Even When It's As Good As It Gets...
Photo by Flickr user lloydi. Used under a Creative Commons license.
So lately I've been talking about the impact anti-feminism has on men as a way to clarify what I think is the most realistic way to address men's relationship to feminism. I'd like to assert that the story about these polygamist men in Texas is one place that rubber really hits the road.
I say that because *theoretically* a compound run entirely by men, entirely for the benefit of men, where men exercise traditional** control over chattel-status women, where men are permitted effectively unlimited sexual access to sometimes unlimited numbers of partners, where they're free to (and sometimes *expected* to) exercise nearly unlimited coercion of their livestock-status "wives," where they're "given" or are able to buy *seriously* barely pubescent pre-teen "virgins" to fuck any way they want, with no obligations to use condoms, no obligation to use foreplay, no obligation to give a rat's ass if she enjoys it for a moment (see "exercise unlimited coercion, above), and where they grow up believing *God says it's ok* sounds like a pure Patriarchal fucking paradise!
And yet...
Seriously...
For all the Hell that kind of setup rains down on women if you're a man do you think you'd be happy in a situation like that? Really? With *5th-graders* for wives? With the rather cold knowledge that you were "given" that 5th-grader by her uncle(!) or father(!!!) in exchange for some (often highly specific) social or economic obligation on your part? One that, for that matter, may not have been exactly what you wanted but you couldn't exactly buck the very small circle of patriarchs who run the show. With the alienation and isolation of having no romantic relationships, of having no life partner, of having no *lovers.* (Because, sorry, 5th-grade boys and girls can be a lot of things -- way more than modern society gives them credit for -- but romance? Lover? Not on that list.) Of having so little in common with your nominal partners. Of never being able to do more than effectively masturbate into the bodies of children *you're custodians of?* Of having to be effectively eternally vigilant that no outsider comes in and fucks things up by actually *falling in love* with your for-all-intents-and-purposes livestock. Of the utterly unilateral economic obligation to be sole breadwinner, arbiter, and bed-time story reader... beginning with your own still-wears-pajamas-aged *wives!!!!* And then on top of that, when your own daughters are very likely still reaching for their blankies or teddies after particularly bad nightmares you're going to have to effectively selling them to other men in your community; and meanwhile you're going to be telling your sons "sorry, you'll have to wait till you're 50."
Never mind that to the extent there's a Hell you're unquestionably going there for taking part in any of the above. What, exactly, makes anyone imagine all those men wouldn't be happier, more prosperous, more mentally well balanced, healthier, and sexually better satisfied with a mutual, reciprocal, equilateral relationship with autonomous, well-educated adult women?
My point being that yes, sure, those male members of that cult are living the patriarchal dream, right? Right! They really are! Really! But the thing is that *that's just not living!* Clearly there are no, zero, none benefits for women but the benefits for the *men* amounts to getting to have salt in your sewage soup! And I'm sorry, if that's as good as it gets for the nominal beneficiaries there's just no justification for the whole sorry enterprise.
So the question isn't why men should be interested in feminism, the question is why any men imagine anti-feminism is somehow a better deal.
[** i.e. "marriages" arranged to seal economic, social, and status contracts between family elders. --fl]
I think it's rather interesting that patriarchal polygamy is always pictured as represented by the worst dystopia that parochial variations on Western religious traditions can produce, rather than the daily grind of societies (like Israel) that have polygamy as a recognized concession to multiculturalism, or just because of their religious legal systems. I am reminded of _The Joy of Sex_'s "Turkish" article from the 1969 edition, which pointed out that "far from living 'mit Saus und Braus'" the Ottoman Sultan was a shut-in who was required to sign a stud-book after every act (for the all-important lineage), living in terror of political assassination, and very often under the influence/control of the Queen Mother. Getting absolute control doesn't necessarily get you closer to what you want, although anyone with a knowledge of mutaa'a marriage is free to chime in, since that seems to be a paradigm of the ultimate male convenience that fl outlines above. So, really, conflating fantasies of power and control with sexual freedom, I think, short-circuits the men's rights' advocacy which presupposes the existence of a Western liberal political system, and female agency, at least to the extent that freedom to enter and leave marriage (as contract law) has to exist for that advocacy to have meaning.
[Wonderfullly put, Eurosabra. There are actually dozens of dystopian patriarchal visions. For instance the typical 19th-Century middle-class German home as outlined by Freud seems only slghtly less miserable for the tyrannical fathers than their wives or children! The trick is that while I'm afraid it's still pretty common I'm also pretty sure nobody except the most dysfunctional "taken in hand" types actually *want* to live like that. But the polygamy/patriarchy thing seems to keep cropping up even though other genuinely positive forms of multi-partner relationships are possible... and maybe even more likely than they are under classic antifeminist/patriarchal/scarcity-fetishism mindsets. But yeah, the reality just doesn't seem even remotely worth *anybody's* time. --fl]
"and meanwhile you're going to be telling your sons 'sorry, you'll have to wait till you're 50.'"
Apparently not even that. According to some recent discussion on a (usually reliable in its sources) Pagan forum I frequent, evidently the boys are habitually tossed out of the community at 16. (Y'know, just about the point when they might become serious competition for the elders.) I gather these young men wind up in pretty marginal conditions, usually associating mainly with each other and self-describing as "lost boys".
This'd make sense, since otherwise the communities would have a large contingent of restless, dissatisfied young men - though one'd think they retain a few young males, or the whole structure will collapse in roughly 30 years.
I can see what source-links were included in that discussion, if you want.
Sunflower
[I haven't seen anyone say it outright but yes, that makes sense. There appears to be pretty heavy reliance on "excommunication" and expulsion with quite a lot of "giving wives and children to more respectable men in the community." And I'm sure they're always just heartbroken to see them go too. "Whoah, dude, ever since your latest wife turned 13 she's, like, totally hot. Guess that parking ticket you got last year is a problem so the elders and I took a little vote and guess how that turned out?" %$!@$!~@$. Thanks, Sunflower. --fl]
Sunflower, Salon.com ran an article on the lost boys a couple years ago. It focused on Warren Jeffs (who's since fallen into the hands of the law, thankfully). Jeffs routinely excommunicated the boys as they began to show interest in girls.
The article doesn't address how Jeffs decided which select boys got to *stay.* I'm very curious about this because it would tell you a lot about how patriarchal privilege gets sustained and handed down in such systems.
[I'm curious how they choose the ones they keep too. (My guess would be the eldest boys of the elders get first pick, wouldn't you?) Anyway, a different article says that when they are choosen, around age 16, they're immediately paired up with a much younger girl and, basically, instructed to violate her. Have I mentioned lately that forcing kids to have sex screws them up whether they're girls *or* boys? It's not a gender thing, it's a screw up their sex lives for life thing. Thanks, Sungold. --fl]