An incredible sales pitch on a defective product.

Readership: Christians
Theme: Agency
Length: 1,200 words
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Introduction

Anyone who has been reading the Christian Manosphere for any length of time will have come to the conclusion that Feminism erodes marriage. But I’m not sure if anyone has explained exactly why this is. Feminism hits men and women in their respective weaknesses by promising what both sexes desire, while offering what seems to be an evasion of the costs and responsibilities thereof. This has the effect of cheapening marriage by making the inherent benefits of marriage a free-for-all (or that is the sales pitch, anyway).

Here, I’ll gloss over many of the dynamics that are already well known by regular readers in order to get to the point.

Pre-wedding feminism incentives that erode marriage

Loosening female sexual morality offers incentives to both men and women before marriage.

The incentive to men is that they will get more sex, and more easily. This is not the reality for most men but that is the sales pitch and it was/is powerful.  The small percentage of men who do get sex regularly have little to no incentive to change the current situation, and the vast majority of men who get little to no sex in the current arrangement end up demoralized.  Without being “man up! – ish” there is an incentive for those men who do not have regular access to the SMP to live lives of self-satisfaction (pun most certainly intended), which often means reduced productivity, further erosion of attractive qualities and a reinforced cycle of singleness.

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone;”

Genesis 2:18 (NKJV)
img-1783681093-6a50d04554e628.91646910.jpgA lonely young man dreams of finding love.

The incentive to women is that it allows them to fully explore their hypergamous instincts. The upside is that most women can have a top quality man! Sex is assumed, and the motivation is Tingles galore. The downside is the fact that most women will not actually pair up with a top SMV man in marriage. The reality is that, without first having a marital commitment in place, they will have a long series of pump-n-dumps, and ride the carousel until they hit the wall. Women are blindsided by this fact because (1) they are unaware of the short supply of HSMV men, (2) they are pumped up on precious princess entitlements, and (3) they don’t understand men.

There is also a prioritization of female career achievement over family achievement which (1) offsets material dependence on men, and (2) makes the men just described seem even less worthy of marriage to these women. This overall shift in focus causes women to underprioritize marriage and family precisely at the time when their prospects for marriage are at an all-lifetime high.

Post-wedding feminism incentives that erode marriage

Prioritization of female career achievement over family achievement incentivizes a more egalitarian marriage structure which brings up Proverbs 14:1 and 21:9.  Fates often awaiting men if they do marry a carousel rider is that their marriage ends in divorce rape, potential alienation from his children due to “family” court, or remains intact but has the characteristics of how Deti describes being married to a girl who settled for you.  Each of these options erodes the sanctity of marriage as men seek to avoid the pain associated with marriage. (This sentence is so d@mning to our society.)

img-1783681092-6a50d044127016.14917972.jpgA married alpha widow dreams of past lovers and is disinterested in the man she settled for.

As you can see, Feminism breaks down marriage on both sides of the wedding ceremony.  On the dating side it incentivizes men with the benefits of marriage without any of the responsibilities of headship.  It’s an easy marketing pitch to men because they avoid all the hardest work which happens with headship, while getting the fruit (sex) at a way reduced rate. On the marriage side of the wedding ceremony it gives women all the power they need to resist biblical marriage authority and extract resources and protection without any of their cost (submission). So feminism incentivizes men to erode marriage prior to the wedding and women to erode marriage after the wedding. Wildly effective.

Parallels

Comparing feminism to Eve and the serpent we have great parallels.  The serpent told Eve that God’s commands were not for her benefit but to keep her down and feminism tells women that God’s marriage order of authority is not for her benefit and to keep her down.  The conclusion the serpent draws or implies is that God is a bad authority much like feminism says that men are a bad authority.  Eve goes to Adam, tells him to eat and he abandons headship and sins through his supplication to her and the world falls into sin and death. Men listen to feminists and buy the “Happy wife, happy life“ mantra and supplicate to them and we are witnessing the deterioration of western society.

Here is where I think it gets interesting.  We are obviously not perfect like Adam was at the time and the enticements of feminism, not the actual outcomes, are actually attractive to a sizeable number of men.  Men, like lastmod, openly complain about the current situation and the lack of women, but there appear to be just as many who are enticed by the message of marital benefits without any of the costs.  Those costs are the weight of headship.  They outweigh Gregoire’s “mental load” of running the family, because that is the way God designed it, but if strong, independent women want to take some of that load off men’s shoulders (versus supporting men as they carry it) and still give men the benefits of marriage, well, for most men, that seems like it’s too good to be true.  Which it turns out is exactly the case…

But that sales pitch …… !!!

img-1783684508-6a50dd9cb8a460.49450781.jpg

To tie this to feminism, we should think about what it costs a man to live in a biblical headship role compared to what it costs him in a feminist marriage (I know, it’s an oxymoron) which is essentially a tentative liaison within serial monogamy. As the saying goes, “She’s not really his, it’s just his turn”, and here, the husband gets a long, formal “turn” with bells, and whistles, followed by a hefty soul-crushing price tag.

In economic terms, this is why a free market (a freely submissive wife) always beats a communist system (a husband asserting headship against non-compliant opposition).  To be fair, in a truly free market, everyone is out for themselves, but outside of rare circumstances, the interactions are not one-move games.  So the strategy to make the most money for yourself is to actually do what is in the best interest of the customer, even to your own minor short-term deficit, because you’ll make more serving them long term than fleecing them once.  This incentivizes self-regulation and organizes economic systems very efficiently compared to other options.  Communism’s top-down structure that demands people work against their self-interest and this design in the system requires heavy compliance enforcement costs in order to implement it.

Conclusions

My conclusion from this line of thought is that feminism is going to either become the dominant cultural force or remain the dominant cultural force in any modern society (viz. one in which people enjoy an easy life relative to history) until the incentives change.

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