As a student of culture, one of the phenomena that interests me greatly is looking at the cultural view of women.  It is a noted phenomenon by mostly immoral and cynical commentators that areas that are “conservative” often have a moral cesspool nearby.  The Southern United States has Central and South Florida (Tampa, Orlando, Miami) and New Orelans.  The Far West has Las Vegas.  The Arabian Peninsula has Dubai.  Malaysia has Northern Malaysia [1].  I have commented on this phenomenon before, but usually in a more narrow and targeted way.  I would like to do so now from a larger perspective, to examine why “conservative” (and the quotes are intentional) societies tend to bifurcate women into one of those two types of roles.

Let us note at the beginning that there are several different views of women that exist in our modern world, with various conflicts between these views.  I myself, as a red-blooded man, am very hostile to the way that advertisements seem to portray women as being more intelligent and more competent than men.  This is deeply insulting, even though I realize that as women tend to spend the most money that marketers pander to them and to their own biased and mistaken views.  As a prickly person I would prefer a more honest and upfront sort of debate rather than the endless poking and insulting of genuine manhood that is present in our debased culture.  I prefer an open fight to an endless serious of ambushes.

Nonetheless, I am aware that some women have legitimate grievances about being treated as inferiors in a condescending manner by others, being expected to cater to whatever men are in the room as well as being subject to leers and inappropriate touching.  Almost no one likes being treated like a piece of meat–neither men nor women in general appreciate being expected to cater to others’ whims.  Just as I get rather ferociously hostile to media portrayals of men as stupid and savage and ignorant, I expect (and understand) sexist portrayals of women to be upsetting and provoking to others who are as defensive and prickly as I am.  Those of us that are ferociously hostile to disrespect directed towards us ought to be equally mindful of showing respect to others.

Herein lies the problem.  If we define a “traditional” culture as a culture like that of the 19th century in the United States (especially, let us say, the antebellum culture of the South), or like the Muslim culture today, or the culture of the Middle Ages in Europe, we will notice many similarities in how women are portrayed.  We see an official culture that champions virile masculinity, chaste femininity, and the courtly romance of women to be proud defenders of the hearth and home.  These portrayals are not accidental, but there is always a dark side.  In Muslim societies, that dark side is a proliferation of foreign-born prostitutes and the exploitation of foreign born maids.  In the antebellum South it meant the sexual exploitation of slave females as concubines (whose children could then be sold for profit, or to avoid embarrassment with an angry wife).  We can guess that the serfs of the Middle Ages fared no better from the virile knights and nobles who did not accept no for an answer.

So, what we have with all of these ‘traditional’ cultures is their bifurcation of women into virgins and whores.  Mothers are ‘virgins,’ as are sisters.  Future wives are as well.  Such women must be protected (generally by the manfolk) from other virile men who might want to dishonor them.  However, women of a lower social class or of a different ethnic group would not be protected, since they would be open for the exploitation of all elite males.  Often (and this was the case in both the Roman Empire and the slaves of the antebellum South) their marriages would not even be recognized, so that such lower-class women could never even be given the honor of being wives.  They could only be ‘whores’ in the eyes of those who were in charge.  In some ways this mentality continued into the workplace, as elites have often thought that professional women (whether they were waitresses or stewardesses or secretaries) were ‘available’ to satisfy the lusts of the boss or the customer.  To some extent, laws against sexual harassment are making that a little more rare, but the problem still exists.

What does one do when one is faced with this problem?  That is to say, what is the solution towards resolving the problem of sexist views of both men and women?  The solution that has largely been adopted by the radical left (which is to say, the ‘feminist’ movement) is to support sexism against men, to deny that women can be sexist themselves, and to overturn any kind of moral standards, making every virgin a whore instead of every whore a virgin.  This is the Machiavellian solution of dealing with hypocrisy by bringing the ugly truth and making it exceedingly ugly by making a war not only on hypocrisy but also on virtue.

A better alternative is to turn the standard on those who hypocritically defend legitimate standards of virtue.  That is to say, to hold them to the standard they hold others to.  That way, when they are insistent on upright moral character from their sisters and future wives, they have that same standard enforced against them.  This has many benefits.  For one, it protects the virtues of all, allowing everyone to be respected and to be treated decently.  As a fierce egalitarian I support this outcome.  Additionally, it tempers the ‘virility’ with self-control and self-discipline.  Not only does this mean that elite men have to keep their own lusts and desires and emotions under control (rather than being encouraged to be lax in this regard and end up as a bunch of hotheads who start wars) but it also means that there is no more hypocrisy to attack.  Everyone is on the same level, behaving in an honorable fashion.  I wonder why ‘conservative’ and ‘traditional’ societies have seldom hit upon that solution, as it provides the fewest grievances against social systems, being fair and just and of a high moral standard.  The only difficulty is that such a standard is very difficult to live up to–it’s so much easier to enforce morality on others, after all, than to live a moral yourself.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/the-whores-of-northern-malaysia/