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 is owned by a man. He should rule her and she should obey 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 owner's command is vicious. Women who defy their owners ruin society, including their own lives.
A woman's owner 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 owner 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 owners.
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 to her owner 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 with her owner 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) resists all tendencies for the sexes to have different roles, seeing them as (or wanting them to be) interchangeable.
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 exaggerations get uttered and written, the more they get believed.
On the Bible's words about this, see Christian Psephogynism.
For other details see Psephogynism.