Some thoughts on the traditional context of romance, marriage, and sexuality (Part Five)
By Mark Wegierski
web posted December 22, 2025
It could be argued that the embrace of monogamy is not necessarily conditioned by traditional Christianity, as some imagine it to be. There are women of Christian background who mostly loathe Catholicism or other forms of Christianity, yet who insist on strict monogamy within marriage. The possibility of civil marriage – which had been historically so ferociously opposed by the Catholic Church – allows men and women to embrace a married life without necessarily requiring them to be practicing Christians.
It could be argued that one of the main results of the victory of so-called sexual liberalism is the dissolution of the link between virtue and beauty in women. In the past, beautiful women were typically closely guarded by their family and by their own sense of propriety. Their gifts and charms were reserved, in theory at least, for one special man, the man who would promise to love, cherish, and protect her. Today, the most beautiful woman is often probably the most promiscuous woman. It was also once commonly considered that an "easy" woman would not be very good looking (as for example in the stag-movies of the Fifties). Women today (and especially good-looking women) have no built-in defenses against male sexual rapacity (although some grasp at some variant of feminist ideas for this protection), and at the same time lack any comprehension of what the truly worthwhile male should be like. An ideology has been created which often leads to the debasement of the most beautiful women.
Repudiating the supposed "oppression" and "slavery" of faithful marriage and family life, those women who are still interested in men have in many cases been thrust into something far worse, a "new slavery" of often-fleeting associations with venal "movers-and-shakers", or ravenous, hyper-sexual "studs".
In a climate marked by the elimination of traditional virtues, those women still thinking of marriage have often been deprived of the possibility of the true discernment of their "marriage prospects", and they all too frequently end up choosing "the wrong man".
On the other hand, some women (probably out of a certain type of desperation) have become overly-committed to their partners, whereas their partners, instead of respecting them, have become coarsened by prevailing mores into "violent monsters".
For all the conditioning by radical feminists, many women still like to look pretty, and to appear and act in ways attractive to men. (A humorless, prominent feminist theorist has complained that, even today, women have a tendency "to smile too much.") In fact, it might be argued that a modern dualistic opposition exists between what could be called "the radical feminist", and "the actress-model" type of woman. The "businesswoman" (especially as portrayed in film and television) -- who is both independent and attractive -- is the supposed reconciliation of the two images, and probably "the ultimate" women can aspire to today. There is also the phenomenon of so-called "lipstick lesbians", which is lesbian women who like to appear in highly feminine, "sexy" fashions. Indeed, it has been acerbically noted that many women in North America increasingly dress outwardly in superficially enticing and highly risqué ways, while internally maintaining the attitude of feminist harridans. Feminists themselves are divided on these issues: on the one hand, they valorize women "taking control of their sexuality" (i.e., what amounts to advocating that women simply jump into bed with anyone -- male or female -- they want to); while on the other hand, others see most (or all) heterosexual relations as invariably "tainted" -- arguing that nearly all male-female sexual relations are effectively "rape."
It may be observed that it is likely that the more the radical feminists deny femininity, the more certain women will probably gravitate to excesses of fashion, make-up, etc., to somehow re-assert their femininity. This will also possibly extend to promiscuity as a desperate attempt to recover some missing portion of their sexual identity.
Camille Paglia, the controversial "postfemininist" theorist, has argued that women -- who have, all-too-often, been traditionally considered as "the weaker sex" -- are, in fact, quite effective at obtaining the results they desire through playing upon a series of so-called feminine wiles, which defeat even the most formally rigorous patriarchal systems. The give-and-take of the sexes has been fundamental to earlier human societies, and they were generally a lot less nightmarish than current radical feminists portray them. What is even more troubling is that it is radical feminism itself that is now politicizing male-female sexual relations to the extent that it makes successful interaction between the sexes increasingly difficult. If extreme patriarchy (by which is meant something like the truly severe regimes of some earlier, premodern societies – or those of some Islamic societies today -- not 1950s America) is unnatural, so too are the excesses of the currently regnant feminist "political correctness", especially on such issues as "date-rape" and "sexual harassment", which are defined so broadly as to collapse into ridiculousness. Some might pointedly see radical feminism in general as a thoroughly disruptive and unnecessary revolt by some disgruntled women, who are fundamentally jealous of most women's comparative happiness and successful family life. So, they have tried to ruin it for as many other women as possible, and stirred them into hating men. Such matters as the fact that some rape-crisis hotlines and battered-women shelters have staffs with considerable numbers of radical feminists and lesbians, or that women whose marriages are in crisis are going to psychological counselors who are radical feminists or lesbians, are simply not permitted to ever become an issue.
It could be argued that there is a highly-conflicted discourse running through much of feminism. Do feminists really want to be in every way like men. There are enough examples of feminists arguing that there is no innate instinct of a mother protecting her child, that women can be just as good combat soldiers as men, that women should be introduced into the toughest, most brutal, physical labor jobs, or that women should approximate the voracious sexual habits of the stereotypical male.
Or do feminists now have some special project of constructing a distinctive, "more sharing, more nurturing" female identity – provided that it is done clearly outside of, and probably, against men.
The fact that radical feminists have essentially made a female serial killer (of men) (played, incidentally, by one of the most attractive actresses in Hollywood) into a virtual "culture hero" -- is enormously troubling. The whole message of the movie appears to be that she is not a monster.
The various conflicts over different definitions of feminism means that almost any public statement (especially by a white male politician) can be accusatorily construed as "sexist". The psychologist C.G. Jung used to be somewhat popular among some types of feminist thinkers – but now it is considered that any discussion of "the feminine" by a man is simply a horrific appropriation and a tool for the enslavement of women. Ironically, the radical feminist theorists, while ranting against something so apparently innocuous as the mathematical work of Isaac Newton (incoherently described as a "rape manual"), have little to say – as far as the author of the article is aware – about the lyrics of gangsta-rap.
Indeed, it is rather ironic that what is conventionally considered "the feminine" and "the feminist" are in virtual opposition to each other. Some feminists try to claim – to some extent at least -- to be voices of "the feminine" (though they may personally dislike the latter word). However, their attitudes could often be seen as contradictory. It would seem, for example, that a professedly "life-affirming" stance would also include some degree of concern for the unborn, as bearing a child is possibly, speaking from the standpoint of biology, virtually the definitional female act. Though one might not expect feminists to be hardcore anti-abortionists, one finds a positive zeal for abortion (the pro-choice position often being viewed as the ultimate touchstone and moral litmus-test – indeed, a virtual "sacrament") among some committed feminists that verges on the obsessive. Indeed, they seem to have taken onto themselves the imperative of waging a war against motherhood, against having children, against homemakers, and against the family in general.
Generally-speaking, one would wish to embrace some variant of the high Romantic spirit -- rather than excessively dogmatic fundamentalist neopuritanism -- in opposition to the various contemporary sexual correctitudes.
We exist in a society of comparative wealth, advanced levels of medicine and hygiene, the near absence of war (in any of its more usual senses), as well as the comparatively wide availability (thanks mainly to the Internet) of all sorts of information and viewpoints. Conceivably, we could achieve something approaching a neo-Romantic, "sexual paradise" of a deliciously different sort than that envisioned in the Sixties' revolutions.
Thoughtful, intelligent persons, do not necessarily have to be stupefied by the current-day climate of consumerism, idiotic pop-culture, and political correctness. The ideas expressed above, although they would have, to some extent, been traditionally associated with the Christian churches, do not require the buttress of any one religion or denomination – they can stand coherently on their own without the need for religious sanction. They simply represent what may be seen as the main tendencies of human nature, and the distillation of centuries, if not millennia, of the best available thinking on the subject, both Western and non-Western. 
Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher.
