Undead sexist cliches: Sexual equality destroys the natural order of things

That was the view religious conservative Douglas Wilson expressed in a piece reprinted by the unrelated Jared Wilson recently, as I covered in And: The reason we have so much rape is because society has imposed equality on the natural order where men rule and women submit. Unable to get the dominance fix they need, women fantasize about rape and men commit the crime.
As I noted at the link, this is bullshit, but this weekend it struck me it’s a particular kind of bullshit: A bullshit demand that the Wilson’s get society’s support for their brand of patriarchy.
The thing is, nothing about legal equality mandates that families exist that way. A lot of families don’t. The women believe God wants them to submit and so they choose to do so. Feminist enforcers are not going to bust into their house and force them to go out and walk or to have an equal say in the decision-making.
The catch, of course, is the words “choose” and “believe.” This kind of thing is only possible as long as the wife accepts it; if she doesn’t believe in it, or chooses not to accept it, then legally the husband can’t force her to do so. That, I’m pretty sure, is the sticking point: Equality doesn’t make it impossible to have a patriarchal complementarian marriage, but it makes it impossible to impose one on an unwilling woman.
As I noted in a previous And column, that’s why many conservatives struggle to stamp out feminism: If one women has the right to walk away from a domineering, abusive husband, all women do. Their wives do. And for men like the Wilsons, a world without guaranteed control over women is, it seems, a world in the grip of Satan.
More on misogyny here.