As I stated earlier today, there has been a very good conversation going on regarding the Feminine Imperative. I believe it stems from a few posts that SunShineMary has been writing at her blog The Woman and the Dragon. She is trying to nail down a more concrete definition of this phenomenon in an attempt to better understand it.

I think a good way to understand what the feminine imperative entails is to attempt to understand and define what the male imperative entails. In my previous post I asked for readers to define the male imperative.

Yohami had this to say:

Male imperative: to win. While the equivalent female imperative would be to survive. In the aim to win the male imperative comes up with the rules and grids and ladders and competition. And the female imperative comes up with the safety nets, tribalism, resource trappings and maintenance.

and deti this:

Female directives: Prime directive: Have sex with best man (men) available, get pregnant, have as many babies as possible. Secondary directive: Secure provisioning for self and babies. Tertiary directive: If she fails in directives 1 and 2, secure provisioning for self by any means necessary. Male directive: Secure unlimited access to unlimited sexual opportunity.

The two definitions take these imperatives down to the bare nitty gritty, the basis of their beginnings. Basically, men seek domination while women seek sex with the strongest, most dominant men while simultaneously securing her and her children (commitment). If we take a closer look at the base male imperative (MI) it would be a world of intense male competition in an effort to dominate. The dominance itself is the attraction. A benefit of this is the ability to have sex with a variety of women (I’m not sold on the main reason for winning being the resultant sex. I tend to think the main reason for wanting to win is to be able to go out and dominate again). The resulting competition could be very destructive as men attempted to become the ultimate winners, as their ambition and drive took them as high as they could take themselves. Women and children would not only have much less (no?) male protection and provisioning, they would potentially also be in physical danger far more often. These men could take what they wanted when they wanted and would be exultant in the taking. While my history is not great, men like Ghengis Khan and tribes like the Huns and Goths come to mind (to help take down the Roman Empire is a tremendous victory).

Taking a closer look at the female imperative (FI) we see women seeking out a way to have sex like men. They are seeking to have sex with the most attractive men (read alphas) without shame or repercussions. Then, when they deem they are ready, they are are seeking monogamy from a man of their choosing. This gives their children the best genes while simultaneously securing their and their children’s future. But women have taken their need for security to new levels. They have sought to change the laws so that they may have this security without marriage (if they were not able to marry the alpha they wished). They are able to have child support, alimony, burden of proof on the man in a rape case, welfare from the government, men fighting for their equality in the workplace, home, etc. Women also control the narrative to protect and secure our feelings. People are not allowed to shame women for sleeping around, they’re not allowed to disagree with a woman in politics, race, sexual relations, or most any other taboo realm lest her feelings get hurt. She will use shaming language to put a stop to it and it will often work. What’s more, women do not have to reciprocate much of this as we are so used to having these things given to us, we don’t know that we actually should reciprocate. If someone should ask for a thank you or some kind of task given back in kind, she further uses her sex and need for security to attempt to put this person back in their place because in asking for reciprocation, it was pointed out to her that she is being ungrateful and it hurt her feelings. Now again, I am taking this to the Nth degree to better illustrate the point. I do not think all women embody all of these things, but I do think we all embody some, and we usually don’t even realize it. Our need for security is so great, that it will often hinder our being able to see that much of this is even happening. When I first learned of the feminine imperative, my mind railed against it. I literally had to work to force my mind to see it. It then opened for a brief second to see it for what it is and then snapped shut at the feelings it elicited. I saw what I had done in my own feminine imperative (part of it anyway, I am not sure I can ever see it in it’s entirety) and it was painful. I didn’t wish to look any more.

What I think benefits society most, and what marriage was originally designed to do, was to balance these two imperatives. A compromise of the two.

Again, deti had this to say:

…most men could have a marriage with no extramarital sex, purely monogamous. I’ve often said this was what marriage 1.0 was designed to promote: every man who wanted a wife could get one. He might get the chubby 4 or the superskinny 5 with no chest, but he could still get a wife. Men and women alike lived in an assortative mating system. 10s with 10s, 9s with 8s and 9s, and so on. this required slut shaming and restricting women’s sexual freedom. It was clear that when you remove restrictions on women, they give up sex to the most attractive badboys and leave all the rest of the men in the cold. It also required the top men to restrict themselves to one hottie instead of one or two hotties and 10 Plain Janes. This had the effect of preventing the men from fighting one another over the women; and enlisting the betas in helping support the alphas. The alphas understood they were vastly outnumbered by betas. If things went badly, the betas could band together and drive out or kill the alphas. The betas could also refuse to do most of the hard work and dying in the wars. So, alphas and betas reached a truce by which the alphas agreed not to fuck all the women, and instead restrict themselves to one. They also agreed to restrict the women from fucking the best men and making them stay faithful in marriage. Any man who wanted a wife got one. This worked well for women too, who got a man to support them. The alphas planned civilization; the betas provided the support and the grunt work.

While I’m not sure I agree with the beta/alpha compromise (I tend to think the betas followed the alphas to glory and domination to help them secure their own women, but I admit I haven’t fully thought this out). The combination of the female desire for the best man and security turns into the best man she can manage given her assets and security while reciprocating with faithfulness, support and caring for her husband. The male desire for domination with the benefit of sex with a variety of women is tempered to sex with one woman, the best he can get, while reciprocating with sharing his assets and monogamy. Society benefits from this in that this tempers the worst of each imperative while still promoting the best parts of it. Men could still seek to dominate, but it would be tempered by the need to provide for and protect his family. Women could still secure good genes and be given protection and resources but would have to hamper her desire to seek a higher ranked man. She would also be called to utilize her solipsism to care for her family (including her husband) and not just for herself and her children. She would be required to support him through thick and thin to the betterment of the whole family. When she found it difficult to do this, society would require her to do it anyway.

Now, I understand that these days there are a lot of men who have little desire to try to return the balance. As a whole, women have broken our deal. Given this, some men would rather return to a time of male primacy and I can’t say that I blame them. As for our society, and what is best for it as whole, I think it will always be that balance. We will never be able to perpetually maintain it. It will always skew one way and then slide back toward the other to, for a time, rest comfortably in the middle again. How far back to the male side it slides this go around greatly depends on how much further to the female we continue to let it go.