The different conceptions of marriage in patriarchal vs. matriarchal societies

Money, fame and power isn't everything, apparently.

The last post was a historical, considered post on an almost unknown figure to the west, but still relevant and important, tying themes of politics, psychology, history and philosophy together; a difficult subject matter, and it pushed my writing abilities. This one we’re going to go lighter and trashy, at least comparatively, but relevant to those affected by, or considering, the institution of marriage in a western country.

The two proximate causes for this post are Gisele Bludchen’s cheating on and divorce from Tom Brady, the greatest football player of all time, and Blake Lively possibly cheating on her husband Ryan Reynolds, one of the most successful actors in the world. This post will touch briefly on this low quality, salacious tabloid-tier gossip and then use it as a springboard to discuss the state of marriage in western society.

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Background

Gisele finalized a quick divorce from Tom in October 2022, ostensibly because he wouldn’t do what she demanded and retire from football in order to “reverse roles” and let her focus on her career, after she spent years bossing him around, then a month later in November she was seen strolling with her long-time jiu jitsu instructor in Costa Rica:

She furiously tried to deny that they were having an affair, but it didn’t look good. She quickly moved on to her next man.

What about Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds? They have four kids together and no rumors of a pending divorce. Well, here she is in a series of recently released photos with her hands all over her tall, muscular, good looking personal trainer, splashed across popular gossip rags for the world to see:

So she’s on camera holding him in multiple photos across different time periods and in different locations, then its released with gusto across the front pages of the internet. The pregnancy photo is especially, uh, classy. Note the trainer’s wearing a wedding ring; maybe they’re just friends, or maybe he’s gay, or maybe she’s just a “flirty, touchy person”, but at the very least it’s quite disrespectful to Ryan for the world to see her physically hanging on this guy. What gives?

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Who cares?

Those are two examples, one from the sports world and one from the entertainment world. If we look at the richest men in the world, we see that Bill Gates is divorced (Melinda left him allegedly in part due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein) and Jeff Bezos is divorced (but he didn’t learn his lesson and is about to do it again after putting his aged, haggard, botox’d fiance’s image on the front of his $500 million mega-yacht). The wife of wealthy and masculine Mel Gibson, who is an ultra-religious Christian, left him after having seven kids with him.

Of the 10 richest men in the world:

1. Bernard Arnaut - divorced (and remarried)

2. Elon Musk - divorced (twice)

3. Jeff Bezos - divorced

4. Larry Ellison - divorced (4x)

5. Warren Buffett - separated but remained legally married until wife’s death

6. Bill Gates - divorced

7. Michael Bloomberg - divorced

8. Carlos Slim - stayed married (congrats Carlos!) until her death, no plans to remarry

9. Mukesh Ambani - married (congrats Mukesh!)

10. Steve Ballmer - married (congrats Steve!)

So of the ten richest men in the world, seven are or have been divorced or separated, and both Carlos Slim (Mexico) and Mukesh Ambani (Indian) live in more traditional cultures.

Therefore the highest value, most successful men in western society, the creme de la creme, are highly liked to get divorced. And if these men have problems staying married, what does that say about the western institution of marriage generally, as well as your odds of staying together if you do get married?

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The institution of marriage as seen in the extreme polarities

There are two polarities of the institution of marriage, one representing a highly patriarchal society and one representing a highly matriarchal society. The following is meant to highlight the extreme versions of each type; many societies exist moderately somewhere in-between these poles. There are usually gradations and each society contains certain features that others don’t possess.

Extreme version of patriarchal society - Typically seen today in traditional Islamic societies. In a patriarchal society the man is the head of the household. In an extreme version, a woman cannot leave the house without a male escort, they wear very conservative clothing (such as the hijab or niqab within Islam), and the father decides who the daughter will marry¹ - the woman is treated like quasi-chattel. Education for the female is limited. There are limited or no spousal physical abuse protections or marital rape laws. The woman has a limited right to work and sometimes even to drive, and her expected role is as a mother and tender of house. The woman has a limited right of inheritance and the expectation is her husband will control the finances. The expectation is that she will be quiet and demure. Fertility rates are higher than in matriarchal societies and the women get married (see below) and start having children earlier. Only the man has the right of unilateral divorce while women require the consent of the spouse or approval by a court for a divorce (see below). Divorce has a significant social stigma to it as does female cheating (men in Islamic societies can have up to four wives, and male cheating seems to be downplayed), and therefore divorce rates are much lower (see below).

Average age of first marriage per country; patriarchal countries get married younger.

Total fertility rate per country; patriarchal countries generally have higher TFR, although Africa’s is an extreme outlier greater than, by far, anywhere else in the world. Given how Africa is not self-sufficient in many areas, especially food production, this is very ominous for the future.

Divorce laws by country; patriarchal countries have stricter divorce laws.

Divorce rates by country. Patriarchal countries with stricter divorce laws have lower divorce rates.

Cat Stevens/Yusaf Islam and family - an example of a patriarchal family structure (which is not to argue they have an extreme version of it). They have nine grandchildren as of 2017.

Extreme of matriarchal society - Typically seen in all western countries today (which are not just matriarchal but increasingly matriarchal gynecocracies). In a matriarchal society the woman is the head of the household. The woman works as much or as little as she wants and expects the man both to make more money than her, to have higher status than her (increasingly hard to find due to female workplace advancement and greater-than-male college education attainment), and for the man to put in at least 50% of the housework and child-care. The expectation is that she will be loud and bossy, leaning-in, which she often tries to hide during the courtship phase. The woman generally dresses however she wants. There are strong anti-domestic violence laws and marital rape laws.

Marriage only happens in the first place for many women after chasing Chad under the rules of female hypergamy until she hits The Wall and then bitterly settles for a beta male provider shortly before her eggs expire, settling in for a usually short-lived, unhappy marriage that lasts just long enough to pump out 1-2 kids and secure alimony and child support.

Just as people experience hedonic adaptation, they also experience status adaptation; in other words, women become accustomed to the social status of whatever man they are with, no matter how high status or rich, and eventually looks down on him and wonders about her options, how she can somehow secure even higher status. The woman knows that divorce laws favor her to an extreme extent² (she must be kept “in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to” by the courts), and combined with media programming telling her to have-her-cake-and-eat-it-too (“girl, you can have it all!”) she is highly incentivized to seek divorce and jump back on the cock carousel in the never-ending quest for Chad. Fertility rates are very low and childbirth is usually delayed until the 30s.

Divorce rates are high, hovering around 50% since the 1970s.³ Divorce is typically no-fault and a man is responsible for alimony (often for life) and child support post-divorce, and often even if the child is conclusively proven not to be his. The woman almost always gets primary custody and often full custody of the children and gets to decide on how they will be educated, to what extent they will be vaccinated and who they get to hang out with, because the judges almost always side with the woman. In extreme but becoming more common cases, the woman also gets to unilaterally decide whether to push their children to horrific life-changing transgender drugs and surgery. Divorce has little or no social stigma including involving female cheating.

Matriarchal countries have strict domestic violence laws.

Generally speaking, the richer a country is the lower the fertility rate (dubbed the demographic-economic paradox) and the more matriarchal a society it is.

Will and Jada Smith; an example of a matriarchal relationship (notice Will fails the green line test by leaning in). She had an affair with one of her son’s friends and flaunted it, she quasi-asked Will to defend her honor and slap Chris Rock using her body language, their daughter is openly polyamorous and their son prances around in a dress. After the slap incident she publicly stated she felt pressured to marry Will. [Side note: Why is this useless information in my brain? Please extract it.] It’s not even close to the most extreme example though as they’ve managed to stay together and their children aren’t post-op transgender.

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How did western societies shift from patriarchal to matriarchal?

One could look at a lot of factors, especially in relation to technological advancement, governmental expansion and life becoming “easy”, but here’s an additional element: it was deliberately planned. Aaron Russo, the producer of the classic comedy “Trading Places”, gave an interview as he was dying of cancer where he claimed to be friends with a very wealthy, prominent Rockefeller, who had bragged to Aaron that he and the other elites created women’s liberation as a way of (1) destroying the nuclear family to make people easier to control, as children of divorce have universally worse life outcomes, as well as (2) expand the taxpayer base by doubling the work-force. Here’s a 3 minute video of Russo making this argument:

You can watch the full interview here which is quite interesting.

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What should one do with this information?

For western women, nothing - the laws and societal factors all massively favor you and give you a weird, artificial leg-up in both the relationship and divorce. Congrats! Queue Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” But the downside of this setup is it goes against your natural programming, and it will inevitably make you unsettled and unhappy; a woman generally wants a man to lead and feels a pit of disgust deep in her stomach if he doesn’t fulfill that role, even if she doesn’t consciously acknowledge it - it will bleed out into the relationship one way or the other.

For western men, if the hope is to have a successful marriage with multiple children, the options are: (1) don’t get married and either (a) don’t have children or (b) have children out of wedlock; (2) go live permanently in a more traditional country to have marriage and children; (3) lower expectations and expect unhappiness and divorce; or (4) join a fundamentalist religion which is resistant to these noxious anti-family globohomo trends:

On a political level, just as there needs to be a transvaluation of values away from a focus on extreme equality back toward a Nietzschian warrior/priestly balance, there needs to be a societal shift away from extreme matriarchal values toward a balance between the polarities of patriarchy and matriarchy (the specific balance I will leave you to decide, although I think no-fault divorce should be abolished). The only thing that will happen from society pushing the extreme matriarchal values we have now is a continued collapse in marriage rates, a continued collapse in fertility rates, a continued highly elevated divorce rate (compared to patriarchal societies today and to historical norms), children growing up under extreme dysfunction - all of which globohomo of course actively desires and conspires to worsen, but that doesn’t mean you should be brainwashed to want it. Long-term, if these trends continue, one can expect society to eventually trend toward the demographics of those religious groups who are resistant to globohomo messaging and maintain traditional marriage and higher fertility rates.

1. According to a 2018 study slightly more than half of marriages worldwide are arranged marriages.

2. This is why women initiate nearly 70 percent of all divorces, yet there was no significant difference between the percentage of breakups initiated by women and men in non-marriage relationships. They are simply responding to societal incentives that enormously favor them.

3. This rate seems too low and could be, perhaps, artificially suppressed.