Androcracy
Gender as a Cosmic Principle
Masculinity begins and ends with God our source and goal, to whom our whole world is feminine, and the complementarity of genders can be seen at every level.
For details see Gender in the World.
Gender-Roles in Humanity
Complementarity
"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon."
Paul of Tarsus, 1st Corinthians 15:41 (reapplied).
"Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order."
Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Danvers Statement, 1988.
Society needs masculine roles, occupied by men and favouring masculine choices, and feminine roles, occupied by women and favouring feminine choices.
String and wind instruments have different structures and aptitudes, and their playing different parts helps enrich music.
Masculine and feminine souls have different physiques and aptitudes, and their performing different roles helps ripen society.
An animal cannot behave against their sex's inclination, but a wicked soul can choose against their gender's prompting, and sometimes they do so.
Subordination
Every woman has a proper male ruler and should be wholly obedient to him.
In God the right and propensity to command and the might to enforce are so conjoined that their separation is inconceivable, and this conjuncture is manifested in men the image of God, who have the right and (typically) might to rule women, who are subject to them.
This principle is called Androcratism and its practice is called Androcracy.
The male-dominance instinct is deeply rooted in our psyches.
The last common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans probably did exhibit male-biased power.
R. J. Lewis et al, Evolutionary Patterns of Intersexual Power (2023). Lewis et al seem to have set out hoping to undermine Androcracy but, as the quotation shows, they were unable to deny the key fact.
So a woman's life should focus on her man to a degree that would be improper the other way round.
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace.
He for God only, she for God in him.
John Milton, Paradise Lost. (The "valour" is extraverted masculine virtue as a whole, not just courage.)
Male dominance need not (and should not) be contempt. Men should rule generously.
Correspondingly, women should obey genially. A woman should not grumble but should rejoice that her obedience is virtuous even if her ruler's command is vicious. Women who defy their rulers ruin society, including their own lives.
A woman's ruler is subject only to God for how he treats her, and in that sense she is his property, though his responsibility to treat her well includes a duty to consider her welfare, so is unlike his duty to treat other kinds of property well.
For a fictional exploration of Androcracy see John Norman's Gor Stories.
(Androcracy in Name Only) "Androcracy needs limits. Surely if a woman's ruler wants her to do something obviously wrong she should do right instead."
In other words, "Obey him unless you strongly disagree with him". Who is to judge? There is no separate category of "obvious wrongs"; it is a sliding scale. Where will you draw the line? How "obvious" must it be to serve as excuse for rebellion? To allow exceptions would grant a license for froward women to defy their rulers.
Integration
Human society ripens by an interweaving of gendered choices supported by an integration of gender roles, so masculine and feminine roles, although distinct, should not be isolated.
Women need to have influence but not power. Men should consult them, as they always have, a relationship expressed in the idea of the Muse. A wise man takes advice from a wise woman, and the wiser she has shown herself, the more readily he should heed her.
Our model in such matters is Sergeant Bagnet from Dickens' "Bleak House". Whenever asked his opinion on anything, he urged his wife: "Old girl, tell them my opinion!" She responded, beginning with "I should think your opinion would be ...", and she was always right, for if it was not already his opinion he adopted it as soon as he heard her wise statement of it!
A woman's duty of obedience includes her choices about what sources of information to use, in whatever media. This is not intellectual suicide but an extension of her conversations with him, the extent of which are for him to decide. This will tend to bring her opinions somewhat more in line with his, but she should not pretend to adopt his views if she still sees no merit in them, but should find any merit she can in them, and work with that, establishing as much common ground as possible.
Feminism
Various views have been called "Feminism", but we can classify them according to their response to Complementarity and Subordination, the natural principles of proper human gender relations.
Docile Feminism accepts Subordination and seeks to enhance Complementarity, exploring possibilities for enhanced patterns of distinctively feminine activity within the bounds of Androcracy. It was pioneered by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which shows how, with domestic labour reduced by technical improvements, women can use their new free time constructively, and input into some areas of our present society that were one-sidedly masculine, all compatible with Androcracy.
Defiant Feminism (Psephogynism) rejects Subordination, and its adherents vary in their attitudes to Complementarity.
The purest form (Epicenalism) claims that innately the sexes are interchangeable and that all tendencies for them to have different roles are learned and need to be unlearned. (They only tolerate such difference in reproduction because here it is unavoidable, and even here they reduce it as far as possible!)
The mildest form would in theory accept role differences so long as they were not imposed by men, but Psephogynists tend to slide down the slippery slope toward the Epicenalism that is the logical conclusion of their assumptions, ending in statements like (to take a random example in the news as I write this):
"A woman can do anything a man can do, and then some".
Joe Biden, Remarks at the National Arts and Humanities Reception (2024). Those last three words illustrate how the slippery slope even extends beyond Epicenalism, toward Gynocracy. Of course Biden did not mean this literally, but the more such hyperbola gets uttered and written, the more it gets believed.
On the Bible's words about this, see Christian Psephogynism.
For other details see Psephogynism.
Epilog
More men and women agree with this than would admit it. Although it sometimes takes bizarre forms, at root it is natural. Just as women are generally more sensitive and responsive, men are generally stronger and more assertive. They have the power and instinct to dominate women -- and to protect them. This is not about to change, and it is a clue for understanding our humanity. We are more than beasts, but not less.
For most of history, it was accepted that a man is lord of his family. The idea of equal power is an aberration, and nature cannot be violated for ever -- a civilisation based on such ideas must eventually collapse.
The principle of equal power detaches us from nature and undermines the difference between the sexes that sustains and enriches not only "sex life" but life as a whole. We are male and female, with different tasks within our one grand shared Task.
This site sees men and women as having different natures and correspondingly different tasks, both equally important parts of God's creative purpose.
To recreational "MDfs" players. The gangsters known as "the State", zealous in their emasculating interference in family life, force the principle of female consent on us. But far from resenting this encroachment, the recreational "Male Dom fem sub" culture seems positively to celebrate it, reminding us that even in its more far-reaching forms it is ultimately only a game, to end at the whim of the sub, who can at any time stop playing. This is not "power transfer", it is delegation, and players who heighten it by obsessive bindings and beatings ("fetish" activities, whether practised personally or viewed vicariously) illustrate what an inadequate substitute it is for a reality whose absence they feel intensely but recognise only dimly.