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THE GARBAGE GENERATION :
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TWO-PARENT FAMILY AND THE NEED TO STABILIZE IT BY STRENGTHENING ITS WEAKEST LINK, THE FATHER'S ROLE
Daniel Amneus
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION: THE PATHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE-HEADED FAMILY....................................... II. THE ONCE AND FUTURE MATRIARCHY: THE STONE AGE, THE GHETTO,AND THE PROMISCUITY PRINCIPLE........ III. THE PATRIARCHAL SYSTEM: PUTTING SEX TO WORK....... IV. SLEEPING BEAUTY FEMINISM VS. SLAUGHTERED SAINTS FEMINISM................................... V. THE MUTILATED BEGGAR ARGUMENT.................... VI. THE CUSTODY TRAP................................. VII. THE GILDER FALLACY............................... VIII. THE WEITZMAN FALLACY............................. IX. HYPERGAMY........................................ X. OUR PAYCHECKS, OUR SELVES: WHY FATHERS MUST DEMAND CUSTODY............................. XI. THE HUMPHREY PRINCIPLE..........................
ANNEX TO CHAPTER I.............................. ADDITIONAL NOTE.................................
INTRODUCTION:
THE PATHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE-HEADED FAMILY
"Women," wrote Ramsey Clark in l970, in his celebrated book Crime in America, "are not a threat to the public."[1 But he also wrote, in discussing the male juvenile criminals who ]are a threat to the public, that "three-fourths came from broken homes."[2 That means mostly female-headed homes. That means that while the single mothers of these criminals do not themselves commit crimes and go to prison, the social]ization they give their children has an extraordinarily high correlation with the male crime of the next generation. This socialization, in fact, is the "root cause of crime" which Clark wrote his book to explore. He had found the explanation he sought and he didn't know it. It was concealed by the generation-long time-lag between cause and effect and by the sex-switch between generations: like hemophilia, crime is manifested in males but carried and transmitted by females--or rather by single females. Instead of seeing the true connection, Clark gave his readers this:
If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what must be seen is the dehumanizing effect on the individual of slums, racism, ignorance and violence, of corruption and impotence to fulfill rights, of poverty and unemployment and idleness, of generations of malnutrition, of congenital brain damage and prenatal neglect, of sickness and disease, of pollution, of decrepit, dirty, ugly, unsafe, overcrowded housing, of alcoholism and narcotics addiction, of avarice, anxiety, fear, hatred, hopelessness and injustice. These are the fountainheads of crime.3
Not so. If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what must be seen is its relationship with the female-headed family. Most criminals come from female-headed families. Most gang members come from female-headed families. Most addicts come from female-headed families. Most rapists come from female-headed families. Most educational failures come from female-headed families. Every presidential assassin before Hinckley came from a female-headed family or one in which he had an impossibly bad relationship with his father. Most illegitimate births occur to females who themselves grew up in female-headed families. If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what we must do is reduce the number of female-headed families; what we must do is prevent the divorce courts from expelling half of society's fathers from their homes; what we must do is terminate a welfare system which displaces millions of men from the principal male role, that of family-provider. What we must do is make the father the head of the family. The female role, says Margaret Mead, is a biological fact; the male role is a
social creation.[4
This is the primary reality concerning human society. Motherhood has been the
dominant feature of mammalian life since its beginning some two hundred million
years ago, most conspicuously since the great reptiles became extinct and the
Age of Mammals began sixty-five million years ago. Fatherhood in the sense of
major male participation in reproduction is only a few million years old.
Fatherhood in the sense of male headship of families is only a few thousand
years old.
What is happening to our society is that it is discarding patriarchal sexual
regulation and reverting to the primeval mammalian pattern of a reproductive
unit consisting of the mother and her offspring, the male putting in an
appearance to perform his minuscule sexual function and then disappearing or
being hauled away to the sausage factory or being reduced to the role of stud
who can be discarded when his female tires of him. "Men and women," rejoices
feminist-anthropologist Helen ] Biologically speaking, it is indeed a recent invention, scarcely older than
the civilization which it made possible and which emerged coevally with it and
created the wealth which reconciled women to accepting it. But women's new
economic independence is leading them to yearn for a return to the prehistoric
mammalian arrangement. "[W]herever women are economically powerful," says
Fisher, "divorce rates are high. You see it in the K] Let's say, wherever women are economically powerful and there are no social
guarantees to ensure male headship of families, divorce rates are high--such
being the case among the Kung and the Americans. The Kung have no social
guarantees to ensure male headship of families because the Kung never emerged
from the Stone Age. The Americans have no social guarantees to ensure male
headship of families because there exists an elementary confusion in the heads
of policy makers, lawmakers and judges, who imagine that the obvious strength of
the biological tie between the mother and the infant (the "biological fact"
Margaret Mead refers to) means that it requires their assistance. A biological
fact does not require the services of the legal system. What does require these
services is the weakest biological link in the family, the role of the father.
It was the creation of this role--only a few thousand years ago--which made
patriarchal civilization possible. Prior to that, mankind had to muddle through
the million years of the Stone Age]
]
The Annex is an essential part of the argument of this book and logically belongs at this point in the text. To place it here, however, would be placing a stumbling block in front of the reader, asking him to plow through fifty pages of tedious documentation, filled with repetitious overkill, proving the assertions made in Chapter I. Like the textual notes in an edition of Shakespeare, which nobody reads and which only one reader in hundreds consults, it has to be in the book but it does not have to be read. It is enough that the reader should know that there exists (and can be consulted on pages 000-000) proof that the high-crime, low-achieving areas of society are those with the greatest numbers of families headed by women and that the low-crime, high-achieving groups in society are those with stable, patriarchal families- -that the feminist/sexual revolution and its attempt to impose a social organization based on female kinship is a failure and that it is necessary to return to a social organization based on male kinship.
II
THE ONCE AND FUTURE MATRIARCHY:
THE STONE AGE, THE GHETTO AND THE PROMISCUITY PRINCIPLE
In the Matriarchal System the reproductive unit consists of the mother and her offspring, the father playing a marginal role, wandering into and out of the "family," subject to dismissal at the mother's bidding. The central fact about this kind of family is its naturalness. Roman jurists spoke of maternity as a natural fact, "natura verum," and of paternity as merely a matter of civil law. "In all but a few species," writes Sarah Hrdy, "females are permanent residents in social groups, males mere transients."[8 This is the reproductive arrangement of all lower mammals. It has been the reproductive arrangement of the human race itself until recently. Its biological backup is awesome--what Margaret Mea]d meant by saying the female role is a "biological fact." It is the reproductive pattern which re-emerges in times of social catastrophe. When men are killed on battlefields or cast into prisons, female-headed families carry on. When there is divorce, the mother takes custody of the children. When ghetto males sit on curbsides and get stoned, ghetto females and children stay home and watch T.V. The matriarchal family may result from catastrophe, but it may also result from doing nothing, from biological and social drifting. It is always on standby, always waiting to resurface and re-establish itself. It is what society lapses into when the upkeep and maintenance of the patriarchal system is neglected. It is the pattern which is re-emerging at the present time under the aegis of the feminist/sexual revolution. It is the pattern found in surviving Stone Age societies. A l9th century German ship's doctor described the situation in the German African colony of Cameroon thus:
With a large number of tribes, inheritance is based on maternity. Paternity
is immaterial. Brothers and sisters are only the children of one mother. A man
does not bequeath his property to his children, but to the children of his
sister, that is to say, to his nephews and nieces, as his nearest demonstrable
blood relatives. A chief of the Way people explained to me in horrible English:
"My sister and I are certainly blood relatives, consequently her son is my heir;
when I die, he will be the king of my town." "And your father?" I inquired. "I
don't know what that means, 'my father,' answered he. Upon my putting to him the
question whether he had no children, rolling on the ground with laughter, he
answered that, with them, men have no children, only women.[9
"Originally," writes W. Robertson Smi]
was by far the most successful form that human association has assumed--it
may indeed be said that it has been the only successful one....All human
associations that have subsequently arisen have been bound by loose and feeble
ties compared with the primitive maternal clan. Political organizations,
religious theocracies, States, nations, have endeavored in vain to achieve real
and complete social solidarity. They are artificial structures; social humanity
has never succeeded in adequately replacing the primitive bond to which it owes
its existence. Even those loyalties which took its place have now to a large
extent lost their reality, and individualistic interests rule supreme. Human
society finds itself in the precarious position of being no longer held together
by those bonds of sentiment which constitute the distinction between a social
group and an aggregate of individuals.[12
The term "family" properly refers to the male-headed patriarchal unit. "The
relations arising out of the reproductive functions, which constitute the only
analogue of social relations to be found in the animal world," says Briffault,
differ conspicuously from those generally connoted by the term "family." That
term stands, in the tradition of civilised societies, for a group centering
round the interests, activities, and authority of a dominant male. The husband
is the head of the family; the other members of the group, wife and children,
are his dependents and subordinates. The corresponding group arising out of the
reproductive functions among animals presents no trace of that constitution. It
consists of the mother and her offspring. The male, instead of being the head
and supporter of the group, is not an essential member of it, and more often
than not is altogether absent from it. He may join the maternal family, but
commonly does not. When he attaches himself to the female's family his
association with it is loose and precarious. He has no functional place in it.
The parental relation is confined to that between mother and brood.
]
"In the great majority of uncultured societies," writes Arthur Ev]
had a very high status in the Stone Age, as we have seen. Archeology, myth
and comparison to still existing nature societies all point to their dominant
position.
He quotes Jacquetta Hawk]
There is every reason to suppose that under the life conditions of the
primary Neolithic way of life, mother-right and the clan system were still
dominant [as they had been in the paleolithic period], and land would generally
have descended through the female line. Indeed, it is tempting to be convinced
that the earliest Neolithic societies throughout their range in time and space
gave woman the highest status she has ever known.[15
The matriarchal family pattern is being restored by the welfare system, by
the feminist/sexual revolution, by women's growing economic independence and by
the legal preference for mother-custody following divorce. Writing of the
educated and economically independent women created by women's liberation,
Elizabeth Nick] "In the coming matriarchy," continue Nickles and Ashcraft,
families will be thought of as sets of divers individuals rather than
homogeneous social clusters, and the definition of "family" will broaden to
include many kinds of living arrangements, as is happening now without
widespread social recognition. We may see the advent of the rotational family,
in which there is no single, stable cast of characters for a lifetime, but
rather a series of individuals--male and female--who will be added to or phased
out of a continually reconstituted family unit as the needs, interests, and
emotional commitments of the couple, individual, or group dictate. The first
five years of a woman's adult life may be spent living with male and female
roommates; the next five years with a male mate; the next five with a husband
and a child; the next three with two female friends, and so on. This pattern is
already emerging, but when it occurs on a large scale, we will see the
rotational family replacing the nuclear family as the status quo.18
The family pattern is called "rotational," but it does its rotating around
the fixed figure of Mom, who remains at its center while males make their
entrances, do their orbiting, and make their exits.
It is the pattern of the Hopi Indians]
The central core or axis of the household is composed of a line of women--a
segment of a lineage. All the members of the segment, male and female, are born
in the household and consider it their home, but only the women normally reside
there after marriage. The men of the lineage leave at marriage to reside in the
households of their wives, returning to their natal home on various ritual and
ceremonial occasions, or in case of separation or divorce, which is frequent.
Into the household in turn come other men through marriage....The household
revolves about a central and continuing core of women; the men are peripheral
with divided residences and loyalties.[19
A. I. ] It is the pattern of the ghettos, where illegitima] It is the pattern of increasing numbers of households in the larger society.
According to the Washington-based National Center for Policy Alternatives, 40
percent of girls in school today will be heads of households.[21 "Ten percent of the
nation's families are headed only by a woman," writes Joreen, "but 40 percent of
the families classified as poor have female heads."22 Implying, naturally, that
society should do more to help these poor Moms and their kids.
The matriarchal days of the Stone Age]
From 3.5 million years ago to about l0,000 years ago, was a peaceful period,
when "marriage" was informal, casual.... Yes, there was a garden and in it we
gathered fruits and vegetables and sang to the moon and played and worked
together and watched the children grow. For the most part life was good, and we
made art and rituals celebrating our participation in the glorious spectacle and
process of life within nature.[23
Referring to those same happy days, feminist Evelyn R]
A woman did not need a husband as a means of support; she was herself economically independent as a producing member of the community. This gave women, like men, the freedom to follow their personal inclinations in sex relations. A woman had the option of remaining for life with one husband, but she was not under any legal, moral or economic compulsion to do so. This freedom was destroyed with the advent of class society, private property
and monogamous marriage.[24
It was destroyed by the advent of class society, private property, monogamous
marriage ] Ms. Reed lauds the freedom of such women. But there is a complementary freedom which is denied them. If they exercise their freedom to be promiscuous, they cannot enter into a stable and binding contract to share their reproductive lives with men who need to rely on their loyalty and chastity as a precondition for having legitimate children and stable families. Once women get the freedom to make the marriage contract non-binding, then they may suppose they have the "option" of either remaining for life with one husband or of not so remaining, but since the husband has no comparable option--the woman's freedom includes the freedom to throw the man out and take his children from him (and in the American matriarchy to take part of his paycheck as well)--the man is forced to share the woman's view of the marriage as non-binding. He becomes roleless and de-motivated, likely to become a drifter or a disrupter of society, likely to be regarded by women as poor marriage material, to be pointed to by feminists as proving the anti-sociality of males and the need for more feminism. "If motherhood and sexuality were not wedged resolutely apart by male culture," says Adrienne Rich (she means wedged resolutely together), "if women could choose both the forms of our sexuality and the terms of our motherhood or non-motherhood freely, women might achieve genuine sexual autonomy."[25 Quite so. Women ]are choosing it and thereby wrecking the patriarchal system. It is the declared purpose of feminists (including Ms. Rich) to do so. "Our liberation as women and as lesbians," write Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin,
will never be accomplished until we are liberated to be mothers. Until we
have the power to define the conditions under which we exercise our biological
potential, until we define for ourselves the role of motherhood to include the
power to determine the conditions of motherhood and to determine the environment
in which our children are reared, we have no real choice. And until we have
choices, we are not free.[26
The legal system, which divorces the parents of l.2 million children every
year, and the welfare system which subsidizes the needs of 700,000 children born
to unmarried mothers each year, are helping them to achieve this freedom--and
passing the costs on to the shrinking numbers of patriarchal families. Only a
fraction of those costs consists of immediate money payments. "The vast majority
of neurotics," writes John M] Feminist Carolyn Shaw Be] "What would it have been like," ask feminists Monica Sjo]
if patriarchy had never happened? To get an idea, we have to comprehend the first law of matriarchy: Women control our own bodies. This would seem a basic premise of any fully evolved human culture; which is why primate patriarchy is based on its denial. ..................................................... The process of redefinition begins with women reclaiming total sexual and
reproductive autonomy; for if the female body can be controlled or used, in any
way, from the outside--via exploitive definitions or systems--then so, it
follows, can everything else. (The definition and use of the female body is the
paradigm for the definition and use of all things; if the autonomy of the female
body is defined as sacred, then so will be the autonomy of all things.)
Patriarchal men have tried to pretend that males can be "free" while females can
be dominated and enslaved; just as white imperialists have pretended that they
can be "independent and soulful" beings in private life, while publicly
colonizing and brutalizing darker peoples.[34
The most significant thing about this statement of "the first law of
matriarchy" is that it is asserted categorically, without reference to the
marriage contract. It assumes without even bothering to assert it, that marriage
confers no rights on husbands. It must be obvious to most men--though it is
clearly not obvious to these women--that this female sexual autonomy rules out
the possibility of using the family as a system for motivating males. Such is
the state of things said (correctly) by Sjoo and Mor to have existed prior to
the creation of patriarchy a few thousand years ago, and such is again becoming
the state of things as patriarchy melts away. It was to prevent this state of
things that patriarchy was created, a central feature of it being society's
guarantee of the Legitimacy Principle] "It would not be far-fetched," writes Evelyn Ackworth, "to describe the whole
conception of the Welfare State as a matriarchal approach to a problem of social
life."[35 Exactly.
The Welfare State has teamed with the feminist/sexual revolution to replace the
patriarchal family with the older matrilineal unit. The ghettos provide the
textbook example:
Now here's how it is [writes black feminist Patricia ]
Ms. Robinson's complaint is that men won't love, honor and protect their
families--which is patriarchy. She cannot see that the first law of matriarchy
has deprived these men of families and therefore of the motivation which would
keep them working. When Othello becomes convinced of his wife's unchastity he
bids farewell to his profession: "] Here's an example of how the Promiscuity Principle [identical with the first
law of matriarchy] works, from Ann ]
DEAR ANN: I'm writing this letter in the hope that you can help me. You have access to the best doctors and I am ashamed to talk to anybody I know. I recently had a baby but I don't know who the father is. She looks like me. I had sex with Guy No. l on May 7, Guy No. 2 on May l4 and 15 and Guy No. 3 on May 27. I had my last period on May l. I never had any problem with my pregnancy and the baby came right on my due date, which was Feb. 7. She is adorable and I don't regret having her, but I would sure like to know who the father is. My friends tell me I'm entitled to support money but I can't bring a guy into court unless I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about. Thanks for your help, Ann.
The Promiscuity Principle entitles her to paternity suit income. It is her right to control her own sexual behavior- -including the right not to use contraceptives- -and to impose the economic costs upon one of her sex partners- -if the District Attorney can round up her playmates, compel them to take blood tests, and identify the lucky one. Then her sexual irresponsibility will pay off and reinforce society's acceptance of the first law of matriarchy, otherwise known as the Promiscuity Principle. The identified boyfriend will be reduced to years of involuntary servitude for the benefit of another person- -slavery. The feminist will insist that the boyfriend is equally responsible with the mother for the procreation of the illegitimate child and therefore equally bound to pay for its costs. Not so in the patriarchal system. Patriarchy divides women into good and bad, those who accept the Sexual Constitution (sexual law-and-order, monogamy, the Legitimacy Principle, the double standard, etc.) and those who reject it. This woman rejects it, and she is "bad" because she denies to a man the possibility of having responsible sex with her even if he wants to. Her unchastity deprives her child of a father and deprives men of the possibility of being a father to her children. She can have a sexual relationship only with a man as irresponsible as herself. She is a sexual Typhoid Mary who has inflicted illegitimacy upon a child and seeks to ameliorate what she has done by demanding to be paid for it. She will plead as justification that "there is no such thing as an illegitimate child," signifying there is no such thing as an unchaste woman. Ramsey Clark assures us that "Women are not a threat to the public."[38 This woman is. She has procreated a fatherless child several times more likely to become a delinquent.39 If the courts adopt the proposals of Senator Moynihan and Professor Barbara Berg]mann and other feminists to garnish the paycheck of her child's father, he will become a less employable, less motivated, less marriageable, less productive member of society. He may drop out of the taxable/garnishable economy altogether and enter the underground economy, or become parasitic upon a female AFDC recipient- -the pattern found in millions of ghetto households. The program for making men economically responsible for procreation outside of the Sexual Constitution has the effect of making them irresponsible within it. (Also it doesn't work--most men will evade its sanctions.) The workability of the patriarchal system requires the regulation of female sexuality, including the enforcing of the double standard. In no other way can men participate meaningfully in reproduction. A woman violates the Sexual Constitution by being promiscuous. A man violates it by refusing to provide for his family. The new feminist sexual order proposes that women shall be free to be promiscuous and that the social disruption thereby created shall be made tolerable by compelling men to provide for non-families. But men cannot be held responsible for female irresponsibility if this irresponsibility prevents them from having families to begin with; and it is for this reason that patriarchy holds a man responsible only for the subsidization of a wife, a "good" woman who accepts the Sexual Constitution and her obligation under it to bear only legitimate children. The historical development of this arrangement in the second millennium B. C. is thus described by Dr. Gerda Lerner:
As we compare the legal and social position of women in Mesopotamian and
Hebrew societies, we note similarities in the strict regulation of women's
sexuality and in the institutionalization of a sexual double standard in the law
codes. In general, the married Jewish woman occupied an inferior position to
that of her counterpart in Mesopotamian societies. Babylonian women could own
property, sign contracts, take legal action, and they were entitled to a share
in the husband's inheritance. But we must also note a strong upgrading of the
role of women as mothers in the Old Testament....This is quite in line with the
general stress on the family as the basic unit of society, which we have also
noted in Mesopotamian society at the time of state formation.[40
The more important point is the upgrading of the role of men as fathers-
-which is to say the strengthening of the family's weakest link, the father's
role, which depends in turn upon "the strict regulation of women's sexuality"
which today's feminists seek to get rid of. The "time of state formation" [read:
the creation of civilization] was the time which stressed the family as the
basic unit of society, just as today's social and sexual anarchy is the time
which stresses women's desire to wreck the family and return to "beena
marriage] "The various laws against rape," says Dr. Lerner, "all incorporated the
principle that the injured party is the husband or the father of the raped
woman."42 Feminists think this is outrageous. What it signifies is that the
protection of female chastity is normally the function of the husband or the
father- -in contrast to the feminist Promiscuity Principle which declares that a
woman's reproductive life is entirely her own business. The ancient Mesopotamian
and Hebrew societies Dr. Lerner refers to stipulated that the law would
interfere when the husband or father could not handle his own family matters,
and when ] Nothing has changed in four thousand years. In ancient Mesopotamia, as in the United States today, women were more concerned with maintaining their sexual autonomy, men more concerned with maintaining the integrity of families, and per corollary the regulation of female chastity upon which the family depends. What Hammurabi's legislation shows is what contemporary lawmakers fail to see- -that the Sexual Constitution is a male creation and must be supported by males. Men, not women, are the ultimate guardians of morality; and while men may delegate the responsibility to women (as in the Victorian age), when women subvert the moral order, men must reassert their responsibility to restore it. "The discoverers of the matrikinship system," says Evelyn Reed,
correctly inferred it to be a survival from a prefamily period when, as some
put it, "fathers were unknown." They reasoned that cases where kinship ties and
the line of descent passed through the mothers, without recognizing fathers,
were evidence that the matriclan had existed before the father-family. The
matrikinship system persists up to our times in many primitive regions, even
where fathers have become known.[43
This persistence is, of course, the chief reason why these regions are
primitive.
]
When I say alone, what I mean is live without a man. It's often one woman
with a lot of children in the house. But unlike many societies there has been a
tradition of women being able to live without men and without living within the
bosom of the extended family. So that there's been a tradition of independent
women living on their own, but the price that traditionally women have paid for
that is that they then have to become the sole supporters of their
children....But it brings with it certain benefits in the sense that unlike in
the Middle East, or say Asia, some other countries, it's possible to not be
ostracized for having many sexual partners, it's possible to live a little
independently, to dress in certain ways, to move differently than has been
traditionally possible in European or Asian societies.[44
Jamaican women practice the first law of matriarchy and thereby deny a
meaningful role to males, many of whom become anti-social:
The situation of women has gotten worse in many ways. If you look at some of
the so-called traditional indicators of progress, which is employment, etc., the
situation of women hasn't gotten any better. It's got worse....In terms of the
streets, in times gone by, in days of yore, women controlled the streets. Now
the streets is not a woman's domain. Violence of Jamaican society which is
virtually taken for granted by everybody. I myself am looking for a place to
live with grills [iron bars over the windows for security] everywhere at the
moment....For a lot of women it is a matter of you can't go out of the house
after six o'clock, you must get home before dark, if you go to the theatre they
have a special six o'clock matinee which is almost completely attended by women
because that is the time when they have to go out. So that is a situation which
has gotten much worse, too....Of course the level of sexual violence has
increased so much that now the streets are not the domain of women, certainly
the docks aren't.45
The violence is male violence, a fact heavily emphasized in feminist
propaganda, which calls it ] "The role of the male," says George Gilder, "is the Achilles' heel of
civilized society....The man still needs to be tamed."[46 The man's violence
needs to be tamed, no doubt, so that his energies may channeled into a useful
direction rather than becoming destructive. But the taming and channeling are
impossible without a meaningful male role; and since the first law of matriarchy
denies men that meaningful role, the female is as much in need of taming as the
male.
According to Carl Wil] The males procreated by these sexually liberated females, males exploited in
feminist propaganda as illustrating male anti-sociality, could better be used as
illustrations of female socialization. A survey of l08 rapists undertaken by
Raymond A. ] The first law of matriarchy implies the right of one woman to undermine the
marriage of another woman. According to Laurel ] The first law of matriarchy is good for the aborti] Thanks to the first law of matriarchy, births out of ]
We know that women who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits when they are less than 25 years old remain dependent on AFDC for long periods of time. In fact, 70 percent received AFDC for at least five years; more than one-third got it for at least 10 years. Raised in an environment in which fathers don't provide for their young and
dependency on government is assumed, few children will develop the skills of
self-sufficiency, or even the concept of personal responsibility. Young men will
not strive to be good providers and young women will not expect it of their men.
Family breakdown becomes cyclical, out-of-wedlock births become cyclical,
poverty and dependence becomes cyclical. And the culture of poverty grows.[52
Bauer quotes Charles Murra]
For the young woman who is not pregnant, "enabling" means she does not ask, "Do I want a welfare check badly enough to get pregnant?" but rather, "If I happen to get pregnant, will the consequences really be so bad?" ........................................................ The existence of an extensive welfare system permits the woman to put less
pressure on the man to behave responsibly, which facilitates irresponsible
behavior on his part, which in turn leads the woman to put less reliance on the
man, which exacerbates his sense of superfluity and his search for alternative
definitions of manliness.[53
The pattern is not confined to the lower orders. It underlies equally the
reluctance of educated men to marry educated women, producing feminist
complaints about the refusal of males to make stable and reliable commitments to
women. The same male reluctance underlay the flurry of panicky articles
appearing in l986 on the subject of the ]
We are talking here about woman as function. We are talking here about
fulfilling others' ideas about what one should be fitted for and for what one
exists. Worse, we are talking here not about love, faith or goodness, but about
fitting into the structures that others decide for you. We are talking about
control.
To put it frankly, this kind of "concern" about one's chances at marriage is
about ways of controlling women.
..............................................................
Marriage can be one kind of love, and at best it certainly is one of the two
or three greatest kinds. But when dealt with in terms of controlling a woman, it
becomes the antithesis of love and fulfillment.
Controlling a ] The statistics on the unmarriageability of educated and economically
independent women are factual.[55 Ms. Geyer resents
them because they suggest the advisability of women accepting a degree of sexual
regulation. She wants female behavior thought of "in positive and freeing terms
rather than in negative and controlling terms." One might describe a train which
jumps its tracks as behaving in a "positive and freeing" way and a train which
remains on the tracks as behaving in a "negative and controlling" way. The
feminist would respond that women are not machines, but the comparison will
stand for all that. Women (and men) require socialization as much as trains
require rails if they are to avoid catastrophe. Controlling women (and men) is
not the "antithesis" but the precondition of "love and fulfillment" as well as
of social stability and civilization.
Let's consider a specific case. Brandon Th] Another case. Dean Philip Carter is convicted of killing three women and
suspected of killing two others. The evidence against him is overwhelming and
his attorneys don't even try to refute it:
Relying instead [says the ]
21 witnesses show that he had a troubled childhood and therefore is less culpable. Quite so. But who, then, is culpable for having inflicted the troubled childhood upon him? Part of the answer is to be inferred from the Los Angeles Times' assertion that Carter was "born the illegitimate son of a half-Eskimo woman in Nome, Alaska, on Aug. 30, 1955." Mom accepted the Promiscuity Principle and exercised her right to impose illegitimacy upon her boy, which placed him at greater risk of becoming a criminal, as the documentation given in the Annex to Chapter I shows. Another case. Arlene W. of Wisconsin. "In the summer of l977," writes
feminist Phyllis Chesler, "Arlene W. met Red E. Early in l978 Arlene became
pregnant."[57
Patriarchal socialization would have taught Arlene the importance of pre-nuptial
chastity and would have prevented the tragedy which now unfolds. But patriarchal
socialization is made inoperative by the first law of matriarchy.
Early in l979, Red's paternity was established by the Welfare
Department....Visitation was allowed....Red was physically abusive to both
Arlene and [their daughter] Andrea during several visits. Arlene decided to
refuse further visitation.
In the fall of l980, Red legally demanded overnight visitation twice monthly.
Judge John E. McCormick told Arlene to "give a man a second chance." He ordered
visitation for one weekend day and one half weekday. Visitation began. At this
point, Andrea started "acting out" behavior: aggressive hitting, crying,
clinging, not sleeping, wetting herself, vomiting. Andrea complained of being
hit by her father--and marks were detectable....The hospital report concluded
that Andrea had been sexually abused....Arlene fled Wisconsin to her brother's
home in the state of Washington....Police arrived with a warrant for Arlene's
arrest. They separated her from her daughter, denied her bail and the use of the
telephone, and jailed her for four days....Feminists, ministers, psychiatrists,
incest victims, experts, academics, jurists, the department of social
services--all launched a campaign against Arlene's extradition. Arlene's
unedited "Chronology of Events" documents the profound isolation and
vulnerability of a battered, unwed, and welfare dependent mother who has
discovered paternal incest, and the state's absolute refusal to believe or
assist her.58
What the events document is the importance of not being an unwed mother. They
also document the damage inflicted upon Arlene and Andrea by the first law of
matriarchy and the incapacity of the legal system to patch up the mess created
by Arlene's and Red's unchastity. Arlene is represented throughout Ms. Chesler's
account as a victim. In fact she created her own miseries and those of her
daughter.
The enforcing of the patriarchal sexual constitution in l978 would have
guaranteed, not infringed Arlene's autonomy, would have clarified
] Ms. Chesler's point that the legal system is incompetent to do much for Arlene and Andrea is valid enough; but she chooses not to see how the mess she describes is created not by patriarchy but by the failure of patriarchy to regulate Arlene's behavior in l978--by society's acquiescence in the first law of matriarchy. The pattern being promoted by feminism is well summarized by a recent Canadian study of female offenders:
Among its findings in a survey of l00 women arrested, the majority had early sexual involvements, with over 40 percent reporting their first intercourse to have occurred between the ages of l0 and l5. Two thirds had children, but almost as many had never been married, and less than one in l0 was married at the time of her arrest. The majority, then, were single or divorced mothers. Most came from broken homes, with 73 percent of the women reporting problems such as one parent being absent all the time, divorce, foster homes, alcohol problems and child abuse. Mentally disturbed parents were common--indeed, female criminals had psychiatric problems in their immediate family twice as often as did male criminals. The authors speculate that "for women to break out of the traditional female role of compliance and passivity and become criminal they have to be products of a more disturbed background." In response to suggestions that the feminist movement has brought "a new era of emancipated female offenders showing some of the same patterns as male offenders," the authors acknowledge many similarities. For example, about the same percentage of female criminals commit violent offenses as do males (although "women's victims more so than men's have trouble defending themselves--for example, children, intoxicated, asleep, infirm"). The authors resist describing women criminals as "emancipated," but what
their study does describe--sexual promiscuity, divorce, women who act
increasingly like men--are familiar results of the sexual revolution.[59
The problems created by the first law of matriarchy were predictable--female
promiscuity and illegitimacy,60 male rolelessness and anti-sociality. With more
illegitimacy, come more second generation crime, more educational failure, more
demoralization, less motivation, less productivity, reduced self-esteem, less
commitment to the future as evidenced by reduced accumulation of stabilizing
(and garnishable) assets such as real estate, annuities, pensions, stock
portfolios, savings accounts, insurance. More sexual confusion, more hedonism,
more infantilism (of which non-commitment is a variety), more emotional
shallowness. And, of course, in consequence of all of these, more family
breakdown, more family non-formation, more demands for freebies from the
government's Backup System ] "If women were really people," wrote Ms. Friedan in l973, "- -no more, no
less--then all the things that kept them from being full people in our society
would have to be changed."[61 "Full" means
something like "without sex-role socialization." Along with the abandoning of
this socialization for girls, there has been a complementary abandoning of the
sex role socialization of boys. The results can be witnessed by anyone who takes
a stroll across one of today's high school campuses. Such a stroll reveals that
a majority of girls have become shallow, sassy tarts, a majority of boys little
better than slobs with little self-discipline, little frustration-tolerance,
little character, little inner-direction.
Back in l963, when Ms. Friedan unleashed feminism upon us with her book
] Social change indeed. There is no area in which the undermining of sex role
socialization has not been disastrous.
Here is the way today's women are coming to perceive their responsibilities
towards society and society's responsibilities to them. The speaker is Byllye
Ave]
Let us now turn from the two-hundred-million-year-old biologically based
mammalian/matrilineal reproductive arrangement and examine the patriarchal
system which succeeded it a few thousand years ago and made civilization
possible- -the artificial, fragile patriarchal arrangement designed to elevate
male sperm-providers into ] it.
III
THE PATRIARCHAL SYSTEM: PUTTING SEX TO WORK
The matriarchy described in the previous chapter is perceived by feminists as a lost Golden Age--and also as the bright wave of the future. Women living in surviving Stone Age societies, such as exist on Indian reservations, are held up as exemplars for the liberated women of our own society. "There are parts of the world," writes feminist Elise Boulding,
where women already feel the autonomy I am imagining for Western women in the
future. For Americans, North and South, there is an alternative model for women
close at hand, in the Native American communities....It doesn't take many
encounters with women tribal leaders who have the quiet confidence of centuries
of traditional knowledge behind them to realize that here are a set of teachers
for European-stock American women right in our midst. Where does their serenity
and self-confidence come from? What do they "know"?...This is a time for the
rest of us, especially middle-class Western women, to "go to school" to those of
our sisters who have the unacknowledged skills, the confidence, the serenity,
and the knowledge required for creative social change.[64
These Stone Age women, despite their squalor, ignorance and poverty, are
contented. They fill the biological role of the mammalian female, heading the
reproductive unit, enjoying the liberty of the first law of matriarchy. And
today's feminists are coming to share their tranquility and placidity. They are,
as Helen ]
For my generation and the generation that followed, the battle for women's rights came in the middle of life- -after we'd started our families and were already living the feminine mystique. For us, the feminist movement meant the marvelous midlife discovery of a whole new identity, a new sense of self. The most notable result of this newfound identity was a dramatic improvement in the mental health of older women....Two decades ago mental hospitals were full of women suffering from involutional melancholia, a severe depression that afflicted women at the time of menopause when, according to the old feminine mystique, their life was over. But a few years ago the American Psychiatric Association stopped using the term because such acute depression was no longer considered age related. Today the mental health of women in their 40s, 50s and 60s is as good as that
of women in their 20s and 30s. No such improvement has occurred in men, so it
really is related to the women's movement toward equality.[66
No such improvement has occurred in men because men have had to pay the
costs. Men in the larger society are being ground down to the status of the men
on Indian reservations--roleless, unmotivated, alcoholic and suicidal, because
the first law of matriarchy] It was the discovery a few thousand years ago of this connection between the
regulation of female sexuality on the one hand and family and social stability,
male productivity and social progress on the other which ended the Stone Age and
began the era of patriarchal civilization. "Patriarchy's age," says
lesbian-feminist Susan Cavin, "is approximately 3,000-5,000 years old. Compared
to the millions of years human ancestors have populated the earth, patriarchy
represents only a dot of human time."[67
True. The fact shows that the creation of patriarchy is the greatest of human
achievements, since each and every one of the other achievements of civilization
came into existence during that dot of time, whereas the preceding millions of
years created none of them. Patriarchy, says Adrienne ] The central fact about patriarchal civilization, besides its recency and the
magnitude of its accomplishments, is its artificiality and fragility, its
dependence on women's willingness to submit to sexual regulation. Women's
de-regulation of themselves by achieving economic and sexual independence can
wreck the system. The ghettos show how easily this can happen. The wrecking of
the system is rapidly spreading from the ghettos to the larger society, where
the legal system] Dr. Gerda Lerner describes how sexual regulation was imposed on women in
ancient Mesopotamia, during the era in which the patriarchal system was being
developed: "While the wife enjoyed considerable and specified rights in
marriage, she was sexually the man's property."[69 Her rights and her
status depended upon her acceptance of the patriarchal system--and vice versa,
the system depended upon her acceptance of regulation. "In Mesopotamian law, and
even more strongly in Hebrew law," continues Dr. Lerner, "all women are
increasingly under sexual dominance and regulation....The strict obligations by
husbands and sons toward mothers and wives in Hammurabic and Hebrew law can thus
be seen as strengthening the patriarchal family, which depends on the willing
cooperation of wives in a system which offers them class advantages in exchange
for their subordination in sexual matters."70
Providing for a woman and placing her "under coverture" in the honorable
state of marriage is perceived by today's feminists in wholly negative terms as
dominance, regulation and oppression. Feminist Dr. Alice Ro] As will be explained in detail in Chapter VII, Dr. Lerner's and Dr. Rossi's
view of sexual law-and-order as something imposed by males is the opposite of
George Gi]
She is the vessel of the ultimate values of the nation. The community is
largely what she is and what she demands in men.[72
He describes this imposition of female values on males as "creating
civilization." But if civilization is a female creation, imposed by women upon
men, why did not civilization precede patriarchy? "The appropriation by men of
women's sexual and reproductive capacity," says Dr. Lerner, "occurred
] While Dr. Lerner is oblivious to the advantages for women of this patriarchal law-and-order, she is correct in insisting that the law-and-order is a male idea. In discussing the Garden of Eden story she writes:
[T]he consequences of Adam and Eve's transgression fall with uneven weight
upon the woman. The consequence of sexual knowledge is to sever female sexuality
from procreation. God puts enmity between the snake and the woman (Gen. 3:15).
In the historical context of the times of the writing of Genesis, the snake was
clearly associated with the fertility goddess and symbolically represented her.
Thus, by God's command, the free and open sexuality of the fertility-goddess was
to be forbidden to fallen woman. The way her sexuality was to find expression
was in motherhood.[74
It is significant that a feminist like Dr. Lerner perceives "female
sexuality" as female ]
To the question "Who brought sin and death into the world?" Genesis answers, "Woman, in her alliance with the snake, which stands for free female sexuality." [Emphasis added]
The Biblical view is not that "female sexuality" is severed from procreation but that it is joined to it, in other words that it must be regulated in accordance with the patriarchal Sexual Constitution which Gilder imagines as something which women try to impose on men, but which Genesis and Dr. Lerner more plausibly see as something men impose on women. Dr. Lerner affects to believe (perhaps does believe) that sexual promiscuity signifies high status for women:
Further, women [in the Ancient Near East] seemed to have greatly different
status in different aspects of their lives, so that, for example, in Babylon in
the second millennium B.C. women's sexuality was totally controlled by men,
while some women enjoyed great economic independence, many legal rights and
privileges and held many important high status positions in society. I was
puzzled to find that the historical evidence pertaining to women made little
sense, when judged by traditional criteria. After a while I began to see that I
needed to focus more on the control of women's sexuality and procreativity than
on the usual economic questions, so I began to look for the causes and effects
of such sexual control.[75
Her views, paralleling those of promiscuity chic movie actresses and other
anti-patriarchal groupies, are antithetical to those of Gilder. Much of the
feminist struggle is one to displace the feminine mystique "image" of the weakly
virtuous patriarchy-accepting doll-wife abominated by Betty Friedan (and lauded
by George Gilder) by the image of a defiantly promiscuous hell-raiser who will
destroy the patriarchy by re-instituting the first law of matriarchy.
"The sexual control of women," says Dr. Lerner, "has been an essential
feature of patriarchal power. The sexual regulation of women underlies the
formation of classes and is one of the foundations upon which the state
rests."76 Quite so. If you doubt it, ask yourself what kind of a state we will
have when it is populated, as it is coming to be, by the fatherless offspring of
today's promiscuous females--when the feminists on the campuses of our schools
and colleges have convinced young women that the traditional patriarchal
attempts to regulate their reproduction by imposing chastity and modesty upon
them are a sexist plot to contravene the first law of matriarchy. The kind of
state we will have is indicated by the evidence given in Chapter I, showing the
high correlation between female-headed families and social pathology.
"The state," continues Dr. Lerner,
during the process of the establishment of written law codes, increased the
property rights of upper-class women, while it circumscribed their sexual rights
and finally totally eroded them.77
By their "sexual rights" she means not their right to be loved, honored and
protected under coverture, not their right to enter into a stable and binding-
-and highly advantageous- -contract to share their reproductive life with a man,
but their right to be promiscuous, and therefore of no value to a man interested
in having a family rather than a one-night stand. She does not even consider
(what Gilder supposes to be self-evident) that many women covet the right to
have a stable monogamous marriage, and thereby acquire the economic and
emotional security and the status which the patriarchy offers women in exchange
for allowing men a meaningful reproductive role--the right to be decently
socialized in childhood, the right to the high status patriarchy confers upon
"good" women.
"Their sexual and reproductive capacities," continues Dr. Lerner, "were
commodified, traded, leased, or sold in the interest of male family members."78
What is the alternative? To have men ]
The Code of Hammurabi [continues Dr. Lerner] marks the beginning of the
institutionalization of the patriarchal family as an aspect of state power. It
reflects a class society in which women's status depended on the male family
head's social status and property. The wife of an impoverished burgher could by
a change of his status, without her volition or action, be turned from a
respectable woman into a debt slave or a prostitute. On the other hand, a
married woman's sexual behavior, such as adultery or an unmarried woman's loss
of chastity, could declass her in a way in which no man could be declassed by
his sexual activity.[79
Her sta] "Society asks so little of women," says Betty Friedan.[80 But that little
must include the chastity and loyalty which makes patriarchal fatherhood and
legitimate children possible.
"When Nigerian Muslim communities get richer through development," writes
feminist sociologist Caroline Knowle] There exists a woman's organization called Single Mothers by Choice] "Woman, in precivilized society," writes Dr. Lerner, "must have been man's
equal and may well have felt herself to be his superior."[82 Her superiority
(which made males idle drones) is why it was "precivilized"--and why
precivilization lasted a million years. Her superiority is why Elise
]Boulding holds up the squaws on Indian reservations as models for American
middle-class women. Her superiority is why women would not be altogether
reluctant to return to precivilization, why feminists like Mary Daly declare
that "society is a male creation and serves male interests" and that "sisterhood
means revolution,"[83 why Fre]ud
thought that woman was the enemy of civilization, why feminists like Adrienne
Rich insist that patriarchal civilization has been imposed upon women over "an
enormous potential counterforce."[84
"In some places like Dahomey and among the Tlinkits of Alaska," writes
feminist Marilyn F] Men stabilize marriage by creating wealth. According to Emily Hahn, "Necessity, as well as instinct, sends the ladies pell-mell to the altar; it is only the secondary things, social pressure of conscience, that send the men."[86 (What sends the men is the desire to have families--which is not secondary, but never mind that.) What Ms. Hahn is acknowledging is that with women the economic motive is primary. Feminist Barbara Ehrenre]ich agrees:
Women were, and to a large extent still are, economically dependent on men....So what was at stake for women in the battle of the sexes was, crudely put, a claim on some man's wage. ......................................................... The fact that, in a purely economic sense, women need men more than the other
way round, gives marriage an inherent instability that predates the
sexual revolution, the revival of feminism, the "me generation" or other
well-worn explanations for what has come to be known as the "breakdown of the
family."[87
(The instability does ]
It is, in retrospect [continues Ms. Ehrenreich], frightening to think how much of our sense of social order and continuity has depended on the willingness of men to succumb in the battle of the sexes: to marry, to become wage-earners and to reliably share their wages with their dependents.
(A man formerly--in the days of stable marriage contracts--did not "succumb"; he entered into what he believed to be a binding agreement which promised him the satisfactions of marriage and the right of procreating legitimate and inalienable offspring. It is the invalidating of these expectations which has turned men off from marriage or made them enter into it with the shallow commitment of which Ms. Ehrenreich complains.) She continues:
In fact, most of us require more comforting alternative descriptions of the
bond between men and women. We romanticize it, as in the popular song lyrics of
the fifties where love was an adventure culminating either in matrimony or
premature death. Or we convince ourselves that there is really a fair and equal
exchange at work so that the wages men offer to women are more than compensated
for by the services women offer to men. Any other conclusion would be a grave
embarrassment to both sexes. Women do not like to admit to a disproportionate
dependence, just as men do not like to admit that they may have been conned into
undertaking what one cynical male called "the lifelong support of the female
unemployed."[88
She shows that it is the man's paycheck which holds marriage together, and
then she, most illogically, describes this paycheck as something causing
] Popular songs such as "Papa, Don't Preach" and "Thanks for My Child" illustrate the failure to comprehend the Legitimacy Principle as essential to the working of the patriarchal system. Mrs. E. M. Anderson of Compton's Teen Mothers Program comments thus concerning the message of "Thanks for My Child," dealing with the woes (but also the noble inner strength) of a poor female who meets the father of her child four years after it is born:
These guys [i.e., the unwed fathers] are dumb- -dumb. All they think
about is themselves. Responsibility? Forget it. They cause a lot of pain
and are too dumb to care.[90
"The song," says Mrs. Anderson, "does a service if it exposes the problem of
these young kids getting pregnant out of wedlock by these guys who don't want
any part of being fathers." A better service would be to explain to the dumb
guys how they might ] Besides these material rewards, there are status rewards. According to Jeff
Wyatt, program director of a radio station which plays "Thanks for my Child"
every day on the demand of enthusiastic female listeners,
The message really touches them- -the mother- child aspect of it. Women
identify with the woman in the song. Maybe some of them know young ladies who
have been in that situation. Maybe some of them have been in that situation
themselves.92
According to Mike Archie, music director of WHUR-FM in Washington, D. C.,
women, especially black women, are responding strongly to the record, which has
been the most requested single at his station:
The single focuses on the inner strength of black women, which makes it
appeal strongly to black women. I find that it really touches single female
parents- -or women with children in general. In the song this woman is saying
how much she really loves her child and that love can carry her through
anything.93
This is the old "feminine mystique" again- -which feminism was created to get
rid of. Women were told by Ms. Friedan to make less of a fuss about their
maternal functions ("Don't you want to be more than an animal?"94) and
participate instead in the arena of male achievement. "Thanks for My Child"
reverts to Mom's maternal functions as the true source of woman's glory. The
miserable consequences of female unchastity are celebrated as proving "the inner
strength of black women." And the same wonderful inner strength is illustrated
by comparison with the irresponsibility of the dumb male. The ]
The guys who father these kids have all the excuses for ignoring their
responsibilities. If no one makes the young man see his responsibility, he'll go
scot-free and father more kids. The burden falls on the teen-age girls who are
too young to handle it. Maybe this song will get a message to some of these
young men- -that what they're doing is very wrong.[95
The girls are too young to handle it- -and therefore they need to be taught
what nobody teaches them, the necessity of chastity and conformity to the Sexual
Constitution, the necessity of rejecting the Promiscuity Principle which tells
them they alone have the right to control their sexuality--without interference
from the irresponsible males whom Wes Hall would like to make responsible but
who are discouraged- -or prevented- -from responsibility by the Promiscuity
Principle which allows females to be mothers while preventing males from being
fathers. Instead of teaching these girls chastity, the song teaches them about
their wonderful inner strength (which nobody would have known about if they
hadn't been promiscuous), about the moral inferiority of the dumb male, equally
responsible but lacking their inner strength- -as though unchaste females might
protect their virtue by surrounding themselves with chaste Parsifal-like males.
They are taught that there is no such thing as an illegitimate child, that
society must not be judgmental of them, meaning that it must not use shame and
guilt to regulate their anti-social behavior. And so forth. Wes Hall simply
refuses to see the fact that males cannot be responsible heads of families
unless society insists upon female chastity and loyalty and implements its
insistence by guaranteeing to males the rewards of family life which justify
imposing upon them the obligations of paternal responsibility. For males to
accept the responsibility which Wes Hall wishes them to accept there must exist
some reasonably dependable way for them to ] Here's Edward McNamara, who wants to do what Wes Hall is urging the young black teenagers to do--accept the responsibilities of fatherhood. The law won't let him. He has had six court appearances to gain custody of an illegitimate daughter, and, after giving up on custody, more court appearances to gain visitation rights. According to the Los Angeles Times,
McNamara, 41, maintains that his constitutional rights were violated when San Diego County social workers--acting at the behest of the baby's mother--placed the girl with an adoptive family four weeks after her birth. But in sharp questioning in a high court [U.S. Supreme Court] hearing on the case, the justices disputed the notion that the U. S. Constitution gives an unwed father rights that outweigh those of the child. "Why can't the state of California decide it wants to follow this polity" of acting in the best interest of the child? asked Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. State law directs social workers to consider the child's welfare foremost in custody cases, and the courts have agreed that McNamara's daughter would be better served in the care of the adopting family. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said she wondered why someone who engages "in a
so-called one-night stand" would have a constitutional right to control the fate
of the child who accidentally results from the affair.[96
The right of "someone" is unquestioned if "someone" is the ]
In l976, the Supreme Court ruled that a husband did not have the power to
impose an "absolute veto" over his wife's decision to have an
abortion....Women's groups reject out of hand the argument that men have a right
to a legal say in the decisionmaking process...and insist that the abortion
decision should belong solely to the woman.[97
The point is equally relevant to McNamara and to the black youths scolded by
Wes Hall: Women's [and girls'] refusal to grant men a significant role in
reproduction means that they are denying to ] Feminist Hazel Henderson writes a piece titled "Thinking Globally, Acting Locally," in which she complains of "fathers who refuse to pay their child support payments ordered by courts." In the same column of the same page she rejoices thus over the success of the sexual/feminist revolution:
Yet the genie will not go back in the bottle- -the cultural revolution has
already occurred. Politics only ratifies social change after at least a ten year
lag. Even more terrifying for the old patriarchs and their female dupes is the
knowledge that the whole culture is "up for grabs." For example, it could shift
fundamentally in less than a generation IF women simply took back their
reproductive rights, endowed by biology and Nature. All that women would need to
do to create a quiet revolution is to resume the old practice of keeping the
paternity of their children a secret.[98
She cherishes the Promiscuity Principle] The black matriarchs, who, like Mrs. E. M. Anderson, view "Thanks for My Child" as "a positive statement of a mother's love for her child" no doubt also perceive it as a reaffirmation of female moral superiority, paralleling the one-upmanship of their Latin American sisters who encourage their men in childish displays of machismo in order to cast themselves in the complementary role ("marianismo") of morally superior, spiritually strong, understanding but forbearing "Mamacitas." It is men who must put an end to this feminine mystique. The male reply to the condescension of "Thanks for My Child" ought to be an indignantly ironic "Thanks for reducing me to the status of a stud. Thanks for preventing me from being a real father, from having a real family." The male is not equally responsible with the female for inflicting illegitimacy on a child. In the patriarchal system a man can only be held responsible to a "good" woman, one who accepts the Sexual Constitution. The bad women are an essential part of the system, but they must be de-classed and regarded as unfit for marriage, since husbands can have no assurance of their chastity and loyalty, no assurance of having legitimate children by them. The feminist campaign to do away with the double standard is an attempt to remove this class distinction and make all women "good." Instead, it is making all women "bad," creating the Garbage Generation in the process. The predicament lamented in "Thanks for My Child" has the consequence that women can no longer trust men and men can no longer trust women. 77 percent of the women readers of Glamour magazine responded "yes" to a survey (Nov., l985) asking whether they approved of single women having children. 40 percent of girls in school today will be heads of households[99--signifying that 40 percent of boys will ]not be. These females will deem themselves to be leading meaningful and (now that their sexuality is de-regulated) socially acceptable lives. The displaced males will be leading roleless, often disruptive lives. If the fathers of illegitimate children can be coerced into supporting the mothers, the mothers will believe that a paternity suit (or a divorce decree) is as good as a marriage contract--or rather better, since it involves no reciprocal responsibilities, not even temporarily. Such sexual de-regulation of females means the destruction of the family and the ghettoizing of society. The Prophet Mohammed emphasized the importance of regulating female sexuality. According to Dr. Fatima Mernissi, he
saw the establishment of the male-dominated Muslim family as crucial to the
establishment of Islam. He bitterly fought existing sexual practices where
marital unions for both men and women were numerous and lax.[100
In Saudi Arabia there exists a Committee for the Protection of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice, whose executive arm is the ]
Nearly every woman has an unpleasant encounter with the Mutatawa to report, an incident when she was observed talking to an unrelated man in public, or shopping without the proper headgear or abaya, and subjected to a public tongue-lashing, or worse. "In the souq [market], they'll come up to you and say, 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' Or worse yet, they go up to your husband and say, 'Aren't you a man? Why are you dragging this hussy around with you?'" Raslan said. "You've embarrassed yourself, you've embarrassed your husband, and for what? For what reason?" "Officially," she said, "they say, 'We don't want the ladies having to face
the hazards [of being part of the working world], we want to protect them.' But
unofficially, what the women see is they are apprehensive of women finding their
own feet."[101
Apprehensive that women will sexually de-regulate themselves, restore the
first law of matriarchy, replace the two-parent family with the "rotational"
family, destroy the male role and ghettoize society. The Matatawa themselves may
be ridiculous, but their apprehension is not. Take another look at the words of
Hazel Henderson or those of Helen Fisher on page 5. What the Matatawa are afraid
of has already happened in the ghettos and is happening before our eyes in the
larger society. The ridiculousness of the religious police, like the
ridiculousness of Victorian puritanism, proves not the silliness of the
patriarchal system but its shakiness and the marginality of the male role within
it- -and its need for social props to sustain it. Female promiscuity can wreck
it, as Hazel Henderson and Sjoo and Mor and other feminists clearly perceive.
"The women's libbers," says Samuel Blumenf]
object to the moral codes that the patriarchal system evolved as aids in the
subjugation of women. But we must marvel at man's intellectual genius in
creating such effective cultural and social devices to maintain the integrity of
the family, as well as his control over women with a minimum of physical
force.[102
Blumenfeld sees "the moral codes crumbling all around us," and says
Whoever sold teen-agers on the idea that there is such a thing as premarital
"recreational sex" ought to be shot. Unless one understands that sexual pleasure
was created by nature as bait for the more painful responsibilities of
existence, one cannot understand sex, one cannot understand love, one cannot
understand life. Unless sexual pleasure leads to human responsibility, it then
becomes the shallowest and most depressing of pursuits.103
It is not "nature" but the patriarchal system which puts sex to work as the
great stabilizer and motivator of society, and the central feature of this
system is society's guarantee to the ] Freiherr F. von Reitzen]
We cannot doubt the existence of matriarchy, which was constantly encouraged
by the Etruscans...Marriage as a binding union was certainly unknown to the
plebeians; accordingly their children belonged to the mother's family. This
agamous or marriageless relationship still existed at Rome in later times, and
was the basis of a widely developed system of free love, which soon changed into
different kinds of prostitution.[105
Otto Kief]
sought to prove that in ancient Italy the reign of strong paternal authority
had been preceded by a state of exclusive matriarchy, chiefly represented by the
Etruscans. He considered that the development of exclusive patriarchy, which we
find to be the prevailing type of legitimate relation in historic times, was a
universal reform, a vast and incomparable advance in civilization.[106
"We understand," writes lesbian-feminist Charlotte Bun] She makes no reference to the contract of marriage, which is intended to
allow men to share in women's reproductive lives. She would have the marriage
contract place no obligations on the woman, and allow her to exercise her
reproductive freedom as though there were no contract.
She continues:
We know that priorities are amiss in the world when children are not
protected from parents who abuse them sexually while a l]
She is labeled immoral because she denies her child a father and wishes to
transform society in order to make her lifestyle normative and thus make it
unnecessary for ] Let's look as a concrete example. Charles Rothenb] A hideous crime. It might not have happened if Charles had not been goaded and crazed by the knowledge that he had no chance of getting a fair custody shake from the court. Aside from this, is there anything to be learned from what Rothenberg did? This mixed-up man was, like Charles Manson, the offspring of an unmarried teen-age prostitute and a father he never saw. Presumably he got messed up because his socialization was messed-up. The sins of the father were visited upon the son, David. But also the sins of the grandmother, who brought Charles into the world in violation of the Legitimacy Principle. Grandma is unpunished because her sins are non-violent, merely sexual, merely sins against the Sexual Constitution which Ms. Bunch wants to do away with. "There is no such thing as an illegitimate child"- -no such thing as an
unchaste woman, no need to regulate sexual behavior.[110 But there are
unchaste women and Charles's mother was one of them, and unchaste women do bring
illegitimate children into the world, and Charles was one of them, and
illegitimate children are responsible for a disproportionate amount of social
pathology, a fact which will not be changed by passing as law (as has been done
in Sweden) that there are no illegitimate children.
Harriet T]
that if men are so sure that nature intended women for marriage, motherhood
and servitude, why then do they find it necessary to erect so many barriers to
other options, why are they required to force women to be restricted to this
role? For if women's preference be natural there can be no necessity for
enforcing it by law, and it has never been considered necessary in any other
area to make laws compelling people to follow their inclination.[111
Women aren't drawn into marriage by their "nature." They accept it because it
is advantageous and because its advantages cannot be obtained without submitting
to the patriarchal constraints whose purpose is to channel procreation through
families. The present disruption of sexual law-and-order is produced by women's
trying to retain the advantages while rejecting the constraints.
We read in the book of H]
She took part in the sexual customs of her own free will and...viewed them not as an obligatory or compulsory duty but as pleasant occasions, rather like festive parties. This situation was clearly unacceptable to the men who espoused the patrilineal Hebrew system, as Hosea did, but it does reveal that for those who belonged to other religious systems it was quite typical behavior. For thousands of years these sexual customs had been accepted as natural
among the people of the Near and Middle East. They may have permitted and even
encouraged matrilineal descent patterns to continue and a female-kinship system
to survive. Inherent within the very practice of the sexual customs was the lack
of concern for the paternity of children--and it is only with a certain
knowledge of paternity that a patrilineal system can be maintained.[112
Hosea was a spokesman for the newer patriarchal religion of Jahweh, Gomer a
representative of the older worship of the Grea]
Goddess worship continued throughout the periods of Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon and as late as St. Paul. It appears that the worship of the Goddess did not naturally give way to the new masculine religions, but was the victim of centuries of continual persecution and suppression by the more aggressive, war-like invaders....Merlin Stone believes that the persecution of Goddess worshippers had a political and economic basis. The invaders had a patrilineal system whereby men controlled paternity, property and the right to rule. If Goddess worship was destroyed, the indigenous, matrilineal system would also be destroyed. It was only by denying women the sexual freedom they had under the Goddess that men could control paternity. Therefore, moral imperatives, such as premarital virginity and marriage fidelity for women reflected and reinforced politically inspired religion. Stone's research has shown her that this integral Biblical story [the Garden of Eden story] which is used theologically to explain male dominance in all things, has been used through the ages to justify the continual oppression and subjugation of women. Ms. Stone believes that the story symbolically describes the eradication of Goddess worship and the damning of its religious trappings and institutions, i.e., wise, prophetic serpents as adjuncts of the Goddess, holy fruit trees, sexually active and free women. [Emphasis added.]
The male and female religions existed side by side for thousands of years. In
other words, it required thousands of years of struggle to establish the
patriarchal system and to do away with forms of religious worship which W.
Robertson Smith describes as "horrible orgies of unrestrained sensuality, of
which we no longer dare to speak in unveiled words."[113
The single generation following the publishing of ] "Women by nature," writes Hendrik DeLeeuw,
are no more monogamous than men and no less polygamous. Women's sexual
tendencies, biologically, are no less variational than those of the male gender.
Best historical proof lies in the case of some of the primitive communities
where conditions of life did not hamper sex expression of women any more than of
men. Among the natives of Victoria, for example, the women have so many lovers
that it becomes almost impossible to guess the paternity of children. Brazilian
historians relate that among the Guyacurus and the Guyanas Indians of South
America, the women, and especially the nobler ones, have one or more lovers who
remain at their side day and night to attend to their sexual requirements. And
so it becomes obvious that wherever conditions permitted, women have rejected
the monogamous relationships as often as men. What it also implies is that, if
granted equal freedom, women tend to be equally variational and multiple in
their sex expression.[114
This promiscuity is why these societies are "primitive." It is to prevent
civilized society from relapsing into this primitivism that the Legitimacy
Principle--every child must have a father- -must be enforced.
Here, from Dear Abby]
DEAR ABBY: I'll bet you never heard anything like this before. Our son, "Mike," has been living with his girlfriend, "Libby," for three years. They have a 2-year-old son whom we love like a grandson. Last year, money got tight, so to help out with the expenses, Libby and Mike rented their spare room to a friend of Mike's. (I'll call him Gary.) As it turned out, Libby carried on a secret affair with Gary, and now she has a child by him, too. Our son wants to forgive Libby, marry her and adopt her new baby. We, his parents, cannot forgive her for what she did to Mike. We love our son and the grandson he and Libby gave us, but we do not want to accept Libby as our daughter-in-law knowing she had an illegitimate child by a guy who rented a room in their house. How should we handle this? --GRAMAW
Abby's reply:
DEAR GRAMAW: Regardless of how you feel about Libby, if you don't accept her as your daughter-in-law along with her children, you can say goodby to your son and the grandson you love. It's a package deal. Take it or leave it; the choice is yours.
It's a good example of the contrasting ways in which matriarchy and patriarchy handle the regulation of sexuality. Libby accepts the first law of matriarchy--whatever she decides is final--and Mike and the legal system go along. In consequence, seven people are at risk, the two babies, the three parents and the two grandparents. The son must either subsidize an adulteress and a bastard or lose his own child. The mother is at risk of being a single parent caught in the Custody Trap--as sole provider and sole custodian, with reduced resources and doubled responsibilities, de-classed in the eyes of conservative people, perhaps driven onto welfare. The two babies are at risk of being fatherless and therefore more likely to be impoverished and delinquent. The two grandparents will either lose their grandchild or be compelled to accept the adulteress's value system, accept an illegitimate child they don't want as their grandchild and pretend not to care about traditional family values. Suppose that the legal system didn't go along. Suppose it behaved in accordance with the principles of the patriarchy which created it. Suppose it provided props for the father's role rather than for the mother's. Then (l) there would probably be no shacking-up to begin with, no illegitimate child. Libby would be far less likely to have shacked up with Mike or to have had her secret affair with Gary, knowing that Mike, not she, was the legal custodian of the grandson and knowing that Mike had the authority to toss her out and keep his grandson for himself--and find himself a wife who would not introduce confusion of progeny into his household. Then (2) if there had been an affair between Gary and Libby anyway, it would have been up to Mike to decide whether to legitimize Libby's illegitimate child and by doing so guarantee it a place within the patriarchal system, or to expel Libby and her illegitimate child and by so doing safeguard the proper rearing and socializing of his son and his relationships with the grandparents--while at the same time giving Libby, Gary and their child their best opportunity of forming a patriarchal family of their own. And of course giving himself his best opportunity of marrying another woman and creating a patriarchal family of his own and providing his son with a stepmother who shared his patriarchal values.
Here's another letter to Abby, illustrating the sexual confusion of the times:
DEAR ABBY: Our parents' anniversary is coming up soon. Some of us would like to make them a gift of a family portrait including their children, their children's spouses and their grandchildren. We want to limit this portrait to legitimate family members only, which would exclude the mother of one of the grandchildren and her son from a previous relationship. We would like to include our brother and his legitimate child without including the woman he lives with and her illegitimate son. Is it possible to do this without causing hard feelings? --PROBLEMS
DEAR PROBLEMS: No. Abandon the idea. There are no illegitimate children; just illegitimate parents.
The writer and his or her siblings believe in the Legitimacy Principle. No matter, says Abby. There are new proprieties to which everyone must conform on pain of being disliked by feminists and believers in the first law of matriarchy. Since the feminist/sexual revolution the Promiscuity Principle has replaced the Legitimacy Principle and one sexual arrangement is as good as another. Nobody's feelings must ever be hurt--unless they happen to believe in the Legitimacy Principle. Field direction (thinking the way everyone else thinks), shame and guilt have hitherto been means of maintaining sexual law-and-order, especially among females, who used to glory in their role as the guardians of morality and who formerly had no greater pleasure than in gossiping about the sexual transgressions of their less virtuous sisters. No more. What Charlotte Bunch said of lesbianism ("it threatens male supremacy at its core") is trebly true of the first law of matriarchy, now that field direction works for, rather than against it, now that shame and guilt no longer function to promote legitimacy, now that the courts (and Abby) are on the side of the Promiscuity Principle. Women now control their own sexuality without interference from men. The Legitimacy Principle, the patriarchal family and the male role as its head are obsolete. These changes, striking at the foundation of the patriarchal system, have been accomplished without any examination of their portentous consequences for society. According to feminists Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin:
The matriarchal mode of child-rearing, in which each individual is nurtured
rather than dominated from birth provides the rational basis for a genuinely
healthy society, a society of self-regulating, positive individuals.[115
Things are this way in the ghettos, where half of the young bear the surnames
of their mothers, and where the proportion of such maternal surnames increases
every year,116 along with crime and the other accompaniments of matriarchy.
"You Frenchmen," said an Iroquois Indian three hundred years ago to the
Jesuit Father Le Jeune, "love only your own children; we love all the children
of the tribe."117 In a promiscuous matriclan this is the best way to see that
all children are cared for; but it will not create the deep family loyalties
needed |