Summary: Before we start this series speculating about our new society as gender roles change unrecognizably, I’ll reverse my usual procedure and give the conclusions at the beginning. The early signs of these things have already appeared, but most readers will be shocked — and many will be horrified. {1st of 2 posts today.}
“Always in motion is the future.”
— Yoda, Jedi-Knight.
An outline of this series
A combination of social evolution and technology — with complex feedbacks between them — has greatly changed gender roles during the past 150 years, and the process has just begun. We can only guess at possible outcomes ahead from trends already running, which is what we’ll do in this series.
I believe that women will continue to outperform men in education and therefore taking an increasingly powerful — and eventually a dominant — role in the professions, business, and politics. Accelerating this trend will be their natural advantages in bureaucratic organizations (from classroom to boardroom) as the weight of sexism fades.
In such a world fewer women will be able to marry up (aka hypergamy) as the balance of power shifts in their favor, putting further stress on the institution of marriage and the nuclear family structure.
As patriarchy dies marriage will offer ever fewer benefits to men. They’ll compare the consequence-less sex so easy available without marriage — with the burden of marriage, raising children, doing half the housework — and the high odds of one’s wife initiating divorce, taking the kids, and levying a decade or two of child support payments. At home paternity tests might increase their cynicism about the institution, as 2-3% of men discover that they’re not the biological father of their children. These things will wreck the already decaying structure of the nuclear family.
Women choosing men without hypergamy often will select for charisma (i.e., alphas) instead of breadwinner ability. As attractive women focus on a small pool of alphas, there’s not much left for young betas (the omegas seldom get anything). The increasing number of obese women further limits the eligibles available to the majority of young men, as the legalization of dating (e.g., getting affirmative consent at each base) diminishes their interest in the game. As a result increasing numbers of young men are already dropping from the rat race of chasing career success and women (always interrelated) — turning instead to porn, sports, and games. That will become more attractive as technology makes all three more engrossing.
Another revolutionary aspect of these dynamics, already seen on our college campuses, is to reverse the traditional dominant role of women in setting the rules for relationships. As they chase a small pool of men, the men set the rules — and women enjoy the game less (see this study). It’s like the law of equivalent exchange at work, as what women gain in one sphere they lose in another.
These trends will express themselves differently in each class. Marriage will again be a behavior of the upper classes. The government will increasingly support single mothers among the proles (they’ll be few in the middle classes, especially after scientists create the Pill for men, allowing them to more easily control their paternity). Social mobility will decline from its already low levels. This is fine for the 1%, since the resulting atomized society will provide few centers of power to challenge them, and they’re uninterested in the personal behavior of the proles.
Most of these trends have already appeared, at least on a small scale. Many have advanced further in Europe. They can be seen even more clearly on our TV and movie screens (see posts in the last section). We just don’t want to see them. The Left has feminist dreams, while the Right has dreams of restoring the 1950s.
My guess is that our future will be a combination of “back to the future” (e.g., strong class structure with low social mobility) and features unique in history (although there are always precedents) — which neither today’s Left nor Right will find satisfactory.
About these matters
Are these changes good or bad? Please consult a priest or philosopher for answers to such questions. This series only discusses what was, what is, and what might be. Understanding first, judgments afterwards. Then we can work to forge a better future.
Before you decide, however, imagine how would people from the past regard our society? Consider someone brought to our time from before the massive changes that began in the 1970s, like Bat Masterson from Dodge City in 1877.
“Nothing is written.”
— Lawrence of Arabia, in the movie.
This afternoon’s post will recommend books exploring our new future.
For More Information.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See my list of accurate predictions here. See all posts about women and gender issues. Of special interest are these about marriage and gender role:
- What’s the future of the family in America? How will that change our government?
- Do we want to bring back traditional marriage? What is traditional marriage?
- The feminist revolutionaries have won. Insurgents have arisen to challenge the new order. As always, they’re outlaws.
- “Mockingjay” shows us a Revolution in Gender Roles. What’s the next revolution?
- The war of the sexes heats up: society changes as men learn the Dark Triad.
- The revolution in gender roles reshapes society in ways too disturbing to see.
Examination of the hit TV show “Castle” as a mirror to our changing society:
- “Castle” shows us marriage in America, a fault line between our past & future
- “Castle” shows us a dark vision of Romance in America
- “Castle” helps us adjust to a new America, with women on top
- Beckett shows our future. She chooses wisely & marries Castle, but dreams at night of her alpha ex-boyfriend.
The first comment on this post is from my 20 year old son:
“Duh. Isn’t this all obvious?”
Obviously it is, but I have only one disagreement. That is, I’m somewhat inclined to think that the coming wave of job automation, though it may currently seem that men will suffer from it disproportionately, will in the end spell the end of the professional working woman, whose livelihood is entirely dependent on her ability to navigate massive, horrifically inefficient bureaucracies rather than actually producing anything of value to the economy.
I think that at bottom, this is what is at the root of the hostility that a lot of liberals/feminists/etc. feel towards Silicon Valley and their so-called ‘gender gap’. They see companies like Google and Apple and other lesser known start-ups which are basically entirely dependent on the labor of high-IQ men, and moreover they see that this most productive part of the economy is doing just fine without any HR departments or whatever, and hence they see that for women with aspirations of joining the workforce, the game is almost up: they will either have to learn how to code–which for the most part they can’t–or else they’ll have to be content with going back into kitchen, or else just living the rest or their lives not only alone, but also poor as well.
Irving,
I don’t understand your comment.
(a) If you believe Apple and Google don’t have HR departments then you are very much mistaken.
(b) That’s a tendentious perspective on the objections to the gender imbalance in some of the STEM fields, especially when there are documented studies showing widespread sexism.
(c) It’s nuts to believe that women cannot code. If Babbage had finished his analytical engine the world would be a different place, and Ada Lovelace would be famous as the first software engineer. Also, the “women cannot do ‘X'” nonsense has been a commonplace for centuries regarding fields in which women do quite well today.
(d) I strongly believe that the “professional working women” (a bit redundant?) will displace many male professionals during the next two decades.
I do agree that the “he coming wave of job automation” might disproportionately effect the service fields which have a disproportionate ratio of women to men. For example, the long-awaited move the paperless office will evaporate countless clerical jobs, which I suspect are disproportionately women.
The boys comment is right on Target.
“We just don’t want to see them. …and women enjoy the game less ”
Have had 20 something Interns working for me. Second and Third Generation money supporting the basics; life is easy for them. They are Retired now and may work later! Simply put…They are NOT in the Game. The relationship game as we used to know it. The Work Game as we used to know it. Skateboarding in their late 20’s?? Climbing Mtns, skiing Extreme, hunting bear and deer with Bows! Eventually using family connections to pursue…whatever…with access to idle Capital. Know many upwardly mobile, self actualizing women from 35 to 50. Single or divorced from some unfulfilling guy (whatever that may be).Strikingly they pursue “encounters”, put the men through Tests immediately and then are baffled.
Next the small bitter taste of disappointment creeps inward. What? Why? …they ask at times. Yes. The Upper Classes marry and will continue. Arranged via clear social choices in toto by their parents and grandparents. Successfully i will add, children, mutual satisfaction as the women know from experience what a busy man must do. And the financial stressors are absent. Both come from a Safe Environment.
Look fwd to the Book List. Great stuff. Eyes wide open.
Breton
Breton,
Please don’t write comments with each sentence a new line. It’s like putting everything in CAPS. Your grade school english teachers cry when they read you posts, feeling that they failed.
“second and third gen money supporting them”
You are talking about a tiny fraction of the American population, the top few percent (the wealth needed to be in the top 1% is very roughly $3 million, although estimates vary widely).
“imagine how would people from the past regard our society?”
If those persons lived in Europe between about between 1600 and 1800, they might recognize a number of characteristics.
Low social mobility, stratified society, 1% with extremely controlled marriages (to preserve and extend power and wealth), are the obvious ones.
Less well-known is the quite high rate of lifelong celibacy and childlessness, as a significant fraction of the population could not marry (too poor, too unstable life conditions such as with soldiers or seamen), was not allowed to marry (monacal population was still important, servants had to get the permission from their masters to marry), or would not because of other socio-economic reasons (the spinster taking care of old, sick or disabled relatives was a reality).
Major differences: children born out of wedlock were shunned upon, and the place of women was very much on the low rung; the percentage of women in prostitution was in the two-digits range — at least 1 in 8 in Paris for instance (the image of Ancien Regime cities teeming with courtesans and harlots was also a reality).
guest,
Thanks for that great comment. My post conflated two trends, which I didn’t distinguish (I’m tweaking the post to clarify this). The re-emergence of a stratified low-mobility class structure is — as you note — going back to the future. At the same time technology and social evolution are producing social forms with some precedents in history — but quite different than anything before.
Until reading your comment I didn’t see this clearly.
OK — let me rephrase what I said above. Although it may be that there are women who have the requisite aptitudes to become computer programmers, engineers, etc, it is pretty clearly the case that when compared to men, only a relatively small number are. At least, the number is extremely small compared to what your average feminist will deem acceptable, which is probably around 50 percent if not higher. It is noted that according to the available numbers, women only make up about 83 percent of Google employees are men; and those 17 percent that are women, we can fairly presume, are probably for the most part employed as account managers, or in other non-technical departments. And let us keep in mind that for all of the money that they generate, Google employees a relatively small number of people, so that 17 percent is a percent taken from an already small number.
At any rate, my position is simply that sexism is not the principle cause for the disparity I have noted above, though I do not deny that sexism does exist. And I do think that think that as more and more jobs get automated, and as things becomes more and more technologically sophisticated in general, the economy will really only be able to support a very small number of positions that, it seems, women excel at best. The top 1 percent of women in terms of talent will either learn to code or else go to Harvard Law or whatever and get a job in government; for the rest, though, I just can’t see how things are going to end well for them.
I’ve gotten Google’s employment statistics here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/29/silicon-valley-tech-diversity-hiring-women-minorities/9735713/
Irving,
“my position is simply that sexism is not the principle cause for the disparity I have noted above”
People have been saying that about countless occupations for 140 years. In almost every case they have been proven wrong, and the exceptions always result from physical differences — not the case in engineering. A vast body of research shows your belief is bizarrely wrong. It is pure sexism.
“The top 1% of women in terms of talent will either learn to code or else go to Harvard Law or whatever and get a job in government”
TOK, that’s just dumb sexism. We’re not going to debate women’s inferiority here. It’s off topic. No more will be allowed.
So noted. They would cringe yes but at many other things, too.
The juxtaposition of this Gender thing with the life of the wealthy, as so referenced by FSF, is valuable. If you do not know who you are in reference to the Other, you know little. A self referential orientation is one of the symptoms today.
But let’s get back to me, please.
Breton
breton,
The books going up this afternoon deal with exactly what you describe — who we are in reference to our past, to other cultures present and past, and to our possible futures.
My posts are examinations of things on the edge of the known, and set on the base of knowledge from people who have deeply explored these issues. That is, I believe, one feature distinguishing websites like the FM website from the bulk on the internet — where authors look out the window and speculate as if nobody researched these questions.
My apologies — I didn’t mean to cause offense.
Irving,
Nicely said, but no apology needed. You expressed your views, to which you are entitled. But these kinds of debates can quickly spiral out of control in fruitless rhetoric that leaves the subject of the post in the dust.
California is moving to replace the statue of Fr. Junipero Serra in the US Capitol with one of Dr. Sally Ride, while in that same building, Col Martha McSally, USAF (ret.) and former commander of the 354th Fighter Sqdn — A-10 — now represents Arizona’s 2nd congressional district.
Chet,
Given the history of the Spanish missionaries in California, switching the statues from Fr. Junipero Serra to a more neutral figure seems logical. From his Wikipedia entry:
Women:
(1) Hold the majority of US wealth (60%).
(2) Are the majority of high school, undergrad and graduate student graduates.
(3) Collect 98% of alimony and child support.
(4) Collect the majority of federal payouts for SS, Medicare, health, education and welfare.
(5) Represent a tiny fraction of suicides, work place and combat deaths when compared to men. (6) Pay cheaper health care costs than men in relation to the services they receive (see ACA).
(7) Represent the fewest homeless yet get far, far better access to homeless benefits.
(8) Receive fractional sentences for equal crimes as men.
In the US, women are now and have always been the privileged gender. Men have always had it much tougher in life than women. But that’s not what you hear, is it? What do you hear instead? The “war on women”! The patriarchy oppresses women! The horrible misogynists! All men are rapists and wife beaters! All of the lies you’re told as a man are based on statistics and data massaged to make you feel ashamed and less of a man – unless you’re living on bended knee for a woman. HeForShe is the latest attempt by the gynocracy to get men to man up and live on bended knee for women. The patriarchy didn’t oppress women. It oppressed men. You just can’t see the forest for the trees.
Most of the richest women in the world are rich because (1) their husbands died, leaving them their wealth, or (2) they divorced their husband and raked him over the financial rape coals. Divorced and widowed baby boomer women represent a very rich class indeed.
How’s it all going to end?
(1) Tanking marriage and birth rates. More single mothers. See decline of black family – canary in the coal mine. Currently underway across the globe.
(2) Mass immigration to cover the tanking marriage and birth rates. Well underway in several feminized nations.
(3) Mass social upheaval due to mass immigration. Already well underway.
(4) More Socialism. More redistribution of wealth. Well underway in several feminized nations.
(5) A move toward greater totalitarianism over, fewer rights for and dictatorial rule by women against men. See feminist foreign policy, ‘1 in 5’, manspreading, manbashing, banning anti-feminist speech, VAWA, Yes Means Yes, etc.
(6) A doubling down of patriarchal and feminist inspired misandry against the majority of men. Well underway.
(7) Mass societal and economic destabilization. Already well underway.
The Truth,
The “Myth of Male Superiority” covers the material in the first section of your comment in detail.
I think your “how’s it all going to end” section is largely imaginary. The first two are somewhat correct. Birth rates are falling everywhere — a good thing, imo. Declining marriage rates is the trend, not an effect. Mass immigration relates to differential economic levels between regions and the ability to travel — it’s a commonplace of history going back millennia, and probably unrelated to the changes in gender roles.
The last five points contain several “already well underway” that seem obviously false. As for the future, predictions of doom like yours are a dime a dozen in history. They’re almost always wrong, being rooted in your confidence that the majority of people are wrong — or even stupid. That’s sometimes correct, but seldom. Very seldom.
That’s not to say the trends here will produce a better world, in terms of my values (or yours). It might be worse, or much worse. But forecasts of “mass social destabilization” and “mass social upheaval” require quite a bit more evidence than I suspect you have. The “more socialism” bullet is delusional considering the actual trends in the West that are concentrating wealth and income in the 1%.
Fabius,
At least on the surface, the movement to honor Sally Ride stems more from her achievements than from defects in Fr. Serra’s character:
It’s worth noting that Fr. Serra will soon be St. Junipero.
Editor of the Fabius Maximus website,
You agreed with the parts you liked (those parts that fit your narrative). What you did with the rest was expected. Lets check back with one another in twenty years to see who’s the better predictor.
Talk to you then.
The Truth,
My major point was not about the future, but that you incorrectly describe the present. If you get that wrong, your predictions have high odds of proving incorrect.
The 3 most important thing when writing imo: facts, facts, facts.
The GOP’s backlash against women and gay rights has been pretty noticeable – particularly after the last election.
Conservative white males are afraid that in the new world they will be treated the way they’ve treated women.
It’s a little sad and pitiful to see old Republican politicians struggling to understand what “consent” means. In biblical morality (which most of these gentlemen were raised by) – women were required to follow certain social rules – like for example not going out without an escort or engaging in “promiscuous” behavior like drinking while wearing a skirt. If a woman violated any of these rules she could be raped with no consequence, as it was presumed she was “asking for it”.
This still sadly remains true today – police departments around the country have mountains of untested rape kits, and no interest in investigating rape. Solving crimes against “loose women” simply isn’t worth their time. Republicans literally can’t understand consent – it completely goes against the religious morality they were taught since childhood. Woman grows up and stays a virgin, until she his married (an arrangement between her future husband and father, her agreement not required), marriage is consummated, she pops out kids for 20 years (birth control is bad and all that). No consent required. The end.
I doubt any of these men would like being forcibly penetrated every time they got drunk in college.
For further reading check out many Christians’ bizarre views on how a marriage should be run: http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/home.html
“The increasing number of obese women further limits the eligibles available to the majority of young men, as the legalization of dating (e.g., getting affirmative consent at each base) diminishes their interest in the game. As a result increasing numbers of young men are already dropping from the rat race of chasing career success and women (always interrelated) — turning instead to porn, sports, and games. That will become more attractive as technology makes all three more engrossing.”
It sounds something out of a 70’s sci-fi dystopia. Pretty fascinating.
Marcello,
Wow, I didn’t think of that. That rings true (as a young man I read a lot of that).
This brings a first-order prediction — which experience validates: these posts will get little attention. Really scary forecasts are ignored. Things that will appear in our lifetime and affect us personally. It’s fun to read about Obama’s NAZI stormtroopers putting people into concentration camps because only the really far-right nuts see that as possible, let alone likely. Ditto for the cities flooded during our lifetimes (the actions of the far-left greens in their personal lives show that they don’t believe these stories).
This is fascinating. I’m tossing the post I was writing for this afternoon, and instead following up your insight.
Thank you for this very interesting forecast. I add a little footnote. What society as a whole is going to be is very difficult to forecast. Maybe, it is a little easier to forecast how society is changing at its symbolic level.
Digression: personally, I think that symbols are the deepest foundations of societies, but this is a persuasion for which it’s impossible to give a rational basis within the limits of this exchange; let’s say that I agree, on the whole, with Eric Voegelin’s views in his main work, “Order and History”.
Here is my footnote.
The current politically correct agenda for LGBT rights, and especially for homosexual marriages, for homosexual adoption and tecnhically engineered production of human beings resulting in homosexual paternity and maternity is of very small practical concern (it regards an insignificant percentage of population) but has a huge symbolical importance, which I think impossible to overrate. Why?
Because:
1) for the first time in human history, it severs the link between the psychocorporeal male/female encounter and the physical (“natural”) and psychical (“cultural”)l perpetuation of human species, substituting it with a psychocorporeal encounter between a variable number of human beings, whose sexual determination has just a functional, technical importance, and “die Technik”, the whole body of technosciences (and the powers, ideologies, rational and non-rational dynamics which govern it). N.B.: the abovementioned male/female link is Eros. What happens if Eros becomes the link between human beings and technosciences? Literature has something to say about this matter (no good news).
2) for the first time in human history, in the symbolically central istitution of marriage, groom and bride are defined NOT by what they ARE (male, female) but by what they DESIRE (where their erotic inclinations lies). I do not know any social example of such a radical subjectivism, except maybe contemporary art.
3) for the first time in human history, the symbolical and juridical web of ascendancy and descendency is broken: how do you trace the ascendancy and descendency in a human being whose fathers and mothers are: two males who ordered him/her as a commodity + one unknown male who sold his sperm + one woman who sold her gametes + one woman who rented her womb? There’s just one practical way: his/her parents are those who ordered him/her and paid for his/her fabrication, so gaining his/her copyright.
4) Father, Mother, Ascendancy, Descendency, Marriage, etc., are centrally symbolical words, which incessantly produce symbols and meaning: the symbols and meanings which constitute all language, i.e. the the vital atmosphere for any human culture. Alter (od adulterate) them, you have altered (or adulterated) everything men think, desire, dream.
Conclusion: here we witness a fight for gaining the center of the symbolic chessboard. When you gain the center of the chessboard, you are one step short of victory.
Roberto,
“What society as a whole is going to be is very difficult to forecast”
I strongly agree. That’s why I’m laying a hard foundation of facts on which to build some guesses about the future. It’s the facts which are shocking, since most people are unaware of them.
My experience here, doing this with so many issues since 2007, is that the most common reaction will be to close their eyes.
In effect, we human beings tolerate just homeopathic doses of truth…
Roberto,
I have wondered about that. My guess is that our ability to see and respond is less than that of previous generations. My parents’ generation fought WWII, the Cold War, and the civil rights conflicts — all to wins (in the sloppy real world fashion).
Us Boomers are doing so well. Hence I believe the problem is not “human” behavior, but our behavior.
The most frequent response in comments to my posts — overwhelming so — is that the problem is not us. It’s “the people I don’t like” (the Left, the Right, the atheists, the religious, the 1%, etc) — but we are innocent snowflakes — in a world not worthy of us.
Hence my quite unpopular stand that the problem is the Man in the Mirror. I doubt if I could have adopted a more unpopular position. Even advocacy of outright evil (e.g., racism, fascism, totalitarian communism) would get more applause.
It is bad for business.
Dear Editor,
I think that you are generally and specifically right. Generally, because I think that the problem (or at least the correct p.o.v. to look at it) is always The Man in the Mirror; specifically, because if you live in a comparatively soft world, it’s more easy that you are allowed not to look at unpleasing truths.
Personal example: before seeing with my personal eyes what a civil war really is, and how it changes the behaviour of ordinary people (as a young man, in 1982, I was an Italian officer in the UNO mission in Lebanon) I didn’t know what peace and war meant.
Responsibility is always personal. (Of course, political responsibility has to be weighed according to political power).
Roberto,
“Because I think that the problem (or at least the correct p.o.v. to look at it) is always The Man in the Mirror”
I believe that’s our problem today, but I strongly disagree that it is always the problem. The problem is IMO usually external, and so the process is usually one of recognition and response.
This can be described as saying it is our “problem” to do the recognition and response, but that is not the normal meaning of problem — the problem is the “cause” or threat. NAZIs or commies at home, climate change, external invaders, disease, etc.
I believe our situation is unusual. We have (as a nation) great wealth and power plus the machinery for self-government. We got these things by birth, a gift. But we have become too apathetic and passive to work the political machinery of the government. So others are doing so, and in their own interest (of course).
There are always precedents. The obvious one is late Republic Rome.
I agree with your correction. See, your present problem as an American and my problem as an Italian are not the same for obvious historical reasons, but they are the same, I think, in this: that they regard the depths of identity. Religious, cultural, national, ethical, and consequently political identity. You, as American, are in the center of this turmoil; I, as an Italian and an European, am at its periphery (and being at its periphery is part of my problem).
Synthesis: what’s happened to European civilization? Can we still speak of it as a living reality? An Irish philosopher whom you might know, Desmond Fennell, titles his last book “Third Strike Did It”, meaning that European civilization has been killed by three strikes: 1) communism 2) nazism 3) the current brand of progressive liberalism enforced today by Western countries, and whose inaugural deed is the refuse to officially repent for the launching of two atomic bombs on Japan (prohibition of the extermination of civilians being one of the core normative tenets od European civilization).
I don’t know if he’s right, but I think that he has a point.
Roberto,
Thank you for providing a perspective from Europe. The English language media I read (US and UK) give little feel for how the world looks like from Europe, and almost nothing from the Mediterranean nations. You have, I suspect, I somewhat different set of problems — but I don’t know more than that.
We do, in effect. But maybe, we’d better talk about them when commenting your next post about Europe. Thank you for your work, and for this interesting and lively conversation.
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Yes, I feel this is happening, although I feel this will also lead to a very hot gender war in the future.
I feel boys and girls begin life very equal, but the very differential treatment boys and girls receive as early as one year of age is creating a very different outcome for the majority of males. The more aggressive, less supportive treatment designed to make boys tough is still here. Even in a nice, middle-class, two parent home, those boys are falling behind their female peers collectively. The only boys doing well are those fewer boys from middle to upper class homes where there is enough stability, knowledge, and * “various mental, emotional, social, verbal interaction/support.
Boys/later men are also given love and honor, the essentials for feelings of self-worth only on condition of some money, power, status, etc. This will become increasingly fewer as the world and its disrespect for Males increases with their lack of influence in the world.
The more correct treatment we as women are given from an early age through adulthood is enabling women from many socioeconomic environments to move ahead in the information age. This is also sadly coupled with increased freedom of expression to give more often now, more verbal, silent abuse, and hollow kindness/patronization to our male peers who are now falling behind. This is increasing in severity, and I believe, is creating more harm to our males peers in a collective way.
I feel the myth of genetics, which is being taught in our schools and is believed by nearly everyone, is creating much more feelings of superiority among girls and women today. This is sadly coupled with more and more feelings of inferiority among many boys/later men.
I feel as boys and men slowly begin to lose their ability to compete and thus obtain love and honor from society, they will slowly and increasingly begin to retaliate toward society and yes women in general. I feel this will eventually lead to a very real gender war with girls and women coming out on the losing end. http://learningtheory.homestead.com
Duckworth,
Thanks for sharing your views and analysis.