Summary: Sunday’s post described one front in the newly intensified war between the sexes. Today’s speculates about its causes. You will find nothing surprising here, except for the conclusions. While obvious, I suspect you’ll find them both new and disturbing (trigger warning!).
The previous post in this series was A brief guide to the new war of the sexes (both sides are 100% right), looking at it from the perspectives of both men and women. What has created the unusual intensity of the current phase of the war of the sexes?
I speculated that the cause might be men growing weaker. Perhaps due to a combination of falling testosterone levels, sedentary lifestyles (physically weak men), modern education (feminist mothers and in doctrinaire feminist schools producing spiritually weak men), and rising rates of male obesity.
The empowerment of women is another possible cause, and easier to see — although we prefer to fantasize rather than analyze the consequences. But some conclusions can be tentatively drawn after several generations of progress. In pre-modern western societies women had to “settle”, marrying betas. But since the late 19th century women’s political and legal independence has followed their growing economic independence. It took a “quantum leap” after WWII with two revolutionary changes. This drastically reduced their need for betas.
The first reason is obvious and so always mentioned: modern contraception gave women control of their fertility. They used these tools to have fewer children. During 1955-1960 fertility was 120 live births/year per 1000 women in the 15-44 age range. By 2014 fertility had fallen almost by half, to 63 (source). Considering only native born women, it will probably continue to fall. This made a greater focus on careers possible for most women. Women’s labor force participation rose from 33% in 1950 to 60% in 2000.
The second factor is seldom mentioned: the massive use of State power to extract child support. This evolved silently but inevitably, driven by loosely related trends — and reduced women’s need for beta provider husbands. But not for the usual reasons, since only a small fraction of women in America earn enough to raise a family by themselves. Follow the history.
(1) Divorce rates rose following abolishment of traditional marriage by no-fault divorce laws. The innovator of this massive social science experiment was Governor Ronald Reagan. He signed California’s Family Law Act of 1969. Divorce created large annual crops of children with mothers unable to fully support them.
(2) The fraction of children from out-of-wedlock births has skyrocketed since WWII, creating more single mothers unable to fully support their children.
The combined result was a challenge for society: how to care for millions of children needing support. Would they be starving waifs, wards of the State (e.g., in orphanages and workhouses), welfare clients, or supported by the biological or marital father?
Congress decided to expand welfare aid to single mothers. The government’s bureaucracy and courts decided (mostly in the shadows) also to aggressively make the father (or husband) pay whenever possible. Feminism provided the ideological support, shifting the role of father from patriarch to cash cow. His authority and status stripped away, all that remained was his obligation to support his children. Family courts became engines of feminist theory, and government agencies became the extraction machine for child support payments.
Note the one-sided operation of this policy. For an unmarried man, a positive paternity test means decades of paying child support. For a married man, a negative paternity test (due to the wife’s infidelity) means paying child support. Either way, beta men become sperm donors and providers.
Enforcing child support became easier with the development of reliable paternity tests. Crude blood tests were developed in the 1920s. But they became an effective tools in the 1960s with the invention of highly accurate HLA testing. And even more so in the 1980s with RLFP testing (here is a technical explanation), and in the 1990s with even better PCR testing.
The result: women’s liberation creates a new society
Now women are unshackled from the need for beta men, and more able to follow their primal attraction for bad boys (i.e., men with the dark triad of personality traits). The result has destabilized the nuclear family, perhaps terminally. Roughly 40%-50% of first marriages end in divorce (that fraction varies with the couple’s social and economic circumstances). Women initiate roughly 70% of them. This WaPo article tells the tale; here’s another study with the same conclusion.
These numbers show that some women play this game aggressively. They marry a beta. Have some children (the most aggressive can have an alpha’s child, usually surreptitiously — but sometimes openly). Get the beta boy’s help for the first few years (i.e., when mom can’t work and the children requires intensive care), then divorce him. After that comes child support and independence!
This is logical behavior for women, responding to basic economics. But it is highly divisive, making close relations between men and women into a battlefield without rules. With roughly one in three first marriages ending when the wife files papers, does marriage make sense for many men? How many of today’s young men will marry? The shape of America’s society depends on their decisions.
Conclusions
This is a social revolution on a scale seldom seen in history. It affects our most basic social machinery. The resulting changes have just began. They will be large beyond my ability to foresee — or even imagine. See the For More Information section for posts exploring the consequences. They have already appeared and might grow to dominate society in the next generation.
A great film showing women’s instinctive dislike of betas
Mogambo
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about romance, about women and gender, and especially these…
- The feminist revolutionaries have won. Insurgents have arisen to challenge the new order. As always, they’re outlaws.
- The war of the sexes heats up: society changes as men learn the Dark Triad.
- Men are “going Galt”. Marriage is dying. Will society survive?
- Men are abandoning the rat race, & changing American society.
- Why men are avoiding work and marriage.
- Will today’s young men marry? America’s future depends which of these answers is right.
- We’ve become a low testosterone America. Pussycats? More research needed, stat!
- A brief guide to the new war of the sexes. Both sides are 100% right.
Useful books about marriage.
