Men and Marriage: Preface & Prologue

I'm going to summarize what I see as substantive points and try as best I can to take the evidence at face value without judging the claims too much until I have a complete picture of what George Gilder is asserting in his book, Men and Marriage. The book began as an article for Harper's magazine titled Sexual Suicide. In that article, Gilder declared "the differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society. . . . the drive to deny them--in the name of women's liberation, marital openness, sexual equality, erotic consumption, or homosexual romanticism--must be one of the most quixotic crusades in the history of the species."

Preface

People were upset at this article, and feminist editors blocked it's expansion into a book until Pelican bravely accepted this expanded version and published it in 1986.

American culture has absorbed the ideology of "the obsolescence of masculinity and femininity, of sex roles, and of heterosexual monogamy as the moral norm".

"sexal liberals simply ignore or deny male nature." "American intellectuals and social scientists reduce manhood to androgynous mush. With men seen longing for the 'right to cry' or to stay home and nurture children, virility becomes a mere derivative of femininity." "the denial of male nature in modern life warps and perverts the natural play of male aggression, leading to violence and pornography, to fear and exploitation of women, to the quest for potency through drugs and alcohol, to punch-drunk music, and to fighting at sports events. Millions of men feed on the masculinity of a few heroes--boxers, football players, roch stars, entrepreneurs, macho film and TV avengers."

"Although some observers believe that feminism and sexual liberalism no longer threaten family values, little in fact has changed. Contemporary sexual liberals are merely less honest than earlier feminists in facing the inevitable antifamily consequences of their beliefs."

"sexual liberalism chiefly liberates men from their families"

Basically Gilder makes lots of claims about the effects of feminism and sexual liberalism without yet providing any evidence to support them, so rather than argue here, I'll get into the book and see what his evidence is. He does provide one piece of statistical evidence (without source)--illigitimacy rate is approaching 80% in Central Harlem and is over 40% in Sweden--and concludes that the welfare state doesn't work. Also, women who wait until their mid-thirties to marry have less than a 5% chance of marriage, so feminist arguments to delay marriage are more than stupid. Women earn less that 17% of income in intact families confirms his argument that wives would never make income their prime goal. Outbreaks of sexual transmitted diseases are proof sexual liberalism is bad. Low birth rates in Europe are proof sexual liberalism is bad. Basically, Gilder was a prophet in 1973, and he will show he was in this book (my words, but his ideas).

Prologue

I'm going to skip the prologue because it tells Gilder's narrative but provides no evidence to support it.

So far

We have a few statistics with one hypothesis for their explanation, and logical ties between the hypothesis and statistics are left to the imagination and prejudices of the author or reader. It's worth noting that Gilder sees one of the same things emphasized in the books on women I am reading, namely that women earn less than men in intact families. I think Gilder would have us perpetuate this as a natural role necessary for the success of society, while the other books see it as a risk factor for poverty and a sign of the sickness of society. Let's see how things play out and see if we have good reason to choose one hypothesis over the other. One thing I don't like is Gilder's very black and white presentation. It's feminism against family. If you don't recognize this, you are simply intellectually dishonest (or ignorant). Maybe a good start for book sales and attention, but I don't think it's a good start for fostering understanding between different parties or arriving at the best possible solutions which, in my experience, tend to incorporate the best of many different viewpoints.