Descent into Decadence

It doesn’t have four letters but heteronormativity has become a dirty word. Back in the day societies far and wide gave special preference to heteronormativity. Some even considered the act of sexual copulation to be quasi sacred, the consummation of wedding vows.

Societies were promoting themselves. That is, assuring their survival. They were affirming marriage and family as a good and righteous way to bring up children. 

But, marriage requires compromise. It requires one to compromise one’s precious individuality. Nowadays, we believe that we have outgrown it. We want to express and extol our individual selves, the better to find a level of self-contentment that we would necessarily sacrifice if we burdened ourselves with duties and responsibilities toward other people. 

For some strange reason, we have decided that extramarital sex is preferable to intramarital sex. Go figure.

The word that best describes a culture that has rejected marriage in favor of free and open sexual expression is-- decadent.

Back in the day, feminism mounted a full frontal assault on marriage. It has largely persuaded women that marriage is a bad deal for them, that it was invented by the patriarchy to oppress them, and that they do better to be independent and alone. Such thoughts date at least to Friedrich Engels.

But then, how can a society maintain the traditional division of sexual labor when women are often more educated than men. Liberated, accomplished women cannot find men who are worth marrying. Or who will marry them. Very few men want to marry a card-carrying feminist.

The result has been a demographic implosion. Fewer people are having fewer children. Does this threaten social survival?

Interestingly, Joel Kotkin points out that the phenomenon is not just limited to America. Admittedly, we are leading the world in unmarried adults and in broken homes, but many women around the world have given up on marriage.

Is it because they do not want homes and families? Is it because the world has become overpopulated? Is it because all of these cultures, far and wide, have separated sex from procreation, making the latter an undesirable side-effect. 

It is difficult to assume that the same cultural influences are at work around the world. Unless, of course, you assume that this represents the hegemony of Western and American values.

If such is the case, then you might understand why certain cultures reject our liberal democratic values. 

Besides, people used to care about the social fabric. They used to care about whether people got along with each other. They used to care about whether society was functional or dysfunctional. They understood that a discordant society, chock full of independent self-righteous individuals,  could not organize to fight wars or to produce wealth.

As long as America seems to function, many people will consider that the new decadence is the wave of the future. At the moment it ceases to function, or it starts losing out in competition, they might think otherwise.

How did it happen? How did America descend into what appears to be fatal decadence?

Surely, one part concerns the war against men, against male chauvinists and against toxic masculinity. One does not assume that this campaign of defamation has traveled around the globe, but one would not be surprised to discover that in an era of easy communication via the internet, women around the world are wary of alliances with men. 

Apparently 28% of American women now identify at LBGTQ. Have they been suitably groomed? Kotkin explains that our government has mobilized to fight the gender binary, or heterosexual normativity:

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken may fail to address Russia, Hamas or Iran, but has time to urge diplomats to eschew “sexist” words like father.

Not to be outdone, our president declared today, Easter Sunday, to be Transgender Day of Visibility. It feels like a gratuitous slur against an important Christian holy day.

But then, the advent of scientism has raised up the status of science, and dimwitted scientists have decided that sex is a social construction.

Alienation from heterosexuality has its cheering section in the scientific community, which increasingly denies even the existence of biological sex. The media is, unsurprisingly, on board: Andrea Chu’s New York Magazine’s cover The Freedom of Sex openly advocates letting children decide about their own gender while still young. Colleges do their part by allowing transgender women to compete against biological women, to the consternation of many female athletes. 

I will not comment on what is happening around the world, but surely we are leading the world in these problems. Until people see that they are paying a price for disparaging marriage, it will likely continue.

In the US, a quarter of all people have not married by age 40, a historic record. Much the same is occurring in the EU, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and now China. Last year, the UK’s birthrate hit a record low, with fertility rates for women under 30 at their lowest levels since records began in 1938. A fifth of all British women are childless by mid-life.   

At the same time, we are now told that people are depressed and suicidal in far greater numbers than they were before. And we know that in these areas America is leading the world.

Kotkin raises an issue that others have raised, and that needs to be emphasized. In today’s America men and women seem to be different species. Ideological commitment, a modern form of religious intolerance, has redefined these relationships. 

In such circumstances, it’s no surprise that relations between men and women increasingly resemble those of almost different species. Young men, for example, are generally heading to the political right while young women trend far more towards the left. Politically engaged women, notes the American Enterprise Institutes Sam Abrams, support cancel culture far more than their male counterparts. 

This suggests that women’s minds have been colonized by ideological zealots, to the point where they insist on having their way. On the one hand women do not tolerate men when they act like men and on the other fewer and fewer men are capable of supporting their families. 

Is there any way to reverse this trend? Certainly, it would be better if family studies were not shaped by hyper-progressive ideologues. This doesn’t require a return to a cultural norm of sexual puritanism. 

Hyper-progressive ideologues have certainly been stirring this pot. And yet, public displays of sexual matters make sex into something vulgar and debased. And this seems to encourage women to avoid it.

Scrutiny over the use of puberty blockers and demanding parents be informed of their children’s gender issues may represent a positive advance. But much more is needed, including measures to make ample space for families by reducing house prices and promoting higher-wage work so that one parent, male or female, can take primary responsibility for toddlers. 

Here Kotkin is being naive. The issue does not involve monitoring gender issues, but producing them. Bringing sexuality out of the darkness and into the light does not enhance sexual desire. As no less than Augustine suggested, sex is better in the dark.

Visibility is precisely the wrong approach. Thinking that fun is the meaning of life or even that it is better for your mental health is obviously not working. How long will it take until we see that we are paying a price for this.

I wish to offer my Christian readers my best wishes for a joyous Easter.