A few days ago, Peter had an article up on deprogramming yourself from Madonna/whore complex, a form of black and white thinking in which there are good girls - Madonnas - who aren't all that interested in sex, and there are bad girls - whores - who love nothing more than a good pounding by just about anyone.
As his focus was more on the deprogramming side of things - so that you might optimize your sex life and dealings with women in a Western, post Madonna/whore type world - Peter only scraped the surface on where this mental model of female sexuality originates in his article, and I'd like to expand greatly upon both the background of Madonna/whore and the purpose that it serves here.
This is going to be a ride through some of the stranger and less-discussed aspects of human sexual history and civilization, so... I hope you're prepared for a lengthier piece.
The Precious Virgin
Throughout human history (though perhaps not human prehistory - and we'll talk about this in a moment), in nearly every time and place, men have prized virginity.
It was prized in ancient Mesopotamia, and Bronze Age Europe.
It was prized from the Levant to the Orient, from Cape Agulhas to the Arctic Circle.
Men in medieval Europe shivered in horror at the myth of droit du seigneur - "right of the lord" - in which supposedly lords would deflower the brides of their serfs on those serfs' wedding nights, before returning the brides the next day (there's no substantiated accounts of this actually happening, aside from Boece's rumors of mythical Scottish King Evenus III doing so, or Herodotus's much earlier tales of the again probably mythical Libyan Adyrmachidae tribe having this practice).
In a book I read many years ago by a Zulu witchdoctor, the author told of the "between-the-legs sex" that young Zulu engage in, the male rubbing his penis against the outside of the girl's vagina, bringing both to climax without breaking the hymen... but also of the passions that sometimes seized couples, and the need for the two to run away from their tribe to make a new life in a neighboring tribe to escape the punishment for losing the unmarried girl's virginity.
In Asia even today, many Chinese men still want virgin brides, and Korean men jealously guard their women against the corrupting, tainting influence of foreign males, chastising women they see with non-Korean men, and interrupting the conversations foreign men try to engage in with local women.
The "Madonna" has been a prize sought after and defended by men at least as long as men have possessed the written word... and perhaps some time before.
The Virgin's Traditional Sway
Sexual expression has been one of the most restricted and controlled phenomenon in all of civilization... as evidenced by its religions:
Deuteronomy 22:20-21:
“But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father's house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Al-Qur'an, 024.002-004
“The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment. Let no man guilty of adultery or fornication marry any but a woman similarly guilty, or an Unbeliever: nor let any but such a man or an Unbeliever marry such a woman: to the Believers such a thing is forbidden.”
Bhagavad-gītā 1.40
“When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Krishna, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vrsni, comes unwanted progeny.”
Those are quotes from the holy books of four of the world's five main religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
Biblical Judaism permits it in certain cases - provided you immediately marry the girl you've just slept with, of course ("If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins." Exodus 22:16-17).
Buddhism, alone among the world's major religions, doesn't have a problem with fornication (unless you're a monk). Despite their religions being okay with it, though, the men of Buddhist countries - Thailand, China - largely are not, at least not for the women they'll have as permanent partners; even today, in our rapidly changing times, many still want virgins as brides.
Cultures Without Madonna/Whore
In stark contrast to most of the major religions and much cultural practice throughout the world, there have also been numerous cultures where a woman's virginity is not prized.
In fact, today, there may be more cultures at or moving toward a Madonna/whore-free sexual-romantic culture than perhaps at any other time since man lived in small bands of (presumably) egalitarian hunter-gatherers.
These generally are matriarchal societies, which can be defined somewhat differently from patriarchal societies, as defined by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, a German feminist who studies matriarchies.
In a patriarchal society, men rule over women.
In a matriarchal society, men and women are equal.
In an article about the Mosou, the matriarchal society mentioned by Peter in his article on Madonna/whore complex, a visitor to the Mosou makes the following observation:
“Men and women are very much equals, but the women are just a little more in charge.”
Another clearly matriarchal society, much closer to home for those of us in the West, is that of American blacks, where in 2013, 72% of children are born to unwed mothers. The term "black matriarchy" has been coined to describe the African American family structure, although it wasn't always this way; in 1880, 3 out of 4 black American families were comprised of a mother, a father, and two children.
However, as black Americans' marriage rates have fallen, their rates of childbirth have remained the same - causing a shift in the structure of black families and black culture.
Some (though not all) Native American tribes are also matriarchal - such as the Iroquois, with a male chief elected by women, and a culture of serial monogamy, with marriages, divorces, and re-marriages commonplace; and the Hopi, where traditionally women were the superior sex, although in modern times this superiority is fading down toward a more gender-equal society.
Native Americans, incidentally, have the second-highest single-parent household rate in the United States, with around 55% of children born to unwed mothers (the rate is 25% in the U.S. overall).
In Amazonian tribes in South America, it's common practice for women to marry strong men, but have numerous liaisons with other men. Researchers to some tribes have been surprised to find on DNA analysis that only half of women's children were from their "strong" husbands, with the other half coming from supposedly "weak" males who were less successful hunting and did not have as important roles in the tribe.
Many Pacific Island nations are matriarchal - the Philippines is a solidly matriarchal and better-known example, but there are plenty more examples throughout Oceania, too.
A phenomenon in African culture today is one of both men and women retaining multiple sex partners. The numbers on how prevalent this is vary from one study to the next; self-reporting is apparently not a reliable indicator of what's actually going on in the field. Different parts of the continent appear to be more patriarchal in culture, and others more matriarchal.
Penis size is another signal thought to indicate an evolutionary response to differing levels of female promiscuity - the larger the penis, the more efficient it is at scooping other men's sperm out of a woman's cervix (the glans - the head of the human penis - is specifically designed the way it is for this task alone). Africans and some South American natives have the largest penises; Asians the smallest. Europeans are in the middle. DNA analysis shows that around only 40% of all African males ever born have reproduced historically (while 80% of females have - twice as many); 60% of European males have reproduced (to 80% of European females); meanwhile, in Asia, it's been nearly 1-for-1 in terms of males reproducing to females.
The implication is that Asian culture has been the most historically monogamous (with one woman mating with one man), with the least amount of sperm competition between males, while African culture has been the least historically monogamous (with multiple women mating with one man, and other men failing to secure women and mate), with the greatest amount of sperm competition between males, necessitating larger penises to deposit sperm deeper in women's cervixes and more reliably scoop out other men's sperm be more sexually competitive (Europeans ranking between Asians and Africans in sperm competition and the size of their members).
To round out this section, modern Western culture - Europe, Canada, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand - appears to be heading toward - or is already in - a more matriarchal society, going by Goettner-Abendroth's definition, with societies that seem increasingly similar to that visitor's statement about the Mosou - men and women are very much equals... but the women are just a little more in charge.
Virgins, once precious in the West, have become, if not devalued, certainly well nigh impossible to find, and not something most men dream of having on their wedding nights any longer.
Yet, especially in the United States, the good girl / bad girl dichotomy of Madonna/whore complex remains a very common way of viewing women's sexuality, both by women and by men.
Are the times really changing; how much have they really changed if so... and, what are the effects on society of moving from a patriarchal to a matriarchal civilization?
Why Madonna Whore Came to Be
I grew up religious, and conservative. Although I thought the notion of no sex before marriage to be ridiculous, the idea of a virgin bride was one I cherished, until the realities of Western society so rudely tore me from my delusions of women who were "pure" and "chaste" and "only for me."
The realization that there are no "good girls" and "bad girls", but rather just girls, is one that can have very profound implications for a man... and I think much of this ties back to his time orientation.
For the man who is present-oriented, there is no better realization than that all women, given the right circumstances and conditions, are "whores" and that the "Madonna" is just an act, or, sometimes, sexual repression.
For the man who is future-oriented, however, this realization can come as something of a crushing blow. If all women are creatures of a highly sexed nature - curious, vivacious, lusty, and sexual - how realistic is it to plan a future with a committed partner in it?
The answer is: it's not.
When you fully discard Madonna/whore, it becomes impossible to truly commit to a "traditional" monogamous, knowing how things play out over time, and what women's true natures are... monogamy in a post-Madonna/whore society does not last.
And therein lies our answer to the question of, "If man started out largely egalitarian, why would a black-and-white, restrictive mental model of women's sexuality as divided between 'good girls' and 'bad girls' evolve?"
The answer, as with all things that evolve, is, "Because it's adaptive."
In this case, it's culturally adaptive.
Survival of the Fittest... Civilization
Hunter-gatherer tribes are, for the most part, egalitarian - which is how we're defining "matriarchal" here. Sexual mores frequently are loose, rather than rigid, and there are few hunter-gatherer tribes where a woman might be, say, lashed or stoned for giving up her virginity.
At one point, 10,000 or 15,000 years ago, the world was awash with matriarchal, egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribes, and no doubt some more patriarchal ones too, as we see with Native Americans - a mix of egalitarian, matriarchal tribes, and more rigid patriarchal ones.
Flash forward to several thousand years ago or so, and the matriarchal tribes had largely disappeared.
They'd been replaced in Northern Africa and Asia Minor by the patriarchal Egyptians, Hittites, Phoenicians, Persians, Sumerians, and Babylonians. They'd been pushed out of Europe by the Greeks, the Romans, the Goths, and the Gauls. They'd surrendered Asia to the Chosun, the Yamato, the Chin, and the Han. Soon they would yield present-day Latin America to the Olmec, Aztec, Inca, and Maya.
How did the patriarchal societies outcompete the matriarchal ones?
Simple: the men in patriarchal societies are more motivated to build and compete than the men in matriarchal ones.
In a matriarchal society, when you acquire goods or property or any other major boon, you share it with everyone. One of the strangest (and most jarring) concepts for Western men marrying Philippine women, for instance, is the expectations of their new wives' relatives that they will help pay the bills for the whole family: pay off their debts, buy them cars, buy them houses... lots of nice things.
In a matriarchal society, wealth is distributed, because the most important goal is making sure that everyone is equal, and everyone is taken care of. One person having significantly more than others is frowned upon as selfish and bad, because this upsets the egalitarianism of the group.
Conversely, in a patriarchal society, whatever you make, build, find, or earn, you keep.
Patriarchal societies use their male members as producers, and their female members as prizes and rewards to their male members compete for in order to drive the production of those male members.
You build an invention that allows you to grow twice as many crops as everyone else? Well, instead of giving away the extra crop to friends and family, as you would in a matriarchal society, you keep it for yourself and your children, leading them to be healthier and stronger; or you sell it, generating more wealth for yourself, allowing you to make even more improvements to your farming process, or secure for yourself a prettier wife than you'd otherwise have been able to get.
In a patriarchal society, because you keep what you produce, rather than spread it around, men are incentivized to up their production, in order to afford themselves better lives... and better wives.
A patriarchal society harnesses men's competitive instincts and focuses these on building, producing, and inventing... largely in order to secure a "good girl" wife with whom to breed.
Madonna/whore is a natural product of this. Men don't want to work for the "whore" - which is, in fact, a truer representation of women's unrepressed sexual nature. Why work to get something that everybody else has had a piece of too, and whom you're unlikely to be able to control the sexual resources of? Not so hot a deal.
But men will work for their very own Madonna. If a man can work hard, and make something of himself, and end up together with a beautiful, pure, virginal wife, just for him... now there's something to work for.
From the woman's side of things, because it's more "every man for himself, every woman for herself" in a patriarchal society (instead of the "everybody for everybody else, and let's all be happy together and free!" way of doing things in a matriarchy), women compete for the more productive, successful men by championing their "Madonna" sides and suppressing (or hiding) their "whore" sides... and by "slut-shaming" other women as "whores", too, to undercut the competition.
The inevitable outcome of all this at the societal level, of course, is that off the backs of its fiendishly productive male members, competing as they are for its female members, the patriarchal society ends up inventing chariots and recurved bows and the ability to smelt harder metals and create supply chains that cross greater distances and farming technology so productive that large numbers of that society's members are freed from having to work the land...
... and eventually, the members of the matriarchal societies either immigrate to the patriarchal societies in search of a better life, or are crushed under the chariot wheels of their more powerful, technologically advanced, and better organized patriarchal cultural peers.
That's why, in a continent that was likely once predominantly matriarchal and egalitarian in prehistoric times, the matriarchal Mosou today comprise 40,000 individuals, while the patriarchal Han Chinese constitute 1.3 billion.
What's Best for the Individual?
Now here's an interesting question.
Is a patriarchal society better for the individual?
Or is a matriarchal society superior?
And the answer is...
In a matriarchy, the top shelf men (the "elites") are unquestionably better off - marriage restrictions become significantly looser (or non-existent), women are free to pursue sexually the men they're interested in most (which is these men), and all a man really needs to do to get by is the bare minimum to survive, rather than work hard all day
In a matriarchy, women are also better off - the kind of committed, monogamous relationships you see in patriarchal societies dissolve and disappear, but women don't yearn for these, or need them - they are supported by family members and, frequently, the society's government, and in exchange they get to pursue liaisons with the most powerful, sexy, desirable men, instead of having to accept a wife role with a lesser man (since the most desirable men are fewer in number than the larger numbers of beautiful women, and are hotly contested by them), as is the order of the day in a patriarchy
However, in matriarchies, average and lower caliber men are worse off - while most of the women are chasing around and competing with each other for the top shelf men's affections, average and lower caliber men are left to compete for the table scraps - those few remaining women willing to consider them as mates. Many of these men become sexually frustrated - there's often a "release valve" in matriarchal societies for men like this; they either go off to war and die, thus thinning out the ranks of men available to the women, or they split off and form their own splinter tribes (hopefully, for their sakes, with a few women willing to go with them)
So, elite men win big in matriarchies (which, if you're improving yourself in all the ways prescribed on this site, includes or will at some point include you).
Women also win in matriarchies, although not quite as big - instead of being trapped with a lower caliber guy they have all to themselves, they're now sharing a higher caliber guy with other women, and being provided for by themselves, their families, or the government.
Average and lesser men, however, are the big losers in matriarchies. Traditionally, enough men died in battle that things would even out. There needs to be a release valve for killing off or otherwise disposing of the teeming numbers of desperate, ignored men for a matriarchy to function properly, however.
Matriarchies suck for most guys.
For some guys, they're awesome.
And for most women, they're better / less repressive than a patriarchy is.
The problem is that collectively, they're much less effective societies than patriarchies are.
Because they elevate the emotional needs of the individuals collectively as all-important and focus on the satiation of individual happiness and feeling goals, they ignore the things that lead to larger collectivist practical objectives - things like encouraging production, a work ethic, inventiveness, and innovation, that lead to less individual happiness but more cultural flourishing.
There's been much speculation in scientific circles about why mankind needs religion; it's so widespread that it's clearly adaptive.
My argument for why it does is this: because without religion, people become focused on their immediate wants and needs... and societies devolve into peaceful, unchanging, egalitarian matriarchies that are easily surpassed and supplanted in time by the slow, steady grind of the driven, motivated, and always-evolving patriarchy next door.
The West's Struggle with Madonna/Whore
By this point in this article, you're probably arriving at the same conclusion I have: the Western world is becoming a matriarchy!
Slowly but surely.
It isn't there yet. Not all of it. There are still plenty of patriarchal enclaves. The IT sector and Silicon Valley is one that's still strongly male, and strongly innovation-focused, for instance.
The military-industrial complex continues to supply innovation, advances, and new development.
But if you look at many large corporate structures, you'll see what I mean: businesses that used to be lean, mean, competitive machines, with zero tolerance for sniveling nancy boys who couldn't keep up with the rip-roaring pace of doing business have become increasingly bloated, bureaucratic enterprises in many ways more concerned with the comfort, equality, and equal opportunities of their employees than they are with their competitiveness (of course, survival of the fittest applies to businesses, too; and over time, most of these top-heavy corporations succumb to leaner, hungrier, less egalitarian competitors, who themselves become big and entrenched and fat and happy, and then eventually are eaten up in turn by newer, leaner, hungrier, less egalitarian firms).
If you pay attention to the media, you'll see this all over, too: there's been a HUGE push into "being inoffensive" or "being politically correct", which is another way of saying "being egalitarian": let's not offend anyone, because everyone has feelings.
The West's struggle with Madonna/whore complex really began in the 1960s with the sexual revolution. Women fought for the right to be "whores" - sexually liberated - but not be judged as "whores", but rather just as "women."
The message was: your view of women as either "good girls" or "bad girls" is wrong; we're just girls!
And girls want to have fun.
However, as 1969's Summer of Love showed, it wasn't quite that simple - many people went to San Francisco expecting bucket loads of wild, free, uninhibited sex, only to find that women soon became attached, and started wanting to appear more conservative, and get more traditional relationships with their newfound paramours.
Many men left San Francisco disappointed that year.
The problem Western society has with Madonna/whore is this: Western society is NEITHER fully patriarchal NOR fully matriarchal... and as such, women are constantly flipping back and forth between whether they can cast off Madonna/whore and live freely and egalitarian, as they would in a matriarchy, or whether they need to throw on the veil of the Madonna in order to secure a good provider husband and protect themselves from the judgment of men and other women, as they would in a patriarchy.
Western society is on the road to becoming matriarchal... but it isn't completely there yet.
And this transition period makes for a pretty maddening and confusing time for members of BOTH sexes.
Will the West Lose the Madonna Whore?
We just looked at how the Madonna/whore complex originated (as a mechanism used to increase men's production in patriarchal societies, and for women to secure the best husbands in patriarchal societies), and how it's become dysfunctional in a transitional society like the West is (with women sometimes wanting to cast off the repressive "Madonna" role, and other times still adopt it).
The last two questions worth asking on this topic are these, and I'll address them below:
Will the West ever completely do away with Madonna/whore? and
Should YOU remove a Madonna/whore mindset... or retain one?
The Future of the West
Ancient Rome, after conquering much of the known world, entered a period known as the Pax Romana - the "Roman peace." Because Rome's military was so mighty, and its technology so great, it held sway over the entire Western world, serving as a sort of world police force, quelling rebellions and helping out friendly rulers, and otherwise keeping the world a safe, comfortable place for its citizens.
A Roman citizen could walk across the face of the civilized world without fearing for his safety in Rome's heyday... all he had to say was civis Romanus sum, and anyone who was listening would demur: "I am a Roman citizen."
As Rome became more accustomed to peace, its citizens, over the course of generations, began to place less importance on military and technology and warfare and competition; in a peaceful nation, these things become increasingly irrelevant. The citizenry began to put more emphasis on egalitarianism and personal freedom; on pursuing personal dreams and ambitions. Like Greece before it - about which historians complained that "the women are becoming like men, chasing down casual sex with little concern for consequences" - the social current shifted to one more of a relinquishing of old social restrictions and constraints, and a freeing of the people to do as they like with no social repercussions.
Roman society gradually shifted from patriarchal to matriarchal.
As the armies crumbled and Rome lost its technological edge to leaner, hungrier, more driven competing nations at its borders - new civilizations, like the Ostrogoths and Visigoths - the Eastern Roman Empire split off to secure itself in a newer, more dangerous world, while the Western Roman Empire sunk down into oblivion.
Today, while Italian men often appear bold, sexual, and dominant, Italy remains a relatively egalitarian nation, and it has as well never regained the splendor it once had, leaving that instead to first the other European powers, and later the United States.
Italian women receive higher pay than their American working women peers, and are generally the real decision-makers at home.
Even on their deathbeds, Italian men, ever the momma's boys, cry out for their mothers as they pass - a cry of "Mamma mia!" or, sometimes, "Madonna."
Pax Americana
Has the long peace (not including a handful of distant foreign wars, and a few acts of domestic terrorism) shifted the United States onto an inevitable plunge into matriarchal territory?
It would seem so. Europe, in many ways, actually appears to be farther along on this road than the U.S. is - large numbers of entitlement programs, a loss of Europe as a real center of innovation (a position it'd held since the Renaissance, when it inherited it from the Arab world), and opening up sexual mores.
If history is a predictor, then, the West likely rests on its laurels for a century or two, enjoying the fruits of its intense labors during its more patriarchal times, but eventually is surpassed by leaner, hungrier, more driven competitors... and perhaps conquered, or perhaps just left forgotten by the wayside, as Italy largely has been, to break down and squabble amongst itself.
If this is the course the West eventually takes - and who's to say if it is for sure; Americans have been complaining that declining morals were going to tear their country apart since the time of the Puritans, but the nation still seems to be going pretty strong - that raises the question of, "Who's to blame?"
Is it the women?
Is it the men?
Is it some subsection of the women or the men - like, radical feminists, pushing women to be more masculine, or the opportunistic playboys who came along and gave the women the sex and excitement they needed to abandon the more average men, or is it the more average men for failing to see what women needed and become it?
The truth is, we no more control our own behavior than we get to choose where or when we're born. We are the products of our eras and environments.
A nation that knows excessive peace is always going to trend matriarchal. Without the need of male innovation and invention to defend its borders from invading neighbors, there's no need to work so hard to stay safe and ahead of the pack. And when people get ahead, the natural tendency is to take their feet off the gas, kick back, and learn to enjoy life again.
Greece did not become a dominant world power until Darius and Xerses invaded Greece and forced it to fight or die for its survival, and doubtless changed the outlook of its entire populace.
Rome became a dominant power because it was so used to having to fight for survival.
Britain, an island nation off the coast of mainland Europe, eventually controlled a quarter of the world's land area, giving rise to popularity of the phrase "The sun never sets on the British Empire" - a phrase traced back to Xerses's Persia - only after centuries of near-constant warfare - either civil, or with other European powers.
Nations become great as the result of conflict, then grow soft and fade into obscurity as the result of the peace that greatness brings.
The Future of Madonna/Whore in the West
Madonna/whore is in many ways already much faded from many parts of Europe. As Europe has moved toward a matriarchal social structure, acceptance of women's inherent natures as sexually curious and free creatures has become widespread, and sexual repression has dried up.
I suspect this trend will continue in both Europe and the United States; I suspect that 100 years from now, Westerners will struggle to understand that concept of "slut" or why women would be shamed for having large numbers of partners.
There is much good in this, for individual women and elite men, and some bad, too, for more average men, and for the society's production and competitiveness as a whole.
The "breakdown of the nuclear family" will be bad in some ways - boys that grow up without fathers are more likely to have problems in school, both academically and behaviorally. But, once the transition is made, I think you'll start seeing more women like this one in Slate who want to raise a child on their own without having to worry about "the complications a husband can bring," and you may see a Western woman's male relatives step in to help in parenting duties, as children's uncles do (fulfilling the "father" role) in the Mosou.
Cycles in all things. You cannot change it; there's nothing you can do about it. Unless some great new enemy arises, with better technology and superior arms, the West is unlikely to change course; and even if it was surpassed, momentum would be on the surpasser's side, and the West would be unlikely to catch up.
It would, instead, be more prudent for the West to be warm and friendly and amenable to the new power, and keep its head down and nose clean, as Italy largely did with the remainder of Europe once surpassed.
The people of the West will live on. There will probably be no great disaster that destroys them, or invader that crushes them.
The West will enjoy its twilight, and then have its golden years, and these will last for several millennia, if the empires of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean tell us anything.
Then, some day, perhaps, as happened with the Caliphate in old Mesopotamia, new blood will be injected, some new religion will call the people to patriarchal arms, and the society will rise to greatness once more.
Your Choice: Madonna/Whore, or Not?
I'm unconvinced that shedding Madonna/whore is really a "choice" at all, actually.
More like an event thrust upon a man by the reality of the world he faces, in contrast with the fantasy of the world he's sold growing up.
Our cultural traditions still descend from those of a patriarchal society, where Madonna/whore was the norm:
There is one true "The One" for each of us
Marriage is happily ever after, and indefinite / unending
Sex is something shared by people who love each other, in matrimony
These tides are changing, and people who hew the closest to these "old-fashioned" ideas are considered old-fashioned (and naïve) themselves. But it's still popular to discuss these ideas, often in debate-like form: whereas in the past, the conversation was, "Of course it's this way!" the conversation now is, "Do you think it really is this way? It sure doesn't seem like... but in the end, I think it still is!"
This appears to be the transitional stage on the road to the discussion becoming, "Remember when people used to think of things this way? How quaint!"
Unless you're living in a small town in a conservative region of your country, you're unlikely to have many people around you who still champion these old-fashioned ideas anymore, and much more likely to have people around you who consider these ideas of women and relationships to be outmoded, unrealistic, and fantastical.
What that means, of course, is that you probably won't be able to hang onto them, the older you get and the more exposure to the rest of the Western world you receive.
I was never able to. I fought against the idea that there are not "good girls" out there; this had to be the message of jaded men, out of touch with reality, I thought.
This is the message of men who only ever meet whores.
But experience is a great teacher, and what I learned with inexperienced girls was that the ones who behave like "good girls" are really just repressed girls... and that, in today's world, it's a fool's errand (and perhaps morally dubious) trying to keep them repressed.
At some point, every girl decides she ought to watch Sex and the City, because why not? ... or you give her such good sex that she realizes sex is a good thing, and not a bad one, and begins to wonder what it'd be like with that guy, or this guy, or that one over there...
... and you realize there are no "good girls"; only just "girls", and girls are the way girls are.
Long Term Relationships: Still Possible?
The transitional stage the West is in makes for some stickiness in thinking about relationships. If you think solely in terms of "some women are good girls, and some women are bad girls," there's a very good chance at some point that life gives you a rude and unwelcome wake-up call.
Conversely, if you hew too closely to an "All women are wild sexual deviants!" mindset at heart, your views of women will clash with how they want to be viewed much of the time, especially in long-term relationships... women still aspire to these, and they are very much aware that relationships don't really work all that well when the man doesn't think you're a Madonna.
I think the way things break down in the West in reality right now is like this:
Women start off sexually repressed
At some point, many/most women rebel against this repression, and undergo a sexual awakening. If a woman is sexually experienced when you meet her, she's likely already gone through this process; if she is not, and you are good in bed and do not have a highly conservative worldview, there's a good chance she both comes to enjoy sex a lot more and comes to be a lot more comfortable with it, and goes through her awakening with you
Past the 2 year drop (or before, if her attraction / respect for you in the relationship was not as strong), and you do not have children with her / she is not pregnant, expect to experience a sharp rise in boredom from her and a spiking in freedom-seeking or replacement-seeking behavior, as she looks to rebel against a relationship that is "not working anymore"
If you do have children, expect freedom-seeking or replacement-seeking behavior somewhere between 7 and 10 years after the birth of your last child, unless she experiences menopause before this time period (e.g., your last child is born only several years prior to her entering the post-menopause phase, when women's sex drives take a big, permanent dip as the ovaries shut down and hormone levels crash)
Long-term monogamy (or, in extreme patriarchal societies, polygyny, where powerful men have multiple wives) - which is something that most people emotionally still seek in the Western world - really only arises in solidly patriarchal societies, where single women past a certain age are shunned socially as spinsters or undesirables, and where women need men's financial support to survive.
In more egalitarian societies, where women are capable of providing for themselves or where the government provides for them, serial monogamy is the norm; a man and a woman come together for a while, produce offspring, then split apart and move onto new partners. Of course in these societies there are still the same intense falling-in-love emotions at the commencement of new relationships, and both partners think they will always be together at the outset... it simply ends up that, in the end, they eventually split apart.
In the West, things aren't cut and dry - a long-term relationship is not guaranteed to ever end, like it usually is in a full-on matriarchy.
However, neither is it guaranteed to last indefinitely; the divorce rate in the West today speaks to this quite convincingly, and the serial monogamy of dating and breaking up, dating and breaking up that occurs outside of marriage stands to evidence of this even more dramatically (in full-on patriarchies, men not infrequently end up marrying for life one of the first women they ever court).
What If You Want Forever?
I'll leave you with a parting thought: what if you want "forever"?
People's behavior is largely constrained and directed by their environments.
Women from patriarchal societies - where Madonna/whore is strongly entrenched - that move to more matriarchal societies - where Madonna/whore is weaker, or nonexistent - liberalize over time and become increasingly less sexually repressed and conservative. You can see this with foreign women who move to Western Europe or North America; when first arriving, they're often quite conservative, but after a little time spent in-country, this changes, often dramatically.
Conversely, women from more matriarchal societies who move to patriarchal societies trend more conservative. I've had Western women I met abroad who were living abroad in strongly patriarchal societies who confessed to me they hadn't had relationships in years, but not long after moving to their new, far less egalitarian homes, they soon craved for and found themselves in committed monogamous relationships.
Women are not born "good girls" or "bad girls", or "Madonnas" or "whores". Some have stronger sex drives than others; and some have higher thrill-seeking or novelty-seeking behaviors. These women are more likely than others to throw off the harness Madonna/whore complex imposes on them when given the opportunity, but in a liberal enough society most women will throw this off, and in a conservative enough society most women will not.
If "forever" is your goal... if you want an everlasting relationship with a girl highly unlikely to ever want to leave or stray or become a sexual experimentalist...
... don't try to fight the environment you're in, and convince a woman that she should behave the way you want her to behave despite the way everything is structured around her and despite what everybody else around her is doing, or try to find a woman who hasn't awoken sexually yet and struggle to keep her repressed, despite all odds.
These things are losing battles.
Instead, if you want forever, put yourself in an environment where "forever" is encouraged, and sexual freedom is discouraged and looked down upon.
Or, if you want sexual freedom, put yourself in an environment where freedom is encouraged, the individual's pursuit of personal fulfillment and satisfaction is esteemed more highly than anything else, and the mantra of equality for all allows women to not worry about needing men for the long term or needing to maintain themselves as "Madonnas" in order to be the kind of women men want to invest in long term.
Fight society, and you will lose. Try to pick up women in a strongly patriarchal society like the Arab Muslim world, and you will be very disappointed. Try to get a faithful "good girl" who will never awaken, grow curious, or stray in a more matriarchal society, and you will be fighting an uphill battle against all of her friends and relatives and the media she consumes.
Don't fight society. Instead, pick the region or society with the values you want - sexual liberation, or sexual conservatism - and build your life within it.
This was a guest post by Chase Amante, from his blog.