WHAT IS MARRIAGE?
It may seem ironic or needlessly terse for me to have to explain what I mean by marriage. Today there are many difference conceptions of marriage. Most of these conceptions in the modern West are at best romantic. For some people, marriage is the proper place in which to have children. Hence, they may cohabit for several years and when they plan to have children or when they have had a child, they get married. Some people invite their children who were born out of wedlock to their wedding. There are children today who can tell you they can remember the day their parents got married.
Devout Christians and Muslims get married before they have sex. To them, marriage is the precursor to sex. Nevertheless, it is still merely a cohabiting arrangement where people are able to build families. In Christianity marriage is a sacrament. Meaning it is a sacred relationship sanctioned and blessed by God. In Islam, marriage is a contract that makes the two lawful to have sexual relations and where divorce is a possibility should the two no longer be able to hold together based on the terms to which they agreed.
Aside from the romantic and the religious, marriage is also a legal contract before the State that begets certain rights and responsibilities. To this end, marriage enables the State to regulate the affairs that arise from people cohabiting. What are the duties of each party in marriage? How are assets divided upon death or after a divorce? What are the rights of children over their parents? All these questions are answered in various ways by the legal systems found in each country.
At the heart of marriage, however, is society. Before all the constructs written down through religion and the State, marriage was simply the natural arrangement that took place because men and women were attracted to each other and found themselves pair-bonding. When a man and a woman were seen together regularly it was assumed that they were a pair. In that sense, marriage simply meant that they were tied together. When society acknowledged their relationship, it attempted to hold them accountable for their behavior relative to their ‘marriage.’ It was assumed that any children that that woman gave birth to belonged to the man she was always with, and hence it connected the man to those children. There was no other way to establish paternity. In turn, because the children could be attributed to a father it meant that paternal investment could be reinforced by society. Society could shame a man who refused to acknowledge or look after his children. However, this mechanism could not work if the woman had several men that she was always seen with. No one witnessed people having sex. It was important to be able to hold men responsible and accountable otherwise children that were claimed by no one would become a burden on the tribe or the society, as it is fast becoming now in the Western world with single mothers and their reliance on tax money.
The initial system of accountability was twofold: men were to be held accountable for women they were presumed to have slept with, and women were held accountable for remaining loyal to the man they slept with. This helped make society functional because it connected men to their children and facilitated investment from men in women and children. In this way marriage wasn’t merely a romantic or emotional arrangement, it was a system of survival. Of course, this construct was the predominant one under patriarchy. Matriarchal societies had other arrangements that amounted to communal responsibility for children where it wasn’t that important to connect a particular father to a particular child. In matriarchy women could sleep with any man they wanted to, and the community as a whole would father all the children. However, such societies almost always failed in the long run and would eventually die out or be overrun by a neighboring patriarchy. Men who didn’t have parental investment
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and a sense of ownership over women and children tended to spend their lives in useless pursuits. They could sleep around with as many women as possible without ever having to claim ownership and hence didn’t need to be responsible for anyone. The bulk of the responsibility for the functioning of the society would naturally fall on women who often worked tirelessly to raise children, work, and fulfill the conjugal rights of their walk-in husbands. This isn’t very different from what feminism has basically tried to establish today.
In this book when I discuss marriage, I am referring to marriage under patriarchal norms. In other words, the type of marriage that requires chastity on the part of the woman and responsibility for women and children on the part of the man. It must be noted that the two systems cannot be mixed. One cannot expect patriarchal norms in marriage and also talk about polyamory or polyandry, and non-investment from men. Marriage, as it exists in surviving civilizations have formed the cornerstone of society because it reinforces the patriarchal structure that perpetuates the strength of a nation. When men are held to account by society for who they sleep with (which is essentially what marriage is) then they are required to compete, perform, improve, and race to the top of whatever competencies they might have. They cannot be weak, check out, and incapable because that would impede them from mating. In patriarchy the best men mate with the most women because the stronger the offspring the bigger the army, the more capable the nation to ward off attacks and conquer other weaker nations. Women in turn push the men to excel so that they have the necessary skills needed for their collective protection and survival.
The conundrum of modern Western governments is that they have weaken their own civilizations by pushing feminism and gender equality as a tool to control their own populations. On the one hand, when you keep men busy with having to engage in a fruitless power struggles in their homes with delusional empowered feminists you can successfully keep them out of politics and the fight for a better society. On the other hand, by feminizing men you weaken the internal structure of your society, and you won’t be able to produce a strong nation and a viable army. It’s not surprising that a lot of the best combat athletes and soldiers are not from Western countries because those men aren’t engaged in a battle for power in their homes with unruly women. They have peace in their homes so they can focus their attention on fixing society, earning money and being successful.
In a very real way, a powerful civilization is formed by women being under the authority of men because it is primarily men who are interested in order, power, and conquests. When a society has too much female representation the dominant narrative will be informed by emotion. Hence, you will have a society that is mainly concerned about making everyone feel welcomed and validated, and not on what works. One indication of a society being feminized is when people become hyper materialistic and hedonistic. A goal-less and soul-less society is part of the female imperative to smooth things over so the day can carry on. Whereas a directed society that is focused on the long-term is about fixing things, so they work. Both male realism and female fantasy is necessary for society to function. We need science and technology, but we also need stories and mystery. We need realism, war and conquests but we also need comfort and escapism- sometimes. Marriage is the building block of the patriarchal society where the balance between what is male and female is obtained between spouses by having the man provide the structure and the woman the trimmings. Yes, society can function with the basics. A man can successfully live his entire life without a woman simply by being obsessed with his science experiments or ambitions. However, his life would be so much better if he also fulfilled his function of being a husband and a father. How will he achieve that? What does he need?
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