Opinion: Traditional Values Provide Nothing to Women

Photo byWalter Rhein

I run into a lot of single guys who lament the fact that they can’t get a date. So, I sit these guys down for a heart-to-heart conversation.

“I’m a hardworking man with deeply held traditional values. There are a lot of women out there who don’t have their lives together. They could use a strong and reliable man like me.”

“Okay,” I ask. “What’s in it for them?”

“Well, I’d be the one with a job naturally. That means I’d be in control of the important decisions. Also, I’d be the one who handled all the money.”

“So, you’d be the one who does the grocery shopping?”

“Of course not, preparing food and keeping the house clean would be her job. Didn’t you hear me when I said I’d be out working?”

“Okay,” I reply. “But if she’s not allowed to handle the money, how is she supposed to pay for the groceries?”

“Well, obviously, I’d give her an allowance. She better keep the receipts after getting groceries too if you know what I mean.”

“What else would you do?”

“We’d attend church regularly. I’m lucky that I belong to a church with a group of strong, male leaders who know exactly how to show a woman her place in the world.”

“So, basically what you’re proposing is an unpaid servant without any rights?”

“What? No! She’d be my queen. I’d take care of her.”

“How?”

“What do you mean.”

“How do you take care of her?” I ask.

“Well, I put a roof over her head. I give her children. I provide the money. All she has to do is sit around all day and think of new ways to please me while she practices her obedience. I’d give her everything she could ever ask for.”

“Okay,” I reply. “Then why don’t you be the perfect ‘traditional’ husband to a working woman?”

“Absolutely not!”

“There’s your answer. That’s why you can’t get a date, it’s because deep down you know this is a terrible arrangement.”

These conversations always end up in the same place. Our modern social dialogue always involves a bunch of ambiguous words that people don’t understand. In some cases, these words are deliberately misused. Examples include woke, CRT, and socialism.

Dishonest and manipulative people always try to hide their message of oppression in an argument that sounds reasonable.

You hear people talk about how they want to find a woman who is like “an American woman from the 1950s.” The problem is many people in this country watch Happy Days and think it’s a documentary.

The truth is that women in the 1950s were miserable. The system of a single authoritarian patriarch who wields rigid control doesn’t work.

Essentially, the model of the traditional family is just human trafficking in a domestic setting. What else can you call it when people aren’t allowed autonomy and are forced to perform unpaid labor? The whole religious model fits into this system. This is probably why the majority of abusers are members of the religious community.

The only way that you can stop abuse is by empowering vulnerable populations. Women in the United States didn’t get legal protections to have credit cards until 1974. If you control a person’s finances, you can control that person.

The simple reason you’re seeing women reject the role that’s been determined for them in the “traditional family model” is because submitting to that would be submitting to abuse. If men think it’s so great to be servants who aren’t allowed to handle money, then they can fill that role.

If you blame “feminism” for the fact that you can’t get a date, it’s because you’re not looking for a partner, you’re looking for somebody to exploit.

Our society often romanticizes the past. However, individuals who do this romanticize an incomplete version of the past. It's similar to how you might be tempted to return to a relationship after a breakup. In the fullness of time, you forget the reasons the relationship didn't work and you focus only on the good times.

This leads to people returning to failed relationships only to be quickly reminded why those relationships didn't work. A more mature response is to keep moving forward into the future. The more we empower people at every level of society, the more we ensure they have a chance at happiness.