There is symmetrical trust and there is asymmetrical trust. Assuming an equal level of trust, we have symmetrical trust when two people trust one another with respect to roughly the same things. We have asymmetrical trust, given an equal level of trust, when people trust one another with respect to fundamentally different things. Trust between people who differ significantly in age is typically asymmetrical, as is trust between people who differ widely in terms of their economic resources. This should be obvious.
What strikes me as rather interesting is that trust between married individuals of the opposite sex is inherently asymmetrical. And no amount of political ideology will change that.
The issue that brings this to the fore is pregnancy. When a woman brings a child into the world, she never ever has to wonder “Is new-born mine?” The affirmative answer here is settled by the nature of the sequence of events that transpire. The woman sees an infant coming out of her very own body. Women have epistemic certainty in this regard; for she sees an infant coming out of her body.
By contrast, it is manifestly clear that men have nothing even comes remotely close to epistemic certainty as to whether the baby which has been brought into this world by the woman they are with is theirs. Insofar as, the man knows that the baby is, this is via the woman. That is, he must trust her.
Oh, to be sure, paternity tests are possible; and a man can always insist on one. But demanding a paternity test is to trust what gravity is to a heavy object that has been knocked off the top of a building. To demand a paternity is to insist that one does not trust the woman; and the damage, irreparable in most cases, has thus been done.
So we have an immutable asymmetry between a woman and a man who are married to one another. At the most profound biological level possible, namely with respect to the issue of progeny, a man has to trust a woman; whereas a woman never has to trust a man.
You never hear anyone talking about this differential. In particular, you never hear women taking about the reality that men need to trust them in a way that women never have to trust men.
Sexism is no doubt real enough; and I would never want to suggest otherwise. But the point to which I am drawing attention is the most sublime truth that the complete end of sexism would not put an end to the asymmetrical trust that I have identified. Yet, you never hear anyone speaking to this unshakable reality.
This is most fascinating; for the unspeakable difference between women and men pertains to nothing other than trust itself; and the most fundamental level of trust between a woman and a man pertains to the issue of trust regarding progeny.
I understand, to be sure, that men can lie about whether they are having an affair and that men can father children without acknowledging this to anyone. A good marriage requires that a woman trust a man in this regard. I have not denied this. Nor would I think to do so.
But this objection misses the point. Why? Because the fact that a husband can be dishonest with regard to whether he is having sex with a woman other than his wife or with regard to whether he has fathered children has no bearing at all upon the epistemic certainty that a woman has with regard to whether the child that she bears is her own. A man’s cheating does not change that one iota. Indeed, in this regard both a woman and a man are more or less equal. After all, women can have affairs, too. And while they cannot much lie about being pregnant, they can indeed lie about who the father is. To be sure, it is absolutely wonderful, I suppose, when a child resembles her or his father. However, there is nothing about biology that requires this to be so. A few recessive genes here and there can result in a child bearing features which are quite unlike those of the father’s—or the mother’s, too.
So we are back, then, to the immutable asymmetry between women and men with regard to the matter of trust.
Interestingly, this asymmetry has become even more acute in a world where women and men are equally of supporting themselves financially. In a world where women needed the support of men in order to survive, it was at least prudent of women to be faithful. But not so in a world where woman can survive perfectly well without men.
So we end up with a most surprising result, namely that economic equality has exacerbated matters of trust between women and men. Or more forthrightly, it has made the issue of men trusting men considerably more acute. If this is right, then we have a quite unexpected factor that serves as part of the explanation for why the divorce rate has been rising so sharply.
If there is one thing on the face of this earth that one cannot paper over, it is trust. A less than perfect meal may nonetheless but quite edible. A house that falls considerably short of being ideal may yet be quite acceptable for living purposes. But if we lack trust in a given area, there is no second-best good that we can fall-back upon that is close enough to being trust without in fact being trust.
To be sure, there are degrees of trust. But where our trust is not complete with respect to a given matter, then what we have is simply not good enough. With regard to their belongings, my dearest friends in France, the Rougemont family, trust me profoundly. Whenever something in the home cannot be immediately found, it never occurs to anyone to wonder whether I might have absconded the item. Their trust is more affirming than words can tell. But that is just the point, were the trust anything less than that it could not sustain the friendship that we have. Either we have that level of trust or we don’t. And if we do not, no amount of fancy conversations will make it the case that we do.
Trust between a woman and a man who are married has to be precisely like that but all the more so. And that is not possible in a world that refuses to acknowledge from the outset the immutable asymmetry between women and men regarding trust as it pertains to the issue of progeny.
There are many forms of power. But there is no getting around the truth that having epistemic certainty with respect to offspring constitutes a considerable power that women have, which men will never ever have. It is a power that women may find less preferable to other forms of power. All the same, it is a power that is immutably theirs and theirs alone.
For the record, I did not say that men cannot trust women. I do not believe that at all. Suffice it to say, though, that trust begins with the acknowledgement of differences where they exist.
