Metrosexuality and Family Values

Bilawal Bhutto's selfie with Paris Hilton.

In the light of my limited experience with the Western culture, I have come to realize that a fully functional family is hard to find in the modern Western societies. Coming across a functioning family unit is more of an exception than a norm in the Western culture.

Most Western women with whom I have interacted are generally divorced, single mothers who are raising their children all by themselves; while the men folks either don’t get married at all, or even if they do get married under some momentary impulse or infatuation, they tend to leave their wives and kids behind them and either run away with their newfound girlfriends or they are otherwise non-committal in their relationships.

Although this behavioral infidelity can be found in both genders but it is much more prevalent in metrosexual men of modern societies. Since women are physiologically built to raise children and since they occupy a comparatively insecure position in male-dominated cultures, therefore they generally take their relationships seriously.

Unlike the traditional Eastern societies which are family-centric, the Western societies are mostly individual-centric. Reductive individualism and runaway hedonism might sound theoretically alluring but this unnatural state of affairs cannot last for long.

Birth rates all over the Western world are already dwindling, and in some countries, population growth rate is in negative. There was a time that population growth rate in Europe was so prolific that the Europeans had to colonize Americas and Australia to settle their surplus population. But now, the only thing sustaining their population growth rate is not their natural birth rates but the immigration of people from the developing world to the Western countries.

The institution of a fully functional family is the cornerstone of a healthy society and if the social environment is not conducive to the development of such a pivotal institution, then there is something fundamentally wrong with our social axioms.

Marriage is basically a civil contract meant for the purpose of raising children and family; and if one of the partners leaves the other midstream, it creates an unmanageable burden on the other partner (generally women) to raise children single-handedly. Sweeping such serious issues under the carpet that affect every individual and family on a personal level by taking an evasive approach of ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ will only exacerbate the problem.

Individualists generally posit that an individual holds a central position in society; the way I see it, however, being human is inextricably interlinked to the institution of family. The only things that separates human beings from the rest of species is their innate potential to acquire knowledge, but knowledge alone is not sufficient for our collective survival due to excessive and manifest intra-special violence in the form of conflicts and wars. Unless we have social cohesion -- which comes from love, compassion and empathy -- we are likely to self-destruct as specie.

The aforementioned empathy and altruism, however, are imparted by the institution of family, within which spouses love each other and their children, and in turn, children love their parents and siblings. This familial love then transcends the immediate environs of family and encompasses the entire humanity.

Thus, without the institution of family, there will be no humanity, or individual, in the long run. In order to reap the fruit of love, one first needs to sow the seeds of love. One cannot expect to raise loving and caring human beings with authority and teaching alone, only the institution of family has this unique gift of teaching love by practicing love.

Although family life in the Eastern societies isn’t as perfect as some of us would like to believe, but they are traditional societies based on agriculture-era value systems. Industrialization and consequent urbanization is the order of the day. These rural societies will eventually evolve into their urban counterparts.

My primary concern, however, is that the modern paradigm that we have conjured up is far from perfect in which divorce rates are very high and generally mothers are left alone to fend for themselves and raise their children single-handedly; consequently, giving rise to a dysfunctional familial and social arrangement.

Paradoxically, some social scientists draw our attention to the supposed ‘unnaturalness’ of the institution of family and the practice of polygamy and polyamory etc. in primitive tribal societies, but if we take a cursory look at the history of mankind, there have been two distinct phases of cultural development: the pre-Renaissance social evolution and the post-Renaissance social evolution.

Most of our cultural, scientific and technological accomplishments are attributed to the latter phase that has only lasted for a few centuries, and the institution of family has played a pivotal role in the social advancement of that era. Empirically speaking, we must base our scientific assumptions on proven and verifiable evidence and not some cock and bull stories peddled by self-styled anthropologists.

Regarding the erosion of the institution of family, I am of the opinion that it has mainly been the fault of the mass entertainment media that has caused an unnatural obsession with glamor and consequent sexualization of modern societies.

Regardless, modern liberals generally are educated and pacifist people. They abhor violence in all its forms and manifestations; so much so that they are appalled by the mere thought of murder, even if it is justifiable and legally sanctioned execution such as capital punishment. Some of the more ‘tender-hearted’ sorts go even a step further and give up eating meat by becoming vegetarians, whether as a matter of moral principle or for reducing weight is anybody’s guess.

I find it curiously intriguing, however, when some ‘bleeding heart’ liberals blatantly violate their own sacrosanct tenets by endorsing the practice of feticide in the form of abortion. What moral high-ground do they have despite their revulsion at capital punishment and animal slaughter when they endorse the gruesome practice of killing unborn babies?

Finally, it would be unfair to lay the blame squarely on the Western culture. The reason why people shy away from getting married and raising children has partly been the doing of modern economics. Industrialization and capitalism have created an unnecessary burden on the lives of individuals and families in modern times. The agriculture era used to be a labor-intensive epoch. Back then, a household with large number of children used to be a boon because the manpower was utilized for cultivation and farming.

After the industrial revolution and consequent urbanization, however, most of the physical labor is being performed by machines. Thus, the cost of raising and educating children in the post-industrial societies outweighs their utility and benefits, that’s why many middle-income families keep the number of children to a bare minimum to avoid financial burden.

Moreover, it has also been the preferred state policy of many Third World countries with large populations and meager resources to restrict the number of children to a minimum in order to reduce the burden on their developing economies, such as the one-child policy of China and the two-child policy of India and Pakistan.

Gender Identity as a Social Construct

The distinction between male and female genders is based less on their physiological traits and more on their respective mindsets. These mindsets, in turn, are a product of social expectations of behavior in a cultural milieu. It is expected from male members of a society to behave in a supposedly manly fashion and it is similarly expected from female members to act in a purportedly feminine manner.

But this emphasis on binary distinction of genders in a rural-agrarian setting served a purpose: the division of functions between male and female members, where women were expected to do housekeeping and nurturing children, while it was expected from men to produce food for the family. Although this distinction is still maintained, to a lesser or greater extent, in urban and industrialized societies, but a distinction based on division of functions is a hypothetical imperative: as means to achieve certain ends and not an end in itself.

Moreover, it would be normative to contend that in primitive tribal societies, women had the same social status as men. The nomado-pastoral and agricultural eras were the age of hunting-gathering, farming and strenuous physical labor, and it is a known fact that women are physically a weaker sex, that’s why we have separate sports and athletics events for men and women.

Women attained the status of equality after the onset of industrial revolution and a shift to mechanized labor, when the focus shifted from physical labor to intelligence and information; and when it comes to cognitive faculties, women are just as intelligent as men, if not more so.

Notwithstanding, instead of taking a binary approach to classification of genders, modern feminists now favor to look at the issue from the prism of a whole spectrum of gender identities. The way I see it, it should not be about being manly; rather, it should be about being human, which is the common denominator for the whole spectrum of gender identities.

When we stress upon manliness, it’s not manliness per se that we are glorifying, but the presence of feminine attributes in the socially-elevated male gender is something that we, as agents of patriarchal structure, frown upon. But such machismo is not a natural order of things, because more than the physical attributes, the rigid segregation of genders is a product of social constructions that manifest themselves in artificial cognitive and behavioral engineering of male and female mindsets.

In our formative years, such watertight gender identities and their socially-accepted attributes are inculcated in our minds by assigning gender roles, but this whole hetero-normative approach to the issue of gender identity is losing its validity in a post-industrial urban milieu, where gender roles are not as strictly defined as they used to be in the medieval agricultural societies.

More to the point, what are the virtues that are deemed valuable in women separately from the ones that are deemed desirable in men? If meekness, diffidence and complacency are disapproved in men, then why do we have double standards for separate genders? Self-confidence, assertiveness and boldness should be equally encouraged in both genders without discrimination.

However, the dilemma that we face is that the mindsets of individuals and gender roles are determined by culture, but if the society itself is patriarchal and male-dominated, then it tends to marginalize and reduce women to a lower social status. Therefore, a social reform is needed which can redefine "virtue" and the qualities that are deemed valuable in human beings should be uniform and consistent for both genders.

Regardless, if we study the behavioral patterns in the animal kingdom, a tigress is as good a hunter as a tiger; in fact, the females of most species are generally more violent than their male counterparts; because they fight not only for food, but also to protect their offspring. But how often do we find a violent woman in human history and society?

Excluding a handful of femme fatales like Cleopatra, bold women are a rare exception in human history. Thus, even though by nature, women are just as assertive and violent as men, but the patriarchy-inspired nurture and male-dominated culture have tamed women to an extent that they have unlearnt even their innate nature.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this fact: first, that it’s always nurture and culture which play a more significant role in determining human behavior compared to some far-fetched concept of essential human nature; and second, that essentially human nature is quite similar for both genders, it’s only the behavioral process of social construction of gender identity that defines and limits the roles which are deemed proper for one gender or the other.

Additionally, regarding physiological distinction between male and female genders, evolutionary biologists are of the opinion that such differences only have a minor importance. Even if we take primary reproductive organs, for instance, clitoris is regarded as a rudimentary penis in females and nipples in males are regarded as rudimentary breasts, a fact which proves beyond doubt that specialization of male and female reproductive organs is merely a mechanism to keep genetic material unimpaired by preference for meiosis division over repetitive and harmful mitosis reproductive division.

Moreover, it is generally assumed about males that due to the presence of testosterone, they are usually more aggressive and competitive than females. If we assess this contention in the light of global versus local character traits theory, however, testosterone only promotes a specific kind of competition: that is, competition for mating. When it comes to competing for food, however, males and females of all species exhibit similar levels of aggression and competition.

Therefore, it would be reductive to assume that the distinction between male and female attitudes and behaviors is more physiological and hormonal than it is due to the difference of upbringing and separate sets of social expectations of behavior that are associated with the members of male and female sexes.

Finally, there is no denying the fact that testosterone is primarily responsible for secondary sexual characteristics in the males of all species. Through the process of natural selection, only those males that have succeeded in mating are able to carry forward their genes, which proves that males with higher testosterone levels do have a comparative advantage in competition for mating, but its effect on attitudes and behaviors of animal species, and particularly in human beings with their complex social institutions and cultures, is tentative and hypothetical, at best.

Factors Responsible for the Erosion of the Institution of Family

Benazir Bhutto, Hillary Clinton and their children.

In the light of my limited online experience with the Western culture I have come to realize that a fully functional family is hard to find in the Western societies; they are more of an exception than norm. Most Western women with whom I have interacted are generally divorced, single moms who are raising their kids all by themselves; while the men folks either don’t get married at all, or even if they do get married under some momentary impulse or infatuation, they tend to leave their wives and kids behind them and either run away with their newfound girlfriends or they are otherwise non-committal in their relationships.

Unlike the Eastern societies which are family-centric, the Western societies are mostly individual-centric. Reductive individualism and runaway hedonism is all fine but this unnatural state of affairs cannot last for long; the birth rates all over the Western world are dwindling and in some countries the population growth rate is negative. Only thing sustaining their population growth rate is not their natural birth rates but the immigration of skilled work force from the East to the West.

The institution of a fully functional family is the cornerstone of a healthy society and if the social environment is not conducive for the development of such a pivotal institution then there is something seriously wrong with our social axioms. Although I reckon myself as a social scientist but the specialty of family and relationships is certainly not my cup of tea, therefore, I will leave this issue as an open question that needs to be mulled over. Denying the climate change and global warming, however, will lead us nowhere.

Regarding the civil unions and domestic partnerships whether or not they are arranged under the title of “marriage,” that’s just the difference of semantics, not the substance. My contention relates to the longevity of such relationships and the reciprocal duties of the partners. A marriage is a civil contract meant for the purpose of raising children and family; if one of the partners leaves the other midstream, it creates an unmanageable burden on the other partner to raise the children single-handedly. Sweeping such serious issues under the rug that affects every individual and family on a personal level by taking an evasive approach of “see no evil, hear no evil” will further exacerbate the problem.

Notwithstanding, individualists generally believe that an individual holds a central position in the society; the way I see it, however, being “human” is inextricably interlinked with the institution of family. Only things that separates humans from rest of the animals is their innate potential to acquire knowledge, but knowledge alone is not sufficient for our collective survival due to excessive and manifest intra-special violence; unless we have social cohesion which comes through love, compassion and empathy, we are likely to self-destruct as a specie.

That empathy and altruism, however, is imparted by the institution of family; within which spouses love each other and their children and in return children love their parents and siblings. That familial love then transcends the immediate environs of the family and encompasses the entire humanity, thus, without the institution of family there is going to be no humanity or individual in the long run.

Although the family life in the Eastern societies isn’t as perfect as some of us would like to believe, but those are traditional societies based on agriculture era value systems; industrialization and consequent urbanization is the order of the day, those rural societies will eventually evolve into their urban counterparts. My primary concern is that the utopian paradigm that we have conjured up is far from perfect in which the divorce rates are very high and generally mothers are left alone to fend for themselves and raise their children single-handedly, and consequently giving birth to a dysfunctional familial and social arrangement.

Moreover, some social scientists draw our attention to the supposed “unnaturalness” of the institution of family and polyamory et al in the primitive societies but if we take a cursory look at the history of mankind, there are two distinct phases: the pre-Renaissance social evolution and the post-Renaissance cultural evolution. Most of our cultural, scientific and technological accomplishments are attributed to the latter phase that has only lasted for a few centuries, and the institution of family has played a pivotal role in the social advancement of this era. Empirically speaking, we must base our scientific assumptions on the proven and visible evidence and not some cock and bull Amazonian stories.

Regarding the erosion of the institution of family, I am of the opinion that it is primarily the fault of mass entertainment media (like Hollywood) that has caused an unnatural obsession with glamor and the consequent sexualization of the modern societies. However, I have not studied the anthropological and sociological evolution of the institution of family in any detail; my area of interest has been in the role played by the institution of family on the nurture of the individuals, and in that regard techno-scientific progress alone cannot ensure the survival and well-being of individuals in the long run; unless we are able to rear individuals who, along with intelligence and knowledge, also possess love, compassion and empathy; and such sentiments cannot be taught in schools and colleges, which makes family an indispensable social institution necessary for our collective survival and progress.

Gender Identity in the Light of Evolutionary Biology

Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari.

The distinction between genders: masculine and feminine, is more of a social construct than it is an immutable physical division. A tigress is as good a hunter as a tiger. But the complexity of human existence is very different from all other species. We, as social beings, have developed advanced social institutions and culture.

The distinction between males and females is based less on their physiological traits and more on their respective mindsets. And these mindsets, in turn, are an outcome of social expectations of behavior in a cultural milieu. It is expected from the male members of a society to behave in a manly fashion; and similarly it is also expected from the female members of a society to act in a supposedly feminine manner.

But the emphasis on this binary distinction in a rural-agrarian society served a purpose: the division of functions between the male and female members; where the females were expected to do housekeeping and nurture the offspring. This distinction is still maintained, to a lesser or greater extent in an urban and industrialized society. But a distinction based on the division of functions is a hypothetical imperative: as means to achieve certain ends and not an end in itself.

Moreover, it is erroneous to assume that before the onset of monotheistic civilizations, women were somehow equivalent to men. That was an age of hunting-gathering, agriculture and strenuous physical labor and it is a known fact that women are physically a weaker sex, that’s why we have separate sports and athletics events for men and women.

Women attained the status of equality after the onset of industrial revolution, mechanized labor and then the beginning of “The Information Age,” when the focus shifted from physical labor to intelligence and information; and when it comes to cognitive faculties, women are just as intelligent as men, if not more so. Thus, blaming organized religions for sexism and misogyny in the medieval times is a bit unfair; the subjugation of women in that era had more to do with divisions of functions based on economics than religious beliefs, as such.

Regarding matriarchy, I believe, that it was a fringe phenomena; though, matri-lineage might have been a norm in some primitive societies but matriarchy -- the rule of the women -- was only an exception in the age of physical labor for the abovementioned reasons.

Additionally, while I agree with the feminist view that in egalitarian societies the role of women is just as important as men’s, if not more so, considering that they perform the pivotal job of raising children and families; however, I generally shun taking a normative approach towards scientific facts, because the treatment of disorder depends on the correct diagnosis of the problem. Romanticizing the past and singling out pieces of uncorroborated evidence that conforms to our preconceived biases will serve no other purpose than self-deception.

In the primitive tribal societies women, as a weaker sex, were treated as slaves and personal chattels. The organized religions gave them rights and the status of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. The modern feminism dates back only to the First World War when most of the male labor force in Europe either perished or became incapacitated for labor; it was only then that the force of circumstances necessitated the “liberation” of women and they began performing duties which were previously the sole prerogative of men.

Moreover, retrospectively applying modern standards to the millennia old social systems is very unfair; in their time the organized religions contributed to elevating the status of women. In modern times a rethink is definitely needed to bring about parity in the status of men and women but we must not underestimate the role played by the organized religions for the empowerment of women in the ancient times.

Notwithstanding, instead of taking a binary approach to the classification of genders, the modern feminists now favor to look at the issue from the lens of a whole spectrum of gender identities. The way I see it, it should not be about being “manly,” rather, it should be about being “human,” which is the common denominator for the whole spectrum of gender identities.

When we stress upon manliness, it’s not “manliness” per se that we are glorifying, but the presence of feminine attributes in the socially-elevated male gender is something that we, as the agents of patriarchal structure, frown upon. But such machismo is not a natural order of things, because more than the physical attributes the rigid segregation of genders is an outcome of social constructions that manifests itself in the artificial social engineering of the male and female mindsets.

In our formative years such gender identities and their socially-accepted attributes are infused in our minds through the technique of gender “Othering,” but this whole heteronormative approach towards the issue of gender identities is losing its validity in a post-industrial urban milieu, where the gender roles are not as strictly defined as they used to be in the pre-modern traditional societies.

More to the point, what are the virtues that are deemed valuable in women separate and distinct from the ones that are deemed desirable in men? If meekness, diffidence and complacency are disapproved in men then why do we have double-standards for separate genders? Self-confidence, assertiveness and boldness should be encouraged in both genders without discrimination.

However, the trouble is that the mindsets of the individuals and gender-roles are determined by the society, but if the society itself is patriarchal and male-dominated then it tends to marginalize and reduce women to a lower status. Therefore, a social reform is needed which can tweak with the definition of "virtue" and the qualities which are deemed valuable in human beings should be uniform and consistent for both genders.

Regardless, if we study the behavioral patterns in the animal kingdom, the females of most species are generally more violent than their male counterparts; because they fight not only for food but also to protect their offspring. But how often do we find a violent woman in the human history, or society? It’s a very rare exception. Thus, by nature women are just as violent as men; but the patriarchy-inspired nurture and the male-dominated culture have reduced them to an extent that they have even unlearnt their essential nature.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this fact: firstly, that it’s always the nurture and culture which plays a more significant role in determining human behavior compared to some far-fetched concept of essential human nature; and secondly, that essentially human nature is quite similar for both genders, it’s only the behavioral process of social construction of gender identity that defines and limits the roles which are deemed proper for one gender or the other.

Additionally, it is generally assumed about males that due to the presence of testosterone they are usually more aggressive and competitive compared to females. If we assess this contention in the light of global vs. local character traits theory, however, testosterone only promotes a specific kind of competition, i.e. competition for mating. When it comes to competing for food, however, as I have mentioned before, that males and females of all the carnivorous species exhibit similar levels of aggression and competition.

Therefore, it would be reductive to assume that the distinction between male and female attitudes and behaviors is more physiological and hormonal than due to the difference of upbringing and different sets of social expectations of behavior that are associated with the members of male and female sexes.

Finally, there is no denying of the obvious fact that testosterone is primarily responsible for secondary sexual characteristics in the males of all species. Through the process of natural selection only those males that have succeeded in mating were able to carry forward their genes, which proves beyond doubt that males with higher testosterone levels do have a comparative advantage in the competition for mating, but its effect on attitudes and behaviors of animal species, and especially the human beings with their complex social institutions and cultures, is tentative and hypothetical, at best.