Have you seen reports on this new Netflix show Cuties? Looks like soft pedophilic porn. It's sick. Maybe with Ghislaine Maxwell behind bars, some on the left are trying to normalize pedophilia before a bunch of them get busted for it. Maybe they can get it legalized before they go to jail. Let's hope not.
What’s interesting to me here is the plot line of Cuties and the way this movie is being defended by progressives, especially given the way Netflix has marketed it.
The New Yorker tweeted this: “Cuties, which has angered scandal-mongers on the right, is the story of a girl’s outrage at, and defiance of, a patriarchal order.”
Let’s get this straight: the patriarchy (in this case a Muslim patriarchy but ignore that aspect for the moment) would seek to suppress sexualized dancing by 11 year old girls. The evil patriarchy does not want pre-teen girls in spandex acting like strippers. The twerking 11 year old and those who support her are on one side. The patriarchy is on the other.
Which side are you on? This is nuts. Could there be a better argument IN FAVOR of patriarchy? If defying the patriarchy means you have to let 11 year old girls hyper-sexualize themselves, then I’ll stick with the patriarchy. The New Yorker tweet sets this up as left/right issue, as an issue of defying or complying with the patriarchy. The anti-patriarchalists on the left are the ones who are putting children forward as sex objects. The patriarchalists on the right want to suppress the sexulization of 11 year old girls, in order to preserve their innocence. The lines have now been clearly drawn.
This is what I find astounding: Feminists have always wanted to smash the patriarchy because it supposedly oppresses women. But actually the patriarchy protects women (even from themselves at times). Patriarchs are protectors, not oppressors. The real battle is patriarchs vs predators. Feminism is built upon a lie about the patriarchy - that the patriarchy is bad for women. In reality, patriarchy is the best thing for women. It’s the best thing for all of us. It's the only view of the sexes that fully grounds duties and roles in our creational design. It's a view of the sexes that harnesses our sexual energies and channels them into lifelong monogamous marriage. It's the only view that protects children and preserves the institution of marriage.
We actually had far less abuse and exploitation of women under the old patriarchal order than we do now. Today, we have an epidemic of abuse, rape culture, porn, etc., because the patriarchy has collapsed. The patriarchy would never have allowed any of this; under the patriarchy, those people at Netflix producing Cuties would already be in jail. Patriarchs take pride in protecting women from predators. Patriarchy has always guarded women against exploitation. Patriarchy stands against the sexual revolution.
Everything is the opposite of what feminists say. They blame patriarchy for abuse. But actually where you find abuse, it is not because of patriarchy but the loss of patriarchy. Hollywood is the prime example. It’s the most sexually abusive culture in the world for women and children. But there are no patriarchs in Hollywood. Harvey Weinstein is not a patriarchalist, he’s not even a thin complementarian (ha!!). He’d probably self describe as a feminist or egalitarian; he was defended in court by a leading feminists, gave gobs of money to Democrat candidates, and I’ve seen several pictures of him living it up in the presence of Hillary Clinton. But he treated women like trash. It is actually feminism that leads to female oppression and exploitation. Does anyone think Hugh Hefner was into patriarchy? Absolutely not. He too was all about undermining the “sexually repressive” patriarchy. Feminists might have briefly opposed him in 1963 or so, but when died, feminists saluted him. They knew he was one of them, liberating women from the “evils” of patriarchal norms.
What about the Roman Catholic Church? Let's be honest: The vast, vast majority of abusive priests in the Roman Church have been gay. At the very least, they are grossly effeminate. They become abusers not because of too much masculinity, but too little masculinity. It's a case of toxic effeminacy. Rome's unbiblical requirement of celibacy for priests makes perversion inevitable.
In short, to keep women safe we must restore the patriarchy.
Is there a redemptive element in Cuties? Is there anything to sympathize with? I do not plan to watch it -- the previews were too disgusting for me. But Rod Dreher gives his take here. Obviously the Islamic/polygamy angle is a crucial part of the story, as is the role technology plays in sexualizing girls in our culture. In a sense, the movie generates sympathy for the young women, despite their bad choices, because of both the cruelty of Islamic culture towards women and the cruelty of America's technologized culture towards young girls. But my main concern here is that whatever problems Cuties might be trying to address -- and there are legitimate problems in these areas -- the movie actually makes worse by the including so much footage of young girls twerking away their innocence. Movies with this kind of imagery simply should not be made. One cannot fight the sexualization of children -- if that is supposed to be part of the point -- by sexualizing children. This is the height of progressive hypocrisy and idiocy. Perhaps the movie makers selected an easy target by making the context a Muslim patriarchy (complete with polygamy) rather than a Western, Christian patriarchy (which would be monogamous). But it seems quite obvious that the aim of the show is to undermine any kind of patriarchal order -- and certainly that is how the show's liberal defenders have taken it.
A final note: When I speak of the patriarchy positively here, I have in mind the social, familial and legal order that developed out the Bible and reflection on our created design, over the course of history in Western civilization, focused on the nuclear family. I do not care for the term, but know of no suitable alternative. I reject, say, Islamic or ancient Roman forms of patriarchy as corruptions of the created order. The kind of patriarchal order I am describing/defending was monogamous, and played a central role in the rise of what we call Christendom. You can learn more about it here, here, here, and here. Secular accounts of the benefits of the patriarchy can be found here and here. I am certainly not interested in defending any and all forms of patriarchy. Christopher Dawson explains how the early church evangelized the ancient Roman patriarchy, transforming it at the deepest level:
The reconstitution of Western civilization was due to the coming of Christianity and the re-establishment of the family on a new basis. Though the Christian ideal of the family owes much to the patriarchal tradition which finds such a complete expression in the Old Testament, it was in several respects a new creation that differed essentially from anything that had previously existed. While the patriarchal family in its original form was an aristocratic institution which was the privilege of a ruling race or a patrician class, the Christian family was common to every class, even to the slaves. Still more important was the fact that the Church insisted for the first time on the mutual and bilateral character of sexual obligations. The husband belonged to the wife as exclusively as the wife to the husband. This rendered marriage a more personal and individual relation than it had been under the [Roman] patriarchal system. The family was no longer a subsidiary member of a larger unity-the kindred or "gens." It was an autonomous self-contained unit which owed nothing to any power outside itself.
It is precisely this character of exclusiveness and strict mutual obligation which is the chief ground of objection among the modern critics of Christian morality. But whatever may be thought of it, there can be no doubt that the resultant type of monogamous and indissoluble marriage has been the foundation of European society and has conditioned the whole development of our civilization. No doubt it involves a very severe effort of repression and discipline, but its upholders would maintain that it has rendered possible an achievement which could never have been equalled under the laxer conditions of polygamous or matrilinear societies. There is no historical justification of Bertrand Russell's belief that the Christian attitude to marriage has had a brutalizing effect on sexual relations and has degraded the position of woman below even the level of ancient civilization: on the contrary, women have always had a wider share in social life and a greater influence on civilization in Europe than was the case either in Hellenic or oriental society. And this is in part due to those very ideals of asceticism and chastity which Bertrand Russell regards as the source of all our troubles. For in a Catholic civilization the patriarchal ideal is counterbalanced by the ideal of virginity. The family for all its importance does not control the whole existence of its members. The spiritual side of life belongs to a spiritual society [that is, the church]...Thus in one of the most important aspects of life the sexual relation is transcended, and husband and wife stand on an equal footing.
This patriarchal order has collapsed today which is why we have so much promiscuity, divorce, immodesty, pornography, sexual and violent abuse, homosexuality, transgenderism, fatherlessness, and now, the sexualization of children. The patriarchy was designed almost entirely around protecting women (including protecting their sexuality); this is why the patriarchal order even suppressed male sexual energy and channeled it toward marriage. However, this does not mean all forms of patriarchy are good. Some forms of patriarchy are just LARPing, e.g., trying to re-enact a bygone era, whether it be the 1950s or Little House on the Prairie. Early on in my ministry, I encountered some Christians who had bought into what I would call a form of hyper-patriarchy that taught fathers had complete authority over even their grown and married sons. Of course, it did not work, and I do not know of anyone trying to implement this kind of patriarchy today. One thing I noticed in that hyper-patriarchal environment is that sons really only had two choices: they could either rebel (in order to escape the tyranny) or they could become effeminate (because they did not get to "leave and cleave" and thus become rulers of their own households). This kind of hyper-patriarchy was also bad for the church because it put family above church and pressured the church to serve the interests of the nuclear family rather than the church enabling the family to serve the interests of God's kingdom. I have addressed hyper-patriarchy at greater length here, here, here, here and here.