and am wondering at who’s doing the DIAGNOSING???)
Corax @ 233, “Whenever women say they want a “nice guy” they’re just virtue-signalling or trying to give their female competitors bad advice.” That is simply not true in my experience. Some women may like dancing on chaos, others of us hate it. Yet others may like dating, having affairs with the bad boys, but would never marry one. I wish I knew why some folks can’t credit us women with being able to act rationally in our own best interests.
Lazy Gardener @ 238, you wrote, “Not mentioned so much are the toxic effects of modernity – endocrine dysruptors, pesticides, PFAS, plastics, ultra-processed-food-unknowns and over medication. Malnutrition, secondary changes from metabolic/biome/immune and tech addictions likely also contribute to the increase in gender confusion and perhaps confused legal/social situations.” Thank you for this.
JENNIFER KOBERNIK:
“a conservative commentator [said] that beauty is part of women’s “virtue”. Huh? I wonder what he even means by that word. “
Maybe he meant it in the sense of what a thing is good for? Like an herb’s virtue might be its utility in preventing infection, for instance.
I’ve also often encountered the idea that via their beauty and charm, women are able to exert a civilizing and pro-social influence on men and motivate them to excellence for the betterment of society; thus it is a virtue to be beautiful, since ugly women do little to motivate men to their best efforts or behavior.
——————–
yes! i’ve always thought if people find you attractive (which IS also a form of charisma, also “paranormal” in its effects), they will listen to you more, you have more power to command attention, and thus you have a serious responsibility to be honorable and not careless with that gift.
but that’s not even a “thing” anymore (if ever???) as far as i can tell.
and the thing is, you don’t even have to be physically beautiful really.
then it’s all back to theatre again, right? because while the hip to waist ratio seems international, beauty standards change like pubic hair fashion and and an era’s obsession with certain porn acts, so you might as well settle on your own standard and stop chasing arbitrary edicts.
so then you LIVE beauty and the feminine power can elevate people. call it beauty call it love and kindness… yeah, i see your point and second it, Jennifer! nice.
i love when people find the more expansive form of a thought. it opens the world. like Papa’s essay. i’m finally relieved to not fear Devouring Mother like a supernatural Medea Menace. / Mama just needs her own thang! but then again, don’t we all? Man talk about the thorn in the crabby lion’s paw.
us twisting ourselves into machines and organ donation incubators is really making us all insane.
it’s WHY Adocentyn Next Year.
Teresa Peschel:
As for the name “Abraxus.” I remember vividly a child from my student teaching days in Sussex County, DE in 1982. Her name was Lasagna. She was in first grade. As you can imagine from the relentless teasing, she already had a thick file with the school’s guidance counselor for fighting. Giving your kid a really weird name, when your family is already in shambles, isn’t doing them any favors. It’s just another handicap.
———–
A BOY NAMED “SUE”! one of my favorite songs.
it’ll give ’em character.
(Lasagna. that’s hella funny and cute)
x
In regards to dating, as a mom of young men, one thing the dating websites do achieve is they avoid the accusation of sexual harrassment for approching a young woman. Young men are very likely to be accused of sexual harassment, or they so perceive, if the young woman they approach is not interested in dating them. A false accusation of sexual harrassment or worse can get a young man kicked out of school (did you know American colleges and universities have thier own judical systems, outside the regular rule of law?) and blacklisted from employment. Safer to just avoid approching young women in person. The websites don’t match you until she’s indicated she’s interested already, so you aren’t at any risk. Of course, young women want the most attractive young man possible, so if you aren’t such, you get no matches. Not that young men do any differently, but the sexes do on average have different criteria.
Salad stealing seems to me like a poor choice for indicating interest, but it seems contrary to feminine instinct for the young women to ask the young men out as a general rule. Some few do, alas, masculine instincts apparently make the young men find those young women generally unappealing.
There is, unfortunately, no tidy cultural consensus in the USA for how to find a spouse, no rules to follow, and I suspect the plethora of so-called Regency Romance (which is guarenteed to be walled by anyone with a desire for historical accuracy) reflects a deep and abiding desire for a social system that makes sense of the whole mess of finding a spouse.
Hi JMG,
I wish all good and ease upon you.
> American middle-class cat ladies
I have seen crop up two, three references to “cat ladies” lately. Please explain.
Cat ladies are indicative of what? Is there something wrong with being an adult and/or elder female who enjoys the company of domestic cats?
I enjoy the company of cats. I cannot say I enjoy the company of people all that much. Cats speak plainly; humans don’t. Humans confuse me.
Born in the early 1950s, there was no such thing as the word “autism” (to my knowledge). Maybe by the mid-1970s. I was well into adulthood by the time autism was a thing. Until you wrote about it here, I had never heard of it. Looking back, I struggled alone most of my life, trying to keep my head above water in a world for which I couldn’t figure out the rules. I floundered. Thankfully, I found meditation by age 19. I don’t know much about autism, but think I have it. It isn’t worth a formal diagnosis at my age. My point is, humans have been more of a hindrance than a help. I much prefer cats. …
Between 2008 and 2016, for eight years, my husband and I gave a permanent, cushy, and stable home to roughly forty-seven elder female domestic cats, mainly flatface Persians (“pussins”), mostly all former breeder-moms put out to pasture but also a couple elder former breeder stud-males. The tops we had were twenty-seven at a time. I was in my 50s.
Each of the pussins had been slotted to get euthanized (by heartless humans) prior to our rescuing them.
We had a big house at the time, just the two of us humans, and we used the space wisely by including our favorite beings: pussins. Our house was a sanctuary.
Each pussin found her niche(s) where she would frequent. I have photos of pussins, three-cushion sofa, one pussin per cushion, one pussin per back of sofa. Three hassocks, one pussin per hassock. One pussin per bed. No crowding. It was cat-heaven. When pussins get old, there is not much fighting.
I had a lot of work keeping kitty-litter pans clear and clean. I got good at giving haircuts to longhair cats. We gladly paid the pussins’ veterinary bills, and being elderly, came to a pretty penny. In expensive California. On our own. We paid 100% for everything. No financial aid. I still have the invoices — I ought to add it all up to see how much it came to.
We had to keep the whole thing secret for those eight years. If any neighbor (talk about arse**** ‘suburban’ neighbors) had “found us out,” they would have reported us, where authorities could have (I am convinced, would have) swept in and stolen away the pussins, where the pussins would have been euthanized. I was petrified we would be discovered.
The whole thing was a major commitment. I loved doing it. When one is among twenty-seven contented pussins, the place definitely has an air about it: female goddesses, reinforcing each other’s vibes. It really was a rare and delightful phenomenon. We sold the house, and I think it altogether possible the house will forever have a happy-feline-vibe to it. If walls could talk.
The experience did have a downside. Because of age, (about) one pussin would die each quarter. THAT was hard. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it😿. I miss each of their pussin-souls to this day. Each had a unique personality. Collectively, they wrapped a feline-world around us for eight years. I am a better person having known them. Ghost lions.
So, I am rather, hmm, curious what is the meaning of “cat lady”?
I just realized. This story is quite “motherly,” most of the pussins having been breeder-moms (in their “crone” years).
💨😻🌲💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
Re: the high heels. Among men, the taller ones seem to get more respect. Therefore an ambitious woman will strap on some heels to get taller herself and borrow some status.
>As you probably know already, there’s entire youtube channels devoted to showcasing and reacting to tiktok clips featuring clueless and clout-chasing young women saying the most stupid and abominable things possible. Superabundant roasting material.
And it’s about the only way you can watch Tik-tok IMHO. You try watching it directly and it’s so painful. Rectangles, I tell you, Rectangles.
>You mentioned hoe_math above, I think he’s among the more intelligent and principled of those youtubers, though his Ken Wilber fixation makes him overestimate his own wisdom about the human condition, IMHO
I think if you can ignore all the Ken Wilber stuff (which I bet if it’s going over my head, it’s going over a lot of other people’s heads too), nobody else has mapped the terrain of the dating market like he has. It’s sort of like a car wreck, you want to turn away but you can’t, there’s so many fascinating broken aspects to it.
Wer here
Well I am very familiar with the informal power here the church ladies are active here on a local level but considering the more strict nature of hierarchy in the Roman catholic church (that I am a part off) I would question if they can ruin some priests stay that easily. Unfortunately we saw a good priest being replaced by a more complacent one here where I live. I seems that he was kicked off because a disagrement with the bishops over some lands in question east to my congregation (a damned shame If you ask me, with all the problems Poland is having right now economic etc)
The last thing we need right now are internal power plays…
JMG I am writing to you also to ask a rather loaded question:
What in your opinion will be the future of the Catholic church in the future of Europe? With the population replacement happening in Europe and rapid Islamisation as millions of migrants arrive in Europe and with the collapse of attendance in churches all around in Europe and the wild out of control (spits in anger) wokeism and anti christian rethoric still coming in some TV stations and members of the extreme left here in Poland what could possibly happen in the future or maybe this is a subject for an another post.
@corax #232: I note that the full information from the Guardian article you referenced is:
> “The DNA evidence also offered insight into the social dynamics of these communities, showing that men often had children with multiple women and that the women were brought in from neighbouring communities. The women appeared to be monogamous. “Multiple reproductive partners could mean several wives. It could also mean men were allowed to find a new partner if they became widowers or they had mistresses,” Seersholm said.
Considering the high mortality from childbirth in historical times, it is probable that a considerable part of the “multiple women” were in fact remarriages after a man became a widower. It is still notable that women may not have remarried after becoming widows.
About those Gor books.
I was curious as to the author of them – John Norman. He was a classics professor at a New York university. His stated goal in writing them was to present better sci fi than the John of Mars books. However, I believe after reading a few with the women usually university types getting their comeuppance, that he was mad about women’s liberation. He had to deal now with uppity co-eds and women professors who were in competition with him. Norman always maintained that the women’s libbers (as he put them) were the ones who caused the publisher to cease publishing his books.
My personal view was he was a poor writer who kept writing the same story over and over. Not to mention repetitive writing within each book.
However, there is Gor Underground. They quote passages from his books as to how conduct themselves. However, real life will intrude on the sexual fantasy and people will leave the Gor stuff behind. I knew one man whose wife/slave got cancer, and another one whose niece was murdered and raped. Both realized that they were living a fantasy derived from badly written books.
One piece of trivia – many of the sex slaves on Gor Second Life are males acting as females. Usually younger men.
I think the fantasy for people is the idea of having someone totally and completely take care of you. All you have to do is please them sexually, and you will have your happily ever after. (HEA)
This is in response to perhaps my misunderstanding of what has been said here on soft power being manipulative. I have been musing on my understanding of formal power and informal power, and I think the two are not as clear cut as I, certainly, have been guilty of thinking in the past. The formal power of the state is backed by violence: army, police, etc. This power is associated with men. It is also economical, which again, has historically been associated with men.
Informal power as has been mentioned here is associated with women, and seems to be deemed manipulative, based on gossip, shunning, etc.
However, I think this is too simplistic. In men’s circles, regardless of the level of social power, while there is the usual masculine physical measuring against each other: who could beat up who and who better back down, there are also a lot of favours, back-watching, friendship, brotherhood, covering-up, lending of tools, offered help, and so on, which creates loyalty, duty, ties, gratitude, love, and yes, soft power. That doesn’t make it manipulative though it can become so.
Women bear children, nurse, change poopy diapers, watch over sick children, feed, comfort, etc, and nurture their families and communities, which creates loyalty, duty, ties, gratitude, love, and yes, soft power. It does not necessarily mean it is manipulative any more than power in men is necessarily physically violent, threatened or otherwise. A feudal lord, for example, has the loyalty of his vassals for reasons other than formal power, which he creates by taking care of his vassals.
Fathers who take the time to do the nurturing in the early years (diaper duty, feeding, bedtime stories, building special gifts for kids out of their garages,) end up with more informal power than fathers who have only physical or economical power, in the form of the belt or loss of allowance, and which in times of rebellion by teenagers can be called on as needed.
Informal power is not necessarily manipulative though it can become so by both sexes. It’s a result of normal human social ties, is not necessarily formed because of sex roles and can benefit everyone in a society.
I have not had time to read all the comments, so perhaps I am attacking a straw man here.
Myriam
re: informal power structures: (huge sigh).
Lady spectrumite here: in middle age I’ve finally gotten to where I can make out the outlines of women’s informal social/power structures, but I can’t figure out how to navigate them *at all*. Now that I can kind of see how they work, I’m not angry about it anymore (when younger, it seemed like an irrational and deeply unfair way to just exclude people based on undisclosed rules, no appeals process), it’s something I try to avoid getting on the bad side of: I politely decline being part of the formal women’s church groups, whether it’s book clubs or study groups or the charitable organization… and instead show up and do the most low-status helpful work I can find– washing dishes etc– to hopefully signal: “I’m being pro-social and making a contribution, but I am not gunning for anybody’s social position or seeking any authority here”. Seems to work OK. It’s still an absolute minefield of unstated rules with no appeals court, where I could at any time make a false step and blow up my entire family’s ability to function in our community. God, help us.
Would rather hang out with the boys, where the rules and expectations are clear. But that’s not really an option…
All that said, I have finally encountered one of those clarifying situations where the difference between formal and informal power structures, and the *need for both* to function well comes into focus: the Youth Safety Program. We all know what went down in the RC church with the abuse scandals, and as a result of that, all sorts of voluntary organizations (scouts, sports, churches, etc) are setting up training and background check requirements for anybody working with kids ever. I’ve been through the process a couple of times now, and this makes it very obvious that… the formal training program doesn’t exist to protect kids. It exists to protect the organization from lawsuits, and may incidentally protect some kids some of the time. It’s the sort of thing that drives me batty, because I want there to be rules, but only if the rules actually do the thing they say they are doing. This is a situation where the stated rules are transparently different from the actual purpose. yay cognitive dissonance.
If an organization is healthy, and avoids these sorts of abuse/exploitation situations, it’s because it has a healthy, functioning, *informal* power network, where there were one or more people with good solid character judgement able to say, “no that person is not appropriate to teach sunday scchool” and keep it from happening, maybe without giving a reason that could be appealed or argued with. Just, “oh, we have enough teachers for now” or “we’re in the middle of reassessing our program” non-answers that never get hashed out explicitly. That stuff drives me crazy (I need clarity!), and it was really weird to finally realize that there was a good and proper place for it. What gets me is that the formal program may actually *protect* people who don’t have a criminal record but also shouldn’t be around kids, because it weakens informal power’s ability to refuse based on evidence-free personal judgements. Nobody has a right to access other people’s children. But having a formal screening process may make it harder for soft power to exclude bad actors: “well, they passed the screening, what do we do now?”
“Karalan, and in other eras, it’s the other way around. The yin and yang are never balanced — it’s always swirling one way or the other.”
Yes, that’s the sentiment I formerly subscribed to, but I no longer believe it to be true. The key distinction is to notice the outcomes in arenas where men and women have conflicting interests (by no means all arenas), given the conditions of the times, an important caveat. Read Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Weak and financially insecure governments forced men into fatherhood and financial support of women and children, but gave men and kids families. Today, strong and rich governments force men into fatherhood and financial support of women and children, but deprive men and kids of their families. Either way, women’s interests are served.
The world is not a matriarchy at present, but it’s fast heading in that direction. It is and always has been gynocentric.
One reply I forgot to address above, @Mary Bennet
>> have you considered that the mid-tier women are making what is for them a rational decision to have themselves the odd fun evening without messy complications?
I’m not sure I’d consider recklessly acting on sexual impulses due to superficial attraction a “rational decision”…though of course they may rationalize that decision after the fact. And (especially these days) a mid woman hooking up with a man way out of her league lookswise is rarely a one-off affair. Getting attention and validation from a very desirable man gets her a dopamine receptors firing on all cylinders and this can become quite addictive. So multiply this act by some unflattering number and it quickly becomes the polar opposite of “without messy complications.” Spend her entire late teens and 20s repeating this behavior and her ability to pair-bond is gone forever.
>>If they support themselves, maybe they don’t want a long term commitment.
It is very true that as long as the email jobs fountain is still flowing, young women who work laptop class jobs “need” men like fish need a bicycle. Well, until their biological clock starts ticking around 30 and they suddenly want kids (but that’s for a whole ‘nother topic). Until then it’s all fun and games and so as long as Miss Average has some degree of youth and beauty she can remain for some time on Mr. 1-in-30s visitation list, and by her late 20s she falls off of that list and onto Mr. 1-in-10s list. When she falls off that list, the choice is either to settle down with and marry some unsuspecting schlub she’s not really attracted to attracted to and pop out a couple kids that may or may not actually be his (then take him to the divorce court cleaners and vampirize his income for the next 18 years, i.e. the painful scenario our host describes about his own upbringing), OR give up on “men” altogether and become a lonely cat lady and zealously vote Democrat for the rest of her current incarnation, whilst kvetching about the state of “men” (with her little circle of ladybirds of a feather) over a copious supply of boxed wine. “Where have all the good men gone?” cries the chorus. **The actual good men were probably her looksmatches, otherwise known as those men she was friendzoning and swiping left on during her youthful prime**
>>The top tier guys can, I suppose, be relied on to behave like gentlemen, don’t whine about unfair life is to them, don’t expect the lady to support 15 of their indigent relatives, and don’t subject her to instant pop psychologizing on the basis of a half hour acquaintance.
The notion that any man less than 8/10 is a whiny, creepy loser who lives in his mom’s basement is an attitude that legions of modern women express openly these days. Of course this attitude says a lot more about these women (raised on Disney fairytales and trashy romcoms) then it does about all the men they reflexively bin as “below” them. This attitude, likely rooted in evolutionary psychology, is also the reason why monogamous marriage was invented in the first place.
Those 4, 5, 6/10 men tend to have talents and knowledge that involve things other than charm, boldness, and sexual prowess; y’know the nitty gritty things keep a civilization running. Now that the cat is out of the bag, thanks to the internet, these men often have very little motivation to put their skills and effort to use if they are unable to start a family and have some degree of assurance that their kids are actually their kids.
Yes, monogamous marriage is a social construct, a sort of “sexual socialism” that ensures that society’s most productive men can have families and pass on their legacy to the next generation. But that great (blech) sexual experiment the boomer generation enthusiastically ushered in is basically a fast-track back to the wild, zany world of savage warlord polygamy (probably the exact opposite of what they wanted, haha).
So, yeah. This “rational decision” you speak of is in fact a wellspring of all sorts of messy complications. In any sane universe, mid tier women are being matched up with mid tier men.
-Your friendly neighborhood MGTOW Druid
@Michael Martin 241: I am of similar age and also a bachelor. My experience was far different; I can’t remember any of the girls I dated back in the 60s and 70s having major issues with their fathers. Maybe there was some sort of selection going on. There were two preacher’s daughters in the mix. If there were father issues, they kept them hidden.
Hi John Michael.
Late to the party as usual.
Thank you for this essay, it’s very timely for me.
I recently started Robert Graves retelling of the Greek myths; the stories are workmanlike but the appended notes ! Oh my.
He glosses every myth/story (so far as I’ve read) as a record of a matriarchal culture being taken over by patriarchal invaders. Well .. it might be so .. I don’t know, I wasn’t there … but what drives me to distraction is the idea that the great Matriarchal mystery was impregnation. I can accept some form of matriarchy, why not? I can certainly accept a matrilineal society where the bloodlines that go through the mother are important one -we still see this in Judaism and I know of it in some monastic systems in India.
What I flatly reject is that a pastoral society that hunts and herds and breeds livestock could find this a mystery. I mean, I’ve worked with cows; you need a bull !
I had decided that it was the cult of Progress in action. “We are so much wiser than our ancestors ! WE know where babies come from !”
So thank you for nailing it down; of course it was a German Professor !
As to the distinction between formal and informal power, that’s very illuminating. If you cross fertilise that with womens’ more active etheric body it explains a great deal of why the emotional/psychic tone of a group is set by the women.
cheers
Lurksalong
Erika, hmm. In at least some cases, I think you’re right.
Northwind, the reference to “cat ladies” is cultural shorthand for women who set aside childbearing during their fertile years, often for career reasons, and then start loudly doting online about their “fur babies” once the chance of children is past. It’s a tolerably common habit among liberal women of a certain age these days, thus its use in conservative rhetoric. Myself, I’m very fond of cats — I don’t have one now, but that’s because after more than a decade of taking care of my late wife, I’m kind of enjoying not having to be responsible for anybody else’s well-being for a little while.
The interesting thing here is that when I was a good deal younger, “cat lady” meant an impoverished elderly woman, sometimes homeless, who cultivated relationships with every stray cat in the neighborhood, spent much of her limited income on food for them, etc. (The character of Phauz in my novel The Weird of Hali: Providence was based in part on that social phenomenon.) As for you — well, that I know of, you don’t parade your affection for “fur babies” all over the internet, and I don’t believe you sleep under a sheet of cardboard in an alley, with a half-empty can of cat food near your feet for the benefit of the local strays, so I don’t think you qualify for the term.
Kfish, fair enough. I’ve never understood the claim that wearing high heels makes for a more alluring walk — the way women walk in high heels has always reminded me of clowns on stilts.
Wer, if you’ll glance back over my essay you’ll find that I specified Protestant churches — the Catholic and Orthodox churches still assign quite a bit more formal power to their hierarchies. As for the future of Catholicism, hmm — yeah, that’s a subject for another post. The short form is that it depends on a galaxy of factors hard to predict at this point.
Neptunesdolphins, that certainly matches what I’d found out about him — except that his name wasn’t really John Norman, it was John Lange. Like a lot of authors of controversial books, he used a pseudonym.
Myriam, I’ll encourage you to review one sentence from my post: “As in churches, so in societies more generally, there is a broad tendency—not universal, not without plenty of exceptions, but still more often true than not—for formal power to end up in the hands of male leaders and informal power to end up in the hands of female elders.” (Emphasis added.) That is to say, of course it’s not clear cut, and of course there’s some practice of both kinds of power by both sexes.
Karalan, if that’s how you choose to see the world, hey, whatever floats your boat. It seems inaccurate to me, but whatever.
Lurksalong, Graves is kind of a monomaniac about that — and yeah, the notion that anybody ever had trouble figuring out the connection between sex and childbirth always struck me as rather silly.
whisper this one: the Gorean fandom skews feminine.
Transnational marriages have been mentioned.
When I first came to Rio de Janeiro (rural Brazil was a different matter), I noticed that quite a number of young women studied engineering or computer sciences. In Germany, a female acquaintance told me of sports competitions at her technical university where the architecture students would jeer the engineering ones shouting: “We have women, and you don’t!” Another colleague in Germany told me she was the first female computer science student at our university in several years. On the other hand, Brazilian women were much more likely to paint their finger and toe nails (beauty parlors are nicknamed “women’s bars” for a reason) and expressed much more often the desire to find a boyfriend or husband than in Germany (at least in my hearing) . They tended to be more accepting of men who refused to do any household work, but were positively surprised that many European men like me didn’t find it demeaning to wash the dishes. Finally, it was rarer in (big-city) Brazil than in Germany for mothers to stay entirely at home for more than a few months after birth.
I couldn’t, for the life of me, say whether German or Brazilian women (at university level) are more “liberated”.
What I can say is that I married a Brazilian woman, and I know many other European men who did so (the reverse is extremely rare). We are two brothers and two sisters, and none of us has ever had a long-term relationship with a German partner.
On the subject of John “Norman” and his Gor books, some decades ago one of my students pointed me to a good brief spoof called “The Houseplants of Gor”: mindstalk.net/houseplants.html (She had read all of the Gor books published up to that point, and had delighted in their potential to be mocked.) I still chuckle when something calls that long-ago spoof to mind.
I must say that I find it intriguing that you explicitly have sympathy for elements of postmodernism, critical theory, radical feminism, etc from before the Great Awokening. You have promoted this book…
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/An_Ethics_of_Dissensus/vVaCJ5FNIFsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dissensus&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover
….and wrote this article.
https://unherd.com/2023/08/in-defence-of-critical-theory/
In some ways, you are kind of like one who had memories of Christianity before one sect took over the Roman state and most of its elite and imposed on everyone! Musa Al-Gharbi is kind of like this as well. For him, unlike many “anti-woke” types, the issue at hand is not the ideas but who uses them and for what purposes!
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/We_Have_Never_Been_Woke/K6kBEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
Today’s issue of The Guardian has a review of a new book on world-wide social collapse, which the author thinks is our most likely future, though not inevitable. The book is Goliath’s Curse by the British academic Luke Kemp. Here is the review:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse
It contains a number of memorable sentences, including “[The] history [of civilizations] is best told as a story of organised crime.” Sounds about right to me.
instead of taking over the comment section here i posted a response on dating now:
https://recordscratchradio.substack.com/p/its-finally-leo-time
(owen otra, i looove term “rectangle girls”!)
So I have been reflecting on this whole extreme fantasy thing – the way we sometimes want the universe to give us our deepest desire, without our having to lift a finger to make it happen, or (this is critical) take any responsibility for the consequences… (which is how commenter Joan analysed this kind of thing in a previous comment thread)…
I most recently encountered this kind of power-without-responsibility wish in the form of someone I was talking to on the theme of difficult things continually happening to her, and her wondering “why me”, and the answer that would be obvious to anyone listening to her for two seconds, was her inability to say no to any out-of-work work being brought to her… and her (slightly shameful, I will say) expression of the guilty wish that her boss would go bankrupt so she could lose her job and rest… (and I thought, say what? Are you *really* wishing that the universe will provide *you* with the rest that you feel unable to provide yourself with, and that it will do it by harming your boss – and also your coworkers? Really?)
I’m sorry to be so tin-eared, but this is what I am hearing when I hear about all these weird fetish fantasies. I am hearing people wanting results they are not prepared to personally pursue, or take credit/responsibility for. The thing about this is that the reverse of credit is blame. The actual fantasy, if it *really* occurred, would create an excuse to blame the other.
So, in the way that the opposite of a bad idea is an equally bad idea – it seems to me there is a reason why both dominance and submission form an intertwined, undisentangleable, pair…. both are a way to flee from a third thing, which is personal agency – the capacity to act, to own the action, and to accept, and indeed learn, from, the consequences.
I’m sorry… I think this comment will be seen as a harsh judgment. Still, it is how it looks from where I stand.
Be well, all. And stay free!
>Those 4, 5, 6/10 men tend to have talents and knowledge that involve things other than charm, boldness, and sexual prowess; y’know the nitty gritty things keep a civilization running. Now that the cat is out of the bag, thanks to the internet, these men often have very little motivation to put their skills and effort to use if they are unable to start a family
Or, a single man is willing to scrape by on a lot less than your average single woman. The terrain of the dating market goes something like this (for the guys). If you’re a 5 and under, you can’t play. Granted their lives are bad but also simple – go away and do something else. The men who I think feel the most pain are that middle tier, 5.1-7.9, they can play in the dating market but they are flat out abused, they get fatfished, used for free food, etc. It’s only when you get to 8-10, does it rock on.
The questions I have these days, is how much could you charge that 5.1-7.9 cohort for an opportunity to exit the dating market permanently? They’re not having anything close to fun. How much could you charge the 5-and-under for the illusion of having a female in their lives? The 8-10 aristocracy on both sides will be fine no matter what.
A quick shout out to JMG and all the commentariat.
JMG’s articles are always interesting and thought provoking as are the comments.
@Phuttatorius
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the reference:
https://s4.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-488cb1e4d90779.jpg
The antidote to toxic informal or female power is, of course, nontoxic informal power. Thank you for this essay, JMG, it helps me understand why the sort of informal power corrections used by female members of my family are no longer used nor understood. I can see why people see them as manipulative, they certainly are, but when done well they are invisible and result in a restored harmony. What you don’t want to do is create factions and continuous warfare. In the best cases, everyone thinks the final result was their idea.
For anyone who watches movies, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” shows this to humorous effect as the female members of the family help the heroine while making her father think it’s all his idea. As the mother points out to her daughter: “Yes the father is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck; and the neck can turn the head any way she wants.”
Synthase, that cat got out of the bag when Fifty Shades of Cheap Fanfic became a runaway bestseller, primarily among liberal, feminist women…
Aldarion, thanks for this. That’s an excellent point — get past simplistic labels and the complexity of gender relations in different cultures is much easier to see.
Robert M, ha! Among its other virtues, that captures the hamfisted nature of “Norman’s” prose brilliantly.
David, I take good ideas wherever I can find them. It’s one of the benefits of being in the abandoned center of the political spectrum — and of course that’s also one of the reasons why those in the center are denounced in such heated terms by both extremes.
Robert M, thank you for this. I got to a sentence in the second paragraph — “people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites” — and couldn’t help guffawing. What a perfect expression of the frantic fingerpointing that passes for political thought these days. It’s especially rich that this comes from the Guardian, one of the house organs of the lavishly enriched, status-obsessed managerial elite!
Erika, thanks for this.
Scotlyn, excellent! Yes, exactly.
Wyatt, thank you.
Chistia, exactly. The fact that informal power is manipulative is not a value judgment, just a description of tactics, and you’re certainly correct that it can be used gracefully to produce optimum outcomes. In exactly the same way, formal power can be liberating or it can be abusive. I’ve long appreciated the suggestion that the difference between tyranny, anarchy, and liberty is purely a matter of supply and demand: under tyranny, the supply of laws exceeds the demand; under anarchy, the supply of laws falls short of the demand; while under liberty, the supply of laws exactly matches the demand.
I’m a woman, and there’s a part of me that has always been more comfortable with operating in formal power structures. But as I’ve gotten older and now that I’m a mother, I much more appreciate informal power structures/networks/communities. Even though there aren’t many examples of healthy informal power structures, as he details in this piece, I can see how amazingly beneficial having them would be, and I’m sad that these opportunities aren’t there for women (and as a result the community doesn’t benefit), and we’re shunted into the formal power structures into order to feel like we have any kind of value in society. The current situation isn’t good for anyone.
Because the old informal power structures have fallen away or been coopted by the State (ie. networks of women caring for the community that got turned into a faceless welfare bureaucracy), now female behavioral tendencies find unhealthy outlets in pointless gossip and self-serving manipulation. Which is why I have never fit it for long in groups of females and prefer one on one; generally I find groups of women to operate in toxic patterns.
Also, as I’ve gotten older, and have worked in many settings and been a part of many groups, I think more and more that gosh I wish there was a clear headed trustworthy man to run this or that operation. Too many emotional women being given power they don’t know how to wield and too many weak men who are powerless to stop it. The whole informal/formal power structure explanation really explains how we got to this place… sigh….
With apologies for veering slightly off the matriarchy/patriarchy topic – and much less crankiness than yesterday’s draft of this comment – I’d like to make the obvious comment about the whole “dating in the modern world” concept, to provide a little balance to the comment section.
If a young person wishes to have a family – specifically, to reproduce their genetics into the next generation – they have to attract a mate by working with what they have, and use creativity and gumption to make up the rest. That is the case whether the situation they’re facing is famine and war, or really stupid and exploitative dating apps. Tools and systems that humans create are just as much Nature as trees and flowers, which is something our society in particular often forgets…
It’s important for young people to note the very real barriers to them achieving this particular goal and to share them around, for the sake of helping others making more informed decisions; however, a lot of the individual comments on this topic I see all over the Internet boil down into justifications for personal failure. To bring a little Stoicism to the table: Nature doesn’t care what your reasons were and are. There is one metric. One.
Needless to say both men and women whiners on this topic annoy me unreasonably. Whining doesn’t get results – **changing your strategy** is what gets the job done. And though all lifestyles, if freely chosen from a balanced heart, are perfectly good and valid ways to live in this world, if your actual goal was a spouse and children but in the end you just ended up posting long screeds on the Internet about how some aspect of this modern world–almost always some inherent flaw in the opposite gender included, I have noticed–dun you wrong? Nature has a word for this and that is FAILURE. Whether you are a MGTOW or a cat lady, it applies just the same.
It’s cold to say, but I believe that those who have failed to such a degree as the aforementioned should shut their mouth completely on the topic and live a quieter life. Clearly whatever they did and believed – now and currently! – was insufficient and wrong, and we can see this by its result. What can they possibly provide to the next generation except a cautionary tale?
As a woman who most likely has some form of female autism, never considered herself a “traditional woman” and had few if any of the usual female qualities – I have a happy marriage and two beautiful children. Because I didn’t waste any time on what COULD or SHOULD be, but worked like a little beaver with what I had. I only hold Gen Z to the same standard. And wish them luck… and more importantly, SENSE!
@JMG (#271):
You’re most welcome! If you made it to the end, you might have noticed other such gems.
I’ve been thinking, and debating, a lot about gossip and your point of it being one of the tools of informal power fills in certain gaps for me. In a recent conversation with my ex, she claimed that gossip was one of the ways that women protect themselves from abusive men–by making sure everyone knows about them. (she was speaking broadly, NOT talking about me!) She’s right, to the extent that women listen, though there’s always someone who thinks she can “fix him” and finds the abusive man alluring.
But it also serves other less-noble purposes, such as the increase in status and power of one who is able to get a hold of juicy gossip consistently and before everyone else, more so if they know how and when to spread it to meet their ends as opposed to dumping it on everyone they meet. It’s an interesting phenomenon. The more I look at it, the less it’s all “bad” as I initially thought. Like a lot of versatile tools, there are many things you can make with it.
The beginning of my interest in the topic was meditating on my Ovate oath not to engage in gossip regarding other initiates. I decided that was worth observing towards the uninitiated, as well. I even got a little high and mighty about it for a while and stepped on some gossipy toes. As a male who dislikes informal power games (or formal ones for that matter) I still choose not to participate in it, but I have a more nuanced understanding of its purpose and at least a little patience for those who use it in some of the less-harmful ways.
Side note for those who are also looking to reduce their gossiping: I found it kind of difficult to draw the line in a lot of cases between gossiping and just sharing stories. In the end, I decided to define gossip as telling a 3rd party something about a 2nd party that cast them in a poor light, when it’s not directly the business of the 3rd party, even if it’s just bare facts and they seem to have earned it. So for example if I know a guy named Jimminy who has been accused twice of date rape with no charges ever resulting, I would consider it gossip to tell everyone I know about it, but if my friend Susan mentions she has a date with Jimminy, I would definitely tell her to watch her drink, since it’s her business at that point.
Or when I feel compelled to tell a hilarious or enlightening story with an obvious heel, I just leave out the name and any identifying markers of the heel. When no individual loses status in the telling, for my purposes, it isn’t gossip.
Hey, Papa–
i really want to thank you for this essay because my fear and rage at the Devouring Mother… and after watching Candace/Tucker i’m ready to hear what she’s saying (we really do seem to be run by a cabal of satanic pedophiles) and Tucker’s question about why pedophilia, because that means this is THEOLOGICAL… and as i was flipping through Geo P Hansen’s “Trickster and Paranormal” i glanced quickly at the open pages which were about people engaging in taboos like cannibalism and pedophilia for the paranormal experiences…
and then i’m remembering “why” i went “bad” as a kid. i’d get itchy watching how everyone lived… like you supposed “autists” i also didn’t understand their ridiculous rules etiquette and how Candace was on about this with Tucker, we’re gaslit (MKUltra stuff) and taught to deaden our human reactions so that we accept whatever we’re told. we’re in a broken down state.
(this is where an army of formerly abused are … or CAN be… immunized… and if they’ve gone through the hell to the other side, which is God)
God is The Light. don’t get hung up with me here on who what where… it’s a VERB a position a philosophy a direction a flicker of the purple in fragile iridescence.
the good news is there IS the possibility of an even brighter light AFTER all this HELL. i know! so i must go out screamin me because Candace is right– they’ve had a head start.
that’s what panics me the most. i myself have to get up to speed because we’re skipping through layers and layers of blasted away illusions. i had more illusions than most because i’d never paid attention to others’ realities before. in America some of us could hide. no more hiding.
must learn to hide in plain sight. dilute by playing tag you’re it. see, the light once you come out of hell, you didn’t know it could be so… without maggots seething inside all the anxiety confusion lostness existential…
you can’t go back. it’s not even like needing to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. you get the good love and Jesus might as well as saved who cares? you’re not going BACK to hell.
that’s what i’m gonna try and be. the exorcist.
this wasn’t supposed to be about me but it being Leo Time you’ll have to forgive me all month. this is MY pig rutting time! gotta kick start the future hard.
i really wanted to SAY:
Papa thanks for writing this. i was i’ve been STUCK …what can i write worth printing??? i myself was stuck in this binary reaction to Woman Platonic Goddess Sexual whatever, and the fear and overwhelming impossibility of appealing to Medea turned Genocidal Maniac… how do i be KALI??? properly?
well, understanding that we were tricked just like EVERYONE else and all of us down here has been, makes us all so damn HUMAN and adorable in our burst of collective criminal insanity.
really. zoom out and it’s all …pathetic and human and come ON!
i’m glad we’re becoming bored with their shtick of having what Candace called “the theatre boys” –zelensky, macron, and Tucker figured trudeau was macron’s twin. i forget who else.
but it makes sense because my time in the juke joint being an artist a bad bougie girl who preferred the bottom…this fits with what courts the paranormal… all the danger that came with the consequences of my choices and nature…
these insane overseers are pathetic sad but human. Candace talking about macron liking gay S/M i felt SAD for him. i’ve seen the abused on the bottom. the top are just as abused human even in their evil choices. they’ve been bred from this. know nothing else.
we have to see the humanity before we get unstuck and find Third Ways.
Papa, that’s why i was stuck: if i can only hate women for all this that Camille Paglia wrote about when it seemed safe and theoretical (now her university and tenure all gone from this), if i can only hate and fear women as i crave and NEED them — as do we ALL— just as we do MEN, we have been horribly divided.
we’re all human.
i’m not saying give pardons to any of these shmucks. i say hold accountable put in jail or on ice bergs to fend for themselves.
it doesn’t make SENSE as Candace said …why not just have them stop hiding? i get it.
but we cannot ever even HOPE to upend this and get the proverbial shoe on the right foot if we don’t ever hope to understand …
when mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy.
that’s what ALL this is about.
how to fix? i don’t KNOW. i just know we need to start asking the right questions in a hurry and fast. like yesterday a million years ago because yeah… they got a head start on us and …
if we can be sold out for made up money …
that’s why is the paranormal what’s REAL???
because this stuff is hella crazy what’s “rational” and real. it’s all lies.
by now i’m okay with that. i partially grew up in suburbia. cherry hill. lies everywhere.
so thanks Papa for opening my heart to the suburbs killing off women’s power. WOW. so true so true.
it’s tragic. bizarre to the point of ..yeah, belly laughing if you saw baby kittens doing this to themselves. (that’s why KiTTEN is my prompt. to see us all as kittens and act appropriately and forgive us because we’ve REALLY got no idea what we do.)
Re: the Guardian article on collapse
If humans were fundamentally egalitarian, Westerners wouldn’t need to be indoctrinated into liberal egalitarian ideologies from the cradle to the grave. And slavery would have been abolished thousands of years ago, probably by the Sumerians.
Wealth inequality will decrease during the Long Descent not through centralized, lenocratic wealth redistribution schemes but because people and communities will have to localize much of the economy (e.g. farming, cottage industries) rather than rely on the faltering system to ship goods in from outside.
SHINJUKI
BRRRRAVO! Beautifully said. Thank you and TESTIFY, SISTER GIRL!
X
Off-topic
SHERLOCK HOLMES TAROT DECK
by JOHN MATTEWS
Helen #85
> One area that I am familiar with, is with Tarot and Oracle cards. So many ‘Goddess’ and ‘Divine Feminine’ decks!
That reminds me. I am looking for a set of tarot cards by Jahn Matthews called the:
Sherlock Holmes Tarot Deck
ISBN A1454910224
published 2014
in “Used – Very Good” condition (or better) at a reasonable price (roughly US$50), or a “*deserving* party who would require more moolah” in a private sale.
I am aware that people here know (or knew) John Matthews and, if he is still alive, I wonder if someone here might take pity on this old cat-lady’s desperate Sherlock Holmes obsession. I am looking for a seller who is willing to part with his/her set, but I don’t want a ‘beat up’ set.
I am VERY, VERY into Sherlock Holmes, currently pastiches and fan-fiction.
One might say, it would make this old lady very happy indeed♥️.
💨🎴♥️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
Helen #85
> you may find this young man’s channel interesting? He hand makes and wears period clothing, and has done since about age 14
https://www.youtube.com/@pinsenttailoring
As a sewer (not to be confused with sewage), in the 2010s, I was VERY into “pattern making” (fitting of clothes) of tight-ish clothes (the current default). Somehow, as a teen, I never learned how to fit. I didn’t get far in learning to fit, but learned enough to satisfy my hankering to learn the science and geometry on how to fit. I learned that it is a somewhat secret job description. Fitting had been a mystery to me for sixty years, and was driving me nuts. (There is a couple great, affordable video series’ online for anyone interested; just let me know.)
But I happened to be studying fitting DURING THE 2010s at a time when Western culture is declining, and only upper-classes will be able to afford fitting. Also, except for hand-knitting, knits are a goner during these down-times — knitted fabric entered Western societies at the late date of roughly 1930, and will be “last in, first out” (LIFO) situation.
In my opinion, being a special interest of mine since age 10, the clothing industry is not far off from resorting to warp-and-weft weaves AND darts and gathers AND no-zippers. It hasn’t happened yet, but as soon as junk-clothes stop being made in sweatshops in Vietnam and Indonesia (WatchMart sold), and Western people find themselves bare-naked, loose woven clothing will come to the fore — not only that, but clothing in ‘peasant’ style and proud of it.. Medieval Europe, 1850 prairie style, and Amish, clothing., will be the “IN thing.”
I decided I want nothing to do with upper-class hoity-toity sewing styles, so it is likely I will drop learning how to fit (other than that appropriate for loose clothing). I now know enough about fitting to know that the fitting of tight-ish clothes has no future for the next 500 years. I adore the idea of making peasant clothing somewhat intelligently-stylish, staying within the physical bounds of warp and weft and gathers and darts and pre-zipper closings. ‘Peasant’ will be the trend of the masses — how can it not?.
I still have not unpacked my sewing room related to our 2020 escape from California — argh‼️I miss it terribly. My spirit✨is still in boxes. Pray for me to get moving on the creation of my sewing room — I feel so lame.
💨👖🥼👚💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
@Courtney Munson #272 I had a female administrator that was quite good. She had a strong streak of think like a man and don’t take things personally and also female relational and emotional skills – a potent combination. I was on NAAS back in the day if you are the same Courtney Munson. That place was wrecked by problematic female stuff IMO.
Northwind Grandma, FASCINATING.
i’d been trying to start a custom casual tailoring biz before covid lockdowns and was practicing on the men at the gym but that all just wasn’t meant to be. now i see WHY! thank you. fascinating because i also liked the effort and skill involved in perfect tailoring.
–why will knits go out first??? PRAY tell!
–also yes please about the fitting video links. i’d like to learn to tailor COATS. i still want to make a 2026 Patriot Coat.
x
erika
@Michael Martin #241, in my wife’s case, the reason is he drank the family’s money away and beat her mother. But that can’t be the reason every time.
@shinjuki #273, most how-we-met stories I know, including my own, occurred in the course of active pursuits. (Not necessarily physically active, but away from home and doing something other than being a customer in a seat.) Pursuits like social events, religion, fandom, business relationships (usually not within the same business), hobbies, and sports. These are all opportunities to express one’s qualities by visibly doing things other than just spending money on oneself or a date. Whether it’s speaking on a topic at an interest club meeting, organizing an event, helping a team get over a tough loss, singing a song, developing a speculative project, helping the needy. It’s no coincidence that many of those things are phobias or near-phobias for many people. For instance, public speaking or performance, sticking your neck out to promote an idea at work, or a failure or oversight that makes you a laughing stock. So the hidden common denominator is demonstrating some form of courage. That’s the part too many people are too kind to point out is the real meaning of “put yourself out there.” You don’t need to demonstrate ingenuity or talent (though those don’t hurt), but you do need to demonstrate courage! Not as in physically dangerous stunts (though those might work too, for some) but socially dangerous; it could be for instance the courage to read your writing out loud for face to face criticism at a workshop. When I look inside those how-me-met stories, most if not all of them happened because something was going on that the protagonist at the time feared more than rejection!
I suspect that every era in which dating happens has “standard” expected ways to meet dates, and that in all of them, doing just that thing, and nothing else, whether it was participating in a Bible study group or haunting singles bars, has been ineffective and frustrating for everyone except the most superficially attractive. Doing something more is all but required, and if the setting doesn’t offer any opportunities at all to do so… like you say, try something else.
Courtney, as you’ve gotten older and become a mother, you’ve moved into the age-and-category position where, in most societies, you’d be transitioning toward being a female elder (or to borrow the elegant Shaker term, an eldress). I hope you make the most of it.
Shinjuki, while you have a point, it’s also the case that for young people today, dating and getting married is much, much harder than it was forty-odd years ago when I dated, proposed to, and married my late wife. A little compassion for people who’ve gotten a raw deal might be appropriate.
Robert, I’ve bookmarked it and will be printing it out. I’m considering getting the book, with a post in mind. Talk about a target-rich environment…
Kyle, exactly. Power can be used and it can also be abused — and that’s just as true of informal power as it is of the formal kind.
Erika, thank you for this! Yes, exactly.
Patrick, bingo. Wealth inequality will also decrease during the Long Descent because a huge amount of what passes for wealth these days is smoke and mirrors, and most of that belongs to the rich. How many working class folks do you know who are into derivatives? As the wind rises, the smoke blows away, and the mirrors go tumbling after, a lot of notionally rich people are going to find out just how little actual wealth they own.
Northwind, it’s for sale right now on Alibris.com for US$39.20. I didn’t know you were a fellow Sherlock geek!
“Patrick, bingo. Wealth inequality will also decrease during the Long Descent because a huge amount of what passes for wealth these days is smoke and mirrors, and most of that belongs to the rich. How many working class folks do you know who are into derivatives? As the wind rises, the smoke blows away, and the mirrors go tumbling after, a lot of notionally rich people are going to find out just how little actual wealth they own.”
“Collapse” (and population decline in general) is one of the “four horsemen” that cause “Great Leveling” events according to Walter Scheidel’s book.
https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Leveler-Violence-Inequality-Twenty-First/dp/0691165025
The infamous 1-10 scale of evaluating physical and erotic attractiveness was invented and applied by men. Now, men are angry and offended to find the same used against them.
When women first began entering the workplace in significant numbers, hiring and promotion decisions were made by men, all too often for reasons other than competence and character. Don’t believe me, ask the working women you know how often some manipulative mean girl or, to use JMG’s expression, cute fluffball got the job or promotion others had earned. Ask how often said fluffballs were lavishly rewarded for doing maybe 2/3s as much work as other less fortunately endowed women. A highly capable US attorney was recently fired by the present administration for the cardinal sin of making a looker, in this case, AG Blondie, look bad. So Blondie did what ambitious fluffballs always do, she whined to her Big Daddy protectors.
No woman with any sense is going to marry or even date a man who expresses vituperative hatred for women. If I had sons or grandsons, I would be telling them, stay off the dating apps, treat women like ladies, get good at whatever it is you like to do. And do try to understand that a half hour acquaintance does not entitle you to pronounce pop psychology judgement on her personality, conduct and mode of life, all which you as yet know next to nothing about. Enjoy your friendships with women; it can’t hurt to have a network of decent women saying nice things about you.
Cristia @ 270 .. but for the big DADA who feels jilted and unloved, there’s ALWAYS a ‘cure’ for everything: it’s name is .. Windex!
‘;]
And I DO love that film .. I mean, whilst the groom is already in a rather uncomfortable familial situation, he suffers the slings and arrows of misfortune because he .. DON’T EAT NO MEAT!
Auntie: ” that’s ok … I make you lamb”.
I think of what is mis-called “couture” sewing as an art form. The techniques are obviously not practical nor appropriate for one’s daily wear, which needs to be sturdy, but I do find some of them enjoyable for the occasional fun and fancy project. Something similar could be said about, for example, embroidery, which can be quite beautiful but does require time and attention.
About fit: the best way to make clothes that fit is to make a master pattern, I believe it might be called a toile, which fits you or your client exactly. There are online services and probably computer programs as well which will do that for you. My daughter has bought clothes from an online company which makes their designs to fit the dimensions their customers provide. A person could order a garment and then unpick the seams and use the pieces as a master pattern.
@shinjuki so many young people today are barely able to pay their rent and bills, even when working a full-time job. I think those of the older generations tend to forget how easy they had it back when they were young adults. It’s very easy to offer generic “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” non-advice to the kids. They will likely see it as tone-deaf and out of touch.
@Other Owen
Yeah I agree, hoe_math has the current dating debacle nailed down to an exact science.
Also, re: a comment of yours from way above that I think is quite important to this discussion.
>>If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the 60s, it’s that love isn’t enough. Nowhere near enough. Not even close. Somehow people got on without arranged marriages though back in the early 20th c though. They made it work, so I consider arranged marriage to be overkill. I suspect arranged marriage is an over-response to the consequences of letting young naive girls do whatever they feel like doing, which in general is run everything right into the ground.
Agreed! I think Forced Marriage (what people today like to call “arranged marriage”) and and Free Love Marriage (letting naive young girls dictate the genetic fate of the tribe) are both very unhelpful extremes, as is the virgin/whore binary we’ve inherited from Christianity. I think there is a middle ground sort of marriage that I call Guided Marriage: it’s where parents and/or community elders proactively engage in matchmaking help for their children reaching adulthood, but the to-be bride or groom must consent to whatever suggestions are send this way. I think this type of arrangement that what was the norm throughout much of historic America, prior to the 20th century. And for those fussy young ladies who reject all suitors presented to them? Well, they can be told in frank terms that if they remain undecided too long their “market value” is going to start depreciating like a used car. Or, a harsh measure might be a cultural custom of the Babylonians that Herodotus talked about and was very fond of: auctioning off married young women to the highest bidders.
When it comes to how we treat sex, I think much of our current culture succumbs to what our gracious host likes to call “a failure of imagination.” So many cultures around the world handled this topic in quite different ways. I was particularly interested in how ancient Indo-European cultures dealt with marriage and sex and in my research I found some interesting commonalities between the Laws of Manu (Hinduism) and the Irish Celtic Brehon Laws, which led me to suspect these were very ancient legal customs. The Irish looked at sexual relations as a broad spectrum of most-desirable to least-desirable, not a simplistic binary.
Under Brehon Law, there were ten forms of marriage, each diminishing in importance, legal rights and desirability and sorted by degrees.
A first degree union takes place between partners of equal rank and property.
A second degree union in which a woman has less property than the man and is supported by him.
A third degree union in which a man has less property than the woman and has to agree to management of the woman’s cattle and fields by someone from her family.
A fourth degree union is the marriage of the loved one in which no property rights changed hands, though children’s rights are safeguarded.
A fifth degree union is the mutual consent of the man and woman to share their bodies, but live under separate roofs.
A sixth degree union in which a defeated enemy’s wife is abducted. This marriage was valid only as long as the man could keep the woman with him.
A seventh degree union is called a soldier’s marriage and is a temporary, primarily sexual union.
An eighth degree union occurs when a man seduces a woman through lying, deception or taking advantage of her intoxication.
A ninth degree union is a union by rape.
A tenth degree union occurs between feeble-minded or insane people.
The “fifth degree union” is what we moderns today call “dating.” And notice that all the degrees below that get into what we today call sexual assault.
Ancient Germanic marriage and sex had a simpler system of classification, but still avoided those unhelpful binaries. It goes something like:
1. Contractual marriage; man has legal control over his wife. In ancient times, his was typically just for noble families / those with a ton of wealth and property to deal with. This custom came to be known later in the Middle Ages and beyond as Coverture. Feminists were very gung-ho on abolishing this custom, though it probably should have never been extended down to the middle classes.
2. Free marriage; man has no legal control over his wife.
3. Concubinage (i.e. all other forms of sexual relations, though usually involving free men and their thralls)
Ancient Greek and Roman marriage customs we of course know quite a lot about and it was the (de jure) rigidly-patriarchal model that Christian marriage largely draws from.
If any pagan group today could devise and implement a form of marriage that reflects some of the above-mentioned ancient customs and avoid the pitfalls o both the Christian and Nihilistic Free love forms of marriage, it just might have a lucrative service to offer many otherwise-wayward folk. It could also present marriage in a way that’s pragmatic and tethered to reality, as opposed to being bogged down with all sorts of romanticist nonsense. Imagine if marriage is seen as a contractual arrangement for producing and raising a family, first and foremost.
JMG, you’ve sparked quite the sociological roundtable this week! As aspiring Lords of Freedom, this seems quite appropriate food for thought.
(Also, apologies for me adding even more weirdness to what’s the weirdest commentariat on the internet)
Re: Beauty as a virtue in women – reminded of an song from back in the day, ‘If You Wanna Be Happy’, with lyrics “If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life – Never make a pretty woman your wife – So from my personal point of view – Get an ugly girl to marry you… (etc.)”.
People with genuine Leadership ability know how to be generous in addition to being secure in themselves. You can have a drink with that man or woman. And they will have your back.
Hollywood has put in a notion of “Strong Women”. That would quite frankly get you punched in the face as a man. And restrict the scale of emotion that is acceptable. Tenderness, being kind in certain situations or even smiling when warranted considered unacceptable it seems.
No one likes an obnoxious asshole to put it crudely.
If they wanted women to imitate masculine virtues they could have chosen something like Honor, staying grounded in emotionally tough situations, keeping their word and always having someone’s back.
I dont get why people are down on Trad wife online content. Of course it is idealized, but so are other reality programs for other hobbies, like wood working or various crafts.
The tradwife content often shows simple beaty inside the home and in the garden ( how is this different from better homes and gardens ? Is it because better homes and gardens has mainstream corporate sponsers ?) The content also shows alot of home cooking and recipes. My eldest daughter, a stay at home mom, gets lots of money saving ideas. Lots of tasty recipes. Look at all the garbage n TV, soap operas, game shows, lots of content to keep into buying corporate products and to be mindless, to focus on well, relay garbage ideas. So instead, a woman tuning into the new, what you are calling trad wife, content sees calm and beauty. Sure, ones own kitchen doesnt look exactly like the one in the program, but many ideas are transferable to ones own kitchen. Bringing in some flowers. a fresh coat pf paint. Some fresh cooked food. SOmetimes it is just the one bowl. My daughter is very happy with the aesthetics of a nice sized and feeling bowl to knead bread in. SOunds like a simple pleasure. Better for the household than artificial long nails and botox or drinking and affairs. ANd the programs are short, so not on a screen all day, just now and then between real work and not even daily, watching the latest content on the computer. Content that affirms your choice to be at home and shows value from it, again, unlike corporate TV content
Wow! There’s so many misconceptions about what a ‘traditional’ wife (and family) is in the modern age… And… I’m stunned at what a low opinion of women, womankind and womanliness many of you here (including some of the women!!! Holy cow!!!) have. I’ll try to give you all some perspective on this from a husband and father who ‘knows what he’s doing’, as evidenced by 38 years of fruitful and satisfying marriage to a woman I find absolutely incredible. I’m extremely fortunate that she’s tolerated my male bullshale for this long!
First off, it’s HER house. Although I assist when I can, and with jobs I can actually do to her exacting standards, she’s doing pretty much all of the cleaning, laundering, cooking and (when our kids were still living here) the vast bulk of the child rearing and nurturing. Those little bastards are just now reaching the age where they realize how damn good they had it (mid-thirties). They treat their own women VERY well as a result.
My wife would NEVER, EVER consider having a maid clean her house or ‘farm out’ the child rearing duties. That would be unequivocally unthinkable under any circumstances, period. Nobody else would even come CLOSE to exerting the care, time and attention to her tasks that she would.
I bring in the money, but SHE controls it. A good thing, too… I’m a notorious spendthrift. If I didn’t have her serving as both my personal and professional ‘accountant’, I’d be utterly fracked.
She works WAY harder than I do… by her own volition. She wants her life and household a certain way, and will do whatever it takes to see that it’s just so. I have to compel her to relax sometimes (which she’s ultimately grateful for, after she gets over the brief hump of anxiety at not being ‘busy’).
She works her ass off to stay beautiful, and it works! At 58, she’s almost always the best-put-together elder lady in the room. In that respect, she influences myself… I make it a point to stay fit along with her just as a simple homage to her incredible level of motivation.
We aren’t just mates and lovers… We’re FRIENDS. We do almost everything together, including our sports. We do have our own individual hobbies we do at home, but always have an interest in each other’s doings at the very least. Some of our hobbies overlap (like gardening). Our sports are very important to us and are ones we both play by design, as playing competitively can create the need for travel, which we also love to do together.
Nobody has unilateral power in our relationship. Every decision of any import gets discussed between us, and binding agreement is confirmed before we present our position to the outer world. In this case, I’ll often be the face of the ‘Formal Power’, but it’s backed up by her formidable ‘Informal Power’. No exceptions. This is a huge plus since she can often provide superior wisdom to my own, particularly in matters of the heart. Conversely, she always respects my learned position in matters of what I call ‘Physics’ problems… Like fixing the cars, the house, etceterra… Which means I do the ‘physical’ stuff that requires mechanical knowledge and strength, and manage those that may be hired for such (I need to be useful somehow!).
She’s what the kids would call a ‘Tradwife’. That said, she’s far from ‘locked in a suburban prison’ as someone derisively stated above. Hell… She gets out of the house more than I do! I work at home, so I’m usually the one itchin’ to get out and about. She’s got a robust network of womanfolk she hangs out with at regular intervals… and they get up to some rather ribald fun without us pesky husbands hanging around! I know these gals and they’re all great ladies… Many of them living almost the exact same lifestyle as my own lovely lady. They discuss their life strategies amongst themselves and believe me… They put their ‘Informal Power’ to work just fine. I see it… ALL. THE. TIME. They’re not powerless little shrinking daisies… They’re lionesses.
I do a lot. I earn all the money. I do all the driving on the long trips. I carry / move / assemble all the heavy stuff. I strike fear in the hearts of wayward offspring. I clean the guns, maintain the swords (fencing), clean and maintain the bowling balls, make sure they work right and stand up to any external physical threats. I protect my wife’s honor. I’m a MAN. she loves that, and it’s part of why she keeps me.
I don’t deserve my ‘Tradwife’, but I do my damndest to keep her happy because she’s the greatest thing in my life, PERIOD. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s the smartest, quickest, most ingenuitive person I know. This world is lucky to have her.
And the heels? She knows that a pair of three inch heels make her butt and legs go POW!… And man, I’ll tell ya’… If she baits me with that, I’d swim across an alligator filled swamp if she told me to. Lottsa’ ways to get what you want from men, ladies… And that’s one of ’em.
Make no mistake my friends, this is a POWERFUL woman. Don’t test her resolve, ever.
She tells me our arrangement is a sweet deal for her, so if you don’t like what I’ve said here, you’ll have to take it up with her. I’ll have a beer and watch while you do that, thank you very much. That’ll be fun.
Anyway… Been reading JMG with you all a long time, and you’re all a great community. On this particular topic, though… I feel like some of you just never experienced or understood this particular cultural phenomenon… the ‘traditional’ family / marriage… And thought I’d throw in a little insight about it. Thanks for hearing me out. Love you guys and gals!
Dear JMG.
I knew that chimpanzees used violence, I don’t know if it was exterminating, although we can allow for the possibility. Continuing with the argument, it seems, on the contrary, that bonobos are less prone to such displays of aggression. Considering that both species are genetically very similar, it is possible to deduce that such aggressive behavior has a cultural origin.
Considering, therefore, that our species also utilizes culture, in richer forms than bonobos and chimpanzees, then it is reasonable to deduce that our exterminating behavior may also be a cultural development, like that of the chimpanzee.
Regardless of whether I agree with you on what you point out: “…the leaders of the transition toward a deindustrialized future will rise to power in a context where the rule of law is crumbling and organized violence is an efficient way to seize control of resources and eliminate rivals…” And as Emmanuel Todd says (https://emmanueltodd.substack.com/p/nihilism-could-explain-israels-behaviour), the current tendency toward “nihilism” may be, in my view, a precursor to the emergence of that type of exterminating leadership that is, currently, fully validated by the dominant cultural structure. I believe there is room for “utopian fantasies.”
I have no doubt that the thesis you propose will occur, and is already occurring, in what we can understand as the imperial core, assuming Todd’s assumptions. But in the most peripheral areas, perhaps we can have other possibilities, and those possibilities open up if we manage to understand the phenomenon of exterminating violence as an avoidable cultural phenomenon. In this, the possibility of many diverse systems of power administration “competing” for the spaces left by the dominant system (which is democratic, let’s not forget) can allow for the realization of “post-apocalyptic utopias.”
The center of the Empire will not be able to do so (the periphery south of the Rio Grande is already sending the leaders of the future), but the periphery, to the extent that it embraces the possibility of “designing” different systems of power and non-power administration, may succeed
David, it’s a normal event.
Mary, if you had sons or grandsons and you said that to them, they’d ask you where they could find these decent women who would say nice things about them. I talk to a lot of young men these days and it’s pretty hairy out there.
PatriciaT, by no means bad advice!
Templar, glad to hear it works for you. I still think a woman in heels walks like a clown on stilts — flat shoes or, better still, bare feet let a woman’s body move much more naturally and alluringly. Mind you, I also think that makeup looks like bizarre face paint; my late wife never wore it, to my great delight.
Gustavo, if murderous violence was a cultural creation, then there would be a significant number of human societies that don’t practice it. There are none; every time one gets proclaimed as the peaceable kingdom, more research turns up fortifications, mass graves, and the like. Here again, you can keep on insisting that the pink hippopotamus surely will someday go tap-dancing across Times Square, and it’s impossible to prove you wrong. The question is why you cling to that unlikely belief in the teeth of all historical evidence.
Oh, and the notion that human societies can be designed is also a fallacy, one that has been disproved by history. Societies are organisms, not artifacts; you might as well try to manufacture a tree. I’ll be discussing that next week.
I think we’re impoverished by dissolving all our “boys only” options into whatever mishmash we have today.
Pondering the dissolution of the Boy Scouts and how, or even if, American society in its current unhealthy state actually *could* provide a powerful coming-of-age ritual or “society” for boys/young men in an era of “safety first!”, I ended up diving into the “Birchbark Roll of Woodcraft Indians” book and associated literature, trying to envision how such a thing could be taken up today. Beyond the ability to foster the organized chaos of a boys’ organization or “society,” we’ve lost access to common spaces where kids could roam and camp and fish and sit and daydream and make mischief. “No mischief allowed, just sit there with your screen” seems to be the defining mark of what we say to young people now.
I think the era of really big corporatized organizations is nearly done-for, past its expiration date because of brand-name, death by milquetoast feelgoodism, but it’s still the only game in town until people decide they want off the beaten path. I’m certainly not the right person to start a boys’ club (being a just-past-middle-aged woman. The Birchbark tradition was also meant to be taken up by boys themselves, not necessarily by Den Mothers. ), but I could see the tamanous spirit beautifully supported and expressed in localized versions of the Birchbark tradition that doesn’t rely on romanticizing Indian ways, but rather dips into common human-heritage and relies on whatever local signs and symbolisms are in each locale, backed up by training in observation skills and nature awareness.
As for girls-only spaces – well, that’s gotten kinda sullied these days for many reasons, not least because we’ve lost our collective minds around what exactly boys and girls ARE. We did it to ourselves.
@Teresa Peschel #129
“My best friend’s cousin is raising her granddaughter because both baby daddy and baby mama were drug addicts. It was actually an improvement when the parents died of drug overdoses because huge, endless traumatic drama went away.”
I can vouch… It’s always a relief when ‘your’ junkie dies. Been through this one a couple times, sadly. Not family, but very close friends. GenX occupational hazard.
Aldarion #252 writes “Considering the high mortality from childbirth in historical times, it is probable that a considerable part of the “multiple women” were in fact remarriages after a man became a widower. It is still notable that women may not have remarried after becoming widows.”
In Orthodox Judaism, the prescribed period of mourning for a parent is one year. The period of mourning for a spouse is one month. The reason for this, I believe, is practical. A wife may work outside the home. She may even support her husband financially while he studies Torah. However, there is a division of labor between spouses and the wife’s primary responsibilities are to care for young children and keep a kosher kitchen. I suppose that in preindustrial times when childbirth was very dangerous, a Torah-observant man might not be able to prolong mourning for his wife. A widow retained her marriage portion and might not be under as much pressure to remarry quickly.
@ Licensed Templar – wow, ans she’s a lucky woman to have you, too.
I remember when I wad gone out of town for a Worldcon in which I’d had an article in an anthology of essays featured there, and I insisted on going. hen I came back, I asked my husband – later to be my ex – what he’d done. He grumbled that he didn’t so any work at all, just the chores around the house that had to be done. I reminded him that was work, and he said, angrily, ‘No, it’s not! It’s just MAINTENANCE!”
And that’s the value he placed on my part of the work. (His father was the sort of domestic tyrant who kept putting down his wife.) Okay – I’ll enroll in the local T-VI, later community college, and learn bookkeeping. and get a job.
Not to mention what his attitude towards maintenance, now society-wide these days, has led to.
One thing that I think may be underappreciated is how many men have avoided dating these last several years because we don’t want to have to deal with yet another person in our lives who is going to tell us that what we went through the past decade and change didn’t happen or that we should have ignored it.
(Surely I can’t be alone in having the experience of being assured by friends and family in the 2010’s that the crazy high school and college students saying crazy things online would drop their crazy ideology when they got into the real world only to have some of those same friends and family then take the crazies’ side when the latter took over the word in the early 2020’s?)
The wide political gulf between men and women is finally starting to heal, and I’m glad to see it, but I can honestly say I’m not interested in dating someone who’s going to try to tell me that the insanity of the past decade didn’t happen, wasn’t important, and also it was a good thing.
JMG, you wrote, “Gustavo, if murderous violence was a cultural creation, then there would be a significant number of human societies that don’t practice it. There are none; every time one gets proclaimed as the peaceable kingdom, more research turns up fortifications, mass graves, and the like.”
Have you looked into the ethnography and history of the Ohlone people, the Pomos, the Nissenan, and the multitude of other indigenous groups that inhabited and still inhabit large areas of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, the Delta and the foothills north of the SFBA? Maybe my picture of the peaceful Indians in that part of California is totally out of date.
What is beyond dispute is that there were dozens of tribal groups speaking about a hundred different languages, living in small villages west of the High Sierra, north of the southern deserts and south of the Russian River. The books by Malcom Margolin and others say that they traded, did not raid each other, and certainly did not build fortifications.
These groups lived in moderate climates that were and still are botanically diverse. They did not garden or farm or herd, so the older scholarly books described them as hunter-gatherers. It took about century for anthropologists to start listening to the women, and then it gradually dawned on them that the various cultures living side by side had more in common than stone tools. All of these groups were managing the entire landscapes of their territories to maximize the growth of edible and otherwise useful plants and browse for deer. They still do so when allowed to. Most of the work is either done by the women while out gathering and foraging, or under the direction of female elders who know where and when to set small fires. https://cog-nclc.org/indigenous-news-and-views/
I wonder how all these tribal bands and villages managed to avoid over-exploiting their environments. i suspect that was also in the hands of women, and involved social customs to limit the birthrate.
Organized raiding and organized warfare are ways of stealing stuff from other groups. If the climate is stable, you take care of the land, and your neighbors or newcomers from far away don’t try to enslave you and steal your stuff, informal methods will maintain the culture. You can trade for the stuff you don’t have. You do not need to reward young men for their prowess in fighting. You don’t have to give your headmen or chiefs absolute power to direct the defense of your settlement.
I was at a gathering where this guy dressed in black spoke. Everything about him signaled “bad boy”. Afterwards I watched one woman approach him. She was clearly interested in him.
I heard him say, “I’m trouble.”
“Yes I know.” she replied.
I guess it’s the same instinct that attracts some people to car crashes, violent sports, cliff edges and the like.
@Yavanna
Thanks. That is an interesting perspective. I think the nature of feminine spirituality is quite distinctive in this way.
Although back in the old days when God manifested in a Glory Cloud. Doing things wrong as a Priest would get you killed. The High Priest especially had a rope tied around his waist. So that when the people stop hearing the bells around the hem of his vestments. They will assume he has been struck dead and hence be pulled out.
All those precise procedures so that the radioactive holiness of God don’t strike them down. In addition to all the bloody butchering work, handling the blood and doing a holy barbeque.
This is probably one of the few reasons why the Priesthood was exclusively Male in addition to helping to properly represent in a Sacramental sense the God above.
Men think, women feel.
OK. That’s an oversimplification by light years. But it illustrates an important point. We are not rational beings. We are retionalizing beings. Our logic and reason cortex is a recent addition to the sacred chamber of the human cranium. It just makes up reasons why we did what our brain stem has already decided we would do.
I always look to folklore, common wisdom, and proverbs to deduce what is happening in the subconscious world. That’s where the real, visceral power lies. “A man chases a woman until she catches him.” “When Mamma ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy.” “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” “Nobody F’s with a woman like another woman.” OK, that last one is mine. Maybe it will make folklore status in due time. If enough women start using it.
The wisdom of the village is expressed in ‘hearth and home’ terms. The business of politics outside of the home develops from that.
Just look at Romans 7:15-20. The Apostle Paul decries the war between the Spiritual Man and the Carnal Man, which are always at war with each other. But his conclusion is that the Carnal Man always gets his (her?) way. Women are coy, deceptive, persistent, manipulative, and seductive when it suits them; traits that would be considered unbecoming in a man and beneath him. But they are accepted in women and are embraced with a bomb, er, with aplomb, by them. And they always get their way where it matters.
In Britain the informal power of women is nowadays most effectively wielded by an online forum called mumsnet, which is infamous for the brutality of its character assassinations.
https://www.mumsnet.com/
@JMG, Clay
Regarding your discussion on arranged marriages, it’s a topic that I’ve been dealing with recently. My mother and I had a discussion about this some months ago, and she asked me if I was dating anyone, so that the elders could formalise the relationship via marriage – to which I said no, because I’ve never had a girlfriend, not even a hook-up or some such thing. My mom then asked me if I was open to going via the arranged marriage route, and that if I answered yes, she would start looking. Now, I do plan to go for an arranged marriage, but not now, as I’ve been working on my R&D business (more like an independent “self-employed” researcher than the typical “hire employees, manufacture products” thing) and have invested my savings into it – so I told her to start looking about a year from now, and in the meantime, if she wanted to register my name in a marriage bureau, I’m okay with that too.
As Clay correctly pointed out, most marriages in India are still arranged marriages – irrespective of religion – and notwithstanding the upsurge in love marriages, most people do prefer arranged marriages; in fact, I know people who have had short-term relationships, and post-breaking up, decided to go for a traditional arranged marriage.
The arranged marriage system is a full-blown industry of sorts, with marriage bureaus functioning and doing well. The way it works is this – a person is registered in the marriage bureau, either by his/her parents or on his/her own. The person is then attached to one of the matchmakers, and asked to undergo some “tests” which gauge his/her personality, compatibility, etc. in addition to physical and generally, medical tests as well, and also do a thorough detailed checking of the family he/she belongs to – the reason being that in arranged marriages, it’s more about the families coming together via the marriage, while in love marriages, the family is important, but the married couple is far more important, and they are the centrepiece as opposed to the larger family setup they belong to. The test results help the matchmaker narrow down the list of prospective brides/grooms for the person attached to him/her – and these prospective brides/grooms that are narrowed down to are also people who’ve registered in the marriage bureau. Once they generate that list of profiles suitable as prospective spouses for the person attached to the matchmaker, they encourage them to meet them and get to know each other – normally, they take something like 4-5 dates/meets to decide whether to go in for marriage with that person or not – if there is clear rejection or lack of reasonably quick and clear responses from the prospective spouse, the person is then asked to move onto the next profile, and it continues till the person meets his/her future spouse and they communicate their decision to get married.
Obviously, this system is not perfect – which human system really is? – but it works tolerably well. I think the closest term that accurately describes it is “arranged dating”; while modern dating apps are there, the matchmaking services that define marriage bureaus are far more efficient and accurate in their choice of spouses for the people availing their services. I know women who’ve been on dating apps for something like 2-3 years looking for a husband, and finally uninstalled their dating apps and went via the marriage bureau route, and got hitched pretty quickly thereafter (as an aside, this can be counted as another human victory against AI – which dating apps use).
Most Westerners, or at least those who consume legacy media, find this unacceptable – the responses from their end are along the lines of “but arranged marriages are done against the couple’s wishes!” and “but how can you marry a person whom you’ve not fallen for?” These questions are not entirely wrong in themselves, and I’ll address the 2nd one as I’ve addressed the 1st already – as our host pointed out, love is one of the things that go into marriage, but other things are at least as important, too. Arranged marriages operate on the idea of pragmatism, which I’ll explain by way of the approach used in medical diagnosis:
1) True positive: The bride and groom have fallen for each other, and are also truly compatible; a best of both worlds.
2) True negative: The bride and groom neither love each other, nor do they have anything else that would make their marriage successful.
3) False positive: The bride and groom are in love with each other, but are actually not compatible enough to make the marriage work; most of the love marriages that end in divorce are of this variety.
4) False negative: The bride and groom don’t fall head-over-heels in love with each other, but are very compatible, and it’s almost certain that theirs will be a very successful marriage.
Arranged marriages operate on the idea that 2) and 3) are to be avoided. While 1) is of course the best possible outcome, it may not always materialise, simply because the “I feel that spark” is frankly speaking, a stochastic event; it does happen in some cases, but in others, it doesn’t, and this is what leads to many people who actually want to get married not getting married, because they’ve bought the pop-culture lie about “finding the person who ignites that spark and makes you fall for him/her” hook, line and sinker. It is for this reason that 3) is a pragmatic choice, and marriage bureaus indeed operate on this line of thinking.
Of course, what makes this topic so relevant to this essay by our host is the fact that for the most part, it is women (mostly middle-aged or senior citizens) who do the actual work of arranging these marriages. Maybe this is an example of a formalization of the “informal power” that our host has written about? If yes, I won’t be surprised in the least if the “church ladies” mentioned in the essay start playing matchmaker; it might really help the marriage crisis in the US, who knows?
Hello everyone, just wanted to share a couple of thoughts.
– Women who wear really high heels: I usually interpret this as a woman signaling high status or intention to achieve high status. Isn’t it usually executives or red carpet celebrity types who wear the sky-high heels? Lower heels probably indicate conformity to business casual/fashion standards, or desire to signal feminine identity.
– Gossip: the rule I came up with for myself is, would I be embarrassed if the person I was talking about overheard what I said about them? If I share with a friend that So-and-so moved to another state and bought a house, no problem. If I share that her other friend suspects marital trouble, that’s gossip.
Re SHINJUKI
She’s saying talk all you want it is what it is
And
Time for talking is over
Put up or shut up
I can totally dig it.
We’re all food. There’s no one to complain to.
SHINJUKI was brilliant
Re Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse (Robert Mathiesen’s post #265), there is a very interesting interview on existential risk with Kemp in Nate Hagen’s the Great Simplification series – https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/153-luke-kemp
>If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life – Never make a pretty woman your wife
It’s mostly systemic. Pretty women tend to develop a cheesegrater personality for several reasons. One, they’re always being hit on. Two, they’re always handed things on a platter. It takes a lot of experience to go against that and develop a pleasant personality. Or, if you see a pretty woman with a pleasant personality – she has learned how to be extremely manipulative, to wax cynical for a moment. Maybe she’s just naturally pleasant? Do you feel lucky?
The other thing – the looks eventually fade, but the personality is forever. So at the end, you’ve got a woman that vaguely reminds you of what a truly pretty woman looks like – with a cheesegrater personality.
This is where I’m going to start offending people (what?!) but to use a car analogy, a pretty woman is like an expensive german luxury car. Quirky, high maintenance, and in odd moments, fun. But when it ages, it really starts falling apart in a bad way, just one thing after another.
But there’s a lot of guys who like those german luxury cars. Different folks, different something or other.
JMG “Societies are organisms, not artifacts; you might as well try to manufacture a tree” Good point! And trees have life spans as do societies. The integrated cohesive Roman and Ming dynasty societies are long gone as is the Victorian British empire. All of which probably thought they would keep going on.The cohesive American society of my childhood is fading away and the worldwide global industrial society is going to collapse over the next 100 years despite pious fusion power and AI dreams of eternal progress.
Thank you for this post and for the term heterarchy in particular. I agree that it seems much more useful for discussing any modern society than pretending that it is defined by one straightforward hierarchy.
One term I’ve seen used to describe gender relations in societies like those of the Iroquois is ambiarchy. Meaning that neither men nor women clearly predominate, with both groups having clearly delineated spheres of power. It seems to me that while such formal ambiarchies are proven to exist, matriarchies are not, making me doubt their possibility (after all, there is no shortage of other variation in human societies, so you’d think that if a pure matriarchy were possible, it would show up somewhere). Then again, as you point out, even the strongest patriarchies can be seen as informal ambiarchies. This often comes up in discussion of traditional patriarchal societies, like Islamic ones: people who try to examine them up close frequently come away with the impression that women can be almost completely powerless in theory and extremely influential behind the scenes in practice. Of course formal power or lack thereof still counts for a lot; this balances it somewhat on the level fo the whole society, but individuals can get crushed by overwhelming applications of formal power just as easily.
Oh, and apropos of your discussion with Joan, when I studied at the history department of a Russian university in the 2000s, primitive matriarchy, Bachofen, Gimbutas and all were still very much discussed, if in a very non-committal tone. I suspect Engels is to blame; though no longer sacred, most professors still came up at the time when his thoughts were obligatory for study and reference. So he and everything attached to his anthropological musings retained a prominent place in the program, even if no one in academia was going to insist that this was actually right and plenty of contradictory data was brought up as well.
@Mary Bennet #19 Are the men in those roles that different? My suspicion (or maybe prejudice) is that the problem is less with feminism and more with meritocracy. In theory selecting people based on merit sounds like an obviously good idea, but in practice, on the level of an entire country or civilisation, the kind of merit that gets rewarded is the ability to fit in and get ahead over the heads of others. So large meritocratic systems – like those of the Catholic Church, the Communist Party or the traditional Chinese imperial bureaucracy – tend to reward cunning careerists who are good at playing politics and conforming to necessary orthodoxies (so they tend to be either zealots or good liars). And the kind of women that aspire to power start playing the same games, with some corrections for gender. The one advantage of a hereditary elite, balancing its many disadvantages, is that it doesn’t select for careerist viciousness (or anything else).
While we are on the subject of consensus and dissensus, I have just found out about the concept of “non-partisan democracy”. Many representative systems in the contemporary world and historically don’t have such a thing as distinct “political parties”!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy
In this system of government, all members of the legislature are elected as independents and select a formal leader through some kind of consensus among them. Examples include Nahru, Niue, Tuvalu, American Samoa, the British Falkland Islands, the Isle of Guernsey, Hong Kong (sort of), the Canadian Territories of Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and the Confederate States of America!
In some Middle Eastern countries, political parties are actually illegal as in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, or Oman!
Unfortunately, most of the examples above exist in polities with small populations where consensus is relatively easy! Others are explicit despotisms where an autocrat can simply prohibit “factions” as “divisive”!
Aidan Barrett
@Licensed Templar #294 …. she’s very lucky to have you for a husband. I recall a time when I went out of town for the 1981 Worldcon – I’d been invited because I had an article in a published anthology of essays, and insisted on going. When I got back, and asked my husband (later my ex) how things were going, and he complained that he hadn’t gotten any work done at all. I asked him about the household chores, and he said, angrily, “That’s not WORK! That’s just MAINTENANCE!”
(In his defence, his father was a domestic tyrant to make Archie Bunker look like a pussycat, who constantly put down his wife (who took it out in setting her daughters-in-law against each other).)
IF domestic labor doesn’t count as work in his eyes, it was time to look at learning bookkeeping with an eye towards getting my own income. But also…. if “maintenance” doesn’t count in the eyes of his father’s class of society, and in the son’s, and if that attitude was widespread, well, the results of that are all around us today!
I note: our daughters taught their sons all sorts of practical skills – both my Florida grandsons can cook.
“Karalan, if that’s how you choose to see the world, hey, whatever floats your boat. It seems inaccurate to me, but whatever.”
I didn’t choose to see the world this way at all. It’s a view forced on me against my will and preferences. But, I’m starting to suspect that excessive gynocentrism is going to bring an end to civilization and has done so numerous times previously. The oddest part of all this is that no one refutes the examples I provided (except to target and blame male sexuality – women good, men bad, don’t you know), yet everyone refutes the clearly-evident conclusion. Women push their obvious power and advantage too far under strong, wealthy governments which enforce their prerogatives, and civilization dies as a result.
Not a popular perspective, I know – women discourage it and punish those who deviate from the script. Male privilege is a myth perpetuated by females who benefit from that myth. In every arena where male and female interests conflict, women win.
@David Ritz #314, I quite dislike partocracies (another example of the toxic meritocracies I wrote about in my previous post), but the question that instantly pops into my mind is: how do those systems keep their elected independents from forming unofficial or even secret parties?
TemporaryReality, that’s a crucial point. Ernest Thompson Seton’s Woodcraft movement is exactly the sort of decentralized approach that might help — which is of course why it was squeezed out of existence and replaced by the hierarchical and (formerly) militarized Boy Scouts.
Slithy, there’s that!
Deborah, I have indeed. During the time I spent in southern Oregon, I worked for a while on a project to help the Takelma nation recover its traditional language, and in those days I studied quite a bit about the native peoples in the southern Oregon-northern California culture region. They were too far south to be within range of Northwest Coast slave raiding parties, which helped limit the amount of violence they had to practice, and with mountains to the north of them and desert to the east they were relatively sheltered from other directions. They still fought battles, in the desultory fashion you always get in tribal societies — personal quarrels between members of different tribes blowing up into general skirmishes — but they’d evolved a range of customs to limit the death toll, and group gambling matches with the “stick game” (wildly popular all over the western half of Native America) offered an outlet for less concentrated bursts of rowdiness. Like other Native peoples, their ancestors had learned the lessons of ecological limits the hard way during the wild climate swings of the postglacial period, so yes, they managed their ecosystems carefully and practiced systematic infanticide to keep their populations in check. It’s not an uncommon setup in unusually sheltered and ecologically sparse environments.
Martin, exactly. If you ever have a spare evening in an American singles bar, sit back and watch and you’ll see the same game enacted many times.
Logan, the current US equivalent is called Tea. Unfortunately for the women who do their character assassinations there, we have a lot of self-weaponized autists in their mothers’ basements here in the US, and it’s just suffered two humiliating hacks which erased the anonymity necessary for online nastiness, and exposed a lot of the names and faces behind the gossip.
Viduraawakened, damn. If we had those here in the US, I’d go register as soon I decide it’s time to consider a second marriage; especially for autists like me, with somewhat shaky social skills and odd interests, it sounds like a much less haphazard way to look for a partner than the mess we currently have.
Chickadee, very likely yes; I think of high heels as like traditional Chinese footbinding, which also showed that the woman in question didn’t have to work.
BeardTree, exactly.
Daniil, “ambiarchy” is a helpful term but it still encodes the notion that the divide between the sexes is what matters most. I prefer “heterarchy” because it stresses the sheer complexity of human social relations, in which the church to which your grandfather belonged or the fact that you have a particular kind of scar on your face may outweigh the obvious status divisions.
David, here in the US that was imposed on a lot of cities in the Progressive era; you still find a lot of places where mayors and city councils are officially nonpartisan. It’s a very good way to exclude political views unwelcome to the ruling class — the elites just make sure that there are two or three candidates they like running for every important position, and fund all of them heavily, so that all dissident voices get squeezed out.
Karalan, nope. You choose your worldview. If you prefer one that makes you feel disempowered, hey, whatever turns your crank.
Well, when looking at my great-grandmothers lineage on multiple marriages: there were deaths and remarriages, and the women remarried after the husbands death too. So, my great-grandfather was married twice, his first wife died and he was a widower with children and married my great-grandmother, his second wife and had a few more children. Now, my great-grandmother ( in the late 1800’s Idaho USA) married, but left him around the time their child was born, he was that bad. Did not divorce him. In a few years, took a job where she could bring her child along, with a widower with children, to be a live in housekeeper/childminder. After some number of years, husband died, and she marries the widower and they have a child. After some number of years, he dies. She takes in boarders, is doing fine. But wants to be married. Answers an add from my great-grandfather looking for a wife, they get married, combine families, have 2 more children, including my grandmother.
So, Great grandfather married twice, great grandmother married three times. His, hers, ours combined children. But, no divorces and no children having to go back and forth between households, etc….
I wonder if a difference in women remarrying could do with which religion they are part of ? Because my great grandparents were Mormon, and I believe the Mormon religion puts great stock on the institution of marriage and being married, or it did at that time in the mainstream church in any case.
JMG, what are the “two humiliating hacks which erased the anonymity necessary for online nastiness, and exposed a lot of the names and faces behind the gossip.” ? Your comment is the first I have heard of it.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) was a non-partisan mayor of Newark, and I imagine he was supported by elite money. That would explain some of his Senate voting, pro-Israel for example.
There is a legend that when Alexander the Great was campaigning in Persia, he came across a people who were said to be entirely peaceful. Alexander gave orders that this particular tribe was exempt from taxation and were to be protected. I suppose the story, or legend, must originate with Arrian, who was writing 3 centuries later. I came across it in a bio of Alexander.
JMG, I have been reading on this forum about networks of women; it occurs to me that a young man of good sense might want to be well thought of by such networks.
On the subject of arranged marriages: The novel The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Faharad Zama is an absolutely delightful romantic comedy.
A Suitable Boy by Vickram Seth about the search for a husband for their daughter by an Indian family is a notable contribution to world literature, a great work, IMHO. Seth died far too soon, alas, but he did leave this novel behind to instruct and delight readers for generations to come, or so I hope.
In a recent visit to NYC, in which my daughter and I walked around various parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, I saw only one woman wearing high heeled shoes. I do think the constant wearing of high heeled shoes is slow motion footbinding. I see the change to low heeled shoes as a part of us women taking responsibility for our own health and welfare.
@JMG
Thank you for you reply. You might be surprised to know that some Indian marriage bureaus cater not just to Indian citizens, but also to members of the Indian diaspora – sometimes 3rd-generation diaspora members too, for instance. I don’t know whether they include in their clientele people who are neither Indian citizens nor of subcontinent-ethnicity, but if they do, then assuming that you go for a second marriage at some point in time, and are also okay with potentially marrying a person of subcontinent ethnicity, you might just benefit from registering your name in there.
That said, I’ll also warn you that arranged marriage – at least among people of subcontinent ethnicity – is almost always endogamous; while things may be different for people going for a second marriage, there are relatively few people who go for an arranged marriage which is exogamous, with the difference being the degree. A friend of mine who got married recently did so via the marriage bureau route – his mother registered him in there, and then he ultimately ended up saying yes to his wife, who has the same native language, belongs to the same sub-caste (there are categories even within castes; the stereotypical 4-caste thing is mostly what Westernized Hindus and foreigners think of when they think of caste in India, but the reality is that within each of the 4 castes, there are a lot of different sub-castes, differentiated by language and ethnicity, and endogamy applies to these hyper-specific categories), and is okay with him being a non-vegetarian – so that’s the typical kind of endogamy you’ll find, with some being less filtered, but others applying even more filters.
I apologize for this unsolicited advice above, but I mentioned it only because you’re an Aspie, and thus are in a sense, a statistical outlier; also, since you mentioned the idea of a second marriage, I thought this might be useful – after all, companionship is necessary (to varying degrees, of course) for most people – and hence the idea of going for a second marriage at some point in time is a perfectly valid thing to do.
JMG and Martin,
When I was in college the concept that bad boys got the girls and nice guys got zilch was widely discussed and seemed to be proven out with numerous ( to us) anecdotal examples. I think to some extent that this is due to a subconscious desire of women to rebel against their mothers. What better way to shock and dismay your mother than going with an obvious bad boy.
If this is true, I would have had a hard time in the dating world as I am the prototypical ” Nice Guy”. But luckily being a blue eyed, red haired haole was just enough ” badness” for my wife ( third generation Japanese American) to satisfy her mother rebellion. At least until I had the opportunity to woe her with my charming personality.
Take a vacation in the mountains with your daughter for a week where there is no Wi-Fi, no cellular signal, no FM signals and AM only works after sundown and when we come back some young lady lady named Sydney has created an uproar even including calls of Naziism because, um, she’s white and lacks tattoos? I’m admittedly a bit puzzled. The uproar may get even louder as there is a video of her at the gun range. The Left will probably be excreting even more ceramic modular building units.
Since Atmospheric mentioned it and I live among Mormons, it is true that they put huge emphasis on marriage. You MUST be married to get into the highest level of heaven. Since the religion does allow polygamy (up to four wives I believe, could be wrong) this leads to the mathematical certainty that from half to three quarters of men would be barred from that level of heaven.
It always struck me as an odd outcome for a supposedly firmly patriarchal religion.
@Daniil Adamov ” I quite dislike partocracies (another example of the toxic meritocracies I wrote about in my previous post), but the question that instantly pops into my mind is: how do those systems keep their elected independents from forming unofficial or even secret parties?”
Hence why many consider formal organizations to be better as they at least enable accountability of authority and a clear layout of roles and duties in a way that is not true in informal systems of power (the subject of this post).
By the way, the very word “meritocracy” only entered the English language in 1958….
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=meritocracy%20
…in a dystopian science fiction novel!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
We are approaching the time when it takes place and a lot of the premise sounds eerily prophetic in many ways!
What is it with women and crime? So many prisoners jailed for really horrible crimes get love letters from women. Men might watch porno featuring women prisoners, but actually getting involved with imprisoned females in real life is not done, as far as I know.
And Google reports: “While both men and women enjoy true crime, it is generally enjoyed more by women. Studies suggest that the true crime audience is predominantly female, with some sources estimating it to be around 80% according to Psychology Today”
@ Licenced Templar – Thank you for your post. I love your wife! (And I love you, for knowing what she is all about, and being willing to let us in on it). 🙂
I am not a trad wife in her exact way – there were times when I was the one bringing in the money, and my lovely husband was husbanding both the farm and the house…
HOWEVER, you are describing many of the female virtues which I have striven to cultivate, and which your wife clearly excels at.
The first and most important is logistics – when, in my youth, I was temporarily persuaded by feminists that food and clothes were demeaning “roles” that women got “trapped” in as part of our oppression, I was waylaid. It took me years to discover that my “role” was actually my “domain”.
And that, although food has to be cooked and clothes have to be washed (and in former times, measured, spun, woven and made)… the specific virtue is not in the cooking per se, or the washing of clothes, per se… The VIRTUE is logistical… the virtue is in so planning and so arranging a household that, just as the people of the household get around to *noticing* that they are hungry, the food is already just about ready to be served. Likewise, just as the people of the household wake up and start thinking about what to wear, the necessary and appropriate clothes are already to hand. (And that is just the start of the virtue of household logistical management that goes into making sure that every member of the household will be properly equipped for an encounter with the outside world before they step out the door).
To many of the most “ingenuitive” (thank you for that coining) women that I know – say – when a teen or twenty-something child reports that they have got an interview for a job, or for a college place – the wheels in the head are already turning. The child will carry on about their business while their mother is already mentally checking through their wardrobe, to see if there are any gaps to be filled, then checking the actual clothes to make sure they are in a state of readiness… and the child, without even noticing all of this background logistical work, will get up on the morning concerned and find, and perhaps not even think it odd, that a professional looking outfit is ready and waiting to properly equip them for said interview.
My husband is also a powerful influence in this house, and in my life! But his strengths lie in other areas, and the fact that we can complement one another’s weaknesses with corresponding strengths is what makes this marriage (like every good marriage, or so I hear) feel like a conspiracy against the world. 😉
Be well, stay free!
Given the recent push-back, I wouldn’t blame you (JMG) if you don’t put this through. Nonetheless, I think what this Substack article raises is a valid and very important aspect to this whole matter.
From Josh Slocum’s “Disaffected” Substack:
What is Borderline Personality Disorder and why is it called that?
https://disaffectedpod.substack.com/p/what-is-borderline-personality-disorder
Slocum’s overall thesis is that Western society has been taken over by “Cluster B” personality disordered people (what Andrew Lobaczewski would have called a “Pathocracy”). Lobaczewski said that when a society is characterized by massive injustice all around (as ours arguably is), then pathological types take advantage of the situation in much the same way as “opportunistic infections” flourish in an immune-compromised body.
From the article:
What used to be recognized as selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, and destructive antisocial behavior is now considered “valid” and “authentic” and “how you live your best life.” This is especially true among women, who are showing far more deranged narcissism than men as a whole. Again, supply your own “not alls.”
We are living in a gynocracy of women who behave somewhere on the spectrum my mother lives on. Resentful, entitled, self-regarding, exploitative and proud of it, man-hating, and abusing or neglecting children is absolutely socially OK for women now.
There are men with Cluster B disorders too, of course, but they are not pampered by society to the extent that wicked women get a free pass. The worst of the men in this regard are homosexuals who are, for all intents and purposes, functionally personality disordered women. I say this as a man who used to be one of these. [Josh Slocum is “gay”]
He then continues:
Here’s a made-up but accurate vignette to illustrate.
Caitlin is a sociable young woman who likes to go out drinking and dancing with friends. She always has a boyfriend, although her relationships don’t last long, and she usually has another man in the wings while she’s still dating the last guy. When Caitlin meets a new man, she showers him attention and affection. It’s over the top, but it feels wonderful to the guy. She tells him that he’s the sexiest, smartest, most fascinating man she’s ever met. Caitlin has told half a dozen men that each is her “soulmate.”
But within a few months, Caitlin starts to sour on her boyfriend. Maybe he didn’t answer a text quickly enough. Maybe he wasn’t able to make the Friday night party because he was called in to work. Caitlin does not take this in stride. Instead, she feels that he’s abandoning her.
Caitlin’s reaction to this alleged abandonment shocks the people around her. Whereas she was describing Mark last week as “the perfect man,” today she’s telling her girlfriends that he’s “withholding affection in an abusive way,” that he has “devastated her,” he’s unreliable, he’s like every other shitty man who has used her and thrown her away.
There’s a high likelihood that Caitlin will go farther, perhaps accusing him of unwanted sexual advances either directly or by implication. Caitlin will almost certainly begin a reputation smearing campaign among other women, as they are prone to gossip and likely to believe it. Even if she doesn’t state an accusation out loud, Caitlin will persuade people to see Mark as unstable, duplicitous, and perhaps a rapist or sexual abuser.
I can relate. I have had that happen to me.
Again, such people we always have with us. The problem is that personality-disordered people now sit at the commanding heights of society and set its tone. That is what Lobaczewski calls a “Pathocracy.” These people need to be removed from power, influence and authority before any lasting solution will be found.
The discussion of the church ladies reminded me of a book I read some time ago after a recommendation by Isaac Bonewits. The book is aimed toward leaders of Christian churches but is applicable to other groups. _Antagonists in the Church_ by Kenneth Haugk. As far as I recall the author didn’t mention church ladies by sex. He examines the types of behavior that can destroy leadership and group purpose: gossip, etc. He gives a list of red flags and cautions about being too quick to label others as antagonists. I read it in 2009, so don’t recall any other details.
#BeardTree #281, yes, it’s me. I’m fairly certain I know exactly who you are and it’s great to see you here. 🙂
And yes, NAAS was totally wrecked by the toxic feminine. Huge learning experience for me.
Mary, here are some articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tea-app-hacked-13000-photos-leaked-4chan-call-action-rcna221139
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tea-app-leak-worsens-with-second-database-exposing-user-chats/
As for young men wanting to be well thought of by women’s networks, no doubt, but most guys are flying blind here, not least because the advice they get from women is so often contradictory and self-defeating. No, we can’t just pick up telepathically what women want!
Viduraawakened, I don’t mind the advice at all. Unlike a lot of Westerners, I knew that the four-varna system applied only in Vedic times and things are a lot more complex now! I tend to think, though, that given the typical caste endogamy of the subcontinent, a mleccha like me would pretty definitely be on the outside looking in. I expect to go for a second marriage down the road a bit, once I meet somebody suitable — it would just be so much easier to be able to go to a marriage bureau, have a long pleasant conversation with the old woman who runs it, and go from there.
Clay, oh, gaijin are always bad boys and bad girls from a Japanese perspective! That’s why so many of the people in manga have Western features, and it’s also how my father ended up with my Japanese stepmother. That’s “woo,” by the way, not “woe”!
Siliconguy, there have been some funny responses to that whole bizarre furore. Here’s one:
Martin, that’s exactly the attraction to “bad boys” that’s being discussed. It’s a real phenomenon.
Michael, interesting. I’m going to put this through, not least because it suggests that women in general may be being tarred by the actions of a psychologically damaged few.
Rita, it’s a useful book for anyone who has to hold down a leadership position in a voluntary membership organization.
JMG, one of the posts above mentioned something about men resenting being relegated to friend status. So, why is this a bad thing? We all could use a few good friends. More generally, I, granted, an old woman, no dating since my husband died because I simply have not been interested, am not understanding why responsible, adult attitudes and behavior can’t and/or shouldn’t be expected from adult women and men. The fool me once principle. If a lady keeps being betrayed by a series of bad boys, she had best be considering why she always makes that choice. If a man falls prey to a Caitlin, maybe he needs to ask himself if he isn’t looking for love in the wrong places. If fun and excitement is what someone, man or woman, wants, that is what they get.
Gustavo Donoso @ 295, thank you for the link to Emanuel Todd. His books are almost impossible to find in the USA, not in libraries, and prohibitively expensive to buy. Yes, interlibrary loan is sometimes, depending on the specific library, an option. Only one of the three to which I have easy access is possible, and I like not to abuse the privilege.
From time to time I used to be confronted by men wanting to know what I thought about abortion. What I would say is that in a just society, there would be no unwanted pregnancies because both partners would behave responsibly about the possibly of pregnancy. Mind, I didn’t say folks couldn’t have intimate relationships, only that they should, both, know and allow for the possible consequences. One fellow declaimed that “Men just aren’t like that!” Excuse me? I found that a careless and preposterous thing to say.
Hey JMG and Deborah
On the subject of “peaceful” tribes who chose to avoid violence and warfare due to ecological conditions, one of the best examples I’m aware of are the Moriori of the Chatham Islands.
Essentially, they were descended from Māori colonists who settled on the rather meagre islands many centuries ago. Due to the precariousness of their existence they developed a strong culture of controlling violence. The only violence permitted was a kind of ritualised duelling using canes to hit until bleeding. Otherwise they were as peaceful as possible. Unfortunately, when they were rediscovered by the Māori with help from the British they were almost completely genocided. The first part of the novel “Cloud Atlas” goes into a bit of detail about the whole story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
@Courtney Munson #330 My name is Jeff Alexander or was it Anonymoose? by what I went by on NAAS, don’t recall which one now. My picture was a guy with a white beard with a flame skull cap and orange tee shirt. This discussion space is somewhat what NAAS aspired to be with diverse viewpoints co-existing amicably. Though I admit strident advocates of certain viewpoints wouldn’t be happy here. JMG supervises here with a firm but fair hand, he is tolerant and gracious, but has boundaries. I saw the men flee NAAS as it got feminized into a progressive New Agey place. It was interesting to see the folks who squawk the loudest about diversity reduce the actual real diversity that was there at the beginning.
Alan,
Regarding women who were talking and men who were silent on your mountaintrip.
Men and women are wired differently. Women process emotions and thrive when they can do a lot of verbal communication. Men thrive when they have time to introspect and process more with being physically active doing stuff. It comes down to evolutionary biology. Women spent time in camp chatting and needed verbal skills to do well. Men had to think more logically and have more quiet time to hunt and make tools.
Yes men and women are not meant to spend so much time together.
A lot of confusion and trouble are caused by nuclear family system. Both men and women have a hard time living in together too much in a single house. I can attest to this. I get tired of my wife talking but I know it’s just how her brain works. She needs to be around other women more who loves talking. We need more social spaces where men can be with only men and women can be with only women.
Other Owen–Does it occur to the 5-7.9 guys to date the 5-7.9 girls? Just a thought.
Truly Inferior men have obviously suffered from women’s independence. I think it was Mary Wollstonecraft, but it may have been John Mills, who observed that few men, no matter how ugly, stupid or brutal failed to find some woman willing to take them. But that was written when women had no property rights and few means to earn a living. So those men are now your 1-4 level losers in the dating game. But the reverse was not true. There were always women too poor, too ugly, too cranky to find a husband except in societies in which a female partner is essential to survival, such as the Inuit. In Catholic countries they might find a place in a convent, but otherwise there was the unenviable role of old maid or household servant. I suspect that it is the mid-range of both sexes who benefit the most from arranged marriage.
I have noticed an entire genre of online videos mocking the unrealistic expectations of some women–those of medium looks and talent, and some with the additional handicap of age or of already having children, who are looking for the 6 ft, 6 figure $, 6 pack abs. man. There are also videos pointing out that if a woman expresses these preferences, she just has preferences or standards, but if a man expresses an unwillingness to date a particular body type, age, etc. he is a sexist pig.
In discussing the problems of people promoted for physical attractiveness don’t forget that male favorites of male rulers, even in societies in which homosexual relations are accepted, also attract envy and criticism. Just read a biography of James I’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham (The Scapegoat by Lucy Hallet) who was criticized and envied as he accumulated offices, power and wealth. Similar criticism was heaped on Hadrian for the honors he gave to Antinous. Sometimes such favorites are given actual power, Buckingham was Lord of the Admiralty, others have the informal power of whispering suggestions in the ruler’s ear.
@ Mormons and Polygamy
The regular Mormon church, LDS, Latter Day Saints, gave church guidance outlawing polygamy sometime in the mid 1800’s. I do know there are splinter groups that not only allow it, but seem to think it is ideal and vaunted. Anyways, back to the main actual church, even when it was allowed, it was extremely controversal ( I have read the LDS published book on church history, in addition to what my grandmother told me) and caused schisms at the time. It was not original, it was added “spiritual guidance” but very early on in the church. In any case, all men did not have multiple wives, certainly the charismatic Elder leaders did though . For normal households, well, due to the civil war and Mormon missionary work bringing in new converts ( and a higher proportion of converts being female, and this is one of the reasons they were run out of town (and lit out for Utah), the drawing into the fold of a high proportion of young women, other christians did not like their daughters running away to join them – according to the book) there actual for a time were many more female than male unmarried Mormons. And Mormons do feel everyone should be married. I am not excusing the splinter groups we hear about where men of power, even up to today, actually covet and take a large amount of wives, leaving many young men without; nor any elders in the early church history that some likely did take advantage and covet young wives.
My great-great grandfather did end up with a second wife, and it was not easy, alot of work on the frontier. His second wife was recruited from Mormon Missionary work in Northern England, in the rough early industrial cities ( my great great grandfather himself was a recruit and immigrant from Glasgow) . She and another young female friend of hers took the journey together and alone from England to the USA and straight out to the frontier to join the Mormon church and forming ( to them) utopian communities. My grandmother said to me ” they came out thinking they were coming to Zion, with streets paved with gold, and instead it was more like hell” meaning the roughness and work of early frontier Utah. Certainly this was not a place where a young woman was going to live alone nor did she want to go find a husband who was not Mormon. Great great grandfather lived in a one room cabin, scratching out an existence. He added on another cabin room on the fireplace side, so a shared wall and chimney, but a separate home. Imagine one room rough frontier cabin duplex. separate entrances, not connected interior either, we have a rough sketch of this arrangement. At some point, the USA decreed polygamy was illegal, and he went to prison for a time as he would not disavow half his family. After a time, the church itself decreed polygamy to be not allowed in the church, then himself and men like him, left prison and the communities came to some arrangements to dissolve households yet support the second families. And, others would not do this and formed new splinter churches. This is of course anecdotal to my family where a young female chose to stay in the church as a second wife to be married in the church. The women in this side of my family are very strong women, feminine but resolute, not what people see in reality TV from current mormon type splinter groups arrangements.
Scotlyn #327, I always enjoy your comments. They make a great deal of sense. I have often worked over the years but have never seen a career as important. You need money to support your family, not your own self esteem. I do most of the “Housework” although now we are retired my husband does a whole lot more. When I was working, we shared the chores pretty evenly as well as with our children. What is more important than the care and feeding of everyone (which, I think. is the name of a book)?
I enjoy a lot of commentors here but must also mention the 2 Patricias.
JMG, you’ve got me thinking. I’m wondering now if the evolution of old patriarchy (perhaps as we know it, and perhaps originating out of herding and agriculture?) had tacit support at the time, from women. If human sexual selection helped drive adaptation and economies, I’d expect to see some of that. It might be better to be father Ibrahims second wife, than be squabbled over by the nerf herders or warbands or primitives you might have been born around or with. Not that this, too, wouldn’t go down as an arrangement when better opportunity came along. If both sexes do this, then you’d see a wratchet effect with a lot of mixed modes co-exiating or conflicting, together with the usual mix of function and dysfunction, or good and bad intentions. Which seems pretty much how history works. If that’s true then the phase we are in will go the way of all flesh too, and isn’t an apex. Anyway, a solid and fine essay on a tough topic!!
>Other Owen–Does it occur to the 5-7.9 guys to date the 5-7.9 girls? Just a thought.
Ah, I see you aren’t familiar with the dating realities. All the young women (except for the 1s and 2s) are gunning for the 8-10 men. That middle cohort gets the crumbs left on the table, plus the fatfishers. And (it’s documented in the Rectangle) that many mid women do not find mid men attractive enough to consider dating. It’s mostly biology plus the Phone whispering in their ears about how they can have that 8-10 guy if they try hard enough. And the 8-10s aren’t saying no. They’re not saying yes either. And they are having fun.
This is only one fascinating aspect of the broken dating market of 2025. There’s more. Much more.
>The arranged marriage system is a full-blown industry of sorts, with marriage bureaus
I can see it now, Congress in an attempt to stave off population collapse passes the [Some Marriage Acronym] Act, creating the first Federal Bureau of Marriages. You must register on your 18th birthday.
Can you imagine the chaos such a bureaucracy could cause? Getting the federal gubmint involved? I think this is an idea whose time has come. Who’s with me? FULL SPEED AHEAD.
I’ve thought that the “modern” version of arranged marriages in which the future spouses get to meet and agree to the marriage makes a great deal of sense if it could be transferred into the rest of the world. Currently many parents are consumed by getting their children into the “best” college, when that probably has less impact on their children than who their children spend their lives with. Drew C
Hi John Michael,
Every tool can be abused, even if originally the intentions were honourable. Intentions are important, sure, but they never stop abuse.
Had to laugh about the ‘tea’ fiasco. The problem with being a target, is that it requires a certain sort of vigilance to be enacted. The thing is, if directors and their assets were made personally liable for serious failings of cyber security, they’d never happen. The results we see, sort of reflect the lack of consequences for the heads of such data gathering behemoths. Oh well. Engineers suggest an old adage: Good, fast, or cheap – pick any two. It’s so true.
Wrote this week about the unfolding gas shortage issue down here. It’s the story you rarely hear much about. Probably important. 😉
Cheers
Chris
@Rita
Yeah I’ve seen plenty of those videos in over the past few years. I think a lot of these female dating “preferences” are quite exaggerated (though based on some truth) and a recent product of social media. In my experience, as a man who once upon a time dated a lot, women’s real preferences are a lot more complicated than the 6/6/6 formula.
I’m **only** 5’8 and in my youthful prime I got plenty of attention from the ladies, some of them being several inches taller than me! Admittedly, I was pretty good looking back then, but I had neither the abs, the wallet, nor the height every mid-and-up gal supposedly requires these days. I stopped dating around 15 years ago, right before the stupidphone dating apps took over. What worked for me was having an active social life and a wide network of acquaintances. And contrary to a lot of “Red Pill” advice for men, having female friends was actually beneficial for me, because even a female friend wasn’t that into me, she likely had a bunch of friends and at least one of them was bound to like me. But yeah, it must be real rough for young men these days, as the internet has crushed much of the once-vibrant IRL social life. Browsing random strangers on a phone scene, all you have to go on for first impressions is a bunch of pictures. So much context is lost that would be available when meeting someone in person for that first impression.
As far as, your question to Owen, “Does it occur to the 5-7.9 guys to date the 5-7.9 girls? Just a thought.” … Many frustrated Gen Z men will say that the 5/10 woman wants nothing to do with the 5/10 men; because she gets sexual attention from 8+/10 men on the dating apps, she mistakes this for relationship potential, thus has a very distorted view of her dating “market value.” In other words, she’s priced herself out of the market and her “looks-matched” men are left out in the cold with nothing. If there is truth to any of this, then those 1-5 men really are cooked. Couple this with the exploding rates of autism among people born within the last 30 years and it looks quite dire.
Dear JMG,
I used “design” and not design because I understand the difference. For years I worked “designing” custom software systems for human organizations. While there is a significant element of randomness in the results, the “design” process is possible. For thousands of years, humans, through selective breeding, have “designed” new species of animals, trees, and plants. It is also possible to “design” landscape systems and, more importantly, complete self-sustaining agricultural systems, such as those proposed in Ernst Gotsch’s Syntropic Agriculture:
https://agendagotsch.com/en/
An example, also, of this type of “design” is the Miyawaki method for reforestation.
Cultures are systems, social systems, and as systems, they are subject to “design.” I put design in quotes because, as autopoietic systems (“organisms”), the designer ultimately makes a “proposal,” and the system will adjust it according to the complex reality they sustain. All political systems, to some extent, are cultural “design” proposals that self-organize as networks of dynamic conversations about intersubjective meaning. Religious systems are also dynamically organized in this way, and in their beginnings, like everything human, were ideas that emerged in conversation.
With apologies to the believers in this forum, if we review the Christian religion and its origins under the Roman Empire, it fulfills many elements of a “design” intervention in a complex system. An initially very simple, driving idea that emerges in a favorable, marginal environment, responding to the accepted mythology of “the Messiah,” and which, by making its way into a dynamic of meaningful conversations, becomes dominant, thereby replacing all previously existing religious conversations. That’s what happened to the set of religious conversations of the Roman Empire, which were displaced in three centuries by this “design” intervention originating in Judea.
I refer to Christianity and the Roman Empire because it’s possible that the presence of early Christianity helped mitigate the undesirable consequences—let’s call them genocidal massacres—which, as you rightly say, are historically present in civilizational collapses. In the same way, the later adoption of Christianity helped the Nordic peoples calm internal violence.
For those of us who have embraced atheism as a state subsequent to our Christian belief, where “truth,” “faith,” or “God” do not exist, this process of how a marginal idea becomes dominant is fascinating.
Now, regarding non-violent cultures, the example I can give is the Ancestral Mapuche Culture, a prehistoric inhabitant of central Chile, where historically there is no evidence of violence or genocidal massacres before the arrival of the Spanish. The Mapuche occupied a territory equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom, and upon the arrival of the Spanish, they had a level of development similar to the rural regions of Spain, as Pedro de Valdivia describes upon his arrival in the Angol Valley. Furthermore, they had a unified culture, language, and customs that extended over more than a thousand kilometers of territory, with highly developed justice, medicine, communications, and religious systems. It is also interesting to be able to observe the cultural difference since, when facing the violence (of genocidal extermination) of The Mapuche, after the Spanish, developed an expression, a battle cry, that allowed them to ward off their own violence whenever they murdered a Spanish soldier. They shouted: “inche kay che,” which can be translated as “I, the person, remain.” The expression “che” is very complex in the language of the ancient Mapuche and refers to four dimensions that are central to the culture’s worldview and that come together in the individual. That is, the warrior who committed this act of murder did not lose his status as “che” despite the barbarity of the act.
I believe that this expression, and the entire great systemic Mapuche worldview, denote a culture that does not correspond to the dominant Western cultural pattern and that, therefore, this dominant cultural pattern, which leads to genocidal massacres at some point in history, can be changed, as Christianity attempted, for example, at the time.
Now, it was a culture in an isolated and very abundant ecological niche, but after the arrival of The Spanish managed to find the formula to preserve it (according to my hypothesis, the expression “inche kay che”), until the genocidal wave of the 19th century reduced them. But it didn’t completely defeat them; since the end of the 20th century, they have been undergoing a strong process of cultural reconstruction.
Mary Bennet #332, it’s very interesting to have access to the Todd substack.
The whole idea of “tradwives” seem to have triggered this lively discussion on whether the phenomenon is actually real, and if so, whether it’s more appropriate for modern women than other possible options. I honestly have nothing to say about tradwives per se, being neither (particularly) trad or a wife – perhaps the “traddest” thing about my marriage is that I married the girl next door.
I do note that the controversy about this topic reminds me of another controversial topic which I do participant in: homeschooling. What you hear about homeschooling in the mainstream discussion is promoters showing well-dressed kids winning academic and sports awards all over the place while avoiding academically and/or morally harmful curriculum fads; meanwhile the detractors show a bunch of kids raised by hippies and/or religious fundamentalists that are weirdly dressed, socially maladjusted, and generally have no idea how the world works.
Both sides of this controversy, at least as shown in the mainstream, are almost completely fake. Yeah, there are good examples and bad examples, but this goes for literally anything in life. But my experience is that the main draw of homeschooling for us and my fellow homeschoolers is very straightforward, pragmatic, and almost completely mundane: it’s simply the most efficient way to do school. By efficient, I mean, our average school day is probably no longer than 2-3 hours total, and what I mean by that is that we are done with ALL the assigned work. In the past two years, we even finished our assigned curriculum 4-6 weeks in advance, *including* an enforced week-long school break for an out-of-town family vacation. And, obviously, I don’t have to do a school run, attend PTA meetings, or do anything of the sort. The kids are turning out just fine, they are *at least* as knowledgeable in academics and just as well-socialized as their peers who are attending “regular” school.
Speaking of socialization, that’s the one thing that non-homeschoolers keep bringing up to me, but it’s a complete non-issue, not to mention that you can be just as easily mal-socialized in a regular school. One thing I’ve observed is that when we do homeschool meet-ups, all the kids tend to be friendly and sociable with one another, it’s the parents (who almost all attended “regular” schools) that are aloof and awkward towards each other!
Of course, my religious fundamentalist homeschooler friends do also care about rebelling against The Man and avoiding corporatist or woke propaganda in the classroom or whatever; but in our actual discussions with each other, it’s kind of a side benefit to the whole thing. For the most part, they’re just tired of doing (as a homeschooling Protestant pastor friend puts it) “school for the sake of school”.
So what’s my point rambling about homeschooling? Well, as with the tradwife phenomenon, yes, all the social media posts and mainstream media opinion pieces about it are totally contrived and fake. But there are people who are really out there doing it, and they’re probably just enjoying their lives having found a good arrangement that works just fine for them.
Sometimes I feel as if I not only come from a completely different time, but possibly a completely different planet. It’s possible that the comment I am about to make is so out of date that it is currently unworkable, or so obvious that no one has bothered to mention it. Most of the successful marriages I know, including my parents, came from a heterarchy (to keep with the current theme) of male and female friends who formed a friendship group. The group usually formed around some activity, rollerskating when my parents got together. cooking Italian food for my college friends, but it could be anything you enjoy. The point is to have fun, to make deep friendships with people of the opposite sex without sexual pressures and expectations. Here you can relax and be yourself, you can develop friendships that expand your understanding of others while becoming known as a person and not a rating in an online fantasy scale. New people, friends of friends, will enter the group, sometimes because your friends think you might really hit it off, but it will be casual and low key. Eventually pair bonds will form naturally from the friendships that develop. These will not be the “just friends” status you get sitting in hope of a sexual relationship while the other person whines, but actual friendships developed over time that “catch fire” into something more.
Mary, yes, but the men aren’t looking for friends. They’re looking for lovers and, in many cases, for wives. If you were out of work and went looking for a job, and all the businesses you approached said, “Sorry, we’re not hiring, but we’d love to have you as a customer,” I suspect you’d get a little miffed…
J.L.Mc12, that’s pretty much always what happens to cultures who lose the habit of effective violence: they get exterminated or enslaved. It’s purely a matter of when.
Celadon, that’s quite possible.
Chris, thanks for this. Gas shortages are canaries in the mine; I’d encourage everyone to get ready for the next energy shock.
Gustavo, it’s highly amusing to hear an atheist like yourself defending what amounts to intelligent design, while a theist like me is arguing for evolutionary processes in which attempts at design are nothing more than raw material for a stochastic process which is neither subject to our wills nor answerable to our preferences! Christianity in Roman times was anything but a marginal idea; whatever may or may not have been taught by the obscure Jewish rabbi from Galilee who set the whole thing in motion, his legacy was massively revised by Saul of Tarsus and his successors to make it fit the familiar metaphors of eastern Mediterranean dying and risen gods, and then revised again at the Council of Nicaea under the patronage of Constantine to make it an ideology of imperial power–after which it promply blew up in the faces of its notional masters, drove bitter sectarian warfare that fatally weakened the Empire, and also crippled the imperial state by encouraging so many gifted people to abandon political life and flee to monasteries instead. As design (or “design,” whatever you mean by those scare quotes), it was a flop.
As for the Mapuche, um, your version of their history contradicts easily accessible facts. You apparently don’t know, for example, that they fought pitched battles against the Inca. Here’s Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s image of the struggle:
(The Mapuche are the fierce spearmen on the left.)
Diego de Almagro, the first Spaniard to encounter the Mapuche in 1536, found them heavily armed with bows and pikes, which doesn’t exactly support your thesis that they didn’t practice violence until then! Once again, the ample supply of rose-colored glasses makes it easy to see what you want to see. Even if you were right, though, that history would be equivalent to that of the Moriori, which J.L.Mc12 mentioned in comment #333: they pursued an unrealistically pacifist approach to life, and so were enslaved and slaughtered when people with different ideas came on the scene. Is that really the future you want to see? It’s even more likely that you’ll get it in dark age conditions, you know, when warbands — highly mobile and skilled at violence — spread throughout the former civilization and its penumbra. The penumbra of our civilization, remember, includes the whole planet…
Chistia, that’s how I met my first wife, too — but it’s very uncommon now. There’s a running joke among guys these days that the most impressive miracle of Jesus was that he reached the age of 33 and still had twelve friends.
JMG #284
Yep, Sherlock Holmes geek here. Over the years, I somehow missed that you like Sherlock Holmes.
Thanks for the lead for the tarot deck themed Sherlock Holmes. However, I will wait for a “Used – Very Good” or “New” deck at a reasonable price — they are going for over a hundred dollars. Nah uhh. [Who would have thought?]
Fifty years ago, the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle got me through two dreadful years of college. That book, an anthology, I had packed away for decades which I just came across: my handwritten notes indicate I read some of the stories over five times. Besides a couple hand-block printed fabrics from India, the book survived all this time.
Within the last few months, I discovered Sherlock Holmes pastiches. There seem to be tens of thousands of writers writing pastiches. I am overjoyed‼️
Sherlock Holmes — this time around, the pastiches — are so entertaining and distracting that they are doing a lot getting me through this very rough couple of years of personal and emotional tumult, as well as passing through the political and economic turmoil we see around us. Sherlock Holmes stories settle my nerves. Meditation only goes so far.
I was surprised that Arthur Conan Doyle has no direct descendants. Only his siblings had kids; he had five children, but none of them had children.
Gotta keep one’s spirit up any way one can. No Debbie Downer am I.
💨📚🔎💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
@ Clay
> until I had the opportunity to woe her with my charming personality.
Been there, done that, over and over. Still single, obviously.
Re warlike societies: Tit for tat, where a player starts by cooperating and then mirrors the opponent’s previous move, is generally the best strategy in game theory. So tribes living at peace would continue at peace until one of them breaks the arrangement and attacks, then it’s war until they agree a truce.
Of course, that presupposes the tribes are roughly equal in power. If one is overwhelmingly powerful, that’s a different situation.
I have a female friend (59 year old art dealer) — we do unpaid work for the same historical association — who has a lot a elderly unmarried female friends, and a talent for introducing them to prospective companions or husbands.
I am a happily married man, but, Heavens forbid, if some catastrophe happened and all of a sudden I found myself alone, I would ask her to indroduce me to one of her female friends. If only because when you live alone, you may have a heart attack or a stroke and die if you can’t telephone for help, which is what happened to my mother.
There are not enough women like the female art dealer in our society. Also, not enough people who join clubs or associations where they can make friends with people. Not necessarily with their future companion, but with people who have a natural talent for matchmaking.
@ Karalan #316
” In every arena where male and female interests conflict, women win.” The obvious answer here is to ensure that there are few arenas in which male and female interests conflict… 🙂 Either that, or kill all the women. 😉
If it interests you, the book of Ivan Illich’s that got him cancelled – “Gender” – is a fascinating examination of all of the ways in which different societies have achieved this by assigning different spheres of power and influence by gender, and also, by ensuring that it remains in the interest of members of both spheres to support (and be supported by) the powers and influences of the other. It might be of interest to you.
You can read this book online at the anarchist library… https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ivan-illich-gender
Be well, stay free!
Hillside Herder 335
> We need more social spaces where men can be with only men and women can be with only women.
Exactly! I date the downfall of society here from the mid-1970s when formerly men-only pubs were opened to women. There were always ladies’ bars and other such places where men and women could mix, so why women wanted entry to our pubs I do not know. My theory is that women are jealous of men who are having a good time. It is female FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that is responsible.
> Women spent time in camp chatting and needed verbal skills to do well.
Talking in a group is a competitive sport for women. I noticed this when working in a mostly-female volunteer organization. She who can talk the longest is the winner. But she is in competition with the others who are very adroit at breaking in smoothly and diverting the flow of conversation their way. A mere male like me has absolutely no chance of saying anything past a couple of words.
>Speaking of socialization
Like the meme says “I have seen the village and I don’t want it raising my kid”
Hi JMG,
Thank you for this week article. I enjoy reading the difference between formal and informal powers.
It is obviously painful to be on the receiving end of power abuse. However, Is there any consequence for people who abuse power ?
And could a soul stay away from power abuse both as a victim and an aggressor ?
Thank you
@Chistia, Walt and others who have mentioned friends groups with shared interests: When I was singing in the university choir, it was a joke around there that nobody (or rather, no man) quit the choir until he had found a girlfriend. That was actually not true for me because I moved away, but there were good reasons for the joke. Choir leaders need to maintain some kind of healthy ratio between the numbers of men and women singers; singing is a collective act and, when done well, creates harmony; there is the collective effort and then satisfaction after a concert; there may be week end retreats, and so on.
I must admit I found my wife through online dating, but that was before the era of swiping. I signed up on a (literally) rainy day when there was nothing to do, just as a pastime, I found her that same day, insisted on meeting her that same day, and we more or less abandoned online dating soon after (simplifying a bit).
Viduraawakened counted the advantages of traditional marriage bureaus as humans vs. AI. While that is true from singles’ point of view, it is also true that dating apps want to keep their customers, not lose them as fast as they did me. So keeping their customers in a loop of insatisfaction counts as a victory for AI, in their books.
Article is paywalled, but I managed to get a full copy from the archive.today site: https://archive.is/2025.08.03-071154/https://www.thefp.com/p/now-women-are-complaining-about-mankeeping
Just as the men don’t find girlbosses appealing, the women don’t seem to find talkative, sensitive men very appealing either.
Hi John Michael,
🙂 You have such a wonderful readership. I get the impression that somehow we’ve begun to workshop your dating life, and what a great idea it is. I’m being serious. This forum is your natural element and environment where you shine, so why not use it to your advantage rather than diving into online dating – just like everyone else seems to be doing? There’s an edge for you right there.
As an autist, I believe you may be unable to see or read ‘indications of interest’ from potential partners, so perhaps a more blunt and honest approach may suit you? Obviously there are some bad eggs out there, but you’ve said something or other years ago about brains, geese, deities etc…
If I may speak frankly with you, you’re over thinking the entire matter and not playing to your natural strengths.
Man, you should so do a blog about this entire issue and open the conversation wide up. You may just learn some stuff. And who knows where it may lead? It’s your hunting ground.
Cheers
Chris
I once worked at a private school on a 1000 acre mountain property. When I took students on a hike the girls would walk in groups talking, The boys would be a scrum around them darting up the hillsides, grabbing sticks and hitting trees and play fighting and throwing rocks and rolling small boulders into ravines.
I have always thought that women are much more open to a wider range of looks in men, then men are to women ! Now, if your first idea of a person is only a photo, then of course what else are they to go on ? And maybe even in real life these days this has changed.
I agree that in real life social situations are what works with this. Dinner parties, small house parties, blind dates. Do they do blind dates any more ? I would when I was younger, the logic being that if your friend knows and has suggested the man, at least you know he is safe. And it is one evening, one dinner. No risk in this at all. I remember one blind date, my friend worked as a secretary at a company and knew the man. I had never seen him until I opened my front door. It was actually a bit startling, as he was certainly not blessed with looks. Part way thru dinner, or our first meeting may have been coffee, I didnt notice how he looked at all, I found him charming and interesting and we went out for a time. Character traits, chemistry, etc… are much more important than height or looks.
Young people need to mingle more in person and talk to each other, or do activities together. Then they will see who “clicks”.
I do have adult children, the youngest being mid twenties, the other 2 mid thirties, and they met their mates thru real life circumstances. I see other young women friends of theirs talking about boys etc… over the years, and I have to say that not all young women are shallow like the internet would lead you to believe.
@Scotlyn #352
Thanks for the link.
@ Northwind Grandma #349
“Within the last few months, I discovered Sherlock Holmes pastiches. There seem to be tens of thousands of writers writing pastiches. I am overjoyed‼️”
I don’t know if you’re aware of this but Bill and I published multiple volumes of Vintage Sherlock Holmes pastiches. We named them the 223B Casebook series because they take place next door to 221B Baker Street.
We begin at 1888, with the first known parody and end in 1930, when Conan Doyle died. Victorian covers 1888 through 1900. After that, each volume covers five years because the floodgates opened. In addition, we’ve got the only collection of James Thurber’s Sherlock parodies. Bill wrote a series of Mark Twain/Sherlock Holmes stories himself that fit into Twain’s real life AND fit into the Sherlock Canon, a “Best of” collection. Punch covers everything related to Conan Doyle that Punch magazine printed between 1888 and 1930. The upcoming book will be the complete Sherlock parodies by John Kendrick Bangs (1862 – 1922). Expect that one by … Christmas. I hope.
Quality of vintage pastiches and parodies vary wildly. Plots are all over the map. Many stories are written by anonymous, others by small town writers, still others by name writers who are now forgotten, and still others by names you recognize. Bill found many of the stories (deep dives into newspaper archives) and republished them for the first time. Extensive footnotes explain what you’re reading.
Here’s our page if you want to learn more: https://peschelpress.com/the-223b-casebook-series/ and https://peschelpress.com/mark-twain-sherlock-holmes/
If you like what you see, you can order our books from your local bookshop (they’ll get a cut), the Evil Empire, or directly from us.
@ Northwind Grandma #349
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) had five children. Two were with wife #1, including Kingsley. IIRC, Kingsley died of influenza at the tail end of the Great War. This destroyed Conan Doyle emotionally and led directly to his deep dive into spiritualism. He had three more children with wife #2. Marriage to wife #2, Jean Leckie, led to serious dissension as he’d been having an extremely discreet, probably non-physical affair with her while wife #1, Louise, was slowly dying by inches of tuberculosis. Bill would know the details as would any decent Conan Doyle biography.
I am unsure if any of those five children had children. It’s possible that Mary, daughter with wife #1, did.
@Chris #358 and JMG, I think what Chris said almost goes without saying, and I think Erika has already said it pretty directly in a previous thread.
I can speak from experience! In my early 20s I found myself unexpectedly in possession of a “hunting ground.” In my case, it was a regional community of (eventually) several hundred hobbyists, with men and women roughly equally represented, that formed to organize and participate in a particular type of LARP game I had pioneered. All of the dating I’ve ever done in my life happened within that milieu. (Who but a virgin would have been dreaming up LARP formats in the early 1980s?)
I ended up with (am still with) the woman whose challenging questions had led me to experiment with the game style in the first place. Which doesn’t contradict what I said, because she also became deeply involved and well known in that community, and while it might appear that we could have skipped directly to such a “foregone” conclusion, we both needed the experiences in between to get there.
Erika note: LARP = Live Action Role Playing
On the other hand, I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be intensely curious about the results of our arch-Ecosophian, after fortifying himself and his intentions with the wisest and most ethical of magic, taking the leap into a modern dating site.
JMG
I know this is very late to ask a question, but might not some of the dysfunction, confusion and unhappiness we are seeing around dating, roles, methods of influence, etc have a karmic cause. It seems that as we are approaching the end of an era and starting a decline, we may well be learning lessons we have created from past lives. You know far more than I do about that, but it seems curious that it has not been mentioned in this discussion.
My dating days are far behind me and we may well be in a totally new world, but all the relationships I was in started with activities I was already involved in: hiking, skydiving, college course,gardening, travel, or the ensuring socializing from those. I am not suggesting someone take up skydiving to meet girls, but if you are doing something you love anyhow, at least you are still having fun whether or not you meet someone
Here’s another example similar to the church ladies theme: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/schoolmarmocracy
Eugyppius is a blogger who writes about Germany. At the recommendation of another Ecosophia reader 😊, I listened to a conversation between Eugyppius and Kunstler where Eugyppius talks about the power of schoolmarms in Germany.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kunstlercast-427-eugyppius-on-the-retardation-of/id273772632?i=1000719141968
The discussion of men not wanting to be friends makes me realize that I haven’t heard about the “friendzone” in some years now. I think that was the result of some very dysfunctional scripts young men got from television and movies, especially the teen comedies that were popular for a while in the 90’s and 00’s, where the hero proves his loyalty to the girl he likes by being by her side as she careens from one overbearing jerk to another, only to finally realize the real love she had waiting patiently for her the whole time.
That is, of course, not how this works at all, but when you’re young and romantically inexperienced and this is the message you see over and over again, it’s hard to avoid absorbing it. Especially when it came as part of a mental binary: you could be the entitled jerk who bullied women into having sex with you but ultimately ended up alone and miserable when the girl finally left you, or you could be the patient and loyal good guy who proved his worth and got the girl in the end and lived happily ever after.
Instead of having someone politely but firmly explain to us that this was dumb and help us out of the mental binary we were trapped in, we got a very rude awakening in the 2010’s when suddenly believing in that narrative and complaining when it didn’t work made you a Nice Guy who felt entitled to sex and so you were basically no better than a rapist. (I know this sounds crazy but that’s really how unhinged online culture was in the mid-2010’s.)
I suppose it’s small comfort that at the very least that particular script seems to be dead and buried now.
I feel i need to respond to this written by shinjuki:
“Nature has a word for this and that is FAILURE. Whether you are a MGTOW or a cat lady, it applies just the same.
It’s cold to say, but I believe that those who have failed to such a degree as the aforementioned should shut their mouth completely on the topic and live a quieter life. Clearly whatever they did and believed – now and currently! – was insufficient and wrong, and we can see this by its result. What can they possibly provide to the next generation except a cautionary tale?’
Well as one of those FAILURES let me answer that question.
Who makes for a better teacher…. the person with natural talent who never struggled with the material, or the person who struggled and failed at times but kept going?
You gave good advice about not being a whinner about the situation and trying new approaches if what you are doing isn’t working. And i am genuinely happy that you found a way to overcome your difficulties and become a good wife and mother.
But here is the thing that you might not appreciate: Although your behavior was integral in the success you have achieved, that success required things to happen that were completely beyond your ability to control. Your actions can destroy someone’s love for you, your actions can make it easier for someone to love you, but there is nothing you can do to make someone love you. It doesn’t matter how good of a person you are, it doesn’t matter how much you love them, it doesn’t matter that they would be better off with you. If that feeling is not there (and it is not a rational decision) it is not there.
Maybe this FAILURE can help you see the incredible gift you have received?
>The discussion of men not wanting to be friends makes me realize that I haven’t heard about the “friendzone” in some years now
It’s called “simping” these days. All those old ideas are still there, but some slicing and dicing has been done on them. And women have an analogue these days – “situationship”. Things have gotten rather complicated – and dysctional. All the “fun” has been taken out of it.
to the commentariat:
the other reason i’m helping with Adocentyn Next Year is because most people like us here are too different for the normies who’re online dating. they have absolutely NO CONTEXT for running into people like myself or John Michael Greer.
magical people seem to meet in magical ways, which takes a lot of real-life work like setting up and showing up at Adocentyn.
(smile)
maybe this is what Walt is talking about??? ever since i was a kid my best friend and i would create little opportunities or dramas to run into our crushes and make us look really good. i’m doing the same here.
speaking of which:
WALT– tell me more about why you sent a LARPing note to me! i wanna know! i don’t know what i’d already mentioned in an earlier thread so i’m not following you and very much want to.
e
Northwind, er, several of the decks in the link I sent to you were for sale for under $40. As for Holmes, good heavens, yes — I started reading the stories when I was eight.
Horzabky, I wish I knew your art dealer friend!
Foxhands, the abuser benefits in a range of ways, materially and psychologically. There are certainly karmic consequences, but whether there’s any consequence in this life depends on how other people respond to abusive behavior. If the society’s strong, they shun the abuser and make decisions that penalize such actions; if the society’s weak, as ours is, not much happens. As for avoiding taking part in abuse, it may be theoretically possible, but my sense is that most people who defend themselves effectively against abuse without becoming abusers have learned the hard way in previous lives that that’s the only good option.
Carlos, I wonder how many of the women who complain about “mankeeping” expect the men in their lives to cater to their emotional needs…
Chris, I’ve thought about that, but there’s always the question of whether using my online presence as a way to arrange a second marriage would be smart, as you suggest, or simply one more way for a middle-aged widower to humiliate himself in public — not that there’s a shortage of those! Still, I’ll consider it — and ask other readers to comment one way or another.
Walt, hmm. So noted.
Stephen, one problem there is that these days, the activities I enjoy most — ceremonial magic, occultism, esoteric lodge work, etc. — primarily attract men, not women. I was at a meeting of an esoteric order the other weekend; the attendance was better than 90% male, and most of the women there were already married to other members. One of the disjunctions in our society these days is that women who are interested in alternative spirituality gravitate toward Neopagan goddess worshipping groups, while men with similar interests have mostly been chased out of those groups and so gravitate toward old-fashioned occult lodges. I don’t like skydiving, btw.
Angelica, thanks for this.
Slithy, oh, it still exists. It’s just much rarer than it used to be, because most guys figured out that “let’s just be friends” was one more way they were being exploited.
Erika, here’s hoping!
@erika #371, oops! I’m sorry, I mislabeled that remark completely. I only intended to be sensitive to complaints from previous threads about undefined acronyms, but those weren’t your complaints. It should have read “Northwind note…”
However, Freudian serendipity time… there is indeed something to be said for creative dramatic liminal spaces where some normal rules and/or identities are suspended and/or replaced. (The type of LARP events I ran turned out to be strong-marriage machines, not just for me but for dozens of other participants. Arguably, magical people meeting in magical ways, keeping our host’s preferred definition of magic in mind.) I often see glimpses of common ground in our respective experiences, as radically different as they’ve been. Any applicability to Adocentyn? I’ll have to put some thought into that.
The comments this week have the most direct personal pain and frustration I have ever read here. Blessings to all.
>I don’t like skydiving, btw
I’ve seen the ambulance scrape too many people off the grass from a botched landing. Also the weather that some of those people tolerate, might as well be IFR at times. Yeah, I’m not enthusiastic about it either.
>I’ve thought about that, but there’s always the question of whether using my online presence as a way to arrange a second marriage would be smart, as you suggest, or simply one more way for a middle-aged widower to humiliate himself in public — not that there’s a shortage of those! Still, I’ll consider it — and ask other readers to comment one way or another.
I’d ask this question – “Would the internet make a good matchmaker and why?” Then again, maybe it’s best not to ask questions you don’t want the answer to.
Hi John Michael,
Yeah, every relationship involves risk, sorry to say.
Sorry to bang-on about gas, but… Solstice Energy to cut gas supply to 10 regional Victorian towns. Whoa! Nothing happens, then a lot does. 🙂 Some of those towns are within an hours drive north (and further inland) of here.
You said long ago that connections would be removed on a last-in first-out basis, and that’s how it looks to me.
Cheers
Chris
NORTHWIND GRANDMA–
why are knits going out first???
and please links to tailoring stuff!
thanks
erika
Jessica, it’s a subject that has gathered a lot of that — and of course it’s not something that can be talked about at all in most contexts.
Other Owen, granted, but it’s not that. I don’t enjoy risk. I know lots of people do, but I don’t. Gambling bores me — it has all the charm of standing in the bathroom flushing dollar bills one at a time down the toilet. Thrill sports like skydiving? I can see doing something like that as will training, but I find them actively unpleasant — the rush that some people get from them misses me completely. As for the internet as matchmaker, we’re not talking about the internet. We’re talking about this very odd little community, which constantly flings down the usual rules of the internet and dances on them with hobnailed boots. (It’s not a graceful dance, but it’s enthusiastic!)
Chris, yes, and that’s why I’m trying to get a sense of the balance between risk and reward — I’m not good at that, you know. As for the gas cutbacks, whee — here we go!
JMG. What a good description of Christianity, I laughed out loud.
Now, if we review the New Testament, its main focus is on reducing violence. It cannot be denied that “turning the other cheek” is the antithesis of “an eye for an eye.” And in that sense, it probably helped reduce violence in the Dark Ages and, most certainly, that of the Nordic tribes later on. If we compare these hypothetical results with what is expressed in the scriptures, I would say there is some success. The self-destruction of the Roman Empire was inevitable, and clearly, the scriptures were not oriented toward its preservation. The keen political vision of the Roman Empire ultimately does not exempt it from its fate.
The (design) I propose is an attempt to intervene in a dynamic system closed to information. My years of work as a Systems Engineer in corporations led me to realize that engineering design wasn’t possible, and that we could only do it (design) with luck. That put me on the path to Autopoiesis Theory.
I have the impression it’s equivalent to how you define magic.
The Mapuche defended their territory and became very skilled at it after the 100-year war with the Spanish Empire, but they weren’t essentially warriors. The “war” with the Inca Empire was the battle you describe, and it was primarily symbolic: lots of costumes, colors, shouts, a couple of skirmishes, a few deaths, and that’s it, not much more. Remember that the Inca Empire’s army was smoke and mirrors and fell in the first battle with the Spanish, that of Cajamarca, where 20,000 Incas were defeated by 160 Spaniards.
The Almagro conflict occurred after the Mapuche encountered the Inca Empire, so they were already prepared, but for a symbolic war. The ensuing war, which lasted 100 years, transformed the capabilities and tactics of the Mapuche people to the point that they were the only Native American people with whom the Spanish Empire signed a peace treaty in 1643. Much of their “indomitable” spirit is described in the epic poem “La Araucana” by Alonso de Ercilla.
But the Mapuche worldview is far from warlike. They are governed by “Itrofill Mongen,” a principle that translates as “all life without exception” and refers to the respect and care of all forms of life, recognizing their interdependence. This is in order to achieve “Küme Mongen,” which translates as “good living” or “life in fullness,” which refers to a state of harmony and balance with nature, with other beings, and with oneself, both individually and collectively. Hence the importance of articulating “Inche Kay Che” in order to preserve “Itrofill mongen” as “Küme mongen” in a situation, war, that required overriding those principles.
From my perspective, it’s a valuable worldview and well worth attempting (designing) from it. That’s what I’m working on. The conditions for meaning seem to be there, that’s why I’m talking to you; magic is necessary.
As to the gas/LPG problems near Chris. Converting from natural gas to LPG (propane) is quite simple. I had gas appliances at a previous house and the furnace, stove, and water heater all had the propane jets and orifices in a little bag attached to the appliances.
Swap the parts and fine tune the airflow to the burner and you should be done. Outside (at least in the US) they just bring in a bulk tank.
https://www.ferrellgas.com/tank-talk/blog-articles/understanding-the-various-propane-tank-sizes/
One of my neighbors has a 120 gallon tank just for the stove as she likes cooking with gas. The rest of the large house and shop has a 400 amp service so it’s not like there was a limit there.
YES YOU ALL! there is a secret level that many of you don’t even RECOGNIZE in plain sight, regarding what Papa G said about THIS community being where he is putting out for Love. / i have always not only made up little scenarios so that i may run into someone (i often fail but the PRACTICE keeps you prepared), i do it for OTHERS. my best friend and i ever since we were young like i was 9 and she was 11 i think. and we’d hear about someone having a crush on someone and we’d go to WORK.
it was creative FUN. directing real life a bit. that means you have to be observant.
it’s a creative form of the community gets us together but also keeps us together. secrets hiding in plain sight, right HERE!
internet dating for Papa G would be absolutely insane. that’d be a COMEDY. very funny.
anyhow, you boys complaining about reality, it may very well be TRUE, but as James Baldwin even said of The Black Man… all that horrid stuff may be true but at the end of the day what are you going to DO as a Black Man???
meaning: NO ONE CARES. talking about it may be interesting and make you (myself included) feel justified like we’re in a court of law but that’s the wrong BORING PARADIGM. no more binary crap. as soon as i hear it in myself i know i’m weak wrong and have nothing to teach because i’m in the same binary paradigm where there can be no answer only pendulous swinging.
yaaawn.
so now that white men are the new nigras you might wanna go over your complaints/arguments with the likes of Baldwin to see ask where you’re gonna GO with this.
i’m not blaming, i’m challenging. because yeah you could be right but until you have an INTERESTING PLAN… (shrug)…? life goes on no one cares. look at what happened with covid and NOW. we’re all food.
what now macgyver? i believe there are always ways out, even if you have to lower your expectations regarding a house in the country to the comfort of drooling insanity.
i’m glad Papa’s going vulnerable and dancing with this because look at all that’s GROWING because of his wish. and so many people will benefit and it could be a powerful creative force all this talking collaborating sharing laughing LOVING.
i said my goal for the rest of my life was to exalt James by chaperoning so that others are shepherded past the WOWNESS of …The Other…
i’m 70s stay at home mom at the school that i took for granted while my mom always missed my civic center plays.
i’m not COMPLAINING. i now see how frenetic sad and unloved and imperfect my own feministy mother was and still is. it’s SAD.
and now i feel all the hell was training for NOW. for pow! pow! deflecting MKUltra crap because i’ve already been insane self hating confused about realities class all this b.s. …i’m totally here for now. i’m waaaaay out of my depths but it’s not about me. it’s about a cypher it’s about Papa putting out “yeah! i wanna love!” and it’s FUN to be a part of that!
Camille Paglia also didn’t know about THIS. and Peter and Jim blew life onto this as well. Scotlyn’s right. there’s nothing left to do with Adocentyn. it’s now taking on a life of its own.
i have NO IDEAS how to really organize. i don’t want to control and i’m not a debater and i’m not gonna be some smack down philosopher without an S in my name, but i wanna WATCH! i wanna use my powers of reading people and accidentally crash them into each other.
also, some of you shy over-intellectualizing people here, don’t sit on your hands too long. things are happening decades faster than i figured. i get vertigo. need a break. some will want to sit back and WATCH and WAIT… nah… it’s not like that. that’s like making stone soup on CREDIT. doesn’t CAN’T work. then you’ve only got the stone and insanity telling you yum the steak is good.
no more.
if someone is quiet feeling overlooked needs/wants some nudging or introducing i want to make it so you feel easy and excited to tell me so we can create a SCENARIO we can set up and a bunch of us can help you shine and swagger.
don’t expect to show up and skulk away from not finding LOVE. it may take a few years for some minutes or decades and maybe other relationships will lead to other adventures and love or place…
the magic is in the ADVENTURE and not knowing.
you can’t complain. that’s two opposite sides of the brain like editing and writing.
we’re casting a most very important spell that may help aid the future of America and other places. butterfly wings flapping… i believe. the minds here have helped me run alongside current events breathing heavily into a paper bag.
learn to court the woozy feeling of doing something completely different vulnerable and scary.
yes! it’ll likely start with most men but good ideas will come out and women will be on the perifery watching as we are wont to do and …. SOMETHING’s going to happen. i don’t know when but it’s too good and interesting.
and then the people who were there when it was small and funky will hate the attention and call it gentrified and you can never make people happy! it’ll be a grand problem to have, i say.
but i’ll have a light to no-touch i’m just showing up and seeing what people want and how to do it. i’m personally hoping for live debates discussions… SOMEHOW. Papa G talking then audience responding LIKE THE COMMENTS.
it organizes ITSELF.
but i see many periferal ancillary ideas will riff off these moments. whether it’s social civil farming small societies trade barter collaborations beautiful…
I SEE IT.
i wanna be there at the beginning. it’s a miracle already.
good people. there are seriously very good people here. even the axxholes get converted. it’s a beautiful thing.
erika
Gustavo Donoso,
As I often remind people who talk about “an eye for an eye” it was intended to reduce violence. It is metaphorical but means that if someone pinches one of your cows you are only entitled to the value of that cow in recompense. You cannot whip over to the neighbour’s and burn his house and take his whole herd. As happens so often people look at something, wrap it in their own beliefs and serve it up. I am a Christian but believe that the Old Testament was written specifically for the Jewish people and not for me. It is interesting and, in many ways, instructive but not written for me. It has many layers of meaning and I neither understand nor appreciate it properly.
Jessica, thank you for the blessings! The post of this week, which is formally about patriarchy and matriarchy, shows in the comment section indeed and, partly, instead of it, how dysfunctional Western society has become in gender relations, among other things. It will be interesting, and probably a colorful show, how all this pans out in the decades and centuries to come.
Gustavo, no, I’m not going to help you figure out how to use magic to impose your ideological head trip on other people. I don’t claim to be any kind of moral paragon but I have more ethics than that. I’ve tried to explain to you that the path you’re walking leads inevitably to blood and horror, but you can’t or won’t hear that. So all I can do for you at this point is wish you well, send you on your way, and hope that you don’t succeed in dragging other people down with you.
Siliconguy, and as more and more people do that, what will happen to the price and availability of propane?
Erika, thanks for this. Exactly; everybody’s got their problems, and at the end of the day each of us have to walk our own road. That’s how real change happens — and yes, it’s happening.
JMG,
I don’t want to be discouraging, but since you seem open to the opinion of the commentariat—
In your shoes, I would be wary of using this forum as a marriage market. I suspect that you will have issues with projection of an unhelpful kind, which would be tempered to some degree by meeting women in person. But I am no expert—I thank the gods regularly for my husband, largely because I suspect I wouldn’t have found him without divine assistance!
JMG, what kind of “real change” do you think is happening? Where is it happening, here in the USA or other places? I do see other countries freeing themselves from US and European exploitation, but I am afraid I am not seeing much cause for optimism here. My granddaughter, an attractive 22 year old, told me she is not dating, prefers to be celibate–her word, unprompted by me, because she simply can’t see a way to support and raise a child in the present circumstances. Those circumstances including full time employment with plenty of overtime, which she never turns down, and still only just barely being able to support herself, let alone someone else.
JMG et al
I was not seriously suggesting that anyone take up skydiving. Perhaps I should have left it off the list. It was just something I had passion for in my 20s and where I met a couple of my romantic interests and many friends. I could say the same about the other activities I mentioned. My experience seems to be really out of date, no pun intended, as my daughter and her friends seem not to have had quite the same results. I do still seem to meet new friends this way though.
If an older man wants to meet women, I could certainly suggest the beach town where I live half the year in Mexico. In the over 70 age group there must be 3 or 4 women for every man.
The theme of not being able to afford a family and not trusting that it would work out for the non wage earner in a split is very prevelant in that generation, I think with good reason. even very committed couples with two incomes Rarely have more than two kids, and many have none. There is a recognition of these times, even if it is not discussed or recognized as openly or
in as much depth as in this forum.
Jessica
I agree with you that I have seldom seen as much personal grief and hurt expressed as in this discussion.
ChrisI
interesting about the gas situation in W. Vic. I am beginning to see somewhat the same situation with the roads here in Cali, though it isn’t officially acknowledged as such yet. The more remote, less crucial roads are not getting the level or speed of repair that the more crucial ones are. No one is saying it yet, but especially as energy and money decline, they will be left in worse and worse condition.
Stephen
I should have put the paragraph about my daughter’s generation and their feelings about families and relationships ahead of the one about the beach town. It made it a bit confusing what generation I was referring to.
Stephen
@Gustavo Donoso (#231, #295, #345, #380):
What place will there be in your “designed” world for the very many men who are biologically hard-wired to enjoy violence, in some cases even to revel in violence? There are such men, men for whom a fight in the street outside a bar, rolling around in the mud and the blood, is the greatest high they can ever know, more to be desired than the best imaginable sexual encounter. For some such men, such a fight can even be highly orgasmic. And in men generally, sex and violence are neurologically and hormonally linked. (A friend of mine tells me about one of his friends whose favorite Friday night activity has been to go down to the gate of the naval yard where the sailors are let out for leave, and pick fights right there with those sailors who are of the same disposition.)
I do not think that any world without a place for such men can be more than a blip in human history, enabled by isolating circumstances like those mentioned bv Deborah Bender (#302).
JMG, I realized my comment was ambiguous: I meant problems with people projecting onto you, rather than vice versa.
Oh, Erika… “making stone soup on CREDIT”… I love it! 🙂 🙂
Regarding the FP article about mankeeping, posted by Carlos M. #357:
I’m swiftly coming to the conclusion that the only sane response to anything the New York Times writes about the gender divide, is to plug my ears and shout “LA LA LA LA” until they go away.
One week the NYT features a story about women disgruntled because their husbands don’t vacuum enough. The next week there’s a piece by a former Playboy production manager, lamenting that men have withdrawn from dating culture, and she really wishes they would return and bring their entire messy selves (or some such therapy speak like that). This week the NYT claims that women are tired of hearing men talk about their feelings.
It’s insanity-inducing. The NYT offices need to be bulldozed into the ocean.
Now I know where that Frank Zappa album got it’s idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasels_Ripped_My_Flesh
i figure i wrote “Flaming Iguanas” just to find James in this incarnation.
love of a certain magnitude is epic.
so when someone here suggested Papa G keep his heart safe and private, i thought, “wow… people never learn.”
the SCARIEST thing to fight for is Love. even during covid many punked out, choosing to look cool instead. that blew my mind.
so it’s not just romance. even agape love takes a leap of innocence.
WHAT YOU’RE NOT GETTING
is that when Papa is all out and open and we all collude to create an epic love spell by building a SCENE, he is not weak or at ANYONE’s mercy! nah. in fact, the more honest and open he is, he is MOST PROTECTED. why? because in that state he is innocent but not stupid. he can feel, i can feel, WHAT DOESN’T FEEL GOOD.
everyone’s getting played because they are hobbled and crippled by their own illusions lies unexamined desires. they can be fooled and played easily because they’re stuck in some fantasy story. they’re not here. do not exist in their bodies and thus will not FEEL those intuitions.
so John Michael Greer is actually PROTECTED and cannot be properly played as he is.
i myself am protected by my sincerity. it makes liars squirmy and leave. and i have manipulated! but as Kimberly Steele admits about some old bad habits: “…but i don’t do that anymore.”
nor do i.
so those of you who “fear” for him, he’s showing the high diving act of trying to find love! it’s why when i wanted to do a tarot deck i would’ve made the magician a kissing couple falling off a cliff. or was it the fool? i’m not tarot savvy but i get archetypes and THE SCARIEST THING is to openly look for love instead of pretending or COMPLAINING.
you have to dare to make a world. YOUR world. no matter how small. i did it out of boredom necessity and wanting much more fun.
so WATCH Papa G! Behold someone daring to be HUMAN in public.
don’t foist your little fears on him. it’s why he doesn’t have to shlep off to a crappy job. this being different is a full time job.
x
On propane, its source is either the light end of petroleum or the heavy end of natural gas. Fracked natural gas is usually quite “wet” meaning a high fraction of propane and butane. Fracked oil is also relatively high in propane and butane. So the supply of LPG can be quite varied from country to country.
As to how much does one use, how cold does it get? If all you need is cooking fuel it’s not that much. If you are fighting a Wisconsin winter it’s quite a bit.
Having to upgrade the electrical service to your house is not cheap either. My electric stove is rated for 11 kw if everything is on for holiday cooking. The standard for a modest all electric house is a 200 amp service. The stove is on a 50 amp breaker, the dryer and hot water heater are 30 amp circuits, the heat pump is a 25 amp circuit, there are another four 20 amp circuits for the baseboard heaters that have to supplement or replace the heat pump if it gets too cold and I haven’t listed the 120V general lighting and appliance circuits.
In Australia do they even need heat beyond what a modest heat pump or space heater could provide? Solar hot water should also work. Cooking, and in particular an oven is the largest peak energy draw that comes to mind.
My limitation is that I’ve lived in climates where 5 months of the year are routinely below freezing and you can expect temperatures at -20 F fairly regularly. Even when I lived further south I was over 4000 ft in elevation so it was still cold. What it might take to deal with a less hostile climate is a good question. My summertime electric bill is 1/3 of my wintertime bill even with the irrigation pump running for a day a week.
Tad too much vino tonight. A dreamwidth sub like the covid that so very much helped me survive the police health stazi years? Oh hellya. New home Marina and a lot of flirting females messing with my head. This post and a lot of extremely smart comments. So yes John, open the door. I appreciate your reluctance for opsec reasons but I have picked up some excellent meditation as I survived a marriage with a borderline personality disorder. The bit about clan organizing a relationship vs my 50 years later grieving over a love that did not work out. Could have saved me a lot of pain.
> Thrill sports like skydiving? I can see doing something like that as will training, but I find them actively unpleasant — the rush that some people get from them misses me completely.
For many people a big part of it is that it puts them entirely in the present moment. It is difficult to think about the past or the future when you are falling earthwards at 120 miles per hour. It is a part of the reason some folks do drugs like LSD, by turning all senses up to 11 people can forget their immediate problems.
For most others however you don’t need to go to such extremes. A good music, sunset, good meal or just having general presence will do it just as well.
Robert M @ 390: I knew a guy in the Air Force who would deliberately go to rough bars in Denver and get in fights; the AF didn’t appreciate it. But it brings to mind the movie “Fight Club” to which I took an instant dislike, without knowing who the author of the novel was or anything about him. Now I know. The only things I liked about the movie were the Tom Waits song and the Pixies song.
This is right before the new topic, so few will see this, but this is more directed at JMG anyway. Attracting women won’t be the issue with you, and I’d say you wouldn’t need our help to scry and avoid the bad ones.
This was a good week in the comments section! Thank you everyone, for what you shared, and what you gave us to think about.
Regarding marriage and relationships: I have been extremely lucky in that I have been married for 36 years, and it has been a great experience. Not that it was smooth or trouble free. But the difficult times brought us closer together, because we valued each others strengths, and tried to ameliorate our weakness. Relationships are work, and you have to tend to each other on a common ground.
That said, I have no desire to repeat the work of getting to know someone on that level. The deep level of intimacy that two people can unlock in each other. I can’t say what the future will bring, so I don’t worry about it.
I just know that the human being is a complex creature, sometimes overly complex, but a little grace for others struggles goes a long ways.