No amount of bemoaning the lot of men in general, and fathers in
particular, will ever have any effect. The innate psychologies of both
men and women will see to that. ...Any taint of victimhood must be rejected by men.
The Problem
After a rundown of the key factors that have degraded Western societies (focussed on the USA but we can read across to any Western nation) Baskerville asks “Why?”. Why did all this happen? To quote Devlin, “Baskerville claims his new book is the first to try to explain why they (the various social pathologies) occurred—or more precisely, why they were not prevented. For the motives of those who carried out the coup are less important than the inability of wiser men to stop them.”
The novel feature of Baskerville’s explanation does not relate to the ideological far left nor feminism, because the role of those factions we can take as read. Instead, he blames the establishment right for their cowardly refusal to acknowledge the root cause of the problems (as opposed from its secondary effects which are only the symptoms).
Devlin quotes Daniel Amneus thus, “The linchpin in the feminist program is mother custody following divorce. Pull that pin . . . and the feminist structure collapses.” No professional conservative institution has ever lifted a finger to do so, he adds. “The debilitating effects of fatherlessness are recited by conservative moralists ad nauseam,” notes Baskerville, but “not a single one ever offers any solution other than vaguely invoking ‘family values’ and ‘religious faith.’”
Fatherlessness, the collapse of marriage, the eradication of true marriage, sex outside of marriage, sexual libertinism masquerading as liberalism, out-of-wedlock births, single parents: these are the poisonous loam out of which the rest of the degraded sociopolitical jungle grows. And all are the product of progressive feminism.
The matter is simple: a society which fails to provide men with any motive to be kindly disposed towards it will achieve men who are not kindly disposed towards it. Such a society will decay and fail. The root cause of men’s disenfranchisement from society is feminism. Ergo, feminism is socially fatal. This is what the establishment, of all political complexions, will never acknowledge.
Feminism appears terrifyingly powerful and ruthlessly efficient. But it has a catastrophic blind spot: men. Feminism has always considered it sufficient to push men down. This ideology fails to appreciate that any society which does not enjoy men’s positive engagement will go extinct or be taken over by a more vibrant culture. In the latter case, whether the invading culture is nice or nasty is irrelevant; it will happen anyway.
The whole of Baskerville’s book before the last chapter is actually a prelude and motivation for that concluding chapter, The Way Out.
The way out of what? Of this…
- A society controlled by government-sponsored protection rackets run by people who have a vested interest in perpetuating the “problems” they are paid to solve, and who very often create or invent the problems in the first place (Baskerville’s Iron Law of Washington).
- A welfare culture which not only fails to overcome poverty but deepens it and breeds dependency, resentment and hopelessness and leads to government agents “forcibly controlling the private lives of millions of non-criminal citizens”.
- Churches which have abandoned moral leadership, or, worse, promote false moral values and whose “craven cowardice before the divorce industry not only drives men from their congregations, it denies themselves the venerable role of public consciences”.
- The demonisation of men in general, and ejected fathers in particular, to act as the universal whipping boys for every ill, thus deflecting attention from the true causes.
- The epidemic of contagious fatherlessness and all that follows in its wake: virtually every social ill is promoted in the children.
- A family court system which imposes draconian authoritarian control on some whilst allowing others to flout their own orders with impunity.
- A criminal justice system which has given ground to feminist pressures and is now a long way from real justice, thus empowering the feminists and simultaneously granting more power to the authoritarian state to incarcerate men.
- The political use of “lawfare”, which has come as a shock to many, as if it were something new rather than having been pioneered for decades by the aforementioned corruptions in the family and criminal courts.
- Police forces which are more interested in policing the thoughts of law-abiding citizens than catching burglars and robbers.
- A ruling elite which, in cahoots with the media and educational establishments, is dedicated to censorship and control of what citizens are allowed to say through hate crime laws and internet safety smokescreens.
- A society in which sexual libertinism is accepted as normal but which, in addition to being moral turpitude, does not liberate young men and women from unwanted constraints but instead makes them anxious and uncertain – and in need of the very constraints and guidance this faux-liberalism has denied them.
- A society which refuses to acknowledge that feminism was never about equality but about making women independent of men, which, in the domestic context, means women’s ability to remove fathers from the home and out of their children’s lives.
- A society which is in denial that the euphemistically named “no fault divorce”, i.e., unilateral, incontestable divorce, is, and was always intended to be, one of the mechanisms for achieving the removal of fathers from their children;
- A society which is failing to reproduce itself and so is doomed to decline and possible extinction.
- A broken economy with unserviceable national debt in which a single wage is no longer enough for raising a family (unlike 50 years ago, when it was).
- A nation in which large swathes of the public, probably the majority, believe that their government and its functionaries (regardless of nominal political persuasion) routinely lie to the public and pursue agendas which they do not reveal, a belief which is difficult to dispute given the palpable nonsense of policies on covid, energy and climate.
The role of the feminist, progressive, faux-liberal left in all this is clear and indisputable. But Baskerville’s ire focusses in particular on establishment conservatism and the right of mainstream politics as a whole. Those of us who have majored on men’s issues are very familiar with this frustration. Whatever topic is being discussed, no one in mainstream debate will go anywhere near pointing the finger at the true root cause: the sexual revolution and feminism. All the rest follow from that, including all the faux-liberal policies which are actually an implementation of feminism.
The refusal of establishment conservatism to call out the true culprit is a sustained act of cowardice and, to quote Devlin again, “all the more maddening when, as the author points out, ‘the solution is so clear and straightforward and free from any financial cost. You just stop the welfare agencies and courts from tearing children away from their parents’. You stop paying mothers to have children out of wedlock. You refuse to grant wives release from their freely assumed marriage vows on grounds of boredom or having found someone they like better than their husbands. In short, you learn once again how to say “no” to women (regaining their respect in the process). Every society since the dawn of civilization has required its women, like its men, to practice sexual self-control.”
Topical UK: Some Illustrations
This – the abject failure of the establishment right – is a lesson that the people of the UK, those who have been paying attention, learnt some time ago. It was the dominant theme in the July 2024 general election and decided its outcome. For those that do not know, or have already forgotten, the Labour Party won a landslide victory with a majority of 174 in parliament despite achieving 583,000 fewer votes than they did in the 2019 election under Jeremy Corbyn as leader when Labour went down to an embarrassingly catastrophic defeat and gave a large majority to the Conservatives.
How come? It was because in 2024 Nigel Farage and Reform split the conservative vote. They did so deliberately and knowingly and the public enthusiastically joined in to assist them. Reform’s electoral strategy was not to attack Labour but to send the Conservative Party into oblivion (the mantra being Zero Seats for the Conservatives). Farage was never going to entertain an electoral non-aggression pact with the Conservatives as he had in 2019, a pact which then sent Boris Johnson into power with a huge majority. This furious breaking of conservative ranks was the justified response by Reform, on behalf of the public, for 14 years of betrayal by the Conservatives in power.
And yet Baskerville has a point, even in the UK, because this conservative schism resulted from “conventional” politics alone, principally the immigration issue. What concerns Baskerville is mainstream conservatism’s refusal to go anywhere near the root cause of any of these problems, namely feminism and the sexual revolution. Indeed, in the UK, Conservative governments have enthusiastically deepened the problem. Even Farage/Reform will not go anywhere near the root cause of our social problems, because they remain a catastrophic vote loser. In other words, because the vast majority of the public have been successfully bamboozled by the feminist revolution.
Britain has been implicated in the rise of the feminist state from the early nineteenth century. As Devlin reminds us, “The switch to presumptive mother custody began in Victorian Britain, a society even more given to a sentimental view of women and motherhood than our own. The first breach was the Custody of Infants Act of 1839 with its “tender years” doctrine, granting presumptive custody of children under seven years to divorced mothers. This was extended to the age of sixteen in 1873. So today’s revolt of the fatherless has deeper roots than we might like to acknowledge.” Indeed, and for those who still believe the law turned a blind eye to the plight of battered wives until second wave feminism came along, there was also the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878 which introduced protection orders against husbands which the wife could acquire at a magistrate’s court. That was not the first such Act. The Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults on Women Act 1853 sanctioned severe punishments for men who beat their wives, including public flogging. Centuries earlier still, in the Elizabethan period, domestic disputes and violence were a considerable proportion of indictments for violence brought before Courts.
“From the beginning”, opines Devlin, “the most authoritarian pressure group in American politics has consistently been women’s rights activists. [No one] has done more to politicize criminal justice, expand the penal apparatus, and increase the prison population. Such pressure groups prefer to pursue their goals through litigation and regulation rather than legislation. This is because the judiciary and the civil service bureaucracy are the most undemocratic and unaccountable sectors of the government, and they know their objectives do not enjoy broad popular support. Accordingly, the rise of the professional lobbies has been accompanied on the government side by an increase in the importance of these sectors.”
This is mirrored in the UK by Tony Blair’s creation of the Supreme Court and the associated Constitutional Reform Act, the delegation of monetary policy to the Bank of England, the 1998 Human Rights Act and the 2010 Equality Act. Further developments under Conservative governments effectively removed financial decisions from elected politicians and into the hands of unelected bureaucrats, and in parallel allowed the civil service to effectively escape the control of Ministers. In short, the Deep State was created, consisting of the judiciary, the civil service and the financial institutions, together with their apparatchiks in the media and the educational establishments.
Devlin notes, “A surprisingly large number of Americans first became aware of how corrupt our courts have become when they witnessed the politically motivated prosecutions of Donald Trump and his associates. Numerous commentators warned us that “if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to any of us.” But as Baskerville notes, this is putting the matter backwards: “they” could only do such things to Trump because they had long since been getting away with doing them to defenseless Americans…Many Americans were shocked, e.g., when a judge issued a “protective order” preventing the former President from discussing his trial, making public the evidence in his favor, or even proclaiming his innocence. Outrageous, yes—but already endured by countless Americans without Trump’s ability to arouse public interest and sympathy…As the author says, “‘protective orders’ declaring defendants’ guilt and punishing or gagging them, come straight out of family court, ‘where they are used to silence Americans who try to publicize the system’s injustices’”. This is all equally applicable in the UK, and most other Western countries.
The American public, records Devlin, were shocked when Roger Stone was “subjected to a pre-dawn no-knock raid and arrest in front of pre-notified camera crews. But, as Baskerville points out, ‘they did not complain when this technique was pioneered by child-support enforcement, so now they join its targets’.” Nor did the UK public complain when exactly that treatment was meted out to Cliff Richards on the basis of sexual abuse allegations with no foundation whatsoever – on that occasion with camera crews descending upon Richards’ house by helicopter. Other than the camera crew, being arrested in the small hours by a mob handed posse of police is standard procedure in the UK for sexual “offences” (i.e., allegations). Is the same approach meted out to, say, a suspect burglar? Who knows, such villains are rarely arrested at all now in the UK. Nearly half of neighbourhoods in England and Wales have had no burglaries at all resolved in three years. But never mind – the Domestic Abuse Acts 2021 and 2023, enacted under a Conservative government, have imposed ever more draconian restrictions and punishments on fathers (de facto if not de jure).
Totalitarianism is getting ever closer under Labour in the UK. Two Tier Kier is a real phenomenon, and is not confined to the Prime Minister but endemic across all parts of the criminal – and civic – justice systems. In early August 2024 riots broke out in many cities across 25 English towns and cities (plus Belfast). Concern over very high levels of immigration figured large. However the protests rapidly degenerated into riots and many groups of counter-demonstrators led to an explosive mix. The initial riot in Southport appears to have been sparked by misunderstanding, and no doubt agent provocateurs were active in spreading the violence and unrest with various different motives which I will not attempt to analyse.
Following the advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste”, ardent feminist Yvette Cooper, now Home Secretary, has ordered a “rapid review” of “extremism” which, she claims, lies behind these riots. Misogyny is included in the definition of “Extremism”, or, at least “extreme misogyny” is. In this initiative, the Home Secretary is enthusiastically encouraged by the ideologically feminist Labour Party generally, and the Prime Miniter and Deputy Prime Minister in particular.
Brendan O’Neill has called Cooper’s intended crack-down on “harmful beliefs” “a first step to tyranny”. No, Brendan, it’s the final step. Exactly when the first step occurred is hard to pin down, but it was at least half a century ago and arguably far longer ago than that. This is Baskerville’s point, and well made.
I have no doubt that any feminist would classify me as a misogynist. In our deluded society many who are not (knowingly) feminists would probably do so too. Do I have to reiterate yet again that “misogyny” no longer means what it used to mean? Not when the word is used as a political device to vilify anyway. For decades past, misogyny ceased to even have much to do with women. It means heresy against the mandatory orthodoxy of feminism – and from that, by extension, it has come to mean dissent against the prevailing ‘progressive’ narrative. On the other hand, Kate Andrews muses on whether one can distinguish between “moderate misogyny” and “extreme misogyny” and reminds us of the disgusting comments by trolls which frequently follow tweets by Yvette Cooper or Jess Phillips. These trolling morons are more my enemy than women’s for they make it too easy to dismiss the valid concerns of people like myself and Stephen Baskerville by association.
But a gentleman never trolls. Nor does this particular aspiring gentleman use X/Twitter, which, from all I hear, seems not to be a suitable place for a gentleman.
Baskerville’s Previous Work
Stephen Baskervillle’s previous books include Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage and the Family (2007), The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power (2017), Not Peace but a Sword (2018 extended or 1993 abridged) and A Gentleman’s Guide to Manners, Sex, and Ruling the World: How to Survive as a Man in the Age of Misandry– and Do So with Grace (2021). The latter I reviewed in 2021. You may want to glance back at that.
You will see immediately that the first two of these previous books link directly to the material of the latest book, Who Lost America? It may not appear so obvious that a book about the Puritans (Not Peace but a Sword) could be so pertinent, nor the superficially whimsical A Gentleman’s Guide. Yet all these earlier books are relevant; the first two simply for factual content and statement of the problem, but the latter two rather more profoundly as regards ethos and hence the approach to a solution. Allow me to illustrate…
- There is puritanism in every revolution opines Baskerville (pdf here). “Effective reform movements succeed in arousing people by combining self-interest with higher moral purpose…This is what the Puritans did, and the American revolution, and the anti-slavery societies, and the working class and ethnic and civil rights movements.” (This and other quotes from Who Lost America).
- Before enjoining battle with those you regard as being in error, first take care of the “sin within”. This principle, Baskerville claims, “was first inculcated on a mass scale by the Puritans, and it may help account for the spectacular success of Anglophone countries”. This aligns nicely with my own proffered First Moral Principle, “the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every man and woman” (see The Destructivists). That Principle is sufficient to immediately bring down the entire edifice of identity politics (which is founded on the moral corruption that the line between good and evil lies between the in-groups and the out-groups).
- “Divine judgment promised that evildoers would receive their just desserts, but it also reminded their victims that they too would be judged if they did not get off their own duffs and do whatever was in their power to rectify the evil. Here again we may wish to thank, among others, the Puritans for having habituated us to this mindset, even now that we have the luxury of deprecating it.”
All these principles will be reflected in the proposed solution, below. To be specific: the combination of self-interest and higher moral purpose, and the acknowledgement of your own contribution to the problem and hence the obligation to be actively engaged in its rectification. No one said it would be easy. The rot has gone too deep.
And as for the relevance of The Gentleman’s Guide, we will come to that shortly.
The Solution
It’s time for some serious talk. It’s time to stop complaining and to focus on the solution. The solution must be motivated by an objective which is intrinsically positive.
No amount of bemoaning the lot of men in general, and fathers in particular, will ever have any effect. The innate psychologies of both men and women will see to that. In particular, the seeming inability of men to cohere around a central organisation is notorious within the men’s movement. This appears to be a weakness in male psychology but I have come to the conclusion it is actually the opposite. Paradoxically, it is in individual, uncoordinated action that men do best, motivated not by organisation but by a shared appreciation of reality. The strength of the proposed solution is that it requires no organisation, no coordination, no identifiable lobby group…and no money.
The standard feminist response to an emerging threat posed by a rival organisation is to infiltrate, co-opt, control and then destroy it. Without any organisation to invade, this standard, highly effective, MO against dissent is made irrelevant. An organisation that does not exist cannot be destroyed.
Many, even amongst those sympathetic to the issues discussed in these pages, will not like the solution that I, following Baskerville, have to offer.
Baskerville’s solution to the problem of saving our civilisation is to address the core problem, not to avoid it as the establishment conservatives continue to insist upon doing. The core of the solution is simple to state, quoting Baskerville,
“…only a single role – a minimal and basic one – is necessary and legitimate for the state to undertake, but it is essential: The state must be compelled by the citizenry to re-establish real marriage by once again enforcing it as a legal contract. The state must be forced to repeal the indefensible oxymoron of “no-fault” justice and reimpose a presumption of father custody over children.” (emphasis as in the original).
I admire Baskerville’s chutzpah in referring to this as “minimal”. Though this is true in the sense of being the least change that will affect real improvement, it calls for the unravelling of half a century of feminist legislation (and two centuries of proto-feminist narrative). To say there would be push-back should earn a prize in understatement.
This is not a utopian vision, it is a practical one. It will not be a cure-all. Bad things will still happen. But, among those who accept this lifestyle one can anticipate a healing of the growing rift between the sexes and a diminishing of the, now rampant, prevalence of mental ill-health.
I don’t think that Stephen Baskerville sees this outcome as being achieved overnight. The mechanism he sees as creating the political pressure to eventually force this outcome is the marriage strike.
It must be emphasised, if the usage of the word “strike” were not sufficient to imply it, that in this new variant – unlike MGTOW – those on strike actually wish to marry. Like striking workers, who actually want to work, the issue is about terms and conditions. The marriage strikers want real marriage not the disgraceful sham that has now been foisted upon us. Baskerville aligns real marriage with a legally enforceable contract which carries the presumption of father custody over children. His position is that the essence of real marriage is to legally protect fatherhood, and thus (in my words) to balance nature’s biological protection of motherhood.
The destruction of real marriage is therefore synonymous with the destruction of fatherhood. It follows that if the destruction of fatherhood and all that it brings in its wake is to be reversed – and ultimately this includes our civilisation’s demise – then real marriage is the sine qua non. This is the conclusion that neither side wishes to face.
My own statement of the objective is “real marriage plus”. This refers to a culture of absolute monogamy, in which marriage involves a solemn covenant which “no man may put asunder”. It is an acceptance of duty and responsibility, not a lifestyle choice. Excepting rare cases, only the death of a partner would permit remarriage. The associated sexual ethos is chastity outside of marriage (for both sexes, of course). The result would be children raised almost exclusively in two-parent, heterosexual nuclear families. I would add a further condition in relation to the intention to create and raise children, namely the agreement by both man and wife that in their pre-school years the children would be looked after by the stay-at-home-mother. Many women, especially after giving birth, want this anyway. If women had not been so indoctrinated into believing they must prioritise paid work I believe they would virtually all agree.
But unfortunately, though not surprisingly, according to the 2023 British Attitudes Survey most women (and probably men too) remain indoctrinated, with only 21% of respondents agreeing with the view that a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works. But the response to that question may be skewed by the fact that most mothers are obliged to work for financial reasons, and they do not want to believe that they are damaging their child by so doing. I recognise that it has now become difficult to raise a family, pay a mortgage, etc., on just one wage, but the objective we are aiming for needs stating clearly despite that. 50 years ago it was the norm, even in working class families, for the man to be the sole earner. That this is no longer the case may also be due in large part to the feminist revolution, though it is tricky to be confident about economic counterfactuals.
There are a number of obvious problems with the proposed solution which I shall address.
But firstly, the attitude of the strikers. This must be fully compliant with the ideal of the gentleman. If you don’t know what that is I suggest you read A Gentleman’s Guide at your earliest convenience (hence the promised significance of that book). A striker’s motivation must not be revenge. Nor should it be inspired by bitterness or misogyny. And striking against marriage must never be motivated by fear. Such would be inconsistent with being a gentleman. To quote Baskerville,
“…renouncing women, marriage and families is not a state to which men should resign themselves indefinitely, especially when it is done out of fear. It is weak and defeatist, and it is not a healthy or wholesome life. It is a denial of manhood itself, the essence of which is to love, procreate and lead. Unless done from compelling religious convictions, it denies a man life’s greatest joys.”
Secondly, it must be clearly understood that the strike is against false marriage, with the desired end being real marriage. To stretch the metaphor, the strike is against employers with unacceptable terms and conditions, but in favour of those who uphold the desired terms and conditions. The strike is, therefore, essentially positive not negative.
Thirdly, the attributes of the strikers. This also can be summed up in the ideal of the gentleman. One can hardly expect young women to much lament the loss of a potential marriage partner who is an uncouth, ignorant yobo with no prospects. The bite of the strike is to withdraw from (conventional) matrimonial availability those who are most eligible. To that end, strikers should concentrate upon improving themselves and their prospects, thus making themselves as eligible as possible. That this aligns with the traditional requirement upon a man before seeking a marriage partner is no accident. Female hypergamy is not going away, nor should it because it is grounded in good sense.
But as Baskerville makes clear, the strike is targeted at those women who will not accept the terms of real marriage. These are the women in respect of which the sole advice is “avoid”. They are entitled to their opinion. And you are entitled to avoid them. The strike does not, though, exclude marriage to those women who do accept the terms of real marriage and its associated sexual ethos.
Why should you not make your requirements in respect of marriage clear? You yield a great deal of freedom in voluntarily accepting the responsibilities of marriage. So you should demand a quid pro quo commensurate with your worth.
The Extended Conditions
Some glaringly obvious problems with the solution as stated so far must be addressed.
Most obviously, those who have worked so assiduously for the destruction of marriage, the feminists, are hardly going to be perturbed by a marriage strike. Is a marriage strike just playing into their hands, then? This objection has real force because, in the UK, most fatherlessness and single motherhood is not caused by divorce but by parents having never been married in the first place. 50% of children are born outside wedlock in the UK. This is why the full statement of the solution is broader than a marriage strike – it is also a strike against cohabitation and the begetting of children outside of real marriage.
The mantra is “no marriage, no cohab, no babies”.
Only by embracing this full prescription does the strategy make coherent sense. Otherwise, via cohabitation, things would continue as before.
In any case, I would go further. To bring an end to the degenerate culture of sexual licence and libertinism, a return to chastity outside of marriage is also required (certainly if J.D.Unwin is to be believed, see also this or this). This will not be popular. But the message is essentially one of voluntarily accepting responsibility and reining in the sexual licence that faux liberalism has promoted to our social detriment.
This is not a utopian vision, it is a practical one. It will not be a cure-all. Genuine domestic abuse will still happen (in both directions). But the diminution of parental separation to dramatically lower levels will reduce its prevalence, and the use of allegations of abuse to jockey for advantage in the family courts will largely disappear.
A further issue must be aired, namely the powerful proselytising against marriage from the men’s movement. Does not the proposed solution stand in stark opposition to this? No, there is no contradiction, merely an ambiguity in the meaning of the word “marriage”. If one means by “marriage” the disgraceful sham that has been foisted upon us, via legislation and social, moral and religious corruption over half a century, then I’m absolutely in agreement with the “fraud of the rings” brigade. This is the false marriage against which the strike is targeted. Shunning the false marriage that is sanctioned by the State is inevitably the route which young men who are well informed will increasingly take.
On the other hand, real marriage is the very objective of the proposal. Real marriage – and the sexual ethic which surrounds it – is the cornerstone of a fulfilling life for both sexes. Moreover, I believe there is no other viable option if our culture is to survive, let alone thrive.
Achieving State sanction for real marriage via legislation will be a long haul. In the meantime how can real marriage be implemented? Inevitably this must be based on mutual trust, but this must involve an explicit understanding by both parties regarding the seriousness of what they are taking on. This is where the formation of local communities which embody this ethos is so valuable. These would provide a public forum for the “solemnization of vows” and so help to bolster personal commitments, which can waver under pressure, with social support. Even better would be for these local communities to be organised around a church which is on board with the objectives of real marriage and can meld these into a traditional service. The details are for such local communities to arrange. That this is workable is demonstrated by many UK Muslim communities in which marriages are often under Islamic Sharia law only, the couples being less concerned with a marriage licence under English law.
Some say that “women’s liberation” actually liberated men – meaning that men could finally get access to all the sex they wanted. For the majority of men this is simply untrue. Instead, many well-meaning men who seek a marriage partner are ignored by the dating app culture and eventually give up. Moreover, there is a danger lurking in this apparent sexual licence. There is no such thing as casual sex. Sex by its nature is not casual. One way or another a price will be exacted. If the bill remains unpaid, a false allegation is what may result.
Many men have given up on dating, partly because they get no interest on dating apps but also because they simply cannot afford it. For these men it is not so much a marriage strike as being unwanted, or so it seems. But this is largely an artefact of our degraded culture failing to provide routes for meeting potential marriage partners other than the appalling dating apps. Dating as the mechanism for finding a marriage partner is on the critical list, put there by a combination of dating apps and promiscuity.
Paradoxically, the proposed marriage strike needs to go hand-in-hand with the emergence of more congenial social arrangements whereby potential spouses may meet. The emergence of small-scale local provisions of this kind is likely to arise naturally if the initiative to promote real marriage and chastity attracts adherents, especially if they are affiliated to a church with a consistent ethos.
Young men sympathetic to these suggestions must develop means of making clear their position and their motivation and purpose. In other words, men must take the initiative. In doing so they should emphasise the positive, pro-marriage, impetus behind their opinion – and this must entail enunciating their requirements for the above sexual ethic and meaningful marriage. It is easiest to envisage this arising within religious communities, though this is not logically essential.
Expect to be called all the names under the Sun. But remember Baskerville’s advice,
“…a gentleman must not be afraid of being hated, and one of the gentlemanly qualities that is most difficult to put into practice is how to respond to reproaches, insults, criticism, and hatred. You might recall that the seminal figure of the religion that shaped the ideal of a modern gentleman – Jesus – provided precisely such a model of how to respond, not with vitriol, bitterness, and reciprocal anger…but with humility and sacrifice.” (I am not a Christian incidentally, but that in no way detracts from the value of the advice).
However…and here’s the rub…this position cannot arise spontaneously across our culture as a whole, but only initially in small groups at best. The formation of these small sub-cultural groups is the most difficult step, opposed by all the usual forces as they will be. Such small sub-cultures will be key to demonstrating (especially to young women) what the benefits are of this “return to patriarchy”. The growing popularity of the new/old sexual and reproductive ethos would lead to it becoming adopted widely. The political, economic and educational establishments would be defeated ultimately by the pressure of public opinion – though in an authoritarian state one should not be too sanguine about the timescale of that final triumph.
I emphasise the necessity of such small, local sub-cultures because the ethos of sexual restraint will not come under attack only from the usual ‘external’ forces but also from within. The tendency towards sexual misbehaviour is a human universal. In our traditional Western culture this was countered by the triple lock of legislation, social pressure and religious teaching. In the short & medium term, reversing 50 years of feminist legislation will be beyond our reach. But sub-cultures can implement their own stigma against sexual incontinence. This is doable in principle. In the UK almost all the churches have fallen for the woke pseudo-ethic, but there are honourable exceptions.
I take seriously J.D.Unwin’s timescale. This mess will be three generations in the correction. And in just one more generation the human population will peak and go into decline. Everything thereafter is unpredictable. This is why I see the objective in more modest terms than final triumph: the creation of sub-cultures within which socially positive behaviours – traditional Western values – may be preserved, awaiting a future renaissance.
Finally, any taint of victimhood must be rejected by men. The correct behaviour for men is as nicely expressed in The Gentleman’s Guide. One should not underestimate just how badly young women are in need of assured guidance. They know that marriage partners have become hard to find, but they have no idea why. Their only response is to make themselves look prettier. It is all desperately sad and so unnecessary, like all tragedies. Young men need to take the initiative and adopt the positive approach outlined here. This is the message that must be promulgated to them – then the job of we older chaps is done.
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