Treatise Revisited

Woah, woah, woah, kids. I think I've almost come to half of a conclusion to part of my treatise question.

I asked a great friend whether he was a complementarian or an egalitarian. His perfect answer: "both."

I've been mulling this over and looking at it from a hundred different ways in my mind and I've almost come to a conclusion for myself. Last time I wrote on this (some five months ago), I didn't really have a conclusion because my head and my heart had different inclinations. Head said there's no reason why I should defer to a man considering my own intellect and generally rational approach to issues. Heart said yeah, but I want a man to step up and take responsibility and be a leader. My problem was reconciliation of these two organs and I think I've done it.

I think the feminism movement has had a bad effect on men. For everything it has done to promote women and equality of the sexes, it seems that many of the men who give way for this not only let women step up, but do in fact themselves step down. Put a different way, they seem to think that there's no room for both men and women to be simultaneously in first place.

Obviously there are some who aren't so passive (e.g. the friend who got me thinking about this). But I think that, with my general faith in women, I am confident that women can rise to the top without help, without any kind of affirmative action or bias in their favor. Men don't need to give up leadership in order for women to claim it as well. I have no worry for women because I'm dead confident that hell yes, I'll be a strong, influential leader. No problem there. What my heart was wanting is for men to be men. Be leaders, be strong, be influential. Rest assured, I will be too. In fact, you'll have to step it up to compete with what I have to offer. But you sure as hell better step it up. If you don't, it's almost just as disrespectful as discrimination against women.

Yes, I'm a libertarian. It all comes down to liberty in the end. Unfortunately, feminism has become to equality what a tariff is to free trade; it demands preference for one sex over the other rather than judging a person based on their individual qualities.

The question is this: if girls would be women, would boys be men?

I've never struggled with the concept of equality in a marriage. If both husband and wife are single-minded, rational, loving individuals, who does it matter who's "right"? They'll work it out in the end. What my heart was not wanting was for the man to be the weak one, deferring or abdicating any leadership responsibilities to, well, me. Not that I'm incapable. However, I would see him as not living up to his full potential and would therefore have less respect for him. And respect is pretty close to being #1 on my list of required emotions in a relationship (yes, rationalism and emotions meet!)

So my perspective is thus: I know what I'm capable of. And if we're in this together, I don't want some gimpy guy dragging me down. So you just better be prepared to match my effort, heck, maybe even make up for some of my weaknesses. Complement me. We'll complement each other.

That, my friends, is egalitarian complementarianism. And that is where this part of the treatise concludes.