Socializing the Males Revisited: Is Hefner a Lady’s Friend or Ladykiller?

A reader with the unromantic name of  “theobrominelove” takes me to task for my recent essay here on the failure to socialize the males. I welcome the criticism. Hat in hand, I will answer as honestly and earnestly as I may, and leave you, dear readers, to judge between us. ‘s bold comments are in bold.

“You seem to say that as chastity and gallantry are scorned, men do not know any better than to behave badly towards women.”

I don’t think I said anything about “not knowing any better” one way or the other. I said boys not taught self-command will grow up to be self-indulgent; boys not taught decency will grow up indecent.

In all these remarks, let us be clear, I am talking about general tendencies, not inevitabilities. It goes without saying that there will always be exceptions.

“And women, without the weapon of chastity and the allure of the mysterious, must be victims.”

More or less. Girls not taught to value chastity (in themselves or in potential mates) will tend to become women who undervalue it, or even despise it.

“They are thus doomed to loveless, unromantic marriages – or worse, the dreaded divorce. Doomed to sexual abuse. Doomed to never be respected and treasured.”

I don’t think I said anything about loveless, unromantic marriages.

“Because men, given freely available sex by promiscuous women, will not see the need to bless any woman with the virtues of respect or love.”

“In sum, in the sane society, your young men do not get to engage in sexual reproduction until and unless they vow eternal fidelity to their mates, and provide support for the offspring resulting from sexual reproduction. This encourages a romantic attitude toward marriage rather than a merely pragmatic one. If you are going to be chained for life to your mate, it were better far for you if you love her, and if your love is not merely fair-weather infatuation.”

“In other words, you say that men should not be held accountable for the abuse and violence they perpetuate.”

I believe I said the exact opposite.

Indeed, I am not sure how you could come to the conclusion that I said anything even remotely like that. Could you explain which words I wrote that lead you to this rather unfortunate misinterpretation?

“ – it is the fault of those promiscuous women, who showed men that they needn’t be respectful to be ‘rewarded’ with sex (the only thing that can fulfill the insatiable, werewolf-like needs of men).”

Here I must confess I cannot follow your logic. You read a statement where I say “Women have been victimized by men for centuries, and the sexual revolution makes the victimization easier because it allows men to escape the consequences of their actions” as a saying that promiscuous women are to blame? Could you explain which words I wrote that lead you to this rather unfortunate misinterpretation?

Perhaps your logic is this: 1. Anyone who advocates decency and chastity automatically and unwillingly thrusts the blame on promiscuous women; 2. The argument given above advocates decency and chastity; 3. Therefore, the argument above thrusts the blame on promiscuous women. If so, that syllogism fails in its major premise. An argument in favor of decency and chastity is just that and nothing more, and does not necessarily have a sinister ulterior motive the opposite of its stated thesis.

“It is the fault of the women for not acting chaste and fragile…”

I don’t believe I said anything about fragility. Perhaps I did and merely now cannot recall. Can you point me to any words I used that lead you to this interpretation?

“… thus teaching men to treat them with care – because if they are not chaste then they are not deserving of that basic human decency of having ‘no’ mean ‘no’.”

Here again you have lost me. Are you making a new argument, or are you making the claim that my argument (then boys should be taught decency and self-control) is somehow one and the same with an argument that makes the claim that if women are not chaste they are not deserving of basic human decency?

I am afraid I do not see the connection between my saying “Men are wolves and are not to be trusted” and saying “a woman who trusts a wolf deserves what she gets” I hope you are not equating the two statements, because they would seem to be logically incompatible, if not opposites.

To use an analogy: if I say “buckle your safety belts, because you may be in an accident” this is not the same as saying, “If a man tells you not to buckle your safety belt, and you believe him, and he is a liar, and you go through the windshield face-first, you deserve having your face cut to ribbons.” Those two statements have nothing to do with each other. The first is a statement of fact: it is merely the case that if you wear a seatbelt, your chance of surviving an accident goes up. The second is a statement of (inverted) moral norms: it blames the victim rather than the perpetrator. Hence, the two statements are not even the same order of being. One is a statement of “is and is not” – the other is a (false) statement of “should and should not.”

“Because the RIGHT to basic human respect is CONDITIONAL upon the actions of women.”

Here again, I do not see any connection, even a tenuous one, between this statement and anything I said. Are we discussing the same topic? i did not say anything about making man’s actions conditional upon the actions of women: if anything, I said it was conditional upon their education, and that the sexual revolution conditioned them to be cads.

My criticism of the sexual revolution is grounded in my unspoken assumption that human react to incentives. If you lower the price, the value is less; if easy alternatives present themselves, the price cannot be raised. This is true for goods and services in a market place, and something as a close analogy is true in human relationships. If I were talking about the price of milk, and I said price controls on milk would create a milk scarcity, that would be a statement of fact: it would not be correct to interpret that statement as a statement of norms, saying we must blame the milkman for the change in price. Indeed, the opposite is the case: the milkman has limited choice in the matter. Certainly a statement that rationing create scarcity cannot be criticized on the grounds that the milkman has a right not to be blamed: the two statements are not even on the same topic. Likewise, here.

“In other words, you say that men would only love and marry women if women guard jealously the treasure of their virginity.”

More or less. I say the chance of abuse, of things like date rape, go down if men are held to a higher standard.

“Without that, women can only attract men with low sexual wiles, instead of with a good head and heart, because men do not value such things in women at all.”

I don’t think I said anything along these lines. Refresh my memory. Which sentence of mine reflects this interpretation?

“In other words, you say that in this age, women are stripped of the only power they had – the power of the feminine mystique.”

Yes, that I did say. Almost. I did not call it their only power, but I did say they are now stripped of it.

“Without it, they are victims, objects without agency and ability to defend themselves.”

Less ability, yes. Nowadays they have to depend on things like policemen and threats of sexual harassment lawsuits rather than on any internalized set of standards the males encourage and enforce between themselves.

“The feminist movement has given women no power that they could use to defend themselves – such as, perhaps, the power to speak and be heard, the power to leave abusive homes, the power to support themselves if they SHOULD leave abusive homes, the power to learn self-defense, the power to vote for a leader who will understand and address common issues, etc.”

Well, no, actually I did not say that. I said that the degree to which feminism has aided the cause of women is something the reader can decide for himself. I was not speaking about the unfortunate fate of women under the Batista administration (before the sexual revolution), but, rather, of the new abuses, things like Date Rape, which seem to have cropped up under the Castro administration (after the sexual revolution).

In theory, all involved should like to keep the gains of the suffragette movement (right to vote and the right to own property) without jettisoning the rules of chastity, romance and decency that used to be imposed (sometimes with greater and sometimes with less success) on the males.

If I may interpose a question of my own: is there anything that makes it so that society cannot give women the power to speak and be heard, the power to support themselves, the power to learn self-defense, while at the same time teaching males to respect and revere femininity and chastity, and come as virgins to their brides? I am afraid I do not see a necessary conflict between the two.

Can women be free if and only if men are unchaste? The proposition sounds absurd on its face.

“I disagree, but not because I feel chastity is stupid. I disagree because the feminist movement HAS empowered women, so chastity is no longer a woman’s only recourse.”

Well and good, but how is it in the self-interest of women to denounce this recourse? How is it in the best interest of women to live in a society where male unchastity is regarded as a norm, applauded and encouraged?

“So that now a woman can be chaste because she wants to be, and not because she feels she will be destroyed if she is not.”

Unfortunately, this does not accord with my experience. Perhaps you know a nobler group of young women and men than I do, or perhaps things have changed since I was in college.

When I was young and fancy-free, young women were regarded by all my friends (and by me, since I too was a sexual revolutionarian at that time) as products in a meat market. The one Christian girl I knew who declared her intent to stay a virgin until married was hated by my friend who had a crush on her (which, even at the time, I regarded as illogical on his part). Nonetheless, HIS attitude was the norm, and was supported and praised by the surrounding society; and HERS was belittled and undermined by society.

I can only judge by what I saw. What I saw was social peer pressure driving women toward unchastity, even those who in theory were supposed to have a choice.

What I saw, even back then when I was no fan of Christianity, was that the one chaste women at school was treated like a pariah. My conclusion is that many a young woman is unchaste because she fears she will be destroyed if she is not.

“I disagree because the feminist movement showed women that they should be valued not just for their sex and their cooking, but for their brains, their brawn, their talents, their ideas, their humanity.”

There are several points wrapped up in this sentence that I’d like to pick apart.

First, you seem to be saying that I said or implied that women should be valued for their sex and their cooking, and that women being admired for brains and talents and humanity is excluded by having respect for women and treating them with common decency. As best I can tell, this is because you simply do not read the words I wrote, or you interpret them to mean the opposite of their surface meaning.

If there is a way you can interpret my statement that men should revere women with fear and trembling, as votaries of a pagan shrine adore a goddess, and therefore should never despise women nor treat them like inferiors, to mean the same thing as saying men should despise women and treat them like inferiors, I would be most interested in reading your step by step explanation of how you get from me saying A to you saying that I am saying not A.

Second, your general premise that feminism is the same cause with the sexual revolution is one where I must respectfully disagree.

I would humbly submit that the sexual revolution demeans admiring women for their moral and intellectual accomplishments and character, and instead makes them much, much more image-conscious, and much more often valued just for their sex appeal. After the sexual revolution, calling a woman a “saint” became an insult, a term of abuse.

Third, my personal experience of how my mother’s generation and grandmother’s generation treated women, at least in their communities (they were Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutherans, farming folk) does not exactly match your characterization of the world before feminism. Gramps did not value Grandma only for her sex appeal, but much more for her moral and mental character, her smarts and her gumption. Indeed, the most demeaning words I have ever heard about women were from my peers of my generation, those who were, like me, members of the sexual revolution.

Grammy was a good cook, though.

Fourth, my indirect experience of seeing how womanhood was portrayed in different decades and different eras does not lead me to believe that women before feminism were treated as such objects of contempt as they are treated now. The statues of Saint Mary, Saint Elizabeth, Saint Joan of Arc, carved into cathedral walls were not praises of the sex appeal nor the cooking skills of women. (If you want to argue that the Puritan revolution demeaned the stature of women from what it had been previously, there you will hear no complaint from me.) I would be so bold as to argue that even in popular media, pulp magazines and black and white movies, the portrayal of women was more respectful and more realistic than the modern popular media image of women, where they are either helpless victims or machismo vampire-slayers. But this is a topic for another day.

“However, I do agree that society is largely to blame for all the horrors you mentioned, but not because of the increased acceptance of promiscuity.”

I am glad we have at least a starting point of agreement.

“I think society is to blame for allowing men to believe that they are brutal beasts, and cannot help but be, so it is not their fault when they sexually abuse women.”

Agreed. I would ask you whether the sexual revolution, which was based on the Kinsey theory that male sexual behavior is genetically determined, aided or undermined this idea you and I both condemn? Holding men irresponsible for their sins is not the old idea.

“I think society is to blame for calling promiscuous women sluts and sexbots, and treating them as if they have no value as a human being, thus perpetuating rape.”

Agreed. And I again would ask you whether the sexual revolution, which was based on the gross sexual commercialization of women as Playboy bunnies aided or undermined this idea you and I both condemn?

“I think society is to blame for penalizing the woman who talks loudly and boldly, and then turns around and is surprised when women don’t protest loudly and boldly when they are raped or molested.”

I am not sure to what this sentence refers. I don’t disagree with it, I just don’t know what particular cases you have in mind.

“And Mr Wright, I think you are aiding and abetting society in its wrongdoings.”

That noise was me spitting my coffee in a Danny Kay style double take all over my monitor. I am somewhat taken aback by this dramatic accusation, which I cannot but take seriously, even though its seems insane.

Please tell me please how me advocating that rapists should be hanged and cads should be flogged somehow encourages rape and caddishness?

Please tell me how advocating that males should be socialized, civilized, and de-barbarianized somehow encourages anti-social, anti-civil barbarianism?

“ Mr Wright, I think you are seriously wrong.”

Well, yes! I suppose that if I had actually said any of the things you interpret me to have said, I would indeed be seriously wrong.

As it is, I believe I am saying almost the opposite of what you are saying I am saying.

I cannot help but wonder how you can read my words and take them to mean something so unrelated to their intended meaning. One possibility is that I am unclear: if so, I apologize and will try to clarify.

Another possibility is that someone has convinced you to equate respect for women (which I advocate) with disrespect for women (which I do not). Once that equation is made in your mind, it does not matter what I say, because you will hear the opposite of what I said.

I draw your attention to the fact that not once in my essay did I say men should not admire and respect women for their intelligence or accomplishments. Indeed, if you’d asked my opinion, my experience is that most women I know are smarter than most men. I married my wife for her brains, for example. Yet somehow, you became convinced I was advocating disrespect for the intellect of women. Where did that conviction arise? Not from anything I said.

Surely that makes you suspicious. Surely you must draw back and look at your assumptions and your general line of argument. If your interpretation of what I said is true, then why am I saying what I am saying now?

Does it not surprise you that you are convinced of something with no evidence, indeed, convinced in the face of contrary evidence?

I suggest that perhaps (this is merely an impertinent guess on my part) this is because you are making an assumption of which you are unaware: you are equating two unrelated statements in your mind. To you it sounds like I said, “Down with women! Women are cooks and Playboy models, valued for their sex appeal and cooking” whereas, to me, it sounds like I said “Up with women! The sexual revolution taught a generation of boys to value women only as Playboy models. Hugh Hefner is not the friend of women, he is an enemy.”

Do you see that those two statements are opposite from each other?

If not, perhaps you would allow me to challenge you to answer these three questions:

  • Can you give me any argument to show that the sexual revolutionaries, people like Hugh Hefner and Alfred Kinsey, have a harmony of interests with suffragettes and feminists?
  • In what way does telling boys to avoid chivalry, chastity, honor and decency actually aid the cause of women, or reduce unwanted sexual advances?
  • If there are advantages to suffragettes and feminists in teaching boys to avoid chivalry and chastity, can you show how these alleged advantages outweigh the disadvantages of which I here speak, things such as normalizing fornication or trivializing date rape?