Get Thee To A Nunnery

In Hamlet, Shakespeare has Hamlet tell his girl Ophelia to “Get Thee To A Nunnery!” This was Elizabethan slang for a brothel. But, actual real-life nunneries in those days often had a large population of “fallen women” who couldn’t look forward to any home and family in the future. So, it really was a collection of former whores. These nuns would typically be occupied in some useful social service, as a hospital, a school, an orphanage, or the like.

Today we have a genre of “born-again slores,” which is the way it has been since the days of Shakespeare, although perhaps a lot more numerous these days. They should be sent to a nunnery — preferably, a real-life Christian nunnery, which you don’t see much of anymore. There they could do something useful, rather than just being a blight on society. They could even bring their single-mom children, to be raised by the Nuns. I don’t see why not. Unfortunately, the spread of the Welfare State has reduced the need for charitable institutions run by nuns.

But, don’t marry them!

Worthy Girls

Although it seems like the majority of single women in the US these days are unfit for marriage, there is still a significant minority that is. For example:

Probably there are some Age 28+ “I want a homeschool/homesteading life” women that are, basically, the secular equivalent of the whores who then get churchy around the same age. You would have to vet them. But, the women under Age 25 who have homeschooling ambitions are probably pretty good.

There is also a category of TradWife Influencer, typically accompanied by a sort of domestic fetish activities including sourdough bread.

This includes former porn girl Nala Ray:

The real tradwifey girls, who really like making bread, are out there, but they are probably not making videos about it.

The fact of the matter is, cooking is an important activity for wives these days; and bread can be an important part of cooking, as it is the staple grain basis for all of Western Civilization. A lot of the bread in stores is highly questionable. Wheat today is not the wheat of the past. A woman that is concerned about food quality soon concludes that she should be making bread from organic flour from a traditional (probably pre-1960) variety of wheat. I personally get organic spelt flour (spelt is basically the wheat of the middle ages), grown locally by Amish farmers. No kidding. You can’t get bread made from this in stores, or if you could it would be really expensive, so I make it myself.

“Emmer” is the original wheat of the Egyptian and Roman era. “Einkorn” is Ancient wheat of prehistoric Mesopotamia. There is a lot of interest in Emmer and Einkorn these days.

Time Now To Exercise Your Political Muscles

After all this time, and an endless supply of Youtube commentators, blogs and other worthy efforts, we still have almost no political activity in favor of changing the laws in favor of men’s interests. This especially includes divorce law, but also includes domestic violence, “sexual assault,” “sexual harassment,” Civil Rights laws that basically amount to favoritism for women employees, policies of universities, and others we could name.

Much of this is State law, so the place to focus is on just one State, probably the State you live in. We just need one man, who, in his free time, takes an interest in these matters, and begins the process of legislative change. This means: a) defining the problem; b) proposing a solution (with the consultation of experts such as divorce lawyers); c) contacting State Representatives, which is not that hard to do. You then explain to the State Representative: a) the problem; b) a ready-made solution. It is something that a man can do in his free time, in evenings and weekends. Once you get started, you can also ask for others’ support of your efforts, in the form of donations to your cause.

Only a few men would do this. For the rest of us, we need to get in the habit of contributing to a cause — and not just doom scrolling on Youtube. I have long suggested making an annual donation to the National Coalition For Men. The NCFM was founded in 1977, and has been around for a while. But, this is not to argue about whether the NCFM is a “good” or “bad” organization, or whether it is effective or not. The main issue here is to exercise your political muscles, by actually donating real money, now, to a real existing organization, that is at least nominally in your interest. I suggest $25. ncfm.org. I also suggest donating some amount of money to the YouTuber or blogger of your choice, who you feel makes a positive contribution to the discussion. Again $25 is fine.

If you are not willing to donate $50 a year for action in your own interests, then you deserve everything you get.

Her Money Is Your Money

A single-earner household, and a stay-at-home wife, should be your goal. Otherwise you are going to neglect the children; and probably, your wife will be unhappy. There will be too much work for everyone.

Nevertheless, sometimes couples feel like they have to have two incomes, at least for the time being. I think this is reasonable particularly early on, possibly before children, when the goal is basically to pay down debts or maybe buy a house. But, if you are going to take a few years and get your finances in shape, that also means marrying early. Among other things, it is a lot cheaper for two people to live together, in their twenties. You can’t do that when you marry at 32.

When a woman earns significantly more than her husband, probably it is not going to work very well to try to be the big boss when it comes to the family’s money. Probably you are going to have a sort of council. But, in most cases, the woman earns about the same, or less, than the husband.

In general, the process should be that Her Money Is Your Money. Basically her earnings go into a common fund (joint bank account), mostly controlled by you. If necessary, you quickly move the money out of this account into an account controlled by you exclusively, so that she has no access to it. Or, perhaps, use these funds quickly to pay down expenses, such as mortgage and car debt, so there is little left in the account. She gets basically a monthly budget — a regular weekly or biweekly transfer to an account controlled by her.

Control the Money
Your Money Is His Money

I think a wife can own some significant assets for herself. Mostly, this is retirement accounts, including employer 401(k)s, and Individual Retirement Accounts. She might also have a personal automobile, if you have two automobiles. But otherwise, I would put all the other assets — notably, the house — in the name of the husband only.

The husband then makes all the necessary payments, notably house and car, and paying down any outstanding debt. A wife can make a few purchases on credit cards, but she must pay for these out of her monthly budget. If a wife becomes undisciplined in her credit card usage, her cards are cancelled. The husband also makes contributions to the wife’s retirement accounts, preferably maxing those out if possible. A wife can also have some personal savings, outside of retirement accounts, but probably not more than $10,000 or so. Also, assets that a woman brings to marriage, notably inheritances, can remain in her control, although perhaps it is best also to at least oversee these.

A man should lay out, before marriage, his expectations in this regard. Of course his long-term expectation is that his wife will not be working at all. Probably some women will balk at these terms. It does not conform to today’s Feminist expectations. But, besides that, a woman suffers no particular hardship from these terms, except perhaps a limitation on excessive spending. Of course she can always ask her husband for whatever she might want; and if it is reasonable, and does not conflict with some other higher-priority goal, she will almost always get it. If a woman continues to balk and complain, then we can simply categorize her as unfit to be a wife. Don’t marry her.

If a woman wants to act independently, then let her be independent. She is not willing to act in a cooperative endeavor. Always refuse “My money is my money, but your [the husband’s] money is our money.” What then is the point of her working?

Women like to balk and complain, and then be told what to do. Don’t disappoint her.

Unfortunately, this idea is so foreign to most men, that it might be hard to come to grips with it. But, men will have to do so, and early, before they get married.

0.55

The total fertility rate in Seoul, South Korea, was recently 0.55. This gets attention, but close behind it, with TFRs <1.0, are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Beijing and Shanghai.

This means that, in each generation, the population would fall by about 72%. But, a woman doesn’t have 0.55 children. Here’s one example:

To get a TFR of 0.54, you would need 60% of women to have zero children; 28% of women to have one child; 10% of women to have two children; and 2% of women to have three children.

This is pretty amazing. 60% of women have no children at all. Only 12% have two or more.

Here’s another example, producing a TFR of 1.0, just to get an idea of what that means in real life:

Not all women are professional class. Those in the professional class have tended to have much lower fertility than the population as a whole. So, for high-earning women, take these numbers down further.

Proper Dancing

I read this recently:

Jack Reacher Won’t Ask Girls to Dance

And since I homeschool, and since my son is 13, this has a certain immediate relevance.

I’ve had a front-row seat to the social breakdown hitting our young people. You can see it in a lot of places, but one of the clearest examples came from a mom in our church who’s helped run a homeschool prom for several years. She told me something recently that I’ve been stewing on. 

When she first got involved, it was normal for boys to ask girls to dance—especially during the “snowball” dances, where the DJ tells you to rotate partners every thirty seconds. That’s the whole point: go find someone new, talk, move, risk a little awkwardness.

But this year? The boys wouldn’t do it. They stood around, clumped up with friends, goofed off, and refused to initiate. Some danced with each other, ironically of course. Meanwhile, the girls were standing around the edge of the dance floor—waiting. Eventually, they gave up and started dragging each other onto the floor. Some even went over and tried to coax the guys to come out. It didn’t work. There were 2 girls for every guy.

I do not think this is a “social breakdown.” It is just some confused teens — who have never done this before — and who come to the conclusion that they would rather just sit it out instead of going through some difficult process of trial and error.

From my perspective, the main issues are this:

Teens pick up cues from their environment, even when things are not explicitly explained to them, or they don’t watch Andrew Tate or any other such commentator. They pick up that men in general are not interacting much with women these days. You can blame MeToo in the workplace, or the recent difficulties in gyms. But, I think a lot of this is downstream from marriage. Although I think that young men should aim for the Top 30% of wifey girls, and form a family, the reality is that 70% of the women are not in the Top 30%, and they do not make good wives. On average, marriage is a losing proposition. From this, there is not a lot of reason to “date” with the expectation of forming a monogamous “relationship,” which itself does not appear in Courtship, but is a kind of degenerate marriage-lite, or Concubinage as it was known in the days of Augustine. This leaves basically hookups, or “friends with benefits,” which most men are actually not that interested in, sensing that it is basically immoral and degenerate.

The reality is, homeschool girls age 18 or less are about as Wifey as you can find these days. Probably 90%+ fit in our “Top 30%” category.

Male youths are low on testosterone. The teen of today has roughly the testosterone of a fifty year old. As someone in their fifties myself, I can say that, it is not enough raw animal desire to want to deal with all the troubles of women today. The Big Head overpowers the Little Head with ease. It’s been said that this commonly happens around a man’s early thirties. But, maybe these boys are there now?

Women and girls are too picky. Just as young men pick up cues from their environment, so young women tend to become too picky, focusing on the Top 10% and rejecting 90%, a pattern now made habit from dating apps. Men today go to events like “speed dating” and find that 90% of the male participants get nothing pleasant out of it. The result is that they do not go to any more such events, and also tell their friends not to go. This sense that “most men are not good enough” probably pervades the girls of a dance as well.

Dancing is stupid. The era of popular music/freeform dancing alone began in the 1960s and has now exhausted itself. In the 1990s, dancing was pretty degenerate and a lot of young people didn’t like it much, including me. Nevertheless, dance clubs and raves or parties were very popular then, and the music, although generally bad, was something you could dance to. Remember the Spice Girls or Ace of Base? Since then, the music has only gotten worse, and more and more people don’t like it. Dance clubs are closing everywhere. This is also something that young people pick up on. “Dancing,” as we have known it since the 1960s, is dead.

The point here is, parents should not expect, or encourage, young people to do these things, because they are basically dead and stupid. This ranges from today’s dance music, through the whole process of “relationships” and “dating” that parents did when younger. You have to invent new things.

But also, Generation X parents who are accustomed to being abandoned by parents when they were young, and making do on their own, should not expect teens to somehow invent things for themselves. What they will invent is — hanging out next to the dumpster behind the Dairy Queen, as Generation X did. Today, the contemporary equivalent seems to be chatting with each other while playing video games. In other words, parents are going to have to do the work.

Dancing is a nice idea, that we — that is, European White People, participants in Western Civilization — have done for many centuries. In the past, this has taken on very elaborate and ambitious forms.

The “high school prom” is basically a public school version of the “debutante ball.”

To do this properly, we need a few things, organized by parents:

Pretty, respectable music, that matches pretty, respectable clothing such as the dresses and suits/uniforms seen here. No popular music. This music does not have to be a historical style — Strauss’ waltzes — but that is maybe the best place to start. Also, no slutwear.

Specific dances that are practiced beforehand. Yes, dance classes. A teen should show up for the event already knowing exactly the dances that are expected. These dances have specific repeatable steps. No improvisation.

A specific process of pairing dance partners. Everybody gets a partner.

Basically, girls and boys should practice all these things, formally in classes, beforehand. The dance event itself is just a repetition of what was practiced earlier, with the only main difference being nicer clothes. The girls and boys should already know each other from taking dance classes together, and have experience dancing with multiple partners.

Then, everyone shows up at the event knowing exactly what to do, and having practiced it beforehand.

This “debutante ball” format is fine, but you can also do “square dance” formats, or other more casual or “country” or “vernacular” forms as well. But, I think that girls love to dress up, so a “debutante ball” format would be widely appreciated. In the interest of reducing cost and complexity, girls can simply wear a pretty dress, and boys a suit.

There are some things today that have some of these elements, but not all. For example, country “line dancing” has an element of specific steps, and a bit of organized social interaction, perhaps getting in a line. And the music is … good enough. But, it is still basically dancing alone, with no specified framework of pairing with other partners, or even touching them.

In time, you can invent new dance forms, and new music to go with it. But, that takes time, so for now we are probably stuck with existing historical formats. These historical social dance formats, although somewhat archaic, are nevertheless new to us, and present an interesting learning process I am sure. Probably we can enjoy their historical nature specifically, such as: “let’s cosplay Andrei and Natascha, or Elizabeth and Darcy, or Laura and Almanzo.”

Social dancing should be pretty easy to learn and perform. In the mid-twentieth century, people raised on dancing invented some complicated new dances. It is too much to expect this of teens in general. Only a few will want to master these difficult styles.

And so that is how you do it. This is necessary today, but also, more fun. But, parents will have to take the lead here, and organize everything beforehand, just as they have always done. Do you think that, in the past, teens organized a debutante ball on their own? They did not. Look at Andrei and Natascha above. Do you think they just improvised that dance on the spot? They practiced beforehand.

Eighth Century Germans

We normally associate morality with Christianity. But Saint Boniface, who brought Christianity to Germany, described the pre-Christian morality of the Germans in the mid-eighth century:

In old Saxony if a virgin in her father’s house, or a married woman under the protection of her husband, should be guilty of adultery, they burn her, strangled by her own hand, and hang her seducer over her grave; or else, cutting off her garments to the waist, modest matrons whip her, and pierce her with knives, till they destroy her.