We live in a society with soft pretensions to self-knowledge, decency, democracy and the respect for human rights. The illusion is becoming more difficult to sustain. The tangle of pathology revealed by increasing rates of theft, violence, addiction, demoralization, familial breakdown, and educational failure, once confined to the fringe, has expanded to most parts of society. Political, social and economic remedies put in place to respond to this problem have been ineffective because they ignore the defects in the current sexual constitution of society.

Anthropological studies of sexual configuration and cultural survival suggest that the creation and continued existence of any society depend more on its sexual constitution, than on how it organizes its economic, social or other structures. The sexual constitution of any society refers to the basic principles, which govern how that society recognizes the fundamental differences in sexual character between men and women in its social, political and moral traditions and practices.

Sexual energy animates most human activities and connects every person to a family and a community and provides the thread, which connects the past with the future. Sex is the life force and cohesive impulse of society. The very character of a society, which determines whether that society will live or die, will be deeply affected by how sexuality is expressed, denied, propagated, and sublimated. When sex is devalued, deformed, and propagandized, as in contemporary society, the quality of life declines and the fabric of society deteriorates.

Stable societies adopt a bi-polar sexual constitution, which is based on the observation that constructive human sexuality is either male or female.

While men appear to exercise a conspicuous power in society or the workplace, realistic assessment suggests that very few men and fewer women exercise real public or private power. Most people realize their real gratification not in business or government but in the domestic and sexual arenas, where women exercise a deep and inexorable power over men. While the female body is full of internal potential and the promise of nurturing new life, the male body offers no sexual fulfillment comparable to that which can be experienced by women and a smaller proportion of the male’s life is devoted to the long-term cyclical dimensions of sexual activity.

The family is the central unit of a stable sexual constitution. It socializes males, reduces male sexual insecurity, and teaches them to subordinate their short-term energy and sexuality to the long-term rhythms and perspectives of female sexuality. It is very effective in socializing males and helping them develop the positive qualities including self-respect, character, and a sense of confident masculinity, which create the durable patterns of individual motivation needed for the long-term survival of society.

Many problems in western societies are due to the failure of male socialization, which has resulted from the breakdown of the family. New generations of insecure unsocialized males find other ways to assert their masculinity through group violence and short-term, self-destructive male sexual activity. Males, who cannot attract women in traditional ways, resort to sex and violence. In populations where women outnumber the men, the lack of eligible males creates a situation in which short-term male sexuality dominates. Far from socializing the male, such women become subject to the shallow and compulsive sexuality of the male, bear illegitimate children, and begin new cycles of fatherless families.

Perhaps the most severe example of effects of a breakdown of the sexual constitution can be found in the American inner city. Contrary to popular opinion, the underlying causes of the urban crisis are not due to race but result from the increase in male sexual insecurity caused by serious flaws in the sexual constitution. As stated by Edward Banfield in his book The Unheavenly City, hundreds of thousands of young, unsocialized black males have grown up blighted with “short-time horizons.” They have not acquired the maturity and masculine assurance necessary to submit their short-term perspectives to long-term female sexuality. Much social devastation results from their attempts to validate their existence by imposing male patterns on women.

The urban crisis is just one manifestation of the general sexual disorder of society caused by grave flaws in the sexual constitution. Failure to adopt policies which promote male confidence and family creation will doom society to years of demoralization and anarchy.

(Michael Farrell is a professor at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres and an occasional contributor to The Interim).