FOR MORE THAN 60 years, feminists have equated power with sex. Is it possible that all this has not made men pure and faithful?

Writing in The New York Times, Sara Lipton wonders whether policial figures such as Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer and Newt Gingrich are affected by the absence of a code of male honor and even by the culture’s loss of respect for men as providers and protectors. We take it for granted that powerful men are impulsive and reckless, but it was not always so. Lipton writes:

Somehow a need for sexual conquest, female adulation and illicit and risky liaisons seems to go along with drive, ambition and confidence in the “alpha male.” And even if we denounce him and hound him from office, we tend to accept the idea that power accentuates the lusty nature of men.

In ancient and medieval times, a man who could not control his passions was considered effeminate. “[S]exual restraint rather than sexual prowess was once the measure of a man,” Lipton argues. What happened?

Contemporary worship of youth is one explanation: rather than shunning the idea of childishness, many adults, male and female, now spend much of their time clinging to an illusory and endless adolescence. The ability to be a “player” well into middle age thus becomes a point of pride, rather than shame, for the modern man. Perhaps the erosion of men’s exclusive status as breadwinners and heads of households also figures in: when one no longer “rules the household,” there may be less motivation for or satisfaction in “ruling oneself.” 

These are excellent points. It’s encouraging to see a writer in The Times find anything positive in traditional codes. Unfortunately, Lipton suggests it is possible to restore traditional masculinity in the context of a feminist culture. Proscriptions against lust in women, she writes, constitute “medieval misogyny.” 

In 1433, officials in Florence charged with regulating women’s dress and behavior sought “to restrain the barbarous and irrepressible bestiality of women who, not mindful of the weakness of their nature, forgetting that they are subject to their husbands, and transforming their perverse sense into a reprobate and diabolical nature, force their husbands with their honeyed poison to submit to them.”

Criticism of female lust represents hatefulness toward women. Female sexuality is innocent and good. Lipton is somewhat like those Florentine officials complaining about “barbarous and irrepressible bestiality.” But it seems such a thing is only evident in men.

                                   — Comments —

E. Smith writes:

Criticism of female lust represents hatefulness toward women. Female sexuality is innocent and good. Lipton is somewhat like those Florentine officials complaining about “barbarous and irrepressible bestiality.” But it seems such a thing is only evident in men.

This has reminded me of something: It’s truly interesting and a spectacle to watch at how many MRAs (men’s rights activists) and gamers tend to blame traditional conservatives for being “white knights,” representatives of Victorian “sanctity” of women and the current moral dystopia, when if anything from a feminist’s mouth we see that the so called “double standard” wasn’t even created by conservatives but by libertarians or liberals and I quote from Lipton, “sexual restraint rather than sexual prowess was once the measure of a man.”

In the context of traditional conservative morality sexual restraint, chastity and virginity are praised in both men and women. Humanity is naturally sinful and neither men nor women can be holy for only God is holy, blameless and without sin. Certainly the accusations from both MRAs and feminists of ‘misandry’ and ‘misogyny’ are respectively baseless because quite frankly both groups transmit the message that what they are doing is human, constructive and moral when if anything the end results are the opposite.

Unfortunately, Lipton suggests it is possible to restore traditional masculinity in the context of a feminist culture.

So she wants to have her cake and eat yours too? She’s being irrational. You are what you deserve, you deserve what you are. Masculinity and femininity complement each other, traditional conservatism and liberalism are clearly incompatible. Seems like she hasn’t totally rejected liberal principles.

Here’s a post at Oz Conservative of a heated debate between traditional conservatives and MRAs in an attempt to demonstrate MRAs how feminists believe in ‘choice for men’ too.

I need to stop dialoguing too much with MRAs. Bad company corrupts good morals.

A.M. writes:

Your correspondent E. Smith has misrepresented the views of the MRAs and gamers. He conflates the separate issues of white knighting and the double standard.

Ideological white knighting takes the form of believing that women are pure and innocent, that women never do wrong, and that men are at fault for any sort of harlotry or abuse. Eg, it is the man’s fault that she had sex. Or the woman claimed to use contraception but in fact did not, and she becomes pregnant, yet the man is still blamed.

Like multicultural victimology, it denies the woman of any moral agency; she is a child, one without responsibility, and any wrongdoing must fall on the responsible, adult party, i.e. the man. And this belief is very much current among the mainstream right and the left. Feminists use it to privilege the woman, and supposed conservatives wield it to shame men and absolve women, ostensibly to discourage promiscuity. These conservatives, if not at heart feminists, are supremely entitled, and always content to blame the man. They prefer to conceal and deny the nature of women’s sexuality. Your writing on female infidelity, for that matter, is a notable exception.

I recommend the blog of Dalrock, who is happily married and believes in marriage, yet does not believe women are without flaws. He discusses, for instance, how supposedly traditionalist women care more about fairness in “hooking up” than about recognizing the flawed nature of both parties, and promoting virtue. See here.

And the left did not create the “double standard.” Virginity at marriage is expected for the bride in traditional Judaism, little attention is paid to its male counterpart. Judaism is not unique in this regard. The term double standard, as applied here, is a lovely bit of Orwellian branding. Men and women are different, so it does not make sense to subject them to the same standard.

Laura writes:

The mainstream conservatives and traditionalists A.M. describes are liberals. 

The fact that they adopt less liberal stances on some issues does not make them conservative. In attacking their position, it’s important to describe them as liberals  and to identify the liberal principles on which they are acting.

Sebastian C. writes:

I think it’s unwise to lump in Mark Sanford with creatures like Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer. Sanford had a long affair with a viable, genuine woman he seems to have fallen in love with, or believed he was in love with. He wrote her poetry and love letters, not “Tweets;” he sent her flowers and jewelry, not pictures of his penis. There is no indication he was a serial philanderer or ever frequented prostitutes. There was nothing lascivious or vulgar about what he did. It was unfortunate and wrong in the context of a marriage, but it did not indicate a systematic reckless or a willful disregard for the feelings of others. It was an affaire in the grand tradition, worthy of a French film. This is not to defend what he did but to put it into its proper moral and aesthetic context – and in romantic matters, aesthetics matter tremendously, as Pascal and the Catholic Church knew. Compared to the juvenile vulgarity and degeneracy of Spitzer and Weiner, Sanford behaved like a gentleman of the ancien régime. 

One of the most impoverished ideas of a certain strand of Christianity, common in evangelical Protestantism, is that all sins are equal. This is not only false but dangerous. Try to imagine the consciousness of a person like Weiner, trolling the Internet while he wife sleeps, looking for young girls he has never met so he can send them pictures and talk dirty. The whole thing is so venal and sickly it reveals a lost soul searching for its body; a consciousness that treats sex as a dirty secret. It is beyond the scope of this comment, but there is a Catholic critique of Judaism and reformed Christianity that argues that those religions, having rejected the body of Christ, leave their adherents as disembodied entities cut off from the sensuality and physicality of romantic sexual love. Consider that Weiner must be the first man involved in a sex scandal that never involved sex! No touching, no caressing, no intimacy: just lust, vulgarity, profanity and pornography. Virtual sex for a virtual soul. This is what sex means to men like Weiner and Spitzer. In my view of the world, that is a much greater transgression, and shows a consciousness and soullessness that makes a man more unfit for leadership and respect than one that involves a passionate, romantic affair with one adult woman. 

What I’m trying to say is this: Sandford’s behavior is not as inconsistent with the foundations of the institution of marriage as Weiner’s or Spitzer’s. Yes he cheated on his wife, but his behavior nevertheless points to the possibility of commitment and exclusivity in so far as he considered leaving his wife for the other woman. He took both woman seriously as ends in themselves and appears to have agonized over the choice before him. This is an intelligible situation from the perspective of marriage. It is what most nineteenth century novels are about. An unfortunate, dramatic and difficult situation, and a sin, but a different matter altogether than a man who frequents prostitutes or one as pathetic, infantile and small as Anthony Weiner. 

True story to illustrate my point: my aunt had been married for three years when she met a man at a cocktail party who fell in love with her. After a difficult affair, she left her husband and married the other man, my mom’s brother. They raised a family of three children and have been together forty years. Not all extramarital activity is the same, regardless of what a Baptist tells you.

Laura writes:

Yes, these are important distinctions. The same can be said of the actions of Bill Clinton and the alleged crime of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. These do indicate some greater spiritual disaster than a real love affair and they suggest a fundamental unfitness for office.

Again, this is not to condone what Sanford did. Destroying a marriage for love is deeply wrong.

E. Smith writes:

A.M. writes: 

I recommend the blog of Dalrock, who is happily married and believes in marriage, yet does not believe women are without flaws. He discusses, for instance, how supposedly traditionalist women care more about fairness in “hooking up” than about recognizing the flawed nature of both parties, and promoting virtue. 

I have read Dalrock’s blog, participated in this debate briefly and have returned with disdain for his off the mark observations concerning traditional conservative women. Throughout the comments many of them rebuke him and seek to correct him but his will is stubborn. He still believes and preaches the MRA and gamer dogma that traditional conservatives “sanctify” women. Sorry if I’m too brash but I’m quite tired of debating MRAs and gamers on this issue. Nobody on this blog and certainly in many other corners of the far-right and religious conservative blogosphere advocates that women are without flaws or believes in “Victorian ideals of women as perfect little angels”. Only God is holy, both men and women are sinful. Apologies for my irritating tone in this post.

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