Some thoughts on the traditional context of romance, marriage, and sexuality (Part Three)
By Mark Wegierski
web posted December 8, 2025
On the one hand, the 1960s seemed to offer the promise of sexual nirvana for virtually everyone, a climate of so-called "free love." It seemed to mean virtually unlimited sex.
In the 1970s, however, as radical feminism definitively emerged, it turned out that men, especially white men, were "the enemy."
The old "familialism" had been a multi-layered structure, developed over centuries, if not millennia, which required a certain degree of coordination of behavior on the part of the sexes, to properly function. It is ridiculous to think that it operated exclusively on behalf of the men. In fact, it imposed very powerful limitations on what had been seen in traditional understanding as the rapacity of the human male. In fact, Christianity had appeared as a system that tried, insofar as it could, to tame various male excesses. It is almost as easy to snidely argue that Christianity has been "a plot" against men – rather than against women.
The near-total wrecking of the old "familial" system has had a truly horrendous impact on society.
To take the most obvious example, any society, no matter how prosperous, and no matter how many rights or how many lifestyle and sexual freedoms it offers, has abjectly failed, if it fails to physically reproduce itself. And that manifestly appears to be the case today, in most Western and European countries, with birthrates far below replacement level. Perhaps a shrinking population would be less important, if Western and European countries could minimize non-European immigration, but that is manifestly not the situation today. The non-European immigration is happening – in greater numbers than it has ever happened – and, in many of the Western and European societies, assimilation of the immigrants to European cultural patterns is both difficult and virtually forbidden by the prevalent political dogma.
In sexual matters today, there appears to have arisen a bivalent situation. On the one hand, society – largely because of electronic media technology and its near-infinite reproducibility -- is suffused with sexual imagery to a virtually unbelievable extent. Among some categories of persons, there also arise almost unbelievable levels of promiscuity, as well as a coarsening of attitudes toward sexuality, which people living in earlier societies would have seen as a dehumanization of the erotic. There also exists the possibility for many persons, to practice the most heterogeneous forms of sexual exploration.
At the same time, radical feminists continue their rants against "patriarchy" and "white males," encouraging the most total politicization of sexual relations, as well as the detection of "male pathology" in virtually every societal and economic interaction. There are also many wide-ranging techniques throughout late modern society for rendering virtually all of white, Western, Christian civilization to appear as utterly hideous to decent human sensibilities. Among these techniques are such things as the endless repetition of the ridiculous factoid that "the rule of thumb" in English Common Law referred to the size of the stick permitted in wife-beating.
There indeed seems to be a profound disconnect among different wings of the sexual revolution. If one part of the sexual revolution creates vulgar male louts, radical feminists cannot expect them to behave like gentlemen. One of the radical feminist alternatives appears to be create "sensitive New Age guys" – little more than geldings -- who diaper the kids (if there are any kids), and exist at the beck and call of their domineering wives. It sometimes then happens that the wife runs off with a rugged ex-con and gets support payments from the abandoned husband. It is certainly no better than the older man who divorces his wife of many years to "trade her in for a younger model."
It is important to realize that there has actually been a decline in "friendly relations" between the sexes since the 1950s. There exists today a situation where it is difficult for many people (especially if they have some traditionalist aspects) to find a spouse. In a society suffused with media-images of wealthy, "beautiful people" both men and women often find it difficult to make compromises on the issues of looks and the money-earning potential of their spouse. For people who endeavor to follow Christian teaching, there is the added problem that the subtle rituals of courtship have been utterly undermined in today's society. A decent young man may be pursuing a woman who has had scores of lovers before him. A decent young woman may think that marriage is in the offing, and gets taken advantage of by an unscrupulous male. There is also the issue that a husband may sometimes make extreme sexual demands toward his wife based on the currently, highly pervasive, "porn" imagery. A wife may also have unrealistic expectations about the performance ability of her husband.
It is possible that some sadistic urges among comparatively decent white men (especially those living in major urban regions and from lower-middle-class and working-class backgrounds) toward women may simply arise out of the near-continual humiliation and degradation straight white males may be undergoing in the general culture, at the hands of women and minorities. The plight of the conservative male arts geek at a major urban university may be especially noted – their fellow-humanities students consider them as little better than "fascists" – whereas engineering, business, and other "right-wing" student-types see them as little better than useless "artsies." Masochistic urges may arise among some especially successful men – stereotypically limousine liberals and corporate CEOs -- who have essentially gotten everything they wanted and pushed people around all of their lives – and now crave a "role-reversal." This is much different from the masochism of the typical, "sensitive New Age guy" – who is simply a push-over for his shrewish wife. While not wanting to give credence to reductive Freudianism, there is something to the idea that even the happiest marriages sometimes have sado-masochistic undertones, certainly in terms of certain psychological interactions arising out of patterns of long-term habituation and the problems of living together for a long time.
The widespread recent prominence of the term "metrosexual" as well as such programs as "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" have tended to further depress straight white males. To think that good grooming and hygiene habits, an appreciation for art and serious culture, and a willingness to talk to women in a serious way, are considered by current-day society as quasi-gay traits, is troubling in its implications. The only other alternative prominently on offer appears to be that of general loutishness, such as that typified in the MTV show, Punk'd.
To be continued. 
Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher.
