Seeking an answer to the Manosphere’s old question.
Targeted Readership: Men
Theme: Female Agency and Accountability
Reader’s Note: Prepare yourselves to swallow another intensely deep Red Pill this month, maybe the ‘Reddest’ topic to date.
Length: 700 words
Reading Time: 4 minutes
The Question of Women’s Agency
Readers have probably noticed that whenever Satan tries to push women into sin, women have a propensity to go along with it, and to do so wholeheartedly! They don’t want to resist evil influences. They don’t even try. Instead, they attempt to maintain ego primacy, and when that is in doubt, they resort to a long list of Female Evasion and Control Tactics. This is what the Manosphere calls a lack of moral agency.
The long standing question in the Manosphere is, Do women possess moral agency? – The ability to resist sin and temptation, and to be obedient to God’s created order?
Why are we even asking this question? Isn’t it because it isn’t very clear whether female agency exists? Whenever we see a particular woman exerting agency (which is not based on a self-absorbed interest), isn’t that a strange and remarkable wonder?
Cultural Considerations
The topic of moral agency is usually discussed with an assumed reference to the assignation of responsibility, innocence, and/or guilt. Here, I want to point out that this is a uniquely westernized reference point.
Western cultures have an Innocence vs. Guilt ethical structure. Therefore, the question of whether Agency exists within a certain context is central to the assignation of responsibility, innocence, and guilt. In cultures having other ethical structures, the question of Agency is merely a point of interest that is somewhat irrelevant.
In addition, the question of FEMALE Agency becomes paramount in Western cultures because the gynocentric nature of these cultures assumes that women are free moral agents.
But are they?
Overview of this Month’s Theme
The theme for this month will be Female Agency and Accountability. I’ve made passing reference to these topics many times before, but this will be the first time I have addressed this topic head on. My past writings here at Σ Frame have taken the stance that women SHOULD have agency, but in reality, they do NOT, or at least do not show much of any evidence of it.
This will not be the first time this topic has been addressed in the sphere. Donal Graeme and Rollo Tomassi (at The Rational Male) have done quite a bit of work on developing some basic theories surrounding the moral agency of females. I’ll summarize the major insights they produced. I’ll also review Dalrock and Deep Strength’s positions, connect some dots, and bring the conclusions all into a concise frame to serve as the foundation for this month’s discussion on Female Agency and Accountability.
The essays in this month’s series will…
- Review some writings about Agency that came out of the Manosphere in the past.
- Offer some examples offering support for and against Female Agency.
- Outline arguments in favor of and against either position.
Independent and opposing viewpoints are welcomed.
In writing these essays, I hope to address the issue of Women’s Agency from both aspects, and offer a comprehensive assessment of the matter. I’ll also look at Women’s Agency through the frame of what we’ve learned from the Cascade Model, namely that women’s motivation is not purpose driven, like a man’s would be, but instead seeks to establish a cascading chain of increasing ego relevancy.
Feedback –> Trust –> Relevancy –> Humility –> Comfort –> Security
In this series, the term ‘Agency’ is intended to mean a person’s decision to proactively, and objectively, exercise their free will to do what is perceived to be ‘good’ or ‘right’. Whereas, the word ‘Imperative’ follows after Rollo’s usage of the term, to describe the subjective, reactive, ‘instinctual’ response of human nature.
I hope to avoid a purely doctrinal argument of ‘Free Will’, however, comments relevant to faith will be appreciated. Psychological or behavioral arguments for agency and/or free will are also encouraged.
Related
- Reading in between the Life: The Selfishness of Others (2018/1/10)
- Dalrock: God Spoke To Him About The Holy Threatpoint (2018/2/9)
- The New Modern Man: Are Virtually All Women Sociopaths? [Archive] (2018/2/9)
- Catacomb Resident: Moral Agency (2022/11/3)
ArchAngel
caterpillar345
Soup Sandwich
Lexet Blog
Novaseeker
Oscar
Red Pill Apostle
Jack
thedeti
Σ Frame 
I know. I added a link to the archive.
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Women do have agency in the natural. It’s just that those “muscles” aren’t exercised anywhere close to as frequently as they should be. Society has been completely re-engineered to permit women to avoid agency as much as humanly possible.
We know women have moral agency. Otherwise God would not have held Eve personally responsible for her sin at the Fall. Eve was responsible directly to God for obedience to His one directive: Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God held Eve directly responsible, without reference to Adam or anything he did or did not do. God did not say to Adam “you were supposed to keep her from eating from that tree. She ate, and that’s your fault.” No. What He did say was that because she ate from the tree and disobeyed God, she would have pain in childbirth and she would have to submit to Adam. “I told you not to. You did it anyway. Here are your consequences.” That’s the very definition of moral agency.
Female evasion and control tactics are not so much evidence of complete lack of moral agency. They are evidence of avoidance of consequences for moral failures. It’s not that women don’t have moral agency. It’s that women feel free, and in fact are free, to act in ways contrary to that agency because there are no negative consequences for those acts. Society and government have done this. Women’s freedom from consequences for moral failures are a matter of social, governmental, and public policy. Women demanded, and got, the right to be free from legal, moral, economic, and professional consequences for their moral failures. And, they got society to force men to pay for their moral failures too.
Women have moral agency, because they are able to conform their conduct to the dictates and requirements of their situations, including dealing with consequences or the lack thereof. When you impose hard consequences, they conform. When someone in power or authority over a woman imposes hard consequences, she conforms. (I mean REAL, hard, social/economic power, not just moral power, though moral power will work too.)
The only reason moral agency works to mold and shape female conduct is because of consequences. Remove consequences, a woman will act contrary to that agency. “Yeah, sure, I know what I’m doing is wrong, or it kinda feels wrong. But it kinda feels OK, and there’s no reason not to, so I am going to do it.”
Women have innate moral agency. It’s just that they don’t suffer negative consequences for acting contrary to that agency or for failing to exercise it.
The only alternative is as Bardelys told us: If women do not have moral agency, then they are little better than children. They cannot be trusted to make any decisions on their own and must always live under the authority of a man: First her father, then her husband, then her son(s). They must never be allowed to handle money, own any property of any consequence, operate any machinery, vote, or have any voice in public affairs. They most certainly must not be allowed even to speak in church, much less have “ministries.” They can work to earn money, but only at menial tasks and only if her father or husband allow it.
All of her earnings are the property of the male authority in her life, whether that be her father, her husband, or her son(s).
Women must always be chaperoned in public. All of her interactions with nonrelatives must be under her father’s watchful eye. Women must never be allowed in the company of men unchaperoned until they are married. Women cannot be trusted to select their husbands – the men of her family must pick her husband or at least approve of her choice; and her husband will have absolute authority over all aspects of her life. She may not divorce him, but he can divorce her (“put her away”). College? No way. Live on her own or with other women? No. She will live at home with her parents until she is married. She does not need any education at all beyond high school and her mother’s training to be a wife.
In this scenario, women still have agency, but they’re insulated from any consequences for breach of that agency because they never get an opportunity to breach it. Again, they aren’t permitted to exercise those moral “muscles”.
Women have moral agency. It’s just that they don’t exercise it, either because (1) there are no negative consequences; or (2) they never get to exercise in the first place.
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Should’ve made this into a post!
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Probably should be that women don’t suffer immediate consequences in the short term. Most of the time a consequence is most effective when imposed swiftly and without delay. Women often suffer delayed consequences or only long term consequences which aren’t immediately apparent.
It’s also the case that women don’t suffer consequences all the time. Consequences are most effective when you suffer them every time a moral lapse occurs. That’s just not the case for women.
It’s also the case that women don’t always suffer temporal consequences; but only eternal consequences.
Women are really, really good at consequence avoidance – our entire society is constructed specifically for women to avoid or least greatly alleviate negative consequences for moral failure.
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So Sarah was told to lie by Abraham and she does it and what we learn from Peter is that her obedience was counted to her as righteousness.
Numbers 30 gives us regulations on headship’s ability to nullify women’s pledges, whether it is her father or husband that does the nullifying God does not hold the broken promise against her morally.
Does the fact she has a potential out if her father or husband is alive change female agency at all? Or is it that headship is so important to Go that he gives those acting as heads the power to revoke the weaker vessel’s poor decisions?
If a husband can morally untangle at least some of mistakes his wife or daughter make, is that agency the way men experience it or is that something different?
I’ll have to ponder this more, but I have a feeling that the law was designed to point us to Christ as our head untangling us from the eternal moral consequences of our sin. It is another point where the Christ/church and husband/wife example would seem to line up well.
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If women have no agency, then they shouldn’t be allowed to raise children.
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If you believe 1 Peter 3 that “all things” means all things, then they should be raising children how the husband wants them raised.
Also, your statement about women raising children does not get anywhere near the heart of my question. If headship provides the authority to remove moral obligations on women in certain circumstances, does female agency differ from male agency and if so how does that play out? Because biblically it sure looks like it does.
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If women have no agency, then the husband has no right to hold his wife accountable for how she raises his children. A senile old lady no longer has agency, and that’s why you wouldn’t let her watch your toddler.
That’s because I wasn’t responding to your question.
Being under authority does not equal having no agency. Authority also removes some culpability from men. War is an example.
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Yes. It’s a stupid question.
Good question. Insanity? Being out-of-touch with reality?
No.
See you all in a month.
Whenever we see a particular woman exerting agency, isn’t that a strange and remarkable wonder?
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Don’t forget your fedora on your way out. We will see you in a month.
I hope you spend the time under the barbell getting strong. Times are uncertain, and being able to protect your family is important.
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This one is uneasy to talk about from my perspective. If you were to ask me my honest un-fully thought-out opinion, it sounds bad…like I’m comparing them to children.
I even talked about this with my mom during a video call last Sunday where I said, I expect more from Men when it comes to living by Christ’s standards because women seem to be more dependent on the herd/village/society than men.
I got that from Stefan Molyneux who said something along the lines of, “Women are more dependent on the herd. A man can get kicked out of the herd and still do well or even better than when he was with the herd. But historically, women have a slimmer chance of survival when they strike out on their own away from the village.”
What I took from that, is if the herd/village is engaging in immoral behaviors, in order to avoid ostracism and being cast out socially, women are more likely to follow the ways of the herd than resist it if it means being on their own.
I even told my mom, that there are exceptions. Like ladies in those Alaska shows who homestead and are content away from the society…but those ladies are rare.
Oddly enough, my mother agreed. I know for a fact that my mother has benefited from being with my step-father because she likes to spend money. She’s aware of this and has acknowledged in the past that she’s grateful for him telling her “No” from time to time.
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This is an important point (albeit one that western churchians are clearly uncomfortable with and try hard to deny). I begin to wonder if it could be that women subconsciously take the attitude of “God holds me responsible, so what right does any man have to do the same?” or “Man screwed up, too, in the Fall, so who is HE to judge what I do?”
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That’s what I was talking about in my reply. It’s not women’s lack of moral agency; it’s women’s insisting on lack of consequences for moral failure.
“You don’t get to hold my feet to the fire. I answer to God, no one else.”
“But but but MEN DO IT TOO! Men screwed up too! Men make mistakes too! Men aren’t perfect either!”
“Yeah, X is true; but people were mean to me/hurt me/lied to me, so I shouldn’t be held responsible for X.”
“I did X, but society has it in for me, so I’m not responsible for X.”
Avoiding consequences for moral failure – it’s what women do.
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It’s what all humans do, given the opportunity. See the “he a goo boy, he dindunuffin” phenomenon.
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This is why men need to stop rescuing foolish women from the consequences of their foolishness. Other than Jesus Christ, no one has ever rescued me from anything, and I suspect the same is true for you.
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@Oscar
Men actually get held accountable by the criminal justice system far more than women. Women make up 12% of all murderers yet most of them are exempt from execution in many States:
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thoughtsUS.html
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This is what my late wife believed and used to rationalize why she did not have to seek my forgiveness for her offenses against me. Makes for a pretty messed up dynamic when one thinks they are above seeking forgiveness from another.
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Yes, women possess moral agency. If they did not, we would have no right to hold them accountable for anything. A senile old man has no moral agency anymore. That’s why, when he signs a contract, the right thing to do is to punish the person who got him to sign the contract.
There is no shortage of men who behave as though they have no moral agency. A lot of them end up in prison for violent crimes. See Theodore Dalrymple’s “the knife went in”
https://www.city-journal.org/html/“-knife-went-in”-12530.html
Do those convicts lack moral agency?
Of course not! They’ve never used it, but it’s there.
The same is true of women who refuse to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of their actions.
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Even more of them end up as politicians holding powerful offices.
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Or the criminal lays it all on the victim. He stabbed himself. He did this. I’d didn’t do it he did.
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Re: The knife went in
I believe people who commit heinous crimes and then say somewhat convincingly that everything that happened was outside their control, like “it just happened”, “the devil made me do it”, “the knife went in”, etc. are under demonic influence. They can talk this way because they have relinquished their agency to demonic control. Situations like this are where the possession of moral agency is truly doubtful, in my opinion. Even so, they are still held responsible for their actions, not the demons.
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That may be true, but if they “relinquished their agency to demonic control”, then they used their agency to relinquish their agency.
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Re: Demonic possession
Exactly how this happens is a highly controversial subject which reaches into the realm of addictions, demonic possession, generational sins, and stuff Derek Prince is famous for preaching about. Definitely not a simple topic.
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I doubt any human knows how demonic possession works. It seems like one of those things God doesn’t want us to know too much about, which is fine by me.
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Do women have moral agency? If women do not have moral agency, why then did Jesus have the discussion with the woman at the well in John 4:4-30?
We know she had had five husbands, and the man she had currently was not her husband. Jesus told her everything about her life.
She needed salvation and Jesus offered her living water – eternal life. Yes, women have moral agency.
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Given what Jesus said about the permanency of marriage, it seems contradictory for Jesus to recognize all 5 men as her husbands. If I were to read between the lines here, I would interpret this to mean that her N count was 5 and she was not under the moral Headship covering of the man she was currently banging.
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God address eve and curses her and women after her as a result of the fall. Women will also all stand before the great white throne judgment and also share in hellfire. That wouldn’t be possible without moral agency.
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The true significance of this event is that, after a lifetime on earth of being convinced that she is not responsible or accountable for anything, every woman is going to have it made clear to her in no uncertain terms that she very much is (or more accurately, was) responsible and accountable for her actions and decisions. This would be a shock of lethal proportions if she wasn’t already dead.
Although it is said that God’s might will inspire such awe and fear that no one on Judgment Day will dare argue with the judgment God hands down, I can still picture most women arguing viciously (if of course futilely) with Him over the subject of their agency.
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Ever notice that any time in the OT when God’s presence is near a human that human does a faceplant out of fear almost instantaneously? I imagine judgement day will be something like that.
There will be no arguing or back talk. But there may be pleading for mercy.
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@Red Pill Apostle
Even when God was without his visible Glory in the Body of Jesus. No one was able to out argue God.
No one can AMOG like God himself.
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Women have moral agency? Cool. I can accept that argument. My question is this: how much responsibility do I have for her then? Why is a husband required to sanctify his wife if she’s responsible for her own salvation? And if the answer is that we are to have headship then this entire blog is mental masturbation until we have the ability to enforce such headship and mete out consequences, as deti notes above.
And before another one of you points out the examples of children or employees, remember that the heads of those hierarchies have proper authority in those relationships. What authority do husbands have over their wives, or fathers over their adult, unmarried daughters?
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What authority do husbands have over their wives, or fathers over their adult, unmarried daughters?
And that’s the problem. The answer is none. But they have all the responsibility, which usually means “shut up, get your wallet/checkbook out, and pay.”
Which is why men are walking away, increasingly. Or, they’re just taking their chances and getting married, because they want p_ssy.
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Because salvation and sanctification are two different things. In fact, a believing wife sanctifies an unbelieving husband.
The fact that the believing wife sanctifies her unbelieving husband in no way robs him of moral agency.
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It is a requirement then for man or woman to be married to be sanctified?
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Sanctification occurs regardless of marriage or singledom. God uses different means in different circumstances.
It’s the Holy Spirit who does the work.
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My whole family told my then 8yo daughter she’s gonna have a great career expensive degree blah blah. I told her she’s gonna live with me until she gets married that college will not help her she has multiple wealthy relatives that will b passing in 15yrs anyway. Get a basic job learn skills volunteer at church have friends find someone have kids. I already explained the carousel to her she’s going to middle school and it’s disgusting what these other parents consider rasing a child. I may not have authority but I’m the only one who tells her the truth and they can’t shut me up.
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Off topic: hey, RPA! Maybe I can afford one in, like…. 10 years.
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Get on racedezert and look at the classifieds some amazing stuff for cheap.
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Sequoias are really nice. I strongly considered them instead of the Land Cruiser I ended up buying. This one has a tasteful lift and a nice aftermarket suspension. The bumpers look great and the winch is very useful, especially if the vehicle does not have lockers. I am sure it would be good off road, but for the roughly 100k I believe this would cost I wouldn’t take it off the pavement.
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An Army buddy of mine told me years ago that the 1st generation Sequoia makes a great family off-roading vehicle. I wish I’d listened to him then. They’re actually getting more expensive.
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Your Army buddy was a few years ahead of the Covid curve. When the world stopped for those months (it was only month here in the South) tons of people isolated themselves in the great outdoors. They started buying 4wd vehicles as part of their newly found enthusiasm for wilderness.
The first generation Sequoias have Toyota’s 4.7 v8 in them. They run forever but you have to replace the timing belt and water pump every 90-100k miles. They are also not very fuel efficient. The second generation Sequoias have the 5.7 v8. They are a little better on fuel economy vs the 4.7 (not much) and the power figures are far superior. I’d get a second gen if I were building out a Sequoia for overlanding.
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My next truck will be a Sequoia or a Land Cruiser….
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Don’t overlook the crew max Tundra. I love mine. There is a enough room in the back that the kids don’t kick the front seats and the utility of having a pick up is so convenient. With a locking tonneau cover the bed is as secure as a trunk and basically sealed in from the weather.
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I’m with RPA with the Crew Max Tundra. Now that the Gen 3s are out, hopefully the Gen 2s will start to drop in price. If I had 3 kids, or fewer, that would be my pick.
For that matter, the current generation 4Runner is pretty awesome for smaller families, and it’s been in production for 14 years, so pretty much every bug got worked out years ago.
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The 5.7 v8 that Toyota makes is kinda nice unless you are fuel economy person. My 2014 Tundra with that engine just hit 136k miles and it does not burn or leak oil. Toyota also uses versions of that engine in the 200 series Land Cruiser and the 2nd generation Sequoia. If routine maintenance is done, they last a looooong time. That’s the reason I bought a truck that had one of them (Toyota also has a 4.6L v8 but it gets about the same fuel economy and does not have near the same power ratings. No one ever regretted having more power … If I could grunt on this comment like Tim Allen’s character on Home Improvement did on the show, I would.
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Now, now….we all know:
People don’t gossip, “they bring each other up to date”
People don’t lie, “they just just don’t tell the truth”
People don’t hate, “they just don’t get along with someone”
People are not greedy “they are just looking out for their family”
People are not vain “they just want to look presentable”
it goes on…….everyone has moral agency of sorts they just justify their judgment or stances or word it like I did above. The serpent “tricked” Eve, and Adam blamed her for why he broke the command
Until recently this has been a norm. Game says “women cannot help who they fall for” and “attraction isn’t a choice” and that’s just the start.
So when people speak of “no agency” its the likes of mostly men, bestowing this so they can behave in ways and justify why they “don’t have agency either” or like Adam, blame Eve for the reason why he behaves the way he does.
“if only the world was as great / smart / intelligent / good looking as I am, there would be no problems” is pretty much the attitude and pride isnt even checked today. Its a virtue now. Gotta be the Alpha, gotta put someone else down, no matter what.
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