Let’s consider this: if there are two parties to a relationship and they are both 50% responsible for the state of the relationship, which party is responsible for keeping the relationship together? The answer of course is both. For a single party to be presumed responsible at the onset of problems, they would need to have at least 51% of the responsibility. Before someone can have 51% or more of the responsibility they need to have 51% or more of the power. This isn’t a radical proposition, we call it “preponderance of the evidence” in law. If the prosecution doesn’t cross the 50% threshold, the defendant cannot reasonably be found guilty.
In a relationship, the person who is “in charge” has the weight of responsibility, at least in terms of social judgments. This is because power should be paired with responsibility. Power without responsibility is tyranny and responsibility without power is scapegoating. The “passive” party in a relationship (traditionally the woman) may be better off if she lacks power because then she also lacks the presumption of responsibility: she doesn’t have to be put on the spot rhetorically when the relationship fails if she had less responsibility for that relationship. Short of adultery or severe insanity there is simply no way to hold the less powerful party responsible for a failed marriage. This benefits a woman because she needs protections against a man leaving her and her children.
In contrast, when a relationship is 50% the man’s responsibility and 50% the woman’s responsibility, any party can sever the relationship at any time and avoid the full weight of social judgment. The 50/50 split sounds equal in theory but in reality, the woman gets pregnant and the man does not. The woman ages faster than the man. This means that equality actually benefits the man. Not just a little bit; it benefits him a lot. It raises up a generation of men like “Christian Grey” who offer equality on the surface but below that, they are really offering women a chance to be their toy until they move on.
What looks like inequality on the surface is not always inequality. Women often need the rhetorical and social advantages that being “victims of the patriarchy” gives them. Otherwise they have only one choice: be a childless feminist who has slept with lots of men who all moved on to greener pastures. This is why most women who self-describe as feminists are just that. It’s also why feminism is facing dissension in its ranks; plenty of women want to have a family. The best way to get that is by playing the damsel in distress. That’s just how it is and it’s how it will stay.
Today we’re in the middle, or perhaps the tail end, of a sad state of affairs. People are expected to justify things like faith and are laughed at for honor but no one is expected to justify their lust. Lust breaks up families and damages society and no one presumes judgment against the men because they were only 50% responsible for the relationship, so it would be unreasonable to presume their guilt. Men never should have been freed from responsibility by giving up 1% of their power. How is that 1% of power the feminists gained working out for women today? Not well it seems.
This is also one of the problems with gay marriage. If two men or two women marry, they will naturally be 50% responsible each for the state of the relationship. Neither party can ever reach the 51% threshold because they are of the same gender. This means that neither party can be presumed responsible for the break-up of a gay marriage. Calling a gay marriage a marriage makes a mockery of traditional marriage because we presume that “equality” is better than “inequality” and the gay marriage is naturally more equal than the traditional marriage. The truth though is that “equality” is not a simple thing; sometimes it is better to be in a position of apparent weakness. If that were not so, we would have no western liberals or progressives today…
In sum, sometimes being “unequal” is actually better than being “equal” if that inequality engenders responsibility and creates a breeding ground for trust. I’m going to presume here that responsibility and trust have inherent value, though I suspect there are some out there who would challenge those positions, fortunately I have no interest in debating with them.
This also ties into questions of honor. I think that honor can be found in two sources, the first being an observance of rules when they are not individually beneficial to yourself and the second form of honor is when someone (such as a host or a husband) has power over another individual and lives up to the responsibility inherent to that power.
One of the reasons that people today seem so honorless is because our increasingly legalistic society tries to put everyone into 50/50 relationships. There’s no need for trust, no opportunity for honor, no organic consequences for lacking honor and therefore almost no one has or expects honor, even if they understand what it is.
Alexander Fāng 