One of the
things that makes the Redpill or MGTOW[1]
community attractive to a lot of younger men today is that the purveyors of the
movement like to share hard truths; the kind of truths that many others avoid.
You will hear them say stuff life, “We drop truth bombs,” or “We will tell you
the cold, hard truth,” and other things like that. And I will grant it to the
men, and sometimes women, in this movement they are willing to deal with uncomfortable
and awkward topics that much of the mainstream discourse just does not want a
bar of. It is no wonder, then, that the Redpill community gains traction with many
young men.
There is
very good evidence that we live in a gynocentric[2]
society and that the deck is stacked against the man. This is even true when it
comes to domestic violence, in how it is understood and how it is punished. Martin van Creveld, who is a historian,[3]
notes in his remarkable book, The Privileged Sex, about domestic
violence:
“What is true of the military is equally true for society at
large. In 1975, and again in 1985, the National Institute of Mental Health
studied a national sample of 2,143 married and cohabiting couples. In both
years, the number of attacks which spouses of either sex directed at the other
was practically equal. Another study discovered that, each year, American wives
were one-fifth more likely to “severely attack” their husbands than vice versa.
In Canada, according to yet another study, the discrepancy is greater still. Of
the women interviewed, 6.2 percent admitted to having beaten up their partners
during the preceding year, as compared to 2.5 percent of men. In the same
study, more women than men admitted to having used “severe” violence, and more
women than men admitted to having used a knife or a gun. And the more severe
the violence, the more likely it is to be directed by women against men. One
study of police records found that women were three times more likely to
threaten or use weapons, such as knives and guns, against their spouses than
men.
So-called reverse spouse abuse — note the terminology, which
makes clear that the real thing refers to men abusing women — is the most
under-reported form of all domestic violence. Some of the reasons for this may
be methodological. It stands to reason that at least some men are being hit or
pushed, have things thrown at them or are kicked or whipped, just as some women
are. But this does not prevent most investigators from ignoring that
possibility. They assume that men’s “accounts of the violence cannot be taken
at face value,” while registering what women say as if it were gospel truth.
For example, 30 percent of women questioned in one emergency room between 1976
and 1979 blamed their injuries on domestic abuse. Since men were not questioned
on the matter, they could not have reported it even if it had taken place.
Conversely, when one study did compare the percentage of
people of both sexes admitted to hospital emergency rooms as a result of
injuries allegedly caused by domestic violence, it turned out that there was
little difference between men and women.
Another reason why female-on-male domestic violence is
under-reported is the lenient way such cases are treated. In the movies, women
who commit violence against men are often applauded by the audience. The
reverse happens rarely, if ever. In real life, men who dare to complain are
likely to be despised, derided, or both. One does not have to be a
criminologist or sociologist to know that, as long as it is perpetrated by a
woman against a man, domestic violence “tends to be... victim precipitated.” Stripped
of jargon, this means that a woman is much more likely to be regarded as having
acted in self-defense. This applies even when, as happens in no fewer than 70
percent of all known cases, the violence is applied at a time when the man is
helpless. Lorena Bobbitt was not the only woman whose male partner was asleep
at the time of the attack. Other men were drunk or bound.
As former New York governor Mario Cuomo, the father of
current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, said when he decided to pardon a woman
who shot her estranged husband after driving several hundred miles, when it
comes to women who kills “there are no rules.” In a single act of clemency in
1990, the governor of Ohio, Richard Celeste, pardoned no fewer than 27 women
convicted of murdering their husbands. The leniency exercised toward women who
have killed their relatives may explain why 15.9 percent of imprisoned female
killers, but only 9.6 percent of male ones, are where they are for that
offense. It may also explain why adult women are 24 percent more likely to kill
their children than are men, and why under-age women are 32 percent more likely
to kill relatives, small children included, than are under-age men.
So strong is the presumption that “mothers don’t kill” that
it has even formed the basis for a legal defense strategy. One offender who
resorted to such a defense, a Virginia female convicted in 2000 of cooking her
baby in a microwave oven, got off with a mere five years in jail. With good
behavior, she could have gotten off in three. Later she was joined by several
more microwave-mothers, all of whom cited various psychological symptoms in the
hope of receiving similarly lenient treatment.
Thus, when a woman accuses a man to whom she is not married
of using violence against her, or of sexual harassment, or sexual assault, or
rape, then the man in question is disproportionally likely to suffer
punishment.”[4]
Martin van Creveld shows beyond a shadow of doubt how favoured women
are by the legal system over men. In other parts of the book he shows how often
men and women convicted of the exact same crime, meaning they were both involved
at every point, still get off lighter than the men they were committing it
with.[5]
Both women and lawyers know this is the case and take advantage of the fact.[6]
All this
goes to show that the claims of the Redpill men that society favours women in
many contexts is absolutely true. They are not lying when they say that a man
will almost always be at a disadvantage before the courts, and in many other aspects of life. They are basing
this often on their own personal experience, and also on well studied research
like that provided by van Creveld in The Privileged Sex.
If you
read van Creveld’s book he shows beyond a shadow of a doubt this this has
always been the case for humanity and will always be the case. I would summarise his
argument as such, “Yes, women are privileged, if they weren’t the human race
would really struggle.” In other words, women are privileged, because to some
degree they need to be. What is even more interesting is the even the Bible leans into this position as well.
We read in 1
Peter 3:7 this, “7 Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding
way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with
you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” This passage
is often misunderstood because it states plainly that women are “the weaker
vessel.” For one feminists either get offended at or seek to redefine its
meaning, because they do not like their physical vulnerability spelled out so bluntly. I saw one such feminist (the worst kind; a male feminist) once actually argue that weaker meant
stronger. That made me laugh. But it is also misunderstood by conservatives who
seek to say that women are equal to men, but also different. Putting aside the fact that 'equal' and 'same' are synonyms, so this conservative response makes no sense, Peter did not
say they are equal, he said weaker. Why is this?
Because, God
created men and women to bear very different loads and roles in this world.
What Peter is saying is very important: he is saying, “Don’t regard your wife
as your equal, capable of doing everything you can do. Treasure her as the more
fragile honoured vessel she is, otherwise God will be against you.” Our society
thinks that it is horrible if husbands and wives don’t consider each other equal.
Peter is saying the opposite, it is horrible if we do. It is built into
creation that men should have more regard for women, than for men. Especially
their own wife. Because the women has more need for it.
So
complaining about how men and women are not treated equal, but should be, is
both a fools errand and way off base. It is actually incredibly harmful. For one, a pretty, or even reasonably
pretty young woman in a court room, or interview room in a police station, is
always going to evoke more sympathy than a man in the same position, especially
with men. This is like an immutable law of nature, it is foolish to try to suppress this. Because this has been built into how we should view women.
Secondly, society would not work if it was not this way, because women are the
weaker vessel they need more consideration and care in almost every context.
And this is a good thing to provide.
Van Creveld
hits on this in the Conclusion of his book:
“We men well realize that nature, having made us, as
Nietzsche put it, the “unfruitful animal” and forced us to compete for women,
has turned us into the superfluous sex. Giving us larger and more robust
bodies, it has also destined us to act as beasts of burden. Our need of, and
love for, women being as strong as it is, most of the time we do not really
mind the fact that they are privileged in so many ways. Nor, in our heart of
hearts, would we like the situation to change. After all, it was women who gave
us life. In a way, all we are doing is returning a debt. This is true even if
the burden is occasionally heavy, and even if while carrying it we sometimes
have to lay down our lives. Ceasing to support women, we would lose not just
our existence but our self-respect. Perhaps the real reason why women have
never fought in war is because, as Hector told his wife, we men would rather
die than watch them dying. To quote an Indian proverb, where women are
worshipped, there the gods dwell. It would be nice, though, if from time to
time, amid the torrents of invective feminists spew at us, we occasionally
heard a pleasant female voice saying “thank you, Mate.”[7]
As a
Christian obviously I cannot endorse worshipping women, of course this is not
right. Also I don not agree nature made us this way, rather it is God's design. But the sentiment of van Creveld’s conclusion is spot on: men are
created to provide for women and make sure that they are lifted up to some
degree and women are created to come along side men and take advantage of this
provision and protection.
In other
words, there might be some good policies which the Redpill community could
achieve. But the underlying philosophy of advocating for equality between men
and women is foolish. It won’t happen, can’t happen, and would be devastating
if we attempted it, “Ceasing to support women, we would lose not just our
existence but our self-respect.” The inbuilt patriarchal nature of our world that
views and treats women with privileges and favours it does not also hand to men is part
of God’s design for our world. Yes, because of human sin it is corrupted and taken in unhealthy directions, but
it is not wrong in and of itself for these intrinsic differences to exist and be cultivated. In fact, it is vital that they are to some degree.
This is why
the Redpill philosophy is ultimately bankrupt. It might have some good points,
as did the feminism of the 19th Century. But the solution the feminists put forward, more equality between the sexes, ended up causing a whole host of
new issues. The Redpill community is falling into this same trap. The solution
is not the Redpill, it is Peter, and Paul, and Moses, and Jesus; the very Jesus who told his friend John to look after his mother. In the Scriptures we find
the solutions we should be applying, outside of basing our position on their
foundations, we risk falling into an even worse situation.
List of
References
[1]
Men Going Their Own Way
[2] Female
favouring, or female dominated culture. Bing defines it as, “centred on or
concerned exclusively with women; taking a female (or specifically a feminist)
point of view.”
[3] I
have no idea what he thinks of MGTOW or the Redpill.
[4] van
Creveld, Martin 2013, The Privileged Sex (pp. 167-169). DLVC Enterprises.
Kindle Edition.
