Man, Woman, angel, demon, beast. Part One

From an early age the riddle of man and woman has fascinated me, in fact to near obsession. I observe men and women, I observe our culture, how we relate to each other, how we love each other, and how we hate each other – the differences between our genders and sex, how we interact with one another, fascinates me. And it disturbs me. I can be seen as a “sensitive” (and rather guilt ridden) man, my efforts to conquer a sort of guilt for being a man, a guilt for my maleness, occupied most of my young adulthood.

I have come to a few conclusions.

The riddle of our age is that few men and women mutually understand each other’s nature.

The few who do is often under a cloak of heavy bias. Where this is reflected in literature it necessitates careful reading. Take Schopenhauer and Weininger. Both were consummate misogynists to the core. However in many ways much of what both wrote about the nature of femininity and masculinity was not inaccurate, in essence. It was simply seen in a one sided way. One could totally re-write the essence of what Schopenhauer wrote, with a womanist bias, and recite it to Wiccan covens and in women’s studies classes. All that he did was word some truths with a decidedly negative spin, out of his author difficult and problematic relating with women. Ditto for Weininger. Mary Daily or Starhawk could re-word some of both said, in modern gynephilic P.C. speak, and come up with something that would sell very well on Oprah’s book of the month.

In the same way it is possible, and often occurs in such circles, to word the same observations that Schopenhauer, Weininger, and Neitztchhe made on the masculine nature, in a decidedly Misandrist direction.

An article I stumbled on, having been linked to a particular blog I read now and then:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-469111/Why-Shirley-Valentine-baby-greatest-love-ultimate-betrayal.html

My reflections.

“..Looking back on what happened, it’s as if I was gripped by a temporary insanity when I embarked on a reckless fling. He was a Mexican fisherman, almost 20 years older than me – and as a 33-year-old career woman there’s no doubt I should have known better.”

Has anyone noticed how many white women on the east coast have started dating Latino men over the last 6 years or so? Especially in Washington DC, every time I go back to DC I notice this, finding more and more women I used to know either married, or having been through strings of repeated long term relationships, with Latino immigrants.
This works out great if you are Mexican and Male.

“…temporary insanity..”

No, just the fire in her loins. It happens.

We rationalize our lust, and desires, in a way to absolve us of responsibility. It just happened, it was a result of temporarily insanity. Few are strong enough to just come out and admit, I do what I do because of a burning fire in my loins.

Reading articles like this could douse the flames of relationship political correctness lingering inside the hearts of truly sensitive and good natured men. Such Gentlemen, when this occurs, start to wonder what their girlfriends or wives are actually doing while on that week long vacation in Mexico. A cynical answer would be, why she’s sweaty, and writhing around in the arms of an aging Mexican fishermen. That’s what.

Our society has become utterly non self-reflective on our own desires, in what we are capable of doing, in the subtle “larcenies of the heart” we might commit with temptation, and that we have come to misunderstand the fundamental dynamics in human nature, in our own natures, and in the nature of love, and passion.

Man remains man, woman remains woman, no matter what the social ambiance.

I grow older, and notice more things around me. In my mind, wheels turn and click, connecting what I’ve experienced and seen in the past, and things I’ve read. Anias Nin’s and Henry Miller’s writings paint an interesting picture of some aspects of early 20th century avant-garde sexuality. Julius Evola’s “Metaphysics of Sex” draws conclusions on the nature and origins of Erotic Love that are far more profound than almost any contemporary author. Except David Deida, and frankly Deida doesn’t hold a candle to Evola in the rigor of his observations. I recommend Evola, for he looks at Eros, it’s physical, emotional, and spiritual manifestation across many different cultures, “civilized” and “barbaric” alike, and sees how it is rooted in Metaphysics.

Vast biological similarities exist between men and women, but so to exist vast biological differences. I believe these differences are complementary at their root, and can be in how they manifest in our actual lives as lovers, spouses, and friends. There is no need for opposition and a war of the genders when we understand each other. But sometimes we are adversaries, and not complementary.

Our biological differences, as they express themselves in our neurology and behavior, are undeniable. The scientific literature on our cognitive and emotional differences, and their biological roots, are so extensive today, and so support many aspects of traditional metaphysical views of our sexual and gender natures, that denying them is only a refuge of blind ideology. Or blind refusing to read.

This is seeing the world as we wished it to be, not as it actually is.

Men and women in many ways often act quite differently and perceive the world in different ways.

We have vast similarities, but also vast differences. Which points to different priorities in life, and in love. Is this observation un-politically correct? It is no longer seriously deniable for anyone who has made herself familiar with the current state of research.

The leap from this to evolutionary psychology and biological determinism, however, is a tendentious leap. And the valuation of this is also problematic. But biological differences exist between we men and women far more profound, far deeper, than just the physical differences of our – eh – parts.

But it is possible to over-state biology, to ascribe to it an excessive role that is disproportionate. But biological differences matter, and denying this has caused more pain and suffering in our society than many would realize.

But is mere biology, chemicals, molecules, neuron connections, and hormones, actually the source and mechanisms under our sexual essences?

Is biology the source of the multitudes of diverse ways in which our sexual essences manifest in the lives of real living men and women? All of this is poorly understood by us modern people.

A leap science cannot make, and which modern philosophy is ill prepared to make (especially modern analytic schools) is a stab at the metaphysical significance of these differences.

To put things a bit provocatively, our society historically has prized the masculine over the feminine. True, the actual history is far more nuanced than gender warriors make it out to be, but there has always been a preeminence of the masculine. Even in societies that many mistake for being matriarchic. Now, this given, the first century of feminism often paradoxically did the same. You disagree? It is because you are not seeing things for how they really are.

Basically this was done by denying the objective existence of feminine traits, making masculine traits as a baseline norm, and then denying that these traits were explicitly masculine. Simone De Beauvoir is obnoxiously up-front about this in her agenda. Everything traditionally ascribed as feminine she despises. Woman to her is merely the second sex. She explicitly seeks to get beyond woman. She sees womanhood as a false construct of society to oppress women. She devalues motherhood, biological procreation. While she was fucking Sartre I wonder if she actually listened to her cunt and womb. No, because she was an ideologue.

If humanity is to be leveled. If we are all quantitatively equal, and not just qualitatively, this implies that we are all literally the same, with the same functions in society.

In our differentiation has been a problem for many feminist thinkers. Not all, but many. The idea of a feminine mystique, of a qualitatively different female essence apart from the male. Some feminist authors tried to resolve this, and then often prized the feminine over the masculine. Which is also problematical, but gets closer to the truth. In general, however, many people have simply sought to level humanity. To destroy traits differentiating us, seeing them as falsely imposed by an oppressive social order.

A few thinkers pulled this off in the opposite direction, normalizing feminine behavior, feminine ways of knowing and seeing, and problematising masculine traits. One then declares masculine traits as pathological; diseased, and indeed to quote one feminist blogger I know “evil”. She sees the objective differences in masculinity and femininity, but problematizes masculinity, sees in it the cause of most social and historical evils, and reasons that the only way to solve this problem is to cure it. now, the problem is the reason she exists in the first place – male desire caused some man, her father, to fuck her mother, and lo, behold, she emerged. But lets visit this later.

The only cure, then, for male nature is androgyny; neutering, and feminizing the male. The arguments for this are quite rational from a certain limited standpoint; after all look at crime, war, oppression, bloodshed. Much of this is apparently male in origin, rooted in a male lust for power domination and control. The smaller camp seeing masculinity as diseased is simply the inverse of the old Schopenhauer valuation of femininity as diseased. It simply sees an essential eternal feminine as the desired norm and ideal of human nature.

This is intellectually dishonest, and spiritually bankrupt, but it at least has the virtue of preserving the feminine, whereas the older sort of Amazonian feminist thought, most concerned with achieving power and agency in a patriarchal world, found it most convenient to deny and murder femininity.

Thus Ends Part One