“Live Not by Lies”: Feminism As an Underpinning of Nihilism

Dear Readers, it has been at least two months, but I have not forgotten the final installment of godly government. Providence and happenstance have put many things on my plate and being only one man of modest abilities, I do what I can. Therefore I ask for your patience.

This wait has been providential in some respects. In preparing for my final installment, much news comes my way which provides further evidence that we are in an end-stage of a corrupt, incompetent and malevolent social structure. And that what we are experiencing as a culture is nothing less than nihilism.

In the hyperlink below, you can read for yourself (and I highly recommend that you do so) that one of the underpinnings of nihilism is feminism. What you will discover is that not only is feminism a lie, it is a tissue of lies and it cannot sustain itself without the strong arm of the state. In this sense, it is much like the cult of Political Correctness, but unlike that totalitarian regime, it receives government subsidies in order to sustain itself. 

https://www.suzannevenker.com/lean-out/the-elusive-american-husband.

Now, please understand, I am not against women’s suffrage or equal rights and such for women. Nor do I want them to be confined to the kitchen and the bedroom. Indeed, I have never encountered such a happenstance or met such a creature and I have traveled widely in my time. (I suppose if I was ever invited to the Playboy Mansion in its heyday I would have seen such a regime in situ, but alas, I was never given that opportunity.)

So spare me the grief of my supposed male chauvinism.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, the sexual disparities brought upon by feminism which has left countless thousands of young men and women without marital prospects. It’s really simple: women, as a rule, are hypergamous. If you don’t believe me, then you didn’t read the above article.

What this means is that in the normal course of nature, the top 20 percent of men have sexual access to 80 percent of the women at any given time. That means that the bottom 80 percent of men are left with the bottom 20 percent of women. We see this played out for instance in Islamic societies where a well-to-do man can have up to four legal wives at one time. Since the ratio of men to women ordinarily is roughly one to one, this means that there are three Moslem males who don’t have or will ever be able to get, wives of their own.

This is by no means a critique of Islamic culture. The same socioeconomic forces which Islam recognizes as a natural given (because it is), is operative in other non-Christian societies as well. However, in Christian societies, the theological equality of men and women is derived from Scripture itself. The inability to divorce in pre-Protestant times actually elevated the status of women even more. One has only to crack open a history book and read about the marital difficulties of Christian kings such as Leo VI of Byzantium or Henry VIII of England to begin to grasp the importance of women in the social structure. In the final analysis, this forced suppression of the natural inequality of the sexes meant was that even a bottom-tier male of meager prospects could acquire a wife because polygamy was illegal as neither the Church nor the state would sanction it.

This enforced religious equality between the sexes had social and political repercussions that benefited Western Civilization in many ways, not the least of which was the ability to form democratic institutions. If “every man’s home was his castle” then no matter how mean his occupation, he was as much entitled to a wife as was the nearest duke. Nor could the duke take his wife for his own harem, since he was not allowed by law to even have a harem. And because he had no harem, he couldn’t take the tradesman’s daughters either. Because of this, the ratio of single men to single women remained stable. Such a regime, which is today derided as “patriarchy” was in fact as beneficial to women as it was to men.

Feminism pretty much destroyed that equilibrium. Under the new regime of “sexual liberation”, women were allowed to support themselves in the workforce without having to rely on the labor of men. Therefore men became superfluous. In time, certain professions became female-dominated. Many, if not most universities and colleges now are female-dominated as well. Unfortunately, the average college degree has become debased and not cost-effective (as we can tell by the student loan crisis). In any event, men for whatever reason, have opted out of getting college degrees. Worse, they have opted out of marriage, as well.

And this is where it gets sticky: the women who “have it all” found out that because they dominated the upper rungs of many social and economic hierarchies, there was no longer an equal number of men in those same cohorts. Indeed, the men in those cohorts were invariably already married.

But none of this should matter according to the tenets of feminism. Specifically, the traditional sex roles were artificial constructs, engineered to suppress women and keep them out of the workforce. If this was indeed true, then men and women were equivalent and that the traditional duties of men and women were thus interchangeable. Moreover, if we follow this fallacious argument, all those high-achieving women who constantly complain about the dearth of men would have no complaint at all. After all, the normal sexual ratio is almost always an absolutely stable one-to-one.

As such, these high-achieving women could look to the local plumber, mechanic, technician or grocery bag-boy for marital prospects. But they don’t. And this fact lays bare the fundamental lie of feminism and egalitarianism that we have been force-fed for several decades now. The idea that hierarchy is likewise a construct is fallacious as well.

Dogma be damned, biology matters: women would rather marry a man of higher status than themselves. Even highly educated women. This is what hypergamy means. It all comes down to this: “nine minutes for a man, nine months for a woman”. (I think you all are smart enough that I don’t have to draw a picture.)

We have seen this scenario play itself out in the African-American community. Ever since 1965 when Daniel P Moynihan wrote his seminal monograph on the black family, the statistics for the African-American family have only gotten worse. In the 1950s (before Welfare), the illegitimacy rate for blacks was 15 percent. When Moynihan sounded the alarm in 1965 it was 26 percent. Today it approaches 80 percent. This datum alone is proof of the lack of marital prospects for black women. While they will mate with unemployable rogue males to acquire a child (which, thanks to Welfare will be their only source of income), the last thing they need is to get married.

The reason should be obvious by now: if a poor, pregnant woman gets married, she won’t be eligible for AFDC, WIC, SNAP, EBT and the other alphabet-soup stipends that operate under the rubric known as “Welfare”. It is, in fact, the state which is their husband. Incidentally, this why the black woman vote for any particular GOP presidential candidate never breaks the 4 percent mark, since the Democrat Party is perceived as the party of the Welfare State; they are literally voting for their economic interests.

We are now seeing this same pathological phenomenon gain ground in white and Latino communities as well. Charles Murray recently wrote Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, in which he cataloged in excruciating detail the loss of traditional American manhood among the white working class. In popular culture we have seen this devolution as well; compare the father figures of hit TV shows like Father Knows Best from the 1950s and The Simpsons (which began in the late 1980s). It’s so stark that we might as well be talking about two different species of animals. Indeed, because of his lower status, the modern, working-class American husband has become such an economic liability that 70 percent of all divorces in America today are initiated by the woman.

To be sure, the pathology which was evident in the African-American community to Moynihan five decades ago was largely ameliorated by the relative prosperity of the white majority. It was mostly contained to the inner city and with the beginning of the Great Society programs, a Calcutta-like scenario of starvation and homelessness was averted. Nor had the same pathology which had so exercised Moynihan taken hold among the white majority.

Of course, this stratification paid political dividends for both Democrats as well as Republicans. The resentment of the white working and middle classes at having their wages garnished to fund the Great Society was exploited by Republican office-seekers who talked about “Welfare Queens” and “Welfare Cadillacs”. On the other hand, the equally real degeneracy in living standards brought upon by the destruction of the black family under the Great Society regime was likewise exploited by Democrats seeking office. Because black and white Americans had resegregated themselves into a black/urban and white/suburban divide, things more-or-less remained in a stand-off for about forty years.

Murray’s present thesis, however, is that this tenuous modus vivendi is no longer economically possible. Mainly because the living standards of the white working and middle classes have eroded significantly in the interim. Their prosperity not only allowed them to maintain a family and decent neighborhoods but gave the Welfare State the necessary funds to function.

To put not-too-fine a point on it, Moynihan’s original observation is now starting to become more preponderant in the white majority. The illegitimacy rate for white women for example, is now approaching 40 percent; that is one-and-a-half times higher as it was for black women in 1965 and three times higher than it was for black women in the pre-Welfare 1950s.

It’s hard to say what is the exact number for illegitimacy rates would have to be to demarcate the point of no return for any particular society or any of its demographic subsets. But in the ten years between 1955 and 1965, the illegitimacy rate for African-American women doubled from 15 to twenty-six percent. Perhaps for the sake of convenience, we can peg that percentage at twenty percent, or one out of five live births. Regardless of the actual number, the fact remains that feminism as a concomitant of the sexual revolution made that number achievable.

Ironically, legalized contraception and abortion –both of which are inviolate sacraments of the feminist agenda–did nothing to ameliorate this pathology. All things being equal, they should have. Instead, they may have made it worse. Consider: fertile black women make up only 4 percent of the American population (out of 12 percent of the fertile female population as a whole). Yet they account for 36 percent of all abortions at any given time. In other words, black women are three times as likely to have an abortion as white women. Yet the poverty rate for African-Americans remains intractable; we still talk about “the Underclass”. The pathology remains.

Clearly, there have to be other reasons for this phenomenon. It’s one thing to say that feminism is the only culprit, however, the loss of traditional American manhood must take its share of the blame as well. Both were driven by the sexual revolution and both must be held accountable. In any event, feminism must accept its share of the blame. This is not possible in today’s politically correct culture. Not by a long shot. As such, it would be wrong to indict only the male half of the equation. It didn’t work for the black Underclass and it won’t work by criticizing the “patriarchy” as well.

Indeed, it is only patriarchy that can bring back a sense of normalcy to the wildly chaotic environment that is operational today.

In almost all particulars, feminism has failed the overwhelming majority of women of all races and all but the highest economic strata. And the irony of course is this: although it has opened up economic avenues for all women (at least in theory), it has mainly benefited those women at the top of the social hierarchy; women who in fact, have had no trouble finding “suitable” marital prospects, that is to say, men of higher achievement than themselves. Think of your typical news hostess on any of the cable channels, or Hollywood actresses, or academics who majored in the humanities who sit on the boards of directors the various corporations or think-tanks. Not one of them are married to handymen or construction workers. In the words of the old Virginia Slims commercial, they are the only ones “who have it all”.

In the very near future, I intend to catalog in more detail the economic forces which drove much of this phenomenon over the last several decades. For now, I want to simply address the issue of the natural hypergamy of women and why it is incompatible with the foolish nostrums of feminism. And that is because, in the end, nature always wins. As such, going from this point forward, we would be better off ignoring the ideological fads which have driven much of our civilization to ruin.

So, how close are we to a civilizational reset? To a return to Leave it Beaver normalcy? Not close in my opinion but definitely somewhere on the horizon. It won’t happen until the normal sexual relations that have always obtained throughout history become financially viable. At the very least that would have to entail a rearrangement of the tax code to make it desirable.

An example was the “living wage”. When that was first introduced, it was done so with the full understanding that housewives should never have to work outside the home. Hence, the wages of working men were calculated to reward the married man for his labor as well as his wife’s. Usually, this meant that he was paid one-and-a-half times his total wages: 100 percent for himself and an additional 50 percent for his wife.

The financial incentives are tantalizing to say the least but they are beyond the scope of this particular essay. And that is this: all social arrangments not based on reality have significant Achilles’ heels. Some have more than one such defect: one of the Achilles’ heels of feminism is biology –nature itself. The ontological differences between men and women cannot ever be overcome (the present fad of “women with a penis” will be among the first to fall).

Ironically, we see the reemergence of this stark difference in the workplace, courtesy of the #metoo movement. Remember two or so years ago when Vice President Mike Pence let it be known that he would never dine alone with a woman who was not his wife? The howls of outrage in the media were immediate and loud. That alone should have alerted us to what was at stake for the feminazis because they knew exactly where that would lead. Among other things, it meant that they would be deprived of the same business opportunities as their male counterparts. And they were right.

Since then, the #metoo movement has intensified into a very real and very dangerous moral panic. It has even taken down prominent liberal men in politics, the media, and the corporate world. No one has been spared. And men of all political persuasions have done the prudent thing, they have restricted any and all private access to women and have even gone so far as to not hire them. And women are complaining because the so-called glass ceiling has now lowered itself even further. Many of the jobs that were theirs’ for the taking are now going to men. Even men who may not be as qualified.

All women are now viewed as potential honeytraps. Whether it’s deserved or not is immaterial. Such a view is prejudicial, it’s presumptuous and it’s by no means fair but that doesn’t matter. Why? Because in the business world, an arena of limited resources, it’s the only prudent decision there is. To be sure, moral panics tend to burn themselves out but until they do, innocent people suffer. First, men suffered from baseless accusations (think Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford). Now the worm has turned and it is now qualified, young women who will never be given the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder.

Because of all this, I am hopeful that society will reorder itself in a generation or two. Yes, I realize that things were never perfect in Mayfield (the hometown of Ward and June Cleaver). But they are certainly not perfect now. Far from it.

At any rate, the present chaotic atmosphere cannot last forever. Eventually, the government receipts that sustain the present moral anarchy will dry up. They always do. We will know when that point arrives when President Occasional-Cortex has to make the decision as to whether to fund Drag Queen Reading Hour or send Grandma her Social Security check. I’m putting my money on Grandma receiving her pension. As for the twenty-something single mother struggling to make ends meet, well, the less said the better.

Comments

  1. Gail Sheppard says

    Not saying this article is wrong, but I for one do NOT think women can do everything themselves and “don’t need a man.”   

    We just don’t need a man running around out there calling themselves men when they’ve abdicated their roles to play video games all day.  We prefer men to lead and love men who are heroes and the last thing we want is for them to be more like us, i.e. soft, nurturing, and flexible as it doesn’t translate well to the bedroom.  The problem, and I said it before, is that men have gotten lazy.  THEY’RE the one who believes a woman can do it all and why not let her?  Let her get up at the crack of dawn and board a train at 5:30AM after a 30 minute commute and then take a one hour train ride into Los Angeles where she will take a subway into the downtown area where there is so much crime it isn’t a question of if you’re going to be mugged but when, and then expect her to walk another 3 or 4 city blocks before she safely makes it to her office.  I had to do that for years at age 58 after a 15-year hiatus raising our kids.  Did my husband complain?  Not a peep.  Why because even if it just about killed me I could do it and I had to do it because he spent so much time not working.  If I sound a bit bitter it’s only because I know for a fact women don’t like shouldering all the responsibility or seeing their husbands turn into another kid. Men need to pick up the pace.  Fewer men are going to college than women. They don’t want marriage because every woman has to be on birth control.  Women are still having babies and raising them but they’re doing it themselves and too many boys are being raised by single women, where there is no man in the home which leads to disastrous consequences.   

    • George Michalopulos says

      What you describe Gail, is the chaos of this essay in personal terms.  Which is good and probitive. There is no question that men have abdicated their God-ordained roles.

      That’s a story that needs to be written as well.  Hopefully I will do so soon.

      • Sorry, but I’m throwing the BS flag…

        * It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman. (Proverbs 21:19 KJV)
        * A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. (Proverbs 12:4 KJV)
        * Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands. (Proverbs 14:1 KJV)

        You want men to lead, ladies?  Then you had better start following, and that starts with not being contentious, angry, shameful, and destructive.

        Whenever the old saw comes out that “today’s men are irresponsible”, no one ever stops to think that men can and do respond to incentives.

        Men are checking out because there is no incentive to engage in traditional masculine behavior.  In the United States (and many other Western nations), when a man and woman get married, there is actually a third partner in the marriage – the government, which has complete fiat over the state of the marriage via family court.  A man can no longer be the head of the wife because the law and society have made it impossible.  The truth is that a man can no longer find a single woman – because women have for most intents and purposes married the government.

        A man can be thrown out of his house, deprived of his children, forced out of his livelihood, financially devastated, and even imprisoned based on the unsubstantiated word of his wife.  Yeah, sign me up for that!

        Time and time again I have seen women huff and puff about their equality – until it comes time to do something dirty (like working in a sewer), difficult, or dangerous – then the men “need to lead”.

        As far as I am concerned, women should be given all the equality they can handle and more.  Let them go to a job they hate every day.  Let them defend themselves physically.  Let them compete on the same athletic fields with men – you don’t even need today’s gender confusion to promote that – we have been told for decades women are not only equal to men, they are better.  You asked for it, honey, you got it!

        Moreover, lest I forget, the ridiculous amount of paternity fraud that occurs. Men can be forced to pay child support for children they didn’t father. Fraud is illegal in the United States – except for paternity fraud.

        I don’t find it puzzling in the least why men are no longer leading.  They have been told for decades that no longer is their leadership wanted, and neither is their presence (oh, but do keep the child support, alimony, and tax dollars rolling in).  In today’s world, for a man, getting married is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in a six-shooter.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Rojo, a lot of what you say is accurate here. Having said that, my overall prediction (of hope) was that because of everything you mention, there may be hope on the horizon. Mainly because the present sexual regime is unsustainable.

          It’s one thing to contain this gross pathology to a minority of the population which is segregated and thus contained thanks to the tax receipts of the majority, however when it seeps into the majority, then it’s only a matter of time before it’s “game over”. This essentially, is Murray’s thesis. If not his, then definitely mine. Believe it or not, his original piece on this was published in The Wall Street Journal on Oct 31, 1991. It was in the wake of the infamous Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown imbroglio and it struck such a chord.

          That’s why I fear that Sharia law and/or Christian Dominionist governance are on the horizon.

    • Estonian Slovak says

      Not saying men don’t share in the blame, but the Hollywood left is somewhat responsible. Almost 50 years ago, All in the Family premiered on primetime TV. The man of the house, Archie Bunker, was depicted as an overweight, bigoted buffoon. He claimed to be Christian, while his daughter and son-in-law were agnostic at best. Need I say what message that conveyed?
             It got even worse with Homer Simpson, a bumbling idiot who is lazy, careless, dumber than his wife and kids, but still collecting a paycheck. I won’t even comment on the still worse father in Family Guy. I still watch All in the Family on occasion, but not the other two.
           Then, on our side, we have extremists from the right, who advocate that one may slap the sh!t out of his wife, if, let us say, she puts on too much weight or talks back. One might remember that the book in Russia advocating wife-beating came out at a time, when the Tsar could order anyone tortured to death. That’s too much even for a monarchist like me. We should note that Stalin’s favorite Tsar was Russia’s most brutal, Ivan the Terrible.

  2. Everyone has a story.  I know there are trends as George has laid out, but this is my story.  I got a college degree and am now a manager in the government.  I married an older veteran with no college degree.  Once we had kids, he started working part-time.  He runs our house and does most everything with the kids.  He is the head of our home — as Christ shows us, the head is the servant of servants, the one who serves more than anyone else.  The real dangers to our family have been internet-driven — but that’s for another blog piece.
     

    • George Michalopulos says

      MrsDK, you are sui generis (one of a kind)!  What you describe is a Christian household in which it doesn’t matter if the husband is a higher-earner than you.
      Unfortunately, for most women –and I’m not blaming them–the natural state of hypergamy kicks in and they neither respect nor seek out lower-earning men than themselves.  I’m not being judgmental, it’s just a fact.
      That being said, you are “an adornment to your husband” and a godly woman.  You are both fortunate in each other.

  3. Dino Tsortanidis says

    George, you must have forgot  that  there will be no true genders soon. Man and woman are soo 20th century.  Get with the times bro and don’t box me in to your reality. Another problem solved by the progressive Liberals/leftist. Sarcasm off. Kind of. ?

    • George Michalopulos says

      Dino, we are heading so far and so fast into the abyss that it’ll take nothing less than the Lord’s mercy to pull us back from the brink.  Especially regarding all this gender nonsense.
      Fortunately, nature has a way of reasserting itself.  

      • Very true George.
        Before Constantinople fell in 1453, it had already left God.
        Most of the church buildings did not celebrate Divine Liturgy because there was no congregation present!
        It was no coincidence.
        Look what is happening today, par example between our brethren Greeks in the USA and elsewhere: For many, Liturgy is just the beginning of a social/folkloric event…  
        I have heard with mine own ears devout Greeks saying that they are most importantly Greeks and then Orthodox! (naturally money is before all that, we need not mention it).
        From what we read here, the similar thing applies to other nationalities.
        Thus, indeed, may Lord have mercy on us sinners
        but first let us convince the Lord that we mean it.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Ioannis, because of God’s mercy (and I’m going to choke having to say this), the Greeks returned to Orthodoxy after the Fall of Cpole.  Unfortunately, the agent of God’s mercy was Sultan Mehmet II, who eradicated the Uniate hierarchy in that city and replaced them with Orthodox monks and scholars. 
          Perhaps I should look at the Bolshevik persecution in similar light.  The more I hear about the origins of the Rue Daru crowd, what with their Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry, the less pleased I am.  Lenin may have been God’s scourge.  Unfortunately, in both the Greek and Russian cases, ordinary people had to suffer for the sins of their elites.
          The broader point to Dino however was that regarding all this nonsense about genders, nature has a way of reasserting itself.  Miss Venker’s piece (which I hyperlinked in the essay above), is testament to this fact.  All these high-achieving women sublimated their natural feminine drives and pursued careers and then when the biological clock started ticking midnight, they looked around and found no suitable men to marry.
          That was only part of Venker’s thesis however.  The reality was that all along there were men to marry while they pursued their ambitions.  Unfortunately, the men were not of their “station”.  Why?  Because despite their relatively high status, they could never shake the fundamental aspect of femininity which is that women are hypergamous.
          BTW, that’s not a bad thing, it is in fact a good thing.  The instinct towards hypergamy ensures that a woman will have a legitimate biological (and thus legal) claim to a man’s assets, as she needs them in order to compensate for her own debility during the entire peri-natal period.  And then to raise a family.
          Being a mother is the hardest job there is. 

          • Regarding the origins of the Rue Daru: While I doubt that any of the current clergy are serious occultists (although there may be Masons), that leftfield, liberal element might come back to bite the MP in the future. Unless, of course, Fr. Andrew Philips in England is correct when he writes that those elements have self-purged by refusing to reunite with the MP. Hopefully he is right.

            • George Michalopulos says

              Let us hope so, Basil.

            • anonimus per Scorilo says

              Come on, where did you get this stuff about Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry in the Exarchate ?
              I am surprised Fr. Andrew Philips has not added to the list Bilderberg, Soros, the Asenapin, the Occult, Opus Dei, the Clozapin and the Cabal  ?

              • George Michalopulos says

                ApS, I said that in reference to those who founded several of the exilic parishes one hundred years ago. Not now.

                In any event, occultism, spirituality, theosophy and other esoteric disciplines were all the rage among the upper crust in Western societies around that time. A lot of that began here in the America after the Civil War where seances then Ouija boards became all the rage. So many American families had lost loved ones that they were literally crying out for comfort in any way they could. This enthusiasm for spiritualism passed over into Europe during the later Gilded Age and received another boost after the Great War, against because of the loss of so many young men.

                In Germany, several of these teachings coalesced into the Thule Society and from thence, into Nazism.

              • anonimus per Scorilo: “Come on, where did you get this stuff about Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry in the Exarchate ?”

                 
                It was all over in the upper class of that time, not just around Exarchate  (exarchate was just much more tolerant to it, than mainstream ROCOR, so they gravitated there). Read more historical books.

                • anonimus per Scorilo says

                  Sorry but I never heard of this occultist infiltration before.
                  At first glance it sounded to me more like a Soviet smear against “degenerate capitalists” 
                  Which books discuss this ? I do not think Metropolitan Evlogy mentions it in his memoirs.

                  • George Michalopulos says

                    Again, you confuse the erection of ROC parishes in the exile with occultism. I made no such claim. I merely said that many in the Russian elite were enamored of occult and esoteric practices both before, during and after the Great War. Some of them were involved in being involved in the foundation of these parishes.

                    Really, this shouldn’t be surprising. In my own GOA parish, every third man was a Mason. At the Greek section of the cemetery, I regularly see square-and-compasses engraved on tombstones and headstones. Some of these men died way back in the 40s. Now I realize that for the average Greek-American businessman, becoming a Mason was a business move. In pre-revolutionary Russia however, there was no financial incentive for a Russian nobleman to get involved in such esoteric organizations. They may have been mere dilletantes, regardless, the fact remains.

                    In any event, there does seem to have been some quasi-Protestant ecclesiology present in the Rue Daru Exarchate. I imagine that those few were of this mindset have decamped for greener pastures.

                    • Estonian Slovak says

                      There was definitely at least some Masonic activity within the Russian community in Paris. Paris became the home of many of the Russian liberal intelligentsia. Not that it was absent from ROCOR and/or Monarchist Russians, either. The Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaiovich, a claimant to the Russian throne, was known to be a Mason. One of his main supporters was the Tsarist General Krasnov. Whether or not, Krasnov was a Mason, I cannot say. He did lead a Cossack division against the Soviets during WWII, and was executed in Moscow in 1947. The Grand Duke Nicholai died in the 1920’s.

                    • Joe Pertinas says

                      Indeed, Prince Alexis Serbatof of the Russian Nobility was a member of the same lodge (http://www.mariners67.org) as Iacovus Cucuzes

          • Very wisely put, George, thanks.

    • Dino,
      “there will be no true genders soon”
      .
      Yeah,
      .
      And there was a congress two days ago in Europe
      to prove that the Earth is flat!
      .
      Yeah,
      .
      we have to follow the other sheep…what ever they do.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Dino, we may not have any “true genders” but there will always be two sexes. It is built into the fabric of creation. “Male and female, created He them…” Gen 5:2 No matter how we try to muck it up with our twisted disobedience and rebellion, we cannot change the very fabric of creation.

      Gender as descriptive of human ontology is a false construct in the first place. Its only proper place is in grammar.

      Read Genesis enough and it will become clear. There is a great deal one can learn from reading the Holy Scripture with the idea of understanding what it means to be a Christian man or a Christian woman. Since I am a man, there will always be something hidden from me about the full nature of women, but the limit of my understanding does not prevent the overall reality from being quite obvious if one has eyes to see. It is an ongoing study and contemplation of mine that started about 45 years ago.

      Indeed the mystery of the male-female synergy is throughout the Bible. If you want a more basic approach you can read the little book: “Mr. God, this is Anna” Or any text book on electricity. The Orthodox wedding sacrament does a pretty good job too.

      “Blessed is a God loving woman.”

      It is sad that so many people are deluded and that sin has altered our minds, hearts and bodies to the extent that we turn to false constructs to feel whole rather than to the love and mercy of God. It is worse that those false constructs have been taken up by ideological tyrants and metastasized into political and cultural weapons. But they will not prevail.

      Lord have mercy.

      • Deep Steak says

        biological sex in creation is not a male or female binary though
         
        nature is inconvenient that way

        • George Michalopulos says

          Well, if you’re talking about mollusks or amoebae you might have a case.

        • Michael Bauman says

          DS..
           Not talking about biological sex, that certainly reflects the male-female but in a creation marred by sin and separation it is not perfect.  
          However your objection is such an old canard.  Surely you can do better.

          I know, stop calling you Shirley

          • George Michalopulos says

            LOL.

          • Monk James Silver says

            We Christians, at least, ought to be taking this kore seriously.

            There are only two sexes, male and female. This is generally true of all species of animals and plants, although there are occasional crossovers. But since situations like this don’t ordinarily occur among human beings, they are not at issue.

            When things such as physical intersexuality (ambiguous genitalia) occur among human beings, these abnormalities are seen and understood as the exceptions they are, and deserve special medical and psychological (and spiritual) attention. They cannot be seen as models for psychological disorders and political positions unrelated to birth defects.

            There are four genders — a grammatical concept: masculine, feminine, neither, both.

            Human beings cannot be defined by gender except indirectly. So, for instance, ‘father’ is always masculine, ‘mother’ is always feminine. ‘Parents’ and ‘children’s’ are both, while ‘people’ is neither.

            All of this applies only to English, of course. Other languages have their own ways of treating these words as singular and plural, masculine and feminine, but the basic premisses remain true.

            • George Michalopulos says

              Brilliant elucidation. If I may add a few tangents:

              In Semitic languages there are only two genders: masculine and feminine. In many Aryan languages (Greek and the Germanic languages) there are three: masculine, feminine and neuter.

              For instance in Greek, “ocean” is masculine (ho okeanos) while “sea” is feminine (he thalassa. “River” on the other hand is neuter (to potami). Likewise in Greek, pre-pubescent children are neuter: to agori (“the boy”) and to koritsi

  4. Linda Albert says

    Dear George,
    Thanks be to God, I have been able to be a full time wife and homemaker. My husband is a professional surveyor, licensed in three states and also licensed as a mineral surveyor so we sort of fit into the middle class. We raised two children without too much financial strain, even though he went without working for a steady company job and having to work as an independent. He hunted for meat for the table and for a while, while we were physically able, had a garden. With or without output from a garden I canned produced, meat and fish with a pressure canner. I cooked our meals, sewed and mended clothes, and did the ordinary housework of cleaning and laundry that full-time employer mother’s often are compelled to outsource to maid and laundry services. I also helped my husband process our own game meat, doing all our own butchering and making sausage, in addition to weekly baking all our bread and preserving and fermenting, mostly sauerkraut, what I could.
    If we truly wish to reverse the current social paradigm and return men to the role of breadwinner and women to full-time mothers and homemakers, women will have to be taught these skills and taught to not see them only as drudgery, though they can at times feel tiresome from sheer repetitiveness, but as a participation with God in creating order and beauty from chaos and nothingness. Better and improved home education classes will have to make a comeback in schools and possibly be made mandatory (o horrors!) for graduation.  I believe the teaching of all the skills our grandmother and great-grandmothers learned at their mothers’ knees will have to have a comeback. We’ve surrendered too many skills and too much knowledge to giant corporate interests whose profits are their first concern and not our welfare. 

    • George Michalopulos says

      Mrs Albert, you sound very much like Wonder Woman! And I’m sure your family is better off for it.

      You touch on several things which need to be relearned for young girls. However, you’ve also unwittingly touched on several other things (or hinted at) that make your familial situation difficult if not impossible. These I will address in a newer post on the abdication of the traditional male.

      Among the macro-economic phenomena which made men superfluous were things like white flight to the suburbs (which made acquiring an extra car or mandatory), the degradation of government schools (which include things like the loss of recess and punishing boys for being boys and the loss of home economics for girls), the loosening of immigration standards (both legal and illegal) which flooded the market with cheap labor thereby driving down the wages of working men, and so on.

      Think of it: govt schools in my mother’s day (she graduated in 1953) were good enough that the Ivy League would come to her high school in Tulsa and recruit. By the time I graduated in 1977, only the two-state schools (OU and OSU) would come to recruit. Anyway, a high school diploma was enough to have gainful employment. In order for me to guarantee the same type of education for my two sons, we had to send them to Catholic schools (and we’re glad we did). Having said that, we paid for a good education which for my mom was free. (Mine was free as well but educational standards had degraded significantly so that a college education was necessary for my own gainful employment.)

      You know, it’s strange that we talk about the $15/hr “living/minimum wage” but when my father came to America, the minimum wage then, when adjusted for inflation, was $19/hr! Can you believe that? No wonder my mom could quit her secretarial position at Wonder Bread and stay home to raise three children.

      Anyway, more to follow.

      You as well are an adornment to your husband.

      • What year did your father come to America? That inflation-adjusted $19/hour sounds awfully high! I know that in the 1890s to early 1900s the usual wages were ten cents an hour (about $3 in today’s dollars) and guys made something like $25 a month (or $600 in today’s dollars). In the 1940s, my uncle was paid $21 a month for full-time service in the Army (plus a carton of cigarettes!) and the 1940 census shows skilled workers making about $1000 a year (about $20,000 in today’s dollars).

        • George Michalopulos says

          1957. Please note I did not say that the minimum wage in 1960 was $19/hr. It was much less, however adjusted for inflation and the overall cost of living being much less, it would be $19/hr today.

          This is one way to look at it: in Australia and New Zealand, the minimum wage is $15/hr right now and the Dems say they want to raise it to that level. However in Australia and NZ, that wage arose to that level on its own –organically–because they don’t have an illegal alien problem like we do. Both of those countries are islands, with no third-world countries abutting them.

          Anyway, back then, a family could live in the inner city, have access to decent public transportation and one car. The local school was not a hellhole of violence and rapine, you could be assured that your children could get a decent education, graduation from high school assured you of a good education, etc. The local public school itself was within walking distance as was the local grocery, barber shop, beauty salon, etc. Churches were local too.

          All things considered, it was far easier to raise a family on one income back then than it is today. This started degenerating in the 70s. Actually, 1974 was the date in which you could pinpoint when the wage/productivity gap started bifurcating.

          More will be said about this when I right about the loss of traditional American masculinity.

  5. Antiochene Son says

    Nothing says liberation like punching a clock, making phone calls and filling out spreadsheets. Way better than raising kids. You go girl!

  6. I do not accept the way this conversation about feminism has been framed.
    I volunteered to catalog early American diaries and merchants’ logs for a history museum when I was 12-14 years old.  From those, and from reading books like A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on her Diary 1785-1812, I know that in Colonial America at least, women were often the breadwinners of their households, particularly by spinning, weaving, and producing clothes.  What evidence is there that, particularly in a system of barter, men held jobs that were more economically profitable than women’s?  Women and men have always *both* worked to produce goods to barter.  Women and men have always *both* reared children.  Women used to stay in the house with the kids and work from home; men had public jobs, public personas, and volunteered for civic duties.  There was a separation, a complimentary division that allowed women to mingle with women, men to mingle with men, and women and men to join each other in the bedroom.
    I do not think that the “feminism” to which you refer has anything to do with women working.  Women have always worked.  
    The problems that you are referring to (please correct me if I am wrong) seem to stem more from the sexual revolution, the invention of birth control, undermining the sacrament of marriage, and a series of technological “advances” such as baby formula, household cleaning robots, state-sponsored childrearing (“education”), state-sponsored food production (agribusiness), and exporting the manufacture of clothing overseas, all of which eliminate what was historically women’s work and devalue the role of women and in particular, mothers.
    We have four or more generations of children who were never allowed to breastfeed.  I think about what women were subjected to when bottle feeding was pushed — how it became illegal to give birth at home, how women were tied up, gagged, and drugged when they were to give birth, how they were required to lay down in the hospital bed for a month or more —
    Now, I am not blaming the plight of women on a conspiracy of our husbands and fathers.  We must all make our best efforts toward a detente with the strained relations between the sexes.  We need each other.
    I pray for a day when we will all remember that men pledge to give their lives in war on behalf of their women precisely because 1 in 8 women naturally die in childbirth.  That we will remember and honor how vulnerable a woman is when she engages in sexual relations with a man.  And that we can prioritize the rights of children — to be with both parents, to breastfeed, to be provided for by both parents.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Michelle, the natural synergy between men and women usually worked well in a balanced agrarian, home based culture–of course sinfulness always gets in the way.  Again, it was events occurring after that watershed year of A.D. 1848 that massively changed the existential interrelationship between men and women and family life–particularly the Industrial Revolution, the reign of Queen Victoria and ideological philosophies that began to be articulated in that time. Men were taken out of the home and money, rather than goods became a hallmark of “success”  to greatly oversimplify things.  Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, Nihilism  and other false ideologies and philosophies denigrated women as well as a plethora of Christian heresies.  Consumerism, no fault divorce, abortion on demand and many other current modernisms have added to that denigration.   
      My wife makes more money than I do but that does not lessen in anyway my manhood nor make her any less of a woman.  She raised 5 children on practically nothing because of the massive failure of her children’s father to live up to his natural responsibilities.  Her relative economic success does not challenge in any way my Christian headship.  Where the money comes from is immaterial as long as it is legal, moral and providential. 
      It is a great shame that we continue to allow the distortions between men and women created by our expulsion from the Garden to be so dominate in our lives so that we either give into the horrendous idea of “the war between the sexes” or worse retreat into a state where we tend to think we are autonomous in our own sex.  
      Men need Godly women to become human and fruitful, just as women need Godly men to become human and fruitful.  Everything else is immaterial.  
      BTW, after my late wife reposed and it became evident to me that I could not successfully live without a mate, I began to pray to the Theotokos, imploring her to send me a Godly woman.  After about a year of such prayer, looking as I prayed, my prayer was answered pressed down, running over.  My lovely wife has been more than I could have ever expected. Having her in my life has deepened and made my faith more real and authentic. She not only loves me, she actually likes me and forgives easily when I mess up. I could go on and on, but I will end with this statement:  There is no economic, political or social philosophy or ideology that has it correct on the God created interrelationship between men and women and unfortunately it is often massively misunderstood even within the Church.  
      A careful reading of the Scripture shows how radical Jesus Christ was/is in His appreciation of women.  Case in point:  at the feeding of the 5000 the count of people (the 5000) was only of the adult men present. It was 5000 plus women and children.  However, at the time of Pentecost the Scripture clearly and specifically gives a count of both the men and the women present in the upper room. That simple change elevates the eschatological and personal status of women to real person hood.  The difference in function is ontological in nature and not subject to change despite modern ideologies to the contrary, but the fact that both men and women are fully human before and in Christ is one of the unique features of Christianity as Jesus demonstrated it.   
       
       
       
       
       
       

    • George Michalopulos says

      Michelle, thank you for your insights. Among other things, I applaud the fact that they are based on actual research based on your access to primary materials.

      A few additional factors must be said if you don’t mind. The time in which you talk about was one in which the vast majority of people had no access to capital at all. Davy Crockett for example, as a child, was given one musket ball by his father to hunt one animal. And that animal (whether boar, deer, squirrel) was what his family feasted on for supper. That’s one reason, btw, that Crockett was such a great shot.

      https://youtu.be/a7F3r7dWpV0

      Also, in an agrarian setting, the upper-body strength of the man was what made plow-farming possible. Again, there was no capital involved, no money changed hands but the husband’s back-breaking labor is what caused the soil to break in the first place. Planting commenced only after that. The masculine ability to hunt and plow was what enabled the wife to cook, clean, sew, and so forth. If her husband was successful, then her labor could result in surpluses which she could sell and thus generate some revenue. We are talking about things like jams she could bottle or clothes she could sew, etc. Maybe she would take in laundry to augment income.

      It goes without saying that if her husband’s labor resulted in a poor harvest (or if he was injured), then what little was harvested resulted in a meager consumption of calories. And of course this worked the other way as well: if a wife was incapacitated, then unless there was a female relative nearby to pick up the slack, then the husband was out of luck as well. It goes without saying that the premium on large families obviated these contingencies provided that the eldest males and females were in their teens.

      Looked at from a sexual-selection perspective, this made broad-shouldered men more attractive to women. (Men of course unconsciously concentrated on the waist-to-hip ratio in women that served as a positive indicator for “easy” childbirth.) And then there’s the fact that the paucity of calories that are endemic to such hard labor (for both men and women) made polygamy impossible. Which of course resulted in a desire for companionate marriages, which then led to greater emancipation for women, theoretically speaking.

      I could go on but I hope this fleshes out the picture more fully. Yes, women were indeed vital to the agrarian economy. Of this there can be no doubt.

  7. George C Michalopulos says

    You see, this is how the First Amendment will be overturned: by using “hate crimes” legislation.

    https://pjmedia.com/faith/beto-vows-to-strip-tax-exempt-status-from-churches-that-oppose-gay-marriage/

    Now, I realize Bozo has zero % chance of winning anything at all –even dog-catcher–but the fact that he’s put it out there means that the eventual winner of the Dem primary fight or a future Dem president, is going to do everything in his/her/its power to make it happen.

    And you know what? It’s gonna happen.

    • Michael Bauman says

      George, about 20 years ago my priest gave an education talk on homosexuality from the perspective of the Church. It was a great talk. Afterward I mentioned to him that at some point the homosexual lobby would come after churches to remove our tax-exempt status. He was incredulous at the time believing that the 1st Amendment would prevent that. I disagreed. He must have changed his mind because a few years later an endowment fund began to be created for two primary reasons: if our congregation gets older and or poorer AND in case of adverse government action.

      The signs were there 30 years ago if not longer. I spent about a year living in San Francisco in the early 70’s. Then as I lived other places I began to see styles of dress, clothing and language that had begun in the homoerotic community of San Francisco percolating out to the heartland promoted as the hottest new thing for supposed normal guys. That was put on hold for awhile with the AIDS crises, but after that crises had largely passed, it was used to promote the homoerotic life under the guise of compassion, etc. and the onslaught really began.

      IMO, all of this was guided consciously by homosexual activists perhaps with the assistance of the evil one. They have been incredibly successful social engineers.

      Removing the tax exemption may not be a bad thing unless they also create an special confiscatory tax bracket to go along with it. That would be my worry. In either case, the choice is clear. Will we give lip service to what is of God and fold when our money is threatened, like the NBA and social justice, or will we stand regardless of the consequences.

      In China years ago, I am told, Christians would come together to worship at sights for which there was no prior notice as to time and place. People would just start gathering.
      The practice of embedding the relics of martyrs into our altars came, I am told, from the catacombs in which liturgy was actually celebrated on the tombs of martyrs.

      Our Lord repeatedly tells us to fear not. Our places of worship are often of great beauty and a true sanctuary where the living presence of God is all of the time, but He can create beauty anywhere and His grace is everywhere even deep in the hearts of those who would persecute Him. “Where two or more….”

      Fear not, what is of God will endure, what is not of God will pass away. The only manner in which our vaunted free will matters is whether or not we follow God or mammon.

      Fasting, prayer, worship, giving alms, repentance/forgiveness. Those are the five pillars of the Christian life when lived in thanksgiving for His providence not as a matter of moral/spiritual law. No matter the storms around us, no matter the violence, hatred and destruction, with Him there is always peace and joy even in tears and death.

      Seek the stillness of His grace and be not afraid for He is with us always.

      Glory to His Holy Resurrection.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Michael, as usual, you provide much-needed perspective. I learned a lot from this particular post.

        You are also prodding me to write something that’s been percolating in my mind as to how to defy Caesar when –not if, but when–we lose our churches’ tax-exemptions.

        To all: I still am working on the final installment on government. Lots on my plate and stuff.

      • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster says

        RE “Fasting, prayer, worship, giving alms, repentance/forgiveness. Those are the five pillars of the Christian life when lived in thanksgiving for His providence not as a matter of moral/spiritual law. ” 

        Well said, Michael! But we Orthodox Christians and others who profess devotion to our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ are also called by Him to exercise the cardinal virtue of prudence:

        “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (St. Matthew 10:16, RSV)

        One crucial way of practicing prudence (wisdom) in the coming U.S. elections is by voting against candidates for office at any level who, like Robert Francis O’Rourke (and, soon enough, all the Democrats in the Presidential race), would impose on the American commonwealth such a clear violation of personal religious conscience as well as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as O’Rourke has pledged–namely, restricting the federal tax-exempt status to those religious entities which have bowed to the new LGBTeieio gods and goddesses.

        • Archpriest Webster: “restricting the federal tax-exempt status to those religious entities which have bowed to the new LGBTeieio gods and goddesses.”
           
          By nature I am a pessimist, and I do not doubt that those guys want to do it. Yet somehow I doubt that they will dare.
           
          The supply of LGBT characters is rather small. More, I know a few men who have “G” tendency and they do not like this agenda. So …
           
          Perhaps in the further future?

        • Michael Bauman says

          Thank you Father for that reminder. You are correct. It is our responsibility to witness in everyway possible in the public square until we are no longer allowed to. I am in no way a quietest.

          I do not see how any Christian, even those who are nominal, can in anyway support a Democrat for public office. Although the Trump administration is really getting my hackles up with its obscene meddling in the life of the Church, he has taken real steps to protect Christian liberty here at home and to reduce the practice of abortion.

          In the end, if we fulfill or even attempt to fulfill our calling to be a prophetic voice, the State will seek to silence us. That fact that so many are coming out in public for such silencing is an indication we have not been entirely ineffective.

          As a side observation, it appears that actual paganism is making a come back. Reference the recent actions of popular singer Aaron Carter who got a large face tattoo of Medusa and then public claimed her as his protectress.

          The more we banish the real presence of the living God from our hearts, our minds and our public activities the more such things will flourish because our hearts cannot be empty of some transcendent/descendent reality.

          The claimed neutrality of secularism cannot exist. We love God or mammon. There is no middle.

  8. Michael,
    I liked everything in your post, but was particularly moved by the following:
    .
    “Our places of worship are often of great beauty and a true sanctuary where the living presence of God is all of the time, but He can create beauty anywhere and His grace is everywhere even deep in the hearts of those who would persecute Him. “Where two or more….”
    .

    Many years ago I attended  Matins and Divine Liturgy in the middle of a forrest (or very large park), with a make-shift altar, a good choir and devout bishop, priests, congregation. It was simply Divine! Besides the icons of Christ and the Theotokos, the rest of them were living icons, par excellence those of the innocent angelic children watching the service, and the God-made trees successfully competing the man-made Corinthian pillars we value so much. 
    .
    It seems the current “civilisation” is pushing the Christians back to the catacombs, just like communism did for 70 years. It’s all for our salvation.

    • Michael Bauman says

      My brother knew a Romanian woman who lived under Ceaușescu who later immigrated to this country (actually immigrated). She never lost her faith. She had one icon that she kept and set it up to say morning, evening and bedtime prayers in her apartment, then put it away in a drawer. The Romanian Secret Police came often to her home when she was away, so she did not display it. Also, frequently, operatives of the Secret Police would come up to her on the street and walk, one on each side of her, quite close and whisper in her ear–“You know we can kill you any time we want.” She acknowledge the reality of their statement but made no other conversation.

      The beauty was in her one icon and the grace was with her throughout that time.

      Also, let us always remember St. Mary of Egypt who spent many years in the desert without even the solace of an icon after having been prevented from entering a Holy Temple. Receiving of the Body and Blood only at the very end of her life. No one can tell me that God, His grace and beauty, were not present with her the entire time.

      As beautiful as my parish is, full of large, well drawn icons, holy services and many kind and wonderful people, there are some times when I long for smaller and simpler.

      Frankly coming together in a vacant lot in the middle of a city somewhere, drawing a Cross in the dirt and praying to God in praise and thanksgiving, commemorating a faithful bishop would be more than sufficient if that is all that can be done. If we can not do it there, all of the magnificent Cathedrals, grand vestments and hierarchical divine liturgies will not help.

  9. Michael Bauman says

    Given his recent speech at the Notre Dame Law School, Attorney General Barr, is going to face even more long knives:

    As reported by Fox News Barr said in his remarks against militant secularism that among other things:

    Barr contends that many of society’s ills are caused because of the breakdown of religion in society. “This is not decay,” he said. “This is organized destruction. Secular forces and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia, in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”

    It would be nice to see a full transcript of the speech even though I find in it a massive cognitive dissonance in the Trump Administration in its genuine defense of Christian liberties her at home and the absolute trampling on those liberties abroad through the State Department.