Food for thought..
For years, feminists have relied on the idea that a patriarchal conspiracy has been responsible for the nearly universal tendency to treat women as something in between an enfranchised individual and property. However, if one takes a closer look at the behavior and demands of women themselves, including and especially those who have been “liberated” since birth, the reality that presents itself is that this is exactly the role that they want.
From Liberation to Chattel
The radical reinterpretation of marriage that has been underway in the West for the past century or so, which began in earnest with universal suffrage, has put men in a tight spot. Comparisons to chattel slavery are entirely apt, given the legal regime surrounding marriage, which can put a man into lifelong indentured servitude, restrict his movement, and imprison him for failing to follow the state mandate to pay his ex-wife or children’s mother. At this point, men are on the ropes. Women control most of the wealth in the United States and probably a number of other Western countries, men’s traditional entitlements as fathers and husbands have been entirely stripped away and replaced with obligations (the opposite of entitlements), and politicians – conservative and liberal alike – are gunning for more of the same.
However, the ultimate consequences of radical policies are not always what folks intended them to be. It is common for people to become virtually enslaved by their entitlements, as men were in the 20th century, when the meaning of being “head of the family” switched from lord and master of the home to dutiful wage slave. As many men have remarked, having a man as “head of household” became a better deal for the wife than the husband following the Industrial Revolution. What benefit is it to be head of household when one spends little time at home, and is unconscious for the better part of that time anyway?
Now that the tables have turned, and men have incurred legal obligations to remunerate women for drawing breath, women’s role in society is undergoing a change that, although subtle, is readily evident from one decade to the next.
As an example, billionaire Donald Bren, a Los Angeles real-estate tycoon, has recently been in the news over a child support lawsuit pursued by his adult children at the behest of their mother, Jennifer McKay Gold. The appropriately named Ms. Gold had a 13-year “affair” with Mr. Bren and bore two illegitimate children by him, who are now 18 and 22 years old. Bren came to an agreement with Ms. Gold about child support, paying her some $3.5 million over 24 years and spending considerably more exclusively on the children. Toward the end of that period, Ms. Gold was receiving $216,000 per year of untaxed income — a tidy sum for taking her clothes off and providing entertainment from time to time. There’s no doubt that she was the envy of all her girlfriends, lived in a nice house, drove a nice car, and had a closet full of expensive clothes and shoes — all the trappings that fulfill life’s purpose for your typical California female.
But that wasn’t enough for her. No, she wanted to bequeath a fortune to her illegitimate children, doubtless purely out of altruism and motherly concern. So she urged them to sue their father for no less than $134 million (if there was ever any doubt that she was the driving force behind the lawsuit, Gold eliminates it by repeatedly speaking for her children and using the pronoun “we” when making statements to the press). Unfortunately for Ms. Gold and her children, they had to make the case to a jury that was likely comprised mainly of people who had never made as much on a monthly basis as she collected in child support. Her attorney, Hillel Chodos, unintentionally injected some humor into the pathetic situation by arguing as follows:
They are not here because they didn’t have enough to live on, they are here because they were deprived by Donald Bren of their birthright. They had the right to share in his standard of living.Now I don’t know Mr. Chodos personally, and he may have been having a bad day, but that line of argument – especially in front of a jury – makes him come off as a second-rate attorney at best.
What’s so ridiculous about the argument is that the children were the result of an “affair,” and therefore appeals to old-fashioned notions such as “birthright” are entirely out of place — opposing counsel might as well have countered with the legal rights of bastards, which in English law stipulated that there was no birthright (i.e. inheritance).
But if you really want to be technical about it, Ms. Gold was a de facto concubine, and that’s why the jury rejected Chodos’s argument.
Concubinage was common in many civilized societies throughout the world for thousands of years, but widespread legal reforms based on Westernization or Communism essentially eliminated the practice in all but a few places. In the West, concubinage (at least the legally recognized variety) was snuffed out by Christianity, which imposed harsh penalties to limit the practice, including stigmas against bastards, religious sanction against those who practiced some form of it (churchmen such as bishops were frequent offenders) and strong social pressure. Without an ideology or religion to counter concubinage, it appears to be something that occurs naturally in human society. It is a social contract whereby the big man who hoards more than his share of women is expected to maintain the females and their offspring at some minimum level of comfort, which usually turns out to be greater than that enjoyed by your typical peasant or tribesman.
In general, the biggest difference between wives and concubines was that wives were much more difficult to put away due to property arrangements (e.g. dowries, land consolidation), and wives’ children were considered legitimate heirs. Of course, there were exceptions, but as a rule the status of a wife was significantly higher than that of a concubine.
If one takes a close look at contemporary American society, it appears that concubinage is gradually reasserting itself in Western culture and law. This is an inevitable result of the idea that men have an obligation to financially support illegitimate children; an idea that was rejected by Christians because it fatally weakens the incentives for women without significant property to engage in monogamous marriage. In fact, Islam prohibits concubinage as well, and dictates that although a man may have up to four wives, each one will have the same status under the law. Abuses have always occurred, but the contrast between European and East Asian society (Chinese in particular) was stark up until modernization in Asia. Rich Chinese men often had a “first wife” and varying numbers of concubines, the Emperor would have hundreds of them, and lots of ordinary Chinese men had to make do sharing prostitutes or going entirely without a woman.
For young women, a life as a concubine is often preferable to being married to a poor man, and increasingly that option is open to them in the US. For the lucky few women – usually the exceptionally attractive and mercenary – a sexual relationship with a wealthy businessman, athlete or politician can guarantee decades of support if she manages to get pregnant. Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’ adulterous lover, is an example of a woman who pulled it off. Scores of women manage to hit the jackpot with young, unsophisticated athletes; thousands upon thousands of others we’ve never heard of take advantage of relatively wealthy men. In these cases, where child support will be enough to live on, the arrangement is concubinage in all but name. The only argument against equivalency is that sexual exclusivity is not guaranteed, as it usually was in ancient forms of concubinage, but given that sexual exclusivity is neither guaranteed nor enforced in marriage any longer and concubinage has always been held to be a lesser alternative to full marriage, it is fulfilling the exact same role the institution did in ancient times.
What is ironic about all this is that the endless demands women make for financial entitlements are slowly creating a legal basis for women’s status as chattel. Culturally, the effect will likely be similar, as it is difficult to counter the sense that what is paid for is owned. Despite the endless complaints from feminists about women being objectified and treated as chattel, now that women have secured the right to do as they please they are busy lobbying themselves into a position where it would be difficult to treat them in any other manner.
For years, feminists have relied on the idea that a patriarchal conspiracy has been responsible for the nearly universal tendency to treat women as something in between an enfranchised individual and property. However, if one takes a closer look at the behavior and demands of women themselves, including and especially those who have been “liberated” since birth, the reality that presents itself is that this is exactly the role that they want.
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