Female moral agency is solipsistic, vain, and easily misdirected or stymied.
Targeted Readership: Men
Theme: Female Agency and Accountability
Author’s Note: This post pieces together several excerpts from emails with Deep Strength and his posts at Christianity and Masculinity.
Length: 1,150 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Do women have moral agency?
It is tempting for Western Christian men to treat women like they either have moral agency or they don’t, but it is not such a cut and dried binary dichotomy.
Clearly women have moral agency. Deti seems to have summarized a lot of it with the garden. God punishes both Adam and Eve separately.
However, going off of Genesis 3, Numbers 30, and 1 Timothy 2:8-15, God created women differently so they tend to be more prone to deception. Hence, God has given men authority in marriage and the Church to act as a covering/protection for them. Yet it’s hard with the culture now to say that we need to protect women in some cases, because much of the time with churchian / secular men it turns into White Knighting, and many would argue that women are (or should be) under the authority of their father until they are married (or at least treated as such).
Misled by Culture and Churchianity
“All women have full moral agency. They are responsible for their decisions as much as men are responsible for theirs. However, culture and churchianity tends to infantilize women’s decision making placing the consequence of poor decisions that women make onto men as men’s burden of leadership and responsibility.”
Christianity and Masculinity: Formalization of AWALT and NAWALT (2015/3/22)
False Humility Misdirects Women’s Agency
“A true godly woman (with great character, humility, etc.) will respect and submit. Albeit, sometimes needs some prompting and sometimes slips up but will get back on track.
However, what tends to occur in reality is that women can easily let FALSE HUMILITY and PRIDE get in the way of actual HUMILITY. They think they are better than the man/husband because they are reading the Bible more, praying more, going to Church more, or more of whatever “spiritual” things. […] Thus, they fall into a place of disrespect, contentiousness, and rebellion, but think they are actually doing the right thing. Very insidious.”
“…a woman who believes they are more godly than the man usually falls into the trap of pride and false humility. She would actually disobey the Bible’s teachings such as 1 Peter 3 and usually starts tearing down her own relationship and marriage thinking she is better than him.”
“…a woman who is actually trying to obey God and spending a lot of time in spiritual disciplines would also probably more easily submit to and respect a man who has put a lot of time into obeying God and his own walk with Christ including the spiritual disciplines as well.”
“Another one of the big areas of false humility with wives who actually want to obey their husbands is they read so many “Christian books” about how they’re supposed to do certain things to submit to their husband when in reality they should be asking their husband about how they want to submit. Then when they do these various “things” trying to make their husband happy and he is not she gets all mad that she is trying and not succeeding. This anger is not a righteous one because she is actually following the books, blogs, podcasts, and whatever advice instead of following her husband’s lead. In other words, she is getting angry over her submitting to the books, blogs, podcasts, and other advice instead of her own husband.
In this way, a wife gets off track from actual submission to her husband and into obeying everyone else but her husband. However, since these “everyone else” sources are supposedly godly, she is duped into believing she is doing the right thing. Hence, the false humility because she thinks she is doing the right thing but she is not.”
Christianity and Masculinity: Is it possible for a woman to be too godly? (2022/6/16)
Women Strongly prefer Mystical Consciousness as a Medium of Interrelational Exchange
It’s difficult for men to ask women directly for what they want and get a positive response from her, because then women feel obligated to perform, and this kills their desire.
“Overt contracts are a form of obligation and obligation generally destroys desire. Obligation should not destroy the desire dynamic, but it does because humans are often prone to give into their fallible human desires. This is why women want men to “just get it”…”
Christianity and Masculinity: Covert Contracts, Overt Contracts, and Women (2015/8/18)
Likewise, women will hardly ever directly tell men exactly what they want or expect, and this could be for a multitude of reasons, some good and some bad depending on the context.
- They want to be passively led.
- They want to preserve solipsistic beliefs and the envisages of fantasy / mythos.
- They are more comfortable to avoid exercising agency and taking responsibility.
- They wish to preserve the option of covert vanity rebellion (discussed in the next section).
- They want the relationship to be based on faith and trust (or else the vicarious proxies of Feeelz and Tingles), rather than a negotiation.
- They prefer the freedom of remaining ambiguous. Revealing too much tends to grant more power to men. This is partly why women love secrecy.
Left to their own devices, women’s indefatigable attraction to fantasy, mysticism, and mythos will lead them into all sorts of gnosticism such as astrology, feminism, liberal “Christianity”, new age stuff, social justice activism, trendy media and philosophies, witchcraft, and whatever else.
Vanity Rebellion
Submission is necessary but insufficient for exercising agency. Submission by itself does NOT necessarily indicate moral agency!
Shades of Rebellion (2015/12/29) describes the irony of covert rebellion as seen in the difference between these two statements.
- Submission: “I follow my husband’s lead.”
- Covert rebellion: “I let my husband lead.”
“That’s ultimately what it comes down to: women want to let their husband lead instead of following his lead. […] Covert rebellion which is “I let my husband lead” is probably the main sin nature of women because it’s under the guise of righteousness (e.g. the husband is leading) but it gives her all of the power (e.g. authority) in the relationship.
This is the true essence of virtue signaling. Grabbing power while maintaining the moral high ground. It’s not enough to grab power. It must be done with the moral high ground.
In other words, a woman must look good while rebelling or sinning. As Looking Glass likes to call it: Vanity. Vanity rebellion. Women’s sin nature in marriage is Vanity Rebellion.
Now that the veil has been pulled back on this pattern, you will see it everywhere. When women divorce, it must be her husband’s fault. When bad things happen in a marriage, the full responsibility is foisted on the husband. Any bad feelings are used as indicators that a husband is not leading in a godly manner.”
Christianity and Masculinity: Women’s sin nature in marriage and contentment (2016/6/24)
Update
Deep Strength wrote a follow up to this post.
- Christianity and Masculinity: Womens’ moral agency and the interplay between mercy and judgement (2022/11/10)
Related
- Christianity and Masculinity: Female hypoagency is ubiquitous (2021/9/7)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Do women possess moral agency? (2022/11/2)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Donal Graeme on Female Agency (2022/11/3)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Rollo Tomassi on Female Agency (2022/11/4)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Dalrock on Female Agency (2022/11/7)
- Σ Frame (Thedeti, Jack): Deti on Female Agency (2022/11/8)
- Σ Frame (Sharkly, Jack): Sharkly on Women’s Agency (2022/11/10)
- Σ Frame (Catacomb Resident, Jack): Catacomb Resident on Moral Agency (2022/11/11)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Artisanal Toad on Women’s Agency (2022/11/14)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Jack on Female Agency (2022/11/23)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Kyojiro Kagenuma on Women’s Agency (2022/12/5)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Zippy Catholic’s View of Female Hypoagency (2022/12/12)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Bruce Charlton on Agency (2022/12/13)
- Σ Frame (Red Pill Apostle): Red Pill Apostle on Women’s Moral Agency (2022/12/15)
- Σ Frame (Jack): D. Bradley on Women’s Moral Agency (2022/12/16)
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Aside from what we can do. Pray that God holds them accountable in this life rather than the irreversible position they are in at the Last Judgment.
I’d rather not women only discover their sin before the face of the glorified Christ as judge rather than discovering him as redeemer beforehand.
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Do women have agency? Women have agents not agency. I asked my wife “Do you have agency?” and she told me “I have a whole temporary agency waiting to take your place.” I get no respect, no respect I tells ya.
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Does this mean that if a man wants something from his wife/gf then he should find a way to get her to want to do it without asking her? I have an engineer brain, so I simply do not know how to do that and it sounds like mind games which I don’t think is what you’re advocating. I thought we were supposed to be bold and direct. Does it just depend on context?
I get what the above quote means, but I don’t know what to do with it in real life. Can someone give an example of when directness would be best and when it wouldn’t? Did I misunderstand the point?
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Dont ask. Tell. Tell her you want this without asking.
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Deti’s right. It basically goes like this:
“I want you to ______ .”
“I don’t like it when you ______ .”
That’s it. Keep it simple, straight-forward, and direct. And don’t back down. You may not get what you want. She may get angry and leave. If she does, you’re better off without her.
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thedeti and Oscar are steering you straight on this one.
The above quote is an absolute no go. That quote is the foundational strategy of the “Nice Guy” who deals in covert contacts and is too chicken $h!t to say what he really wants.
The husband is the confident captain of the ship and like a ship captain he has to give directives to be carried out or things go to ship (see what I did there). That means telling, not asking. You should be polite and loving, but by no means should you be equivocal. Say what you want done and how you want it done. You may (will) make her mad, as Oscar has pointed out, but in my experience she’ll get over it. It’s up to you to tell her what to do and say it as if you expect her to comply, which means a matter of fact calm confidence. Then expect that she’ll comply as it’s up to her at that point to obey or not, and as she is told to submit in all things in the bible it becomes a moral issue for her before God.
I’ve made Mrs. Apostle mad more times than I can count and even cry a few times with my assessment of her behavior and she gets over it. The last time I matter of factly explained the logic of one of my decisions to her she asked me to stop explaining because it upset her. About an hour later we knocked boots and she did things without me having to ask. Other times she has dug her heels in and I have had to address her non-compliance.
Some of my strategies involve immediate feedback and some are longer term. All of them involve making Mrs. A uncomfortable as I have found that is what actually works to make her change behavior. Every one of my strategies are based on the truth. Not all have worked perfectly, but I keep learning and getting better at being a husband that manages his family.
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hamg,
I agree with what others have said above, but I want to add a few insights.
Giving her demands is not limited to verbally asking for things. In Name it to Change it! I described a number of different ways that a demand can be expressed.
This depends on the woman. Some women respond the way DS describes. Other women find some kind of ego fulfillment in performing well. Also, as DS described in the OP, some women have their own standard of performance that may be different from yours.
I think (some) women can be trained to perform. But of course, you have to be a good teacher, and she has to trust you.
Also, don’t forget what we covered about laying out Boundaries and Expectations.
I don’t think DS would advocate mind games, but personally, I wouldn’t throw it out as an option. Women like games in general, although they’ll never admit it nor discuss it. If you have enough trust built up, you can play games, including mind games, and make it fun.
Here’s an example. My wife used to b!tch at me for not keeping the house as clean as she would like. Simply telling her to relax and not b!tch about stuff is not effective. So I played a little game with her to turn the tables. I took a number of small toys (lego bricks, small action figures, etc.) and hid them in obscure places around the house (e.g. behind the TV, on top of the refridgerator, on top of the shower stall railing, under the bed, etc.). Then I’d wait to see how long it was until she found them. Sometimes it would be a few weeks. When she found them, I would tell her, “Ohhh… Wow!” [exaggerated surprise] “I put that there X weeks ago, just to give you a little fun surprise while you were cleaning. I guess that means you didn’t clean that place in X weeks!” This gave her the subtle message that I was more aware of how clean the house was than she was. She hasn’t b!tched at me about that since then. She’s still looking for toys.
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Jack,
You should hide a small bullet vibe for her to find while cleaning. Be as creatively suggestive as you want with what you tell her when she finally finds it.
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Thanks, each of you, for your advice. Especially Oscar’s fill in the blanks. I get all the other stuff about headship. I just need it spelled out like that sometimes as a starting point for what to do in real life.
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hamg,
Understood. If you’ve never made any demands and you’re not in the habit of doing this, then it might be very difficult to start. Hopefully, you’ll get the hang of it quickly and your girl will fall in line without a lot of static noise pollution.
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Here’s the part where I walk in, drop a little of my “grey pill” and walk out.
All three of these are great points, and they work… wait for it…
IF she already thinks you are hot.
The reason “some women get an ego fulfillment” from hearing what their husbands or boyfriends say and then going out and doing it is because on some level she is afraid of losing him and what she heard was, “I need to do this to prevent that from happening.”
If you have been placed in your wife’s friend zone and you wake up tomorrow and start acting all confident and telling her how things are going to be, the standard American wife will find this hilarious and ignore you.
Always remember, the “already thinks you are hot” rule extends for the life of the relationship, it’s not only a warning against cold approaches. Which, as we have already learned are stupid without IOIs.
To be clear, I am not saying, “Don’t get a spine. Don’t get confidence.” These will help you with self-perception and locus of control.
But getting up tomorrow and strutting around like you own the place will cause your wife (in most cases) to regard you as a retarded rooster who mistakenly wandered into the wrong hen house.
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But getting up tomorrow and strutting around like you own the place will cause your wife (in most cases) to regard you as a retarded rooster who mistakenly wandered into the wrong hen house.
And maybe those marriages need to end. Maybe those men will be better off without those women. Maybe those women need to move on and find men they are sexually attracted to.
I gave Mrs. deti this choice about 11 years ago. I essentially told her that if she was so damn unhappy with me, maybe she’d be happier without me. I didn’t care what choice she made, but i told her to choose that day and then laid out what she would have to do if she stayed.
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Right, but it seems like from everything else you’ve written it’s not worth it.
This is the “have to play extreme hardball just to get a tiny bit of begrudging respect” conundrum.
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Perhaps, Scott. As I said, it didn’t matter what choice she made, as long as it didn’t stay as it was. And it didn’t.
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Maybe it wasn’t worth it. But maybe my kids will thank me someday for not messing up their lives any further with a costly, nasty divorce from their mother. Maybe my kids will be spared their parents’ f_ckups. Maybe God will tell me someday I did the right thing by staying with her.
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What’s interesting is I don’t know if we are really have much of a disagreement. You probably remember (I remember you this far back) when I first started commenting it was about 2011. In those days, I was anonymous and my problem was basically that I had slid into “boyfriend/comfort/beta” behaviors and Mychael was responding predictably. We weren’t sexless or dead bedroom, but I was dealing with a lot of push back on just basic “whose in charge” stuff.
It was about 2 years of that before I realized that I was inadvertently killing the very things about me that she was attracted to in the first place, and once I finally quit trying so hard, things returned to baseline. It’s been like that ever since.
I think as we have aged, she also settled into the realization that a 6’2″ 200lb body building, doctor, retired army officer, who ALSO helps around the house, buys flowers, changes diapers, remembers birthdays and anniversaries, writes songs and sings them to her on my guitar would be hard to come by in any time or any place.
There is an implied sense that I don’t need to strut around and make demands because my value is known accurately by both of us.
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And that’s not really so much a brag about myself as it is this.
From what I know about you, I think your wife would benefit from learning a similar lesson about you.
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Do you really think this is why she stays with you? What you describe is a utilitarian ethic. But what if you became paralyzed from the neck down? A utilitarian would drop you like it was nothing, probably drive you to Canada herself — it’s not far away — and have you euthanized.
But I don’t think she would do this, because at the end of the day she is a Christian and her love for you is not contingent on that list of things.
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I have no idea why she “stays”.
I think it’s just we really like each other.
Kind of weird idea nowadays.
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thedeti,
Last night at the church small group we go to we were reviewing Sunday’s sermon on Roman’s 5. It’s the chapter where Paul lays out Adam’s headship leading mankind to sin and death and Christ’s headship leading God’s children back to Him. This is a beautiful part of scripture, but not does not give the complete picture of what had to happen for Romans 5 to be true.
Reading about Jesus in Gethsemane and looking specifically at His prayer is where the rawness of the pain and the submission to the Father’s will comes out. Christ is feeling the full brunt of what has been asked of Him and the fear and stress is so great that his stress hormone levels result in him sweating blood (hematohidrosis is the scientific term and it’s worth some quick research to understand it better). He pleads with His Father to provide another way, but He knows the standard and He knows the answer so He submits to the will of the Father instead of running away. His obedience is the pinnacle of human history.
I have no idea what God is thinking in your specific situation, and won’t even begin to posit a guess. We are told that we will have to carry burdens in this life in being obedient to God. Maybe staying married because it is better for the kids and Mrs. thedeti (whether she realizes it or not) is one of yours. The bible is littered with examples of obedience being difficult, so it’s quite possible you are on the right track.
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Do you really think this is why she stays with you?
Yes.
I have been interacting with Scott since 2011 in this and other spaces like it. I can tell you with absolute certainty what he describes, especially this part
would be hard to come by in any time or any place.
is precisely why she stays.
What you describe is a utilitarian ethic.
By Jove, I think he’s got it!
My wife stays for the same reasons. Quite simply, I’m her best option.
This – being “her best option” – is the ONLY reason ANY woman stays with any man. It’s hard for men to hear this, but it’s true.
Just like “she has sex with me and is good looking enough” is all a woman needs to be in order for a man to accept her. It’s hard for women to hear this, but it’s true.
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A Scott paralyzed from the neck down is STILL a better option than most men; and is STILL Mychael’s best option.
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Mrs. Apostle taught me that the utilitarian ethic of marriage is true. If she does not think you are her best option at the time of marriage she is not marrying you. Conversely, if you have better options that her at the time of marriage you’re not marrying her. Don’t make the error of letting the subjective judgement of “best” cloud the reasoning here.
Also, just because marriage is utilitarian in nature does not diminish the marriage relationship. People benefiting from each other does not make for a bad relationship. Issues pop up when a person, statistically the wife, decides they have other utility options that now look “best” to them after they made their vows and they bolt.
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The earlier the strutting starts in the relationship the better. It is best if done during dating before too much time is invested. But if you past that stage of the relationship earlier is better than later as a rule. The longer a man waits the more time, heartache and money he’s putting on the line when he finally struts into the henhouse to organize it how he wants it.
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But I don’t think she would do this, because at the end of the day she is a Christian and her love for you is not contingent on that list of things.
Oh, my sweet summer child…..
Millions of Christian women have divorced their husbands for myriad reasons, which all really boil down to “she found a better option, one of which is ‘live on an income stream from ex husband while being relieved of the obligation to have sex with him or live with him anymore'”.
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There are some women capable of loving loyally. Even when something happens to their husband. And I don’t think this only happens with Christian women.
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Cameron,
By ‘some’ you mean rare, right? Because that is what scripture says is the case. There is a reason that the wives who meet the criteria of verses 10 and 11 are memorable.
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My mom proved to be one such woman. She took care of my dad through his decline into senility and death. Even when he got mean, she was patient with him. Fortunately, he mellowed out before he died. He never spent a day in a nursing home.
And, you know what? Despite my wife’s flaws, I think she’s also the type. Of course, if I go senile, like my dad, I’ll never know, will I? Heh!
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On the ego fulfillment as she goes about trying to please you thing.
I would challenge men in LTRs (marriages or otherwise) to think back to the beginning. Was she acting like this then?
I remember one time Mychael sent me a text message asking how I prefer hair on a woman. I wrote back “Dark and with a little wavy body to it. The longer the better.”
She came home that day with basically exactly what I described. She still spends a pretty large amount of mental energy trying to read me, figuring out what I like. Whether it’s clothing choices, food, whatever. It waxes and wanes occasionally, but when she goes out and buy me something that she heard me talk about in passing, the look of vulnerability on her face as she hands it to me is priceless. Its says “I really hope you like this and I am nervous that you might not.”
Its not creepy, or like she’s scared of me. It’s just sweet. Every guy who has been in an LTR remembers those days (if not, the relationship might have started off without a proper meet cute.) 🙂
It’s one of the things Rollo, for all his narcissistic blow-hardness is right about. You kill the relationship when you make your whole life about her, pleasing her, whatever.
It’s probably the most important thing I learned from something 11 years reading around here.
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