I have long considered
Rollo Tomassi one of the most erudite thinkers of the manosphere. Taking the hard-won data about women that came out of PUA field research, Rollo created useful information with insight that men can use. I really don’t have a problem at all with the data, the problem is the paradigm through which it came and was then analyzed- evolution. The issue here isn’t an argument about evolution, it’s about the impact evolution has on his analysis and conclusions. While Darwin’s theory (adaptation of species) is both observable and provable, the general theory of evolution is far more theology than science and requires far more faith than Christianity. The point is the Bible has a much different paradigm (frame, if you will) within which to place this data.
What I’m trying to illustrate with this essay is the difference in paradigm and the resulting difference in answers the different paradigms yield when comparing the same data. In his post
“The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies” Rollo made a number of points from his paradigm of evolutionary psychology that I’ll respond to from the paradigm of creationism using the standard of what the Bible actually teaches- which is the opposite of what the churches teach.
“The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies:
For one gender’s sexual strategy to succeed the other gender must compromise or abandon their own.”
The “standard” that frames this rule is monogamy and ironically, monogamy is the arbitrary church-created standard that hands women a monopoly within marriage. Which means no competition and thus no accountability for the women. Even more ironically, we have the evo-psych based position holding monogamy as the correct standard versus the Bible-based position holding that the standard is non-exclusivity for the man. And we know that monogamy is an artificial and arbitrary standard.
“It’s interesting to note that the popular theory amongst evolutionary anthropologists is that modern monogamous culture has only been around for just 1,000 years. Needless to say, it’s a very unpopular opinion that human beings are in fact predisposed to polyamory / polygyny and monogamy is a social adaptation (a necessary one) with the purpose of curbing the worst consequences of that nature. We want to believe that monogamy is our nature and our more feral impulses are spandrels and inconveniences to that nature. We like the sound of humans having evolved past our innate proclivities to the point that they are secondary rather than accepting them as fundamental parts of who we really are.” [Emphasis added]
So, where did this artificial standard that surrenders the male sexual strategy come from? Underlying all of this is the idea that men and women are equal and are to be held to the same sexual standards, anything less is feral worst consequences and monogamy is the agreed upon solution. There can be no better illustration of Rollo’s “Cardinal Rule” than socially imposed monogamy as a moral obligation, which was created by the church for political reasons. When it comes to marriage:
Monogamy Is The Ultimate Surrender To Women
Modern monogamous culture has only been around for about 1200 years and honest historians provide the answer why: The ancient (Catholic) church. The exquisite irony of this is in creating socially imposed monogamy, the church threw out the Biblical standards of sex and marriage, replacing all of it with a mixture of pagan belief, Stoic philosophy and Roman law. They did this so long ago and preached it so hard that people actually think this is the way God designed it. As Rollo put it:
“The old social contracts that constituted what I call the Old Set of Books meant a lot in respect to how the social orders prior to the sexual revolution were maintained. That structuring required an upbringing that taught men and women what their respective roles were, and those roles primarily centered on a lifetime arrangement of pair bonding.”
“Pair bonding.” Now claimed to be some sort of evolutionary development, this is nothing more than the concept of monogamy the church imposed because their thought leaders hated sex. How about that. Pair bonding is actually real and the Bible describes it as becoming one flesh. The thing is, while we don’t know how it works because the Bible clearly states it’s spiritual in nature, we do know when it happens- which is when the woman gives her virginity to a man.
The church was so effective in replacing the Biblical standard with garbage that today, as Rollo demonstrates, everyone is convinced that what the early church put in place 1500 years ago is actually the “old” way of doing things. In other words, the “right” or “correct” way of doing things. What Rollo refers to as the “old set of books” isn’t because it’s actually the second set of books. What we have today is simply a continuation of the second set of books unbound by any societal restraint. From a Biblical standpoint monogamy was a radical change from the old, which actually laid the moral foundation for feminism and was the cause of the sexual revolution.
There are 4 specific points that must be understood in order to grasp the magnitude of what happened, because the standard that God put in place originally is one that solves all the problems.
1.) “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” That was the original command to mankind. The
law of marriage was given in Genesis 2:24 to implement that command. According to what the law says,
marriage is initiated with the act of sex and with that act God joins the two as “one flesh” (pair bonding). Further, while there is no restriction on a man taking more than one wife, there is likewise no authority to terminate a marriage once it is begun and the virgin’s commitment is not required. From this we can see the God-given standard of marriage:
With the act of penetration of the virgin, with or without her consent, the man makes a permanent but non-exclusive commitment of marriage to her, binding her to a permanent and exclusive commitment to him until the day he dies. With that act, God joins the two as “one flesh” (pair bonding) in ways we do not understand and as Christ said “what therefore God has joined together let no man separate.”
The purpose of marriage is to create a permanent, durable and stable “container” called family which has as it’s purpose the production of children. The emphasis on permanence cannot be overstated, as we can readily observe the social pathologies inherent with broken families. The purpose of marriage is not romance, nor love nor even sexual gratification and fulfillment, but children. That is not to say a marriage cannot provide all these things, but the purpose of marriage is to produce children who will be legitimate heirs and raise them to adulthood under the best conditions possible.
2.) God’s first judgment on mankind stated (among other things) that the desire of the woman would be for her husband and
“he shall rule over you.” The context of that passage is the events of the fall in the Garden and the woman was literally
declared incompetent and her husband appointed her guardian. The evidence for this is the requirements of Numbers 30, which states every vow, every agreement with binding consequences and even the rash words of her lips which create obligations is subject to the review and either approval or annulment by her father or husband.
Rather than being an evolutionary development, we can point to Genesis 3:16 as the origin of female hypergamy, for the woman was given a desire for the man who is fit to rule her. The meaning of the word “desire” is dualistic, meaning both the desire to conquer and overcome as well as a sexual desire. We see this in the form of fitness tests in which the woman tests the man with a desire to overcome him. If he is fit to rule her and passes those tests her desire becomes a sexual desire. This is Game 101: Shit Tests.
3.) The consent of the virgin is not required for her to be married and her father has the authority to not only select her husband for her and turn her over to him to be married, but if she decides to marry without his permission he has the authority to annul that marriage in the day he hears of it. In other words, the virgin has no agency because her father has the authority to give her in marriage whether she likes it or not.
4.) Men and women are absolutely not equal in any meaningful way except in value. Women were
declared incompetent and it was God’s desire that they be married and under the authority of a man who will rule them and hold them accountable. The only change from the Genesis 3:16 standard in the New Testament is men were commanded to love their wives as Christ loves His church. Effectively, Christian men are to treat their wives as loving guardians who act out of love rather than despotic rulers. To treat them
“in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman” while keeping in mind that the standard for accountability has not changed. For, as Christ said,
“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” All of which sends feminists into screaming fits of hysterical rage.
All four of the previous points are Biblically irrefutable, but the most influential people in the church back in the 4th and 5th Centuries were men who hated sex. They hated the idea of sexual pleasure and they laid the foundational doctrine that sexual standards applied equally to men and women: marriage is by consent rather than sex and since the only reason a man would have more than one wife was sexual variety and pleasure that must now be forbidden. In doing so they threw out the Biblical standard of marriage in favor of their own opinions. One of the principle architects of this was Jerome. He was also the guy who translated
the Vulgate. Just saying…
The doctrine that men and women are equal and are to be held to the same standards of sexual morality is the moral foundation of feminism. Out of this came the imposed standard of monogamy.
As
Kevin MacDonald explained, this doctrine was used to good effect in the church’s war against the nobility after the fall of Rome and throughout the middle ages. By requiring the consent of the woman and a church ceremony they completely usurped the authority of the father to determine who his daughter married. By upholding the prohibition on divorce for Christians
and forbidding the taking of another wife, the church created a condition in which it held the keys to the annulment of a marriage, which is the authority of the father. And, of course, when the man died without legitimate heirs there was really no other option but to leave the property to the church.
Women and Competition
Unknowingly, the church laid down the moral foundation of feminism by declaring men and women equal and giving women a monopoly condition within marriage. While the Bible says the husband has authority over his wife and she is required to be in submission to him, submission does not mean obedience, it means accepting his accountability. In order for a woman to submit to a man long-term, the woman must desire to submit to him. In large part this is just as much a function of attraction as her desire to have sex with him. A woman can be 95% in obedience to her husband but if she refuses to accept his accountability for that 5% of the time when she refuses to be in obedience, she is 100% in rebellion against him.
Read the last paragraph again. Keep reading it until you understand it.
Pronouncing monogamy as the only marital standard of sexual morality was the first and most critical step in removing accountability for women because it re-enforced the church’s false moral doctrine of equality and gave the wife a monopoly condition within the marriage. It should come as no surprise that “dread game” is acknowledged as the only tool available in a long-term relationship or marriage that really has any effect once one gets past the basics. The reason is what we know as dread game is supposed to be part of marriage because the husband has every right to add another wife if he wants to. What he doesn’t have the right to do is kick her out.
Women respond to competition from other women and the Biblical non-exclusive commitment on the man’s part kept her in competition with other women even in marriage because even the remote possibility of adding another wife was enough to change the entire dynamic. The ultimate act of accountability was for a husband to uphold his permanent commitment to her and add another wife. This was a very public display of the fact she didn’t do her job. The threat of competition, however small, provided accountability to wives.
As Rollo has pointed out time after time, the best sex a man is likely to get is before and at the very beginning of a relationship. Competition is part of the reason why, because the only way a woman can compete with other women is to give the man what he wants. And what does he want? A sweet, feminine, attractive, submissive and sexually available woman. Why isn’t the sex as good later? Because she no longer has competition. But look what that competition does…
“The indignation that comes from even the suspicions of a man’s “straying”, a wandering eye, or preplanned infidelity is one of the most delicious sensations a woman can feel.”
This is the modern view as seen from the woman’s perception that she has competition, but under the Biblical standard of marriage it represents accountability. It puts her on her A-game because if he’s straying it’s her problem and anything that results won’t be infidelity unless it happens with another man’s wife. And the result could be a new wife in the house. Call it Biblical dread game. One of the major arguments against this sort of standard is the perceived interference with “pair bonding” that would result, but the truth is that a man creating those conditions of competition is viewed as being immoral. Better stated, anything that forces the woman to compete is viewed as being immoral.
Which brings us back to the church-imposed monogamy based on the idea of equality issue, which is NOT what the Bible says. According to the Bible, a woman can only be the wife of one man at a time while a man can be the husband of many women at the same time. Because they are not equal. Yet, everyone buys into the idea of monogamy and “pair bonding” on an equal basis as if it’s some sort of holy writ. When it isn’t.
“Arguably, pair bonding has been a primary adaptation for us that has been species-beneficial.”
This is complete and utter bullshit. In this case, “pair bonding” is a magic code word for monogamy and a rhetorical argument for hard monogamy. The evo-psych idea of pair bonding is similar to what Vox Day describes as the theory of “magic dirt” when it comes to immigration. The idea that a commitment by both parties will cause a change that bonds them to one another. Pair bonding is the result of God making the two one flesh and I point to the fact that the
real rate of divorce is somewhere around 5% in support of that. Which, to most, is a preposterous statement. The problem, as explained in that post, is one of definitions.
The church says the woman’s commitment in a ceremony is required for marriage and any sex prior to that time is just “premarital sex.” In order to do so, the church had to interpret Genesis 2:24 in such a way that becoming “one flesh” meant the act of sex rather than the spiritual joining together that Christ described in Matthew 19 as “what God has joined together” and the Apostle Paul described as spiritual joining that was on par with becoming a member of the body of Christ- a “great mystery.”
In denying that sex with an eligible virgin is to marry her, we deny that God made the two one flesh with that act. In doing so the culture rips them apart and permanently damages them.
By society refusing to recognize the marriage the two are joined together only to be ripped apart, leaving a mass of broken women who cannot ever have that pair-bonding experience again. Because while all women save themselves for marriage, the vast majority don’t know that they’re getting married when they actually do so. For those virgins who know full well they are marrying the man who gets their virginity,
the divorce rate for those marriages is around 5%.
The Church Lied and Claimed Only A Ceremony Created Marriage
The Church Created The Doctrines of Equality and Monogamy
The Doctrines of Equality and Monogamy Created Feminism
Feminism Is Destroying Marriage
The Epidemic Of Adultery and Divorce Is Destroying the Church
The Church Leadership (not the Bible) Is Responsible For This
With marriage essentially destroyed and unbridled hypergamy being the order of the day we are now seeing other patterns emerge. Because women compete.
“It might be that women would rather share a confirmed Alpha with other women than be saddled with a faithful Beta, but that’s not to say that necessity doesn’t eventually compel women to settle for monogamy with a dutiful Beta.”
Here we get to the heart of the difference. Women would rather share the confirmed Alpha if they have the chance; that is, if it was socially acceptable. In other words, the absence of shaming. However, sharing something less than alpha runs contrary to their desire for monopoly power. It isn’t that she is compelled to settle for monogamy with the dutiful Beta, it’s that she demands monogamy as the price for settling for the Beta. In theory, nobody walks into a competitive market unless they can put something on the table, but a monopoly situation in return for “settling” for the beta is a rather unequal trade.
What does the woman bring to the table in order to get this monogamous monopoly? A vagina? Really? There is no equality because this dynamic assumes the woman is superior to the man. What the reader must keep in mind is this system was set up by men of the church who hated sex and sexual pleasure, i t was NOT women who did this. Jerome’s view of women was much worse than the modern MGTOW’s and the idea behind monogamy was sex was ONLY to have babies and after that be celibate. Sex, at best, was a necessary evil. It didn’t matter if the woman refused to have sex because sexual pleasure was wicked and evil. Their idea of equality in sexual morality was that neither women or women should be having sex.
I should also mention that the church was the largest brothel owner in the world at one point… and while they were forbidding the married couples to have sex in anything other than the missionary position in darkness with the minimum amount of clothing removed and get it over with as fast as possible…. the women of the brothels were not required to follow the same rules.
In my mouth? Of course, sir, and I swallow too, but there is an added charge for doing that. Yes sir, anything you desire. The women of our order have received a special dispensation from the Bishop and nothing we do is a sin because we serve the church. If you have enough money I can get one of the other girls to help me give you an experience you’ll never forget!
Monogamy vs Polygyny: The False Dichotomy
The idea we have
either Polygyny or Monogamy is preposterous because what we see from history is that in cultures in which polygyny is accepted,
very few men have more than one wife. Because there are very few alphas. It follows that the vast majority of the men are monogamous. Now we run into the definition of monogamy and the problem of keeping a marriage monogamous, which the church solved with the “forsaking all others” clause in the marital vows. Why, exactly, do the marriages require such a vow to remain monogamous? The only reason is to
voluntarily make a vow that prevents polygyny and reinforces the wife’s monopoly.
Fortunately, because the vast majority of marriages are fraudulent (the woman was already married), such vows are null and void.
History tells us the church was in conflict with the Nobility in the Middle Ages and the Nobility were the only ones realistically able to have more than one wife. Interestingly all of the church’s policies with respect to marriage were designed to constrain the Nobility and had little or no impact on the peasants. These policies (doctrines) were designed to usurp the authority of the fathers (requiring the consent of the woman and a marriage within the church- the father can no longer arrange a wedding) and husbands (requiring monogamy, invading the family and regulating the marital bed) for the benefit of the church.
Commitment vs Biological Attraction: A Logical Fallacy
The idea that biological attraction is meaningless once a commitment has been made is a historical legacy of the period when the church claimed commitment was the end-all and be-all of a marriage because sexual attraction was evil and a sin. Yet, it is the woman’s attraction to the man that best indicates whether she will make and then keep a commitment to him. A woman’s attraction to a man can be plotted in three ways depending on his masculine dominance, personal attractiveness and her personal proclivities:
- Will she give him Sex (how willingly, in what ways, how often)
- Will she Submit to him (level of obedience, up to D/s relationship, spanking)
- Will she Share him with other women (privately, publicly, shared bed)
While it would be nice to think that a woman’s commitment to a marriage is something she values in and of itself, history tells us that the best way to keep a woman committed is to keep her attracted. Interestingly, polygyny is a structure that re-enforces the attractiveness of the husband. However, most people do not understand the interaction between polygyny and monogamy.
- Very few men have the capacity to have a relationship, much less marriage, to multiple women. His ability to get a threesome is a good litmus test. No matter what the man wants, in the absence of slavery if he isn’t attractive enough it probably won’t happen. The majority of men do not have the capacity for a polygynous relationship, but that does not mean they cannot change.
- Removing the male exclusivity requirement for monogamy as an agreed upon standard removes the monopoly situation and keeps the accountability of competition in the relationship dynamic, even though there is only one wife. It is this point that drives the fact that polygyny accepted for some is very beneficial to strong monogamy for many. Because just because it *could* happen is enough to keep the women in a competitive mode.
- Accepting polygyny means the woman’s SMV is no longer the end-all and be-all of her MMV (within reason) and an older, skilled and experienced woman could be a beneficial addition to the household.
Consider: The assumption the second wife will be younger and better looking is just that: an assumption rooted in the paradigm of monogamy. In fact, as soon as monogamy as a hard standard is taken off the table, a womans’ SMV is not nearly as relevant to her MMV as it once was.
Once we get away from the assumption that the only standard of marriage is hard monogamy, everything changes.
