“Spouses in happy marriages have affairs,” is the headline for Hanna Rosin’s newest masterpiece on Slate. In the midst of an adoring interview with one Esther Perel, we are assured that now that we all agree on the need to celebrate premarital sex, we also have to “reexamine monogamy,” as serious moral scholars like gay activist Dan Savage have urged.
Rosin is right, though not in the way she thinks. Marriage is already destroyed – and was destroyed long before “gay marriage.” A real marriage is a communal, tribal, and public commitment that joins two families and in essence, creates a new people that will form part of the larger folk community. Today, it’s just another greeting card word designed for individual self-gratification, as trivial as a fat celebrity’s drug overdose. Why pretend otherwise?
Born in Israel, Rosin made her reputation writing on “religious issues,” i.e. bashing white Christians.
One of her books is God’s Harvard, a predictable hit piece on Patrick Henry College. After sneering at how the goyim practically worshipped her because, in their words, she had the “blood of our Savior coursing through your veins,” she spends most of the book obsessing about the blond hair and blue eyes of the fearsome Christian stormtroopers campaigning for the GOP and fighting to save the country she unfortunately left as a child. Like most of these “conservatives in the mist” type stories, it tells us more about the paranoia and loathing the author feels for Americans than it does about the ostensible subject matter.
After the long, national nightmare of George W. Bush ended, Rosin skillfully moved on to the next social causes du jour, feminism, homosexuality and the ever multiplying varieties of sexual mental disorders, er, displays of individual courage and bravery against oppression. Part of her crusade was against the Bernstein Bears, recounting how the children’s book about talking bears caused her to “[throw] the book away in a fury” and how she reacted to the author’s death with “Good riddance.” This unstable woman achieved her magnum opus with the celebratory The End of Men, which noted that women were triumphing in the new economy, while men were simply being left behind.
What kind of man could be married to Rosin (who does not have her husband’s last name?) Well, this guy.
The beautiful irony here is that Rosin has ensured her job security at Slate by being married to this magnificent specimen of manhood, Slate editor David Plotz.
Thus ensconced in a high position as part of the Chattering Class, Rosin can inflict feminist talking points on Americans, all the while decrying oppression and honoring her own bravery. Of course, as someone married with children, she might not actually mean it – like racial diversity, this could be yet another example of something that the masses are supposed to endure, but not the SWPL elites. This week, she checked off the latest box on the feminist platform, encouraging infidelity.
Along with Perel (who has an accent that is a “combination of French and Israeli”), Rosin leads the reader on what the old Communist functionaries would call a “guided discussion” on marital fidelity. While not necessarily recommending an affair, Perel heaps scorn on the “imperfect arrangement” of marriage. She uses that wonderful culture of critique phrase “we have this idea that” in order to criticize marital spouses who think “our partner is our best friend, that there is one person who will fulfill all our needs!”
But of course, the reason we think that is because perfect emotional fulfillment and the dream of “love” is all that’s left. What marriage used to be was a community celebration, a way for families to ensure common bonds within a shared religious tradition and ensure the transfer of property, the security of women, and a healthy environment for children. This is why marriage ceremonies still contain practices that infuriate feminists like the father “giving away” his daughter to her new husband.
Marriage wasn’t a “choice” in the contemporary sense, like deciding what garbage food to have for lunch, what corporate brand to patronize, or what variation of egalitarian clichés you are going to embrace as your “spiritual life.” It was a serious lifetime commitment before God (or gods) who were worth worshipping and an entire community that you were a part of. Financial practices such as the dowry and the bride price were a part of this institution, with serious monetary consequences in the case of divorce. Violating that commitment through adultery was punished by community scorn as well as legal consequences. Now real consequences for adultery only live on under the Universal Code of Military Justice, which needless to say, leftists and feminists are also trying to abolish.
What really killed marriage was its transformation into a celebration of individual love and personal choice. Once it’s conceded that love is simply a question of opinion for the two people involved, how can one oppose liberalizing divorce laws? Love fades. Why not legalize interracial marriage? After all, the heart wants what it wants. And once, racial considerations are dismissed as irrelevant, as Slate reasonably asks, why not polygamy? In fact, why “privilege” this social construct known as the family at all? And of course, smoothly pivoting from arguments about why gay marriage is about “love,” the homosexual movement is now admitting that is their real position, logically enough. Get ready for a tenured parasite to lecture you about your “family privilege,” cisgender scum.
If everything is just a matter of choice, marriage becomes purely a contract (as Perel says). And since what a person “wants” can change so often, why tie yourself down at all?
Perel asks, “Why did infidelity continue to rise even when divorce became available and accepted and nonstigmatized? You would think an unhappy person would leave. So by definition they must not be that unhappy.” Well, no. Infidelity continued to rise because once marriage transitioned entirely to a lifestyle choice with the normalization of divorce, marriage became about satisfying feelings instead of building a family and contributing to the larger community. If divorce had consequences, both social and legal, infidelity would decline. Instead, people are allowed to have it both ways, provided they have a partner who is sufficiently beaten down that he or she can’t leave – or is afraid of losing all their possessions in a divorce settlement.
Perel herself, let it be said, practices what she preaches. She is a “couples therapy expert” who has a nominal husband and children in the midst of her speaking to TED seminars and the like. She crows, “For me, this is my fourth marriage with my husband and we have completely reorganized the structure of the relationship, the flavor, the complementarity.” What makes the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th contract renegotiation, er, “marriage,” so different from the one prior is left unsaid. And how any self-respecting man can continue with this farce is best left unexamined.
So why have an affair? Perel emphasizes this from a female perspective, even a political perspective. “Today, female infidelity is the biggest challenge to the male-dominated status quo.” Edgy, man. Affairs make people feel more “alive” and let women get away from having to take care of the kids and other non-sexy things. “This is the one thing I know I am not doing for anyone else. I am not taking care of anyone, this is for me.”
Or, as she puts it, “And all that is part of the feminist deliberation. I deserve this, I am entitled to this, I can have this! It allows people to finally pursue a desire to feel alive.” Keep in mind, this is not a parody by Roosh – this is in her own words.
Of course, none of this is actually new. All the pretentious rhetoric about the “next frontier” of egalitarian is actually the same old hypergamous evolutionary programming in action. In short, alpha fucks, beta bucks.
Every word of psychobabble, every feminist treatise, and the rant of every shrieking harpy on a college campus can be quickly summarized as, “As a woman, I should not suffer consequences for my sexual choices, nor be held accountable for any commitments I make. My feelings at the time are the most important consideration.” The end result of feminism is denying that woman are moral agents even capable of choice – like blacks, homosexuals, and illegal immigrants – they exist only as victims, moral mascots to be subsidized by kulak white males.
Not surprisingly, what can broadly be called the Red Pill subculture is reacting with scorn to the idea of marriage. Who can imagine dedicating his life to the likes of Perel, or even making the slightest commitment? Indeed, why would he even buy her a drink when all he needs to do is a recite a script and act dangerous enough such that she feels alive, and then ignore her texts? Most women may or may not deserve a good man – but certainly no feminist does.
The end result is that Perel is beating a dead horse. We are already living in her world, and unfortunately, there are still enough useful idiot beta males who are going along with it and subsidizing it. The smarter (or more cynical) males are dropping out entirely. But this is a retreat, rather than a solution.
What is needed is a new tribalism at every level. The current sexual climate has to be attacked at its core, not just with out of context Bible waving or moral stuffiness. Marriage should return as a tribal institution, something negotiated between families and communities. If marriage is to be reduced to a “contract,” let it be a contract of a more ancient form, complete with the return of dowries, bride prices, and prenuptial agreements negotiated by the patriarchs of the families. Such an arrangement is the only thing worthy of the word marriage, rather than the individualist farce which is taken less seriously than membership in a sorority.
Of course people will still cheat – both men and women. We might even be willing to accommodate this in some way with brothels or tolerated prostitution. But such practices should be seen as unrespectable and shameful. Degenerates who meet the market in human depravity are an unfortunate necessity. More importantly, to publicly disgrace a spouse or bring it into the family home should be regarded as a horrific act. Rather than the reforms favored by a Dan Savage, we should look at the marital reforms implemented by Caesar Augustus.
The alternative is to simply embrace the decadence, but feel free to give the likes of Perel what they really want. Men who want to take their chances in the modern climate are free to do so, but they should read the interview with Perel and gaze into the abyss.
As for the women who don’t want to return to a more honorable practice, they should be treated accordingly. They want temporary emotional satisfaction, momentary excitement, and no commitment. If they want to embrace sexual anarchy and simply burn it all down, better for men to oblige them than to try to save them from themselves. After all, it’s called Tinder for a reason.
