Feminism and the Fall of Cultures

It's a symptom of weak men

What did many famous feminist leaders have in common? Weak fathers who failed as protectors and providers. Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan: all watched their mothers suffer and resented their fathers. Don’t mistake feminism for the cause of cultural decline: it’s a symptom of it. Feminism comes from weak men.

Looking at the fall of the Roman Empire can help us understand what’s happening today. Regulus, the enemy and rival of Pliny the Younger, spoiled his son - giving him birds, dogs, ponies, everything he wanted. When his mother (whose fortune had paid for these expensive gifts) died, the father emancipated his son, allowing him to get his full maternal inheritance. The boy then lived so luxuriously that he died early, leaving the remainder of his fortune to his father.

This would have been impossible at one point in Roman society. But in the second century, relationship through the male line and the unlimited power of the paterfamilias weakened. The female line was recognised and extended beyond legitimate marriage. This undermined the ancient system of civil inheritance, wrecking the fundamental conception of the Roman family.

And by the end of the second century, the father’s absolute authority over his children and the husband’s absolute authority over his wife disappeared completely with dire consequences. Adapting themselves to public feeling, the laws demanded only natural affection from fathers. Where Cato the Elder had maintained rigorous discipline in his family, all was now tenderness. Failing to govern their children, fathers let their children govern them, producing a generation of idlers.

And they also failed in their duty to govern their wives. Before, women had passed from the guardianship of their fathers to that of their husbands; in Hadrian’s day, they didn’t even need a guardian to draft their wills. ‘Emancipated’ from the family solidarity imposed by the old patriarchs, the morality of children and wives perished together. Women increasingly avoided the duties of maternity altogether. They didn’t want to lose their looks. By the beginning of the second century, many Roman marriages were childless. And the example began at the top: Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, who had no legitimate issue between them.

Shunning motherhood, Roman women competed with men in pursuits that, in the days of the republic, men had reserved for themselves. As the satirist Juvenal remarked, ‘What modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures her own sex, and delights in feats of strength?’ But the deeper question is what honour can you expect in a man willing to compete with her?

The individualistic emphasis on ‘living your own life’ lead to a loosening of morals that dissolve family ties. As Juvenal noted, the new woman lives with her husband ‘as if she were only a Neighbour,’ friends with benefits. Adultery was so common that it required its own special court, and when it finally declined it was only because facilities for divorce had legitimised adultery by anticipation.

As the historian Jerome Carpocino observed, ‘by copying men too closely the Roman woman succeeded more rapidly in emulating man’s vices than in acquiring his strength.’¹ And man’s vices meant he was ready to prey on this new female behaviour. Then as now, women’s greatest predator was the male feminist.

1. Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1943), p.124