Forced through the vice of contemporary Western wokery, modern feminism has come to demand something deeply unfair: that men abandon traditional expectations of women while retaining traditional expectations of men. A man is expected to provide like a traditional husband, sacrifice like a traditional father, and absorb risk like a traditional protector, only to be told that expecting commitment, support, cooperation, and respect in return is somehow oppressive.

That arrangement deserves a much less flattering description than equality.

Such feminism struggles to answer a simple question: what does a good man have a reasonable right to expect from the society, family, and relationship to which he commits himself? A feminism that meticulously accounts for his obligations while resenting that question has a serious intellectual problem.

The most serious consequence of this assault on reciprocity has been to shift marriage into a high-risk, low-reward proposition for men in which women have developed wholly disproportionate leverage to end marriages easily while then equally easily securing men's assets, financial support, and often primary child custody with that.

Just consider these data – in the United States (US) women initiate 70% of divorces, a figure that rises to over 90% for college-educated women!

This is not a win for women’s equality, as it is often read, but rather a breaking of the social contract between men and women – and the implications are not a victory over patriarchy but instead a set of effects that lead to higher rates of family break-up, financial insecurity, depression, anxiety, and long-term loneliness.

Societal data demonstrate that marriage provides significant advantages, with married individuals reporting much higher levels of happiness, longer life expectancies, and greater wealth accumulation than single adults. Furthermore, children raised in stable, married-couple households experience lower poverty rates and significantly better long-term academic and financial outcomes compared to those from divorced or single-parent families.

Yet even in the face of such evidence Western wokery continues to press the idea that traditional expectations of manhood are somehow toxic and that men collectively uphold a patriarchal system of unfair institutional power and economic privileges over women.

That just does not stack up. Modern societies continue to depend almost entirely on men to perform dangerous, physically demanding infrastructure jobs – like construction, logistics, and military service. Men account for approximately 92% of all fatal workplace injuries in the US – and something similar could likely be extrapolated to South Africa.

Woke feminism is way out of line therefore when female autonomy becomes exemption from reciprocity and male expectations become evidence of hostility. Men should face demanding standards but they should be permitted to expect demanding standards in return. There is something inherently good about a man wanting to provide. And there is something profoundly wrong about accepting his provision while treating reciprocal expectations of love, care, support, and affection as an affront to female independence. The fix is a return to traditional expectations of family structures.

Pierneef was one of South Africa's greatest artists, known for his paintings of South African vistas. This column named after him aims to do something similar — sketch the broad vistas of South Africa's domestic landscape.