GENIUS FORUMS

Well then, somebody please take a little time to explain some of this to poor ole' me, because I'm not getting it. Matriarchy (yet of course I know this term is being used here poetically) is control and ownership by women. What daybrown is talking about, which I don't get, is something else. And daybrown is not speculating, it's not 'if', according to him these things go on now, and some women are holding sex-parties where men are strategically invited, etc., etc., (crazy fantasy).

What IS happening, as I see it in some of my friends, is that laws enable women to have a significant amount of control of joint assets, and in this sense men are sort of hedged-in. If they decide to associate themselves with a woman, have kids and such, and if there is a dissolution, they are going to be left in a pretty unenviable position. Many men seem not to understand what has happened to them over the last 20-30 years, and what is worse they do not know how to articulate their discontent, and often when they do, they sound like idiots.

Women sense, I think, the advantage of their position. Day by day, they gain, and day by day, men lose, and all is good. But this is not 'matriarchy'. Maybe more women actually own businesses and control some wealth than at other times, but I doubt it is that significant. Women have a great deal more influence, especially on the American scene, and weild influence, but that is not 'matriarchy', and could actually be viewed as a new form of cooption to existing structures (the 'patriarchy' which is both an accurate and a false term, helpful and misleading all at once).

Now, if you mean that women will sell themselves to the highest bidder (?) and that mothers will assist daughters in this, strategically, well that might be true. But that's not all that different from the historical status quo. But I am just not getting a connection between (what you mean by) matriarchy and prostitution.

In any case, since there is nothing like 'matriarchy' happening, nor will it ever happen in my opinion, but what IS happening is just more female mobility along with the more important factor (as I see things): that of successfully being able to weild attitudes, and to rally other women to support causes, defend gains, point the finger, weild blame, etc., which is something that we can literally see in TeeVee programs like Oprah and all the spin-offs (which is very definitely moving into Latin America, with the talkshow Christina and others like it). But this is not 'real power' it is power that has been granted, and it is power that can be taken away in a shifting economic and social landscape.

Women, as I see things, are much more conscious of what they have to lose and gain in the tangible struggle of their lives in a 'battle' against stubborn male culture, and they can get very, very crafty. When you know that you have just one shot at 'power' or attainment in your life, you tend to get sober. If you are not sober, you are stupid, and here in Latin America in any case, where the stakes are higher and there's further to fall for lack of vigilance, people don't squander opportunities like they do in the 'spoiled' North.

Here is what the facts really are: women, having explored all the options, undreamed options that men would never have even considered or believed possible, are aware of their options. In the present environment of Europe and N America a women can, in point of fact, live without a man. True, it is far more difficult without a man's income. Men, because they have dropped the ball and because they are not thinking clearly, have allowed this to happen. Men are expendable, and women know this. This is a significant attitude that N American women weild. They can look at you up and down and in 3 seconds know what value you have to their project, or if you are a deficit. There is a whole genre of self-help literature to help women see beyond their feelings and to select (and groom) the right sort of mate, which is a compliant man who will serve their purposes.

Now, whose fault is that? The boyish crybabies, like that freak with the weird hat (Ron Zuby? or what was his name, the one they did a podcast on) can jump up and down and have a tantrum because a shrewd wife got the house, I guess that is one option. Another option, like with the Geniuses here, is to do absolutely nothing, achieve nothing, set as your goal nothing, and have no relationships. (Now that takes real brains when you think about it, you really have to be a genius to have come up with it). The other option is to...take matters into your own hands, and essentially to educate yourself, to empower yourself, and to learn how to protect your wealth right from the start. Also, to define what you want and what you don't want, what you'll put up with and what you won't, and also to educate younger men to not make the mistakes you may have made, or that your fathers made.

Alex,

What IS happening, as I see it in some of my friends, is that laws enable women to have a significant amount of control of joint assets, and in this sense men are sort of hedged-in. If they decide to associate themselves with a woman, have kids and such, and if there is a dissolution, they are going to be left in a pretty unenviable position. Many men seem not to understand what has happened to them over the last 20-30 years, and what is worse they do not know how to articulate their discontent, and often when they do, they sound like idiots.

How is this a problem that only men endure? I have been married before, and came out of it broke. It is also true that if I just happen to get married again in the future, I could lose my assets, if I marry a man that has less assets than me.

If you have only observed this happening to men, then it must be that the men you know make more money than their wives / girlfriends. But this is not a given.

The other option is to...take matters into your own hands, and essentially to educate yourself, to empower yourself, and to learn how to protect your wealth right from the start.

This advice is good for women too.

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Shahrazad wrote:I think daybrown is right. If matriarchy happens, it's going to be based on prostitution.

I'd rather have patriarchy.

The only way to do that will be to move to a community run by patriarchs. Matriarchy, such as at the Silk Road towns, dealt with the Chinese and other patriarchic tribes so long as it was in their economic interest to do so. The competition between both lifestyles will go a long ways twards reducing exploitation in each.

It may come across a little harsh, Shahrazad, but in my personal thinking---and I write completely from a personal perspective---I am not interested in defining or giving energy to the 'empowerment' of women. I grew up in the shadow of many different 'movements', and certainly that of Feminism, and so it was natural for me during my 20s to have alot of sympathy for 'women's project'. In fact, I think we all have---we men---and we in fact live in the aftermath of a pretty significant change. Women still very successfully weild certain attitudes about all these issues, and that is the principal game: to weild narratives with emotional levers.

I was browsing a used bookstore up in the States last summer and came across a choice title in the women's studies section (this was just when I had joined this rather pathetic forum and was reading some of the seminal feminist works). The title was something like 'Born Guilty', written in the 80s by some English fellow, and the whole gist of it was a man, the author, making a confession of all the historical evil that his sex had committed against women, and was a declaration of his commitment to make amends through, essentially, self-denial. The whole book was composed of declarations of in what ways he and his group were going to deny themselves in favor of women, and about just how committed they were to the advance of women. It should have come with a little cat-o-nine-tails so one could flog oneself. I should have bought the book because the attitude it expressed really existed in the 80s, as I remember it, and many men that I knew seemed to internalize an almost pathetically apologetic attitude...for being men...for 'everything they had done'. The idea of course is that there is am 'incorrect' way to be a man and of course a 'correct' way.

But here is a funny contrast. A few years before that I was browsing in another bookstore, in the business section, and came across a title called 'La Princessa', a Machiavellian self-help book for women, which spelled so much out and so very plainly. (I think it must have been written in 1999 or therabouts). Let us examine the contrast: men who are ashamed of themselves, embarrassed for themselves, who abase themselves in guilt, and who serve their women and not themselves, despite themselves; and women who learn to act like Machiavellian princesses in a game that has everything to do with power.

My point is painted in a very broad brush, of course, but my point is very clear. It runs like this: all during the 70s the 80s and perhaps the 90s too men have been beaten over the head with certain narratives which functioned more or less specifically at an emotional level, and as a result of that guilt-slinging, which functions between cajoling and threatening, women have advanced their interests tremendously.

I assert that a counter-movement must emerge, needs to emerge, and because I am formulating this, I assume it is the tip of the iceberg. But the grotesque and burlesque formulations of the idiots in the wierd hats (Rich Zubaty, et al), the angry boys, must be superceded by intelligent discourse, and with a 10-point program. Men have to ask themselves some very hard questions, and they have to answer them.

In this process, it seems to me, if you lost out on a deal you certainly cannot blame the historical moment, which was entirely in your favor. Personally, of course, I have tremendous sympathy (and recommend a trust (fundacion) which you can set up in Panama that is unassailable), but my interest is in speaking about men's condition and situation, not women's. That is something you can do on your own and there is so much information out there it is mind-boggling.

I sincerely wish to see women knocked down quite a number of notches, and I say this openly. The rug has to be pulled out from under the crafty princessa. I am interested in exploring and defining my own power, and in asserting the ways that a woman---my gf or companion---can assist me in my 'project', and not the other way around. If she can, we can grow together, if not, she goes down the road. (But she never 'goes down the road' poorer and abused, it is pathetic that a man would do that, but always richer and better off, as did my last GF. And this is a sort of Nietzschen attitude, a classical attitude, that is defined in Genealogy of Morals, where you don't mind losing a little from your abundance simply because you have it. The poor fucker who robbed you will most likely remain miserable, because those are unworthy habits).

The attitudes I am defining are Noble Attitudes (*sound of a trumpet*)...

;-)

The reason I even mention these things is because this forum is (supposedly) dedicated to 'male empowerment', and offers a whole recipe toward that end, and I think it is completely bogus and the attitudes and ideas expressed herein are directly connected to men arriving at the place they are, have contributed to it. You don't win by giving up.

In this process, it seems to me, if you lost out on a deal you certainly cannot blame the historical moment, which was entirely in your favor.

It was only in my favor if I submitted to the rules set for playing the game. As a rebellious person, I just could not.

And if there's anything I can blame for "losing", it's that I'm too kind for my own good. People will always try to take advantage of kind people, and that is not a male or female thing.

Personally, of course, I have tremendous sympathy, but my interest is in speaking about men's condition and situation, not women's.

And that is your right. It just sounds a little biased when you talk about problems that are common to humankind, or at least to successful people, and you label it "men's condition".

Just fyi, I've never been interested in succeeding as a woman, but in succeeding as a person.

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Shahrazad wrote:

And if there's anything I can blame for "losing", it's that I'm too kind for my own good. People will always try to take advantage of kind people, and that is not a male or female thing.

As they say, "No good deed goes unpunished." The trick is to identify which people take advantage, since not everyone does. True kindness is almost painfully attractive, IMHO. You do have to be able to harden your heart sometimes, but hey - that just makes you value your true friends all the more.

You do have to be able to harden your heart sometimes,

And I do, but usually after I've been had. And then, some friends accuse me of being too unforgiving.

My attitude towards someone who betrays my trust, and then asks for forgiveness is "Move on to your next victim, dude. You don't need me."

but hey - that just makes you value your true friends all the more.

Yes! And I do value them, as they are few and far between.

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Any sort of attitude we have about ourself, the ones that we use to bolster ourselves, or that in self-pity we take refuge in, such as the idea of 'my kindness' that people always take advantage of, needs to be examined ruthlessly. I can't speak for you, Shahrazad, because I don't know you, but one can be entirely kind and still have very clear limits. But, we always live and learn. A gf I had in Panama, I felt, abused a very nice situation, and trust me it made me angry. But the way I look at things, if you're going to give ('be kind') and if you do give, you can't later regret it, as if your giving was a business deal. You have to give with abandon, you have to be kind with abandon. The psychology is very complex between those who give, and are kind, and those who receive, and benefit from 'kindness'.

And what I am suggesting---for men---is 'negotiating' (if you will) from a position of strength and certainty. I personally would not be with a woman who had more resources than I, but there are many men who would, I guess.

"And that is your right. It just sounds a little biased when you talk about problems that are common to humankind, or at least to successful people, and you label it "men's condition". Just fyi, I've never been interested in succeeding as a woman, but in succeeding as a person."

But I am talking quite openly about gaining a definite advantage in relationships with women, and in seeing women lose some of the leverage position they have. I am stating it openly. I want to win far more, and I want women---the ones in my life---to contribut to me and to 'serve my power', but that does not mean that I want to take advantage of them or abuse them or leave them weakened. There is a huge difference.

What are the 'problems of humankind', I could hardly care in this context. It is just very interesting to state things plainly, I think. They say that in magic (this is something Castaneda mentions in his books) you have to state your intention OUTLOUD so that your intent can move the Intent of the universe. And I submit to you and to the forum---and may it resound through the Three Worlds!---that once men begin to formulate their intent, and to direct it, things will change rather quickly.

If as daybrown suggests witchcraft and 'wikkary' was used against us, it is with a counteractive effort that things will be turned around. It starts, of course, at a subjective, internal, psychological, magical level...

Well, there is the Vedic idea that each of us chose the kind of world we wanted to fulfill our Kharma in. I would not like to think a world so full of suffering was created for me to do that. But whichever, I dont see it in my power to have any significant effect on it. I saw who my children were at the age of three, and knew they would be what they've become despite my hindrance and without my aid, so if not they, then who?

The history is obscure, but matriarchy dont build military empires, but economic peer-to-peer trade zones. They send girls into the harems and brothels of patriarchy as part of their intelligence services, so there is little that goes on in a patriarchic power center they dont know about. The salons they establish attracts the input of the best minds in town, adding a vastly greater understanding than what the alpha male power elite has. Everyone knows about the effective leadership of Pericles, but few consider that his mate, Apasia, established the tradition of the salon at her place which we still have.

Genius has rarely, if ever, been satisfied with monogamy, so the most talented minds will seek out the communities with the salons and brothels that are staffed by women educated like geishas. And the synergy of their minds, the geishas, and the madams, will organize the R&D for innovation, and arrive in the global market with new products, on time and under budget that will make them all rich.

Previously, this has made them rich targets, but the brave heart, strong right arm, sword in hand, dont cut it any more. You may find communities that are run by men, but as we see with Islam, every generation of smart girls will see what is going on and choose to get the fuck out. They are not interested in devoting their lives to the satisfaction of an alpha male. Mostly, they are the daughters of such men, have therefore some of the same drive, and dont care to be told what to do.

Course, maybe the world you live on is different.

"...only in comedy do dogs litigate, birds govern, or women declaim".
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"...a beautiful, independent, brilliantly witty young woman capable of holding her own in conversation with the best minds in Greece and of discussing and illuminating any kind of question with her husband."
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"...with few exceptions, most citations of Aspasia float in a Sargasso Sea of protoprosopography, subhistory, and subbiography."

Aspasia was a rare bird, as rare as they come. Some factual things are known about her, and there is also a great deal of defamation, speculation and romantic fantasy. It all depends on what point you want to make. As with certain historical examples, it depends on who is handling the discourse. But we only need refer to a few solid facts: she was a concubine, a foreigner, she benefited from highly educated company, and as a woman managed to use established male discourse to her advantage, and on that basis established a place for herself. Nothing beyond that.

She did not invent discourse, she handled discourse nicely, and was generally admired. To invest her with more influence than she in fact had, and to portray her as some sort of advance scout of Matriarchy, is not accurate. It is misleading to the entire conversation, if indeed we are talking about 'real things'.

Matriarchy, I assert, is not a real thing and therefor not a real term. In some long forgotten past---if you follow a romantic like Graves for example---there were 'matriarchies', and in our present there are a few matriarchal tribes, for example in Panama and on the Isthmus of Oaxaca and other limited axamples. But that is about the extent of it, and there is not matriarchal civilization that we can refer to, but perhaps it will happen that the culture(s) of the Silk Road will prove otherwise. (I know nothing about it).

"...but the brave heart, strong right arm, sword in hand, dont cut it any more. You may find communities that are run by men, but as we see with Islam, every generation of smart girls will see what is going on and choose to get the fuck out".

Not so.

Did Aspasia 'get out'? On the contrary she got way in, and married another Athenian after Pericles died, and had a child by him. You are engaging in intellectual romanticism to prove some point of yours which I don't fully grasp, though I'd like to. And since you are dealing in poetical terms, in metaphors, one has to translate them, but when one translates them, one sees that, in fact, almost the opposte is true.

Powerful men do not necessarily have a literal 'sword' in hand, and real power (your 'sword' symbol) can and does function in so many different ways, and is now and will continue to be a male trait, a male activity, and is still right at the top. The 'sword' can be the strength of one's mind and one's articulateness. It can be one's aggressiveness or shrewdness and activity in so many areas. The 'sword' you speak of can be one's skill and genius, and this skill is peculiarly masculine. Meaning, women don't have it, not in that way, and what they have they have in different ways, hence the difference between men and women.

I just don't quite know what product you are representing and selling, daybrown.

"They are not interested in devoting their lives to the satisfaction of an alpha male. Mostly, they are the daughters of such men, have therefore some of the same drive, and dont care to be told what to do."

To be disobedient, now that is a special subject. We who are products of the post-war era are, by and large, a disobedient group, especially your generation. The generation that spawned these feminist discourses (of feminism and other resistance)---that intoned abracadabras over them, and set them loose upon the world---they were indeed a disobedient generation, and we get to live in the results of that, both good and bad. We get to assess too, we get to make decisions from our vantage. Disobedience, in women, is a temporary mood, it can never become permanant. As long as it is nourished, it grows, but when it is no longer desired, it will no longer be nourished, and it will fall back on itself.

You heard it here first, folks!

;-)

Anyway I stand by my assertion, but I take issue with your nomenclature, and yet will use it as a convenience. It is the 'alpha males' who invent just about everything of use and of value, and in this sense ours is still very much 'a man's world'. This is just a fact. PC makes people say and do strange things! Women can make inroads and can learn to handle discourses and things, but they will not likely take over the role of invention, of setting into motion. This is just a fact, as I see it. If it happens that women now are dissatisfied with 'their position' in relation to 'alpha males' (which is debatable and I assert that they sometimes are but generally are not), they have a sort of window of opportunity to demonstrate their dissatisfaction. And it seems they have been doing just that. But, the tides of history can change, and do change. It is a mistake on women's part, I claim, to assume that they can establish an alternative culture or that they can 'take over the establishment'. Women are granted power within an existing system that was not created nor is it defined by them, and take advantage of power, but this only works up to a point.

It is not at all that I live in a different world, it is that I live in a somewhat differet time.
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Hetaira

Alex, I find it unalert at worst, ingenuous at best, for you to make appeals for patriarchy in the name of moral genealogy without recognizing it [patriarchy] as the original ressentiment of men toward the condition of redundancy that nature deals them. Their natural condition also excludes them from progeny-identity, whereas a woman will always know a child is - at least and most - hers. Hence, matriarchy has never been, will never be a need, like its erroneously assumed "counterpart" - patriarchy: a male-oriented social corrective for a natural condition of redundancy. It means to keep men "in the loop" against nature's indifference to them. What nature did/does give to men generally is superior upper-body strength (which in turn assists in lung capacity for running and endurance). Such motivity, I submit, has everything to do with the urgent development of male reasoning, esp. since they required it in response to their condition of natural redundancy and endless sexual need.

At any rate, men used this ace they were dealt by nature to forcibly withhold the resources, territory, and free-movement of females (which I submit had the retarding effect of the natural development of female minds). The social-corrective of patriarchy is built-upon an original ressentiment for the sense of lack that men felt/feel with their natural condition. They are expendable to nature in the matter sex/birth, and they are expendable to each other in competition for this same thing. The only way to cease killing each other over mating rights was to collude in this agreement - the first great hand-shake - and define the laws of family, incest, and property-rights. In addition, resources can be withheld from the rest of the female population unless they service this disparity through prostitution or other tasks of immanence. It is the worst of ressentiments in the sense that it is a matter of being pissed-off at nature - something I think your hero, Nietzsche would find extraordinarily distasteful.

I agree with you, I don't know what is daybrown's point; nevertheless, the both of you are sharing in that great cosmic whining and ressentiment. Patriarchy - a dominance model - suffers as all dominance models do. Eventually, those who are left out of its privileges (women, barbarians, blacks, etc) will revolt sooner or later, for as in all master-slave dynamics, it is your dependency that keeps the noose of need, fear (and ressentiment) around your own neck. You need the slaves more than the slaves need the masters, and you need only return to the Genealogy of Morals (or Hegel's Phenomenology) to see this dynamic spelled out. Your use of Nietzsche in this context is all bent up. And the level of collective ressentiment in this thread is enough to produce a cosmic stench.

No intelligent woman is going to propose/enforce a "reverse" dominance model of matriarchy, or she, too, slips the noose of the master around her own neck. Further, it isn't needed. You are running after straw dogs here, getting twisted around the axle of these websites you dig up. And no one can produce shame (in this case, you're talking about sex-drive) in a clean-standing, truly powerful creature. What insipid whining; how weak you reveal yourselves in your ressentiment of your natural condition. It is a whine that has spanned the whole arc of civilized ages (and pardon my rhetorical zeal).

It is the same whine that daybrown makes when he says if a woman isn't going to fuck him, he needn't be around her. This is a clear expression of just how naturally limited men are in their interfacing with these female creatures - and just how dependent they are on them at the same time. It's nature you two are resentful over, just as is the whole history of patriarchy. I add my amusement over daybrown's comment that men will only respond to sex or violence - men - who have tried to claim as their greatest achievement their reasoning minds.

Most women - in their own idiocy - actually care about men and their personhood. Nature does not. You're pissed at the wrong thing and trying to imprison your only way out - women.

(scraping off the bottom of my shoes before leaving this room . . . .)

(scraping off the bottom of my shoes before leaving this room . . . .)

Hey! Not on my nice new carpet!

Alex Jacob wrote:

Men are expendable, and women know this. This is a significant attitude that N American women weild.

N American women, like most women of any Western Society, take men’s contribution to society for granted. The truth of the matter is that men are extremely valuable to women. If it weren’t for the large number of men in the police, judicial system and military, and the many males working in governments protecting wages and providing welfare, women in the West would have to depend on husbands, and a network of other related males to do the job of keeping them safe, and protecting their interests.

They can look at you up and down and in 3 seconds know what value you have to their project, or if you are a deficit.

The above scenario has never been any different. Men are only accepted subject to him meeting her needs and wants. If women find no use for a man, he becomes an outcast of society. For example, homosexual males and sages aren’t really any use to women - though gay men have become far more accepted due to the fashion of women adopting them as honorary women, and keeping them around for amusement.

Women have made up fantasies about sages. Jesus and Buddha were given the feminine make-over to establish those two religions, and in so doing are totally unrecognizable in that form as sages. But most sages aren't even on women's radar, as they serve no purpose for them whatsoever.

…women can, in point of fact, live without a man.

Yes, due to a hell of a lot of men working constantly behind the scenes to ensure that society doesn't fall down about them.

But, of course, this living without a man is quickly put halt to as soon as Mr Right stumbles into her path. Having a man all her own is one accessory that can’t be beat. Even the richest and most powerful single women in the world aren’t satisfied until they are also attached to a “Mr” (prepared to sign the prenup).

Now, whose fault is that? The boyish crybabies, like that freak with the weird hat (Ron Zuby? or what was his name, the one they did a podcast on) can jump up and down and have a tantrum because a shrewd wife got the house, I guess that is one option.

Yes, after Rich Zubaty’s fantasy of a happy family burst, he did fall into a despair which he has yet to recover from even to this day. And he won’t be recovering any time soon, for he still holds out hope for a future which includes a woman giving him her total love (a blow job) and attention (cleaning the cave, and cooking the bison). He’s still locked in the fantasy that true happiness can be found in a relationship with a woman. Rich will remain in this state until he sees through that fantasy by working to understanding what drives men and women to do the things they do.

The podcast he was involved in showed that he had a fairly good understanding of the superficial nature of relationships, but in doing so he also showed that he was completely ignorant to any deeper understanding. But there is a very good reason for him to remain ignorant, and that is to protect his deep need for women. If he really knew woman, he could no longer find her desirable. He could no longer cry foul over her actions towards him or glean a role of the put-upon male. By understanding the feminine he would naturally also understand the masculine. And he would discover that true freedom existed in rising above them both.
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Pye,

I add my amusement over daybrown's comment that men will only respond to sex or violence - men - who have tried to claim as their greatest achievement their reasoning minds.

It's amusing, but true. Daybrown is among the few males who will admit this.

Pye,

I love your zeal but am awed by your rhetoric! (Well, sort of).

;-)

But first I have to confess that when I read what you'd written, I broke down and cried. No one has yet responded to me---to anything I've written so far---with such depth and intensity! Most everyone else here, unless they have their own, peculiar rhetorical mission, ignores me. Hence, tears of gratitude! My sun will rise, though! I have faith!

Obviously, you have been indoctrinated at some woman's studies center somewhere, it woul dhave to be in the US given some of your formulations, In that sense, we know each other well, too well in fact. If I am a free-market capitalist of male-female relations, you are a Marxist with a red beret!

I merely suggest---and the point can be debated here---that you weild a discourse, that the discourse is emotional at the core, that it is designed to shame and to produce results that serve your purposes.

You say that the weilding of shame would have no effect on an individual whose conscience was clean, and it is a very interesting point. It is false through and through of course, and modern advertising demonstrates this.

But the way that certain historical discourses are constructed, leaves no choice but to assign blame, and by presenting the discourse, in all rhetorical glory, it tends to capture followers, to rally adherents. What I mean is that the feminist discourse, based as it is in certain truths, that is, parts of truths, has been very successful in convincing men and women alike. It is extremely persuasive, in the sense that you are persuasive, in the sense that you persuade yourself.

I don't have the energy right now to respond. But one small point. Ressentiment does not whine, ressentiment howls in pain, it shivers and flexes with an unspeakable agony, and then it turns its bruised face to you, points its finger and says..."You! you did this to me!" And then it utters a curse that resounds through matter and consciousness.

That is ressentiment.

"You're pissed at the wrong thing and trying to imprison your only way out - women."

I like the ring of this---what do you mean?

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Sue, in this 'true freedom' that you describe that is attainable through rising above both and either stance or definition (gender roles), what sort of relationship will men and women have?

Shahrazad wrote:Pye,

I add my amusement over daybrown's comment that men will only respond to sex or violence - men - who have tried to claim as their greatest achievement their reasoning minds.

It's amusing, but true. Daybrown is among the few males who will admit this.

I would admit it if it were true. The part that's wrong, of course, is the word only. The more a woman tries to use reason with a man, the better. Women all too often do not develop rational modes of attainment because reasoning is a learned skill and women are born with genitalia. It's easier to marry a lawyer than to become one, no? Men actually resent it less if you lead them around by their big heads as opposed to their little heads. And by that I mean convincing, not demanding. The closer a male/female relationship comes to a "meeting of the minds," the better.
I guess "only respond to sex and violence" means respond to sex from females, and violence from other males. Again, this is so grossly untrue it's hard to know where to begin. Clearly, men who work together achieve greater things. Quid pro quo has built civilization - such as it is - in spite of men's "violent nature."

brokenhead,

I would admit it if it were true. The part that's wrong, of course, is the word only.

How would you solve the problem of terrorism we have in the world right now, without using violence or sex?

Women all too often do not develop rational modes of attainment because reasoning is a learned skill and women are born with genitalia. It's easier to marry a lawyer than to become one, no?

That is probably true for airheads, but not all women are. I'd rather become a lawyer than marry one. A few years of studying will get me a law degree, but there's nothing I can do to make sure that a man I marry will stay with me all his life, or even if he does, that I will want to stay with him if I consider he has changed beyond recognition. I can't control a man completely, or at all, really, but I can control what I become and the skills I perfect to support myself and those who depend on me.

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Alex,

"You're pissed at the wrong thing and trying to imprison your only way out - women." Pye

I like the ring of this---what do you mean?

Pye means that you're taking your anger out on women, but what you really are angry at is nature, for making you redundant and sadly expendable.

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Alex, I am no graduate of any women's studies program, I have never taken a women's studies course, and you will not find what I've put forth here in toto from any feminist writer I know of, and further, I'm not a "feminist" (please see paragraph above beginning with "No intelligent woman," etc.) For further seasoning, I am regarded warily by the women's studies program at the university at which I teach one of their approved courses through the philosophy dept., Women and Philosophy. Finally, I am no fan of the whining of women/feminists, either. This does not mean I have to reject everything put forth as "feminist" concerns anymore than I have to reject everything put forth by patrichian concerns. Perhaps it is yourself backed into this either/or corner?

When you're done with your rather postmodern focus on the rhetorical form of my post - and after you've dried your eyes - feel free to begin addressing its content. We will simply have to disagree that shame can be imposed upon a truly clean-standing, powerful individual; it's oxymoronic. You'll have to explain what you mean about the capacity of modern advertising to do this (and what kind of person would be susceptible to such an effect).

Here's something a lot of women say: Men only hear the way you say something to them, rather than what you are saying - so fragile have their mothers raised them for female approval; so deep is their natural need for female attention. Intelligent women have been begging for centuries to have access to education, resource, free-movement, inclusion, acknowledged subjecthood. And they have used anger, supplications, sex-withholding, tears, and even some cool and towering reasoning to state their case, but there appears to be no form of delivery whatsoever that most men can see past. All they see is anger, supplication, sex-withholding, etc. whilst the content of the complaint goes disregarded; ridiculed.

brokenhead writes:

Clearly, men who work together achieve greater things.

can you jesus h. christ imagine what might be accomplished if this invited women to it, too. Unfortunately - as daybrown illustrates - the only commerce men require/desire of women is sex or other bodily service (i.e. food, nursing, child-rearing, puke-cleaning, clothes washing, porn-adorning their products-for-sale). Most men have no interest in partnership with women in anything beyond this. They assume women to be constitutionally incapable of participation, and so have sawn their own noses off, along with millennia of wasted minds and education of female participants in civilization. To assume them all constitutionally incapable of contribution is pure bullshit, when one has excluded/controlled them from the start, and a brief modernity of access for females has shown us otherwise. And that, Alex, is what I mean about your "only way out" of the polarized patriarchy/matriarchy pendular swing.

You are correct about the howling, shivering, unspeakable agony of ressentiment . . . I hear you, Alex; I hear you. O would that you could ennoble in this way the return-ressentimental howling of women, too. You state above that you do not care about women in this male-empowerment scheme. You'll have to pardon me that I do care about the personhood of men in return. The greatest thing this site has always promoted is a bootstrap approach to men pulling their own heads out of their own pants and chiseling away at the prison of their own monocular obsession with women/sex. It howls; it shivers, in its unspeakable agony.

Alex Jacob wrote:

Sue, in this 'true freedom' that you describe that is attainable through rising above both and either stance or definition (gender roles), what sort of relationship will men and women have?

It is a very different form of relationship than what people normally experience, for there aren’t any games. Egotistical game-playing is what drives normal relationships, causing all those emotional ups and downs. Living as true individuals, cooperation naturally occurs; or does not occur. There are no recriminations or expectations, because the individual has no emotional needs and wants to be met by others.

Obviously, the human race is far from being a society of individuals, but the potential for individuals to arise does exist. It is true that most people like to hold onto their illusions in the same way as a child holds on tightly to a toy. But, like a child grown in confidence forgetting the toy, so too does the individual develop, casting off the shackles of their illusions to live free.
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I'm not often as clear as I hope. It aint upta me. The Global Corporate Culture has seen greater profit in female staffing. Now that the cost of labor is trivial, the competitive edge goes to the cost of management, and women do it cheaper. They dont need a trophy wife in the villa at home and a mistress in the downtown penthouse. They dont need to corrupt the system to get the money to buy the status symbols to get laid.

Much of the innovation you read about that alpha males had was actually invented by beta geeks, with the alphas taking credit for it. That syndrome permeates patriarchy, always has, always will. The geeks see that if they work for women, not only are there less ego problems in appreciating their contributions, but they get laid more often.

And yes, there are, most likely, a majority of women who instinctively want an attachment to an alpha male thinking he will provide emotional and financial security. But there's also an increasing cadre of women focused more on the peer to peer relationships they have- which formerly was in the tribe or village, but now in the corporate culture. So- rather than fucking the alpha hoping for his generosity and faithfulness, they take turns fucking the beta geeks and profiting by the creativity. They dont worry about being replaced by a younger trophy bimbo later on.

Both social models will be around for quite a while. You get to vote with your feet, and live with the result. For every alpha male with the vision to produce spectacular economic success, there's a dozen alpha scam artists whose main talent it that they can convince others they have that vision. If the alphas, as a class, could punish the CEOs who fail to produce the promised economic profits, rather than providing them with golden parachutes, the future dominance of alphas would be assured. But instead the general rule is to use the good old boy network to cover your ass.

Maybe, as the competition from matriarchic entrepreneurism heats up, the alphas will get their act together. But the data on new startups is already in. Female leadership is already much more reliably profitable. Dont argue with me, but investors and banks.

I dont claim that Apasia invented the salon; she's merely the first one I know of, and we've had very many since, and as the competition from matriarchy heats up, we'll see lots more. The fairies that attend have an artistic sensibility that has, and will continue to, produce economic opportunity.

Another lesson not lost on women is that were it not for the oil, the misogynistic Arabs would still be riding around in donkey carts, and that the Nordic cultures, even those which lack oil, have highly creative comfortable lifestyles with more women in positions of power than most other places on the planet. They also are the cultures which are most heavily invested in the R&D for a global post-petroleum global economy, and most able, if there is systemic economic collapse, to get by on their own regional resources.

They've always been on the leading edge of the social sciences, which has created problems for them recently because of faulty assumptions about the nature of hominids. But now the neurology and biochemistry of the mind is being unraveled, and I expect they'll pick up on the limits of behaviorism and come to grips sooner with the breeding problems caused by the high birthrates of airheads. Patriarchy has never been able to get a grip on this. we will see.

On a personal note, since I understand that women dont even want to think about having sex with me, I stay away from them and live alone. Like a lotta geeks, I get lost in my own projects, and dont mind the solitude. Is there a problem here? Like all hominid males, I was born with sexually attractive models wired up in my brain. I spoze that women have their own models, and since I dont fit, I stay away, making more room in their personal space for whoever strikes their fancy. If I were trying to produce progeny, then I'd be interested in controlling women's bodies. Women have never had that problem, so they've never had the same kind of controlling instinct over men, and have no interest in controlling me.

Lechery is not a problem in my consultations over the phone or email, and on those few times when a field trip is needed, I can handle it. It'd be the day to day contact with sex objects I could never enjoy that would be troublesome. I've lived with Lesbians, and been grateful for what I've learned, but I still remember, been there, done that, dont need to do it again. And contrary to the usual anti-feminist raps, I didnt see where the Lesbians were trying to control me; being civil was enuf.

Its the real Nazis, not the femo-nazis, that have been the problem I've seen in this world.

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Pye, just for the record I think I don't have a problem dealing with your content, but your tone is just as relevant, and the tone warrants and requires mention. One thing you'll have to avoid, with me anyway, is a structure of conversation that supposes it will lead me along some path you have established for that conversation, that once I have finished one thing, I must then attend to something of importance to you, as you stated in your last post. That sort of controlling of discourse is, I submit, borne of internalized ressentiment of the sort that permeates the discourses of feminism, and it is this rather shrill note that I felt I recognized in your post. Along with that I would place statements like this: "so fragile have their mothers raised them for female approval, so deep is their natural need for female attention", which is pure bait. And in my case it is not at all true, if only because the women in my life right now---sadly---do not have the preparation or the interest in understanding and appreciating the sorts of ideas I am engaged with, but my own mother certainly did, as she was active in feminist circles in the 70s, knew and corresponded with Brownmiller for example, wrote and published on the subject. I only mention to provide some elements for a grasp of my 'context'.

One major feature, at least historically, in a significant part of feminist discourse is the baiting portion. I don't mean in the seminal discourses, necessarily, but I am not sure, it is mixed. You seem to have noted that some men react to an aspect of this 'tone', and I only suggest to you that you pay attention to that, because you will likely produce that effect again and again if you engage in that way, as you seem to have here. But it was certainly not necessary with me. (Too ironic for all that).

With that said, it has often been a part of my perception in dealing with feministically oriented women (I am not sure how you wish to be referred to), that it is their intention to unseat, disturb, irritate, in short to provoke a reaction, and to exploit that reaction to their advantage. This is part of the game, and is often obvious, and deserving of applause. But, PC demands that we not notice it or mention it.

I don't know if this shrill, baiting or challenging portion is part and parcel of classical feminist discourse, as in de Beauvoir, Millet, Friedan, Greer, Brownmiller, Dworkin, Irigaray, but I have certainly noticed among many women friends who identify(ied) themselves as feminist, that they were always ready to scrap, if the occassion arose. The discourses of rebellion, reformation and revolution are weapons that we fight with, and it is glorious to go to battle, ain't it? I think we have to be aware of where a discourse is situated, and from what roots it draws nourishment.

I realize that much of this is anecdotal, and entirely subjective, but I am more than anything concerned, as I have said, for my own power and well-being. I guess you could call it a 'withdrawing of support'. Frankly, I don't see myself as being an apologist for patriarchy in having the feelings/ideas that I have, and to understand my points I can only suggest that you read what I write with a little more attention, and don't jump to conclusions so readily. Also, nothing is completely fixed in my mind, there is no thought or idea that I offer as an absolute, and I do not know what is the best and the most correct relationship for men to have with women, nor do I finally know if there is a sort of cosmic answer to this question, some established order to which women and men must conform to achieve harmony and balance. I did state my position by referring to an old Confucian ideal and I am actively exploring it.

I am aware that in a sense it represents a sort of arch-conservatism, and I am acutely conscious that I am presenting conservative and possibly even backward ideas, but over the years as I have been thinking about things I see a certain sanity in a level-headed conservatism, and I do in fact take issue with some of the new-fangled formulations. It will shock you I am sure, but the sort of woman I personally want in my life right now is a woman who has an interest in 'attending the sacrificial fires'. Weird, I know. It is an ideal that I could and will explain, if it pleases me and if there is any interest. But just as there are proscriptions for the role of women, there are just as many proscriptions for the role of men, and you should also note that I said that men have failed to uphold their role, and so have dropped the ball.

But that does not at all mean that I am reactionary or acutely conservative in my views. I said quite openly: I am very interested in seeing women knocked down a peg or two, humbled if you will, even humiliated if I were to be completely honest, and I mentioned a specific context, the US, where some women's attitudes have, as I see things, gone way over the top. They want too much and they have gotten too much. This is not really a philosophical treatise of history, Pye, it is a very basic sense that I have, and it is one of the reasons why I choose not to live in the US. And I most certainly did not say anything at all that could be interepreted as meaning that I don't think that women should have access to education! I do very often have the sense that we no longer really know HOW to educate our children, and what values to inculcate, and how to raise upstanding, intelligent children with civic pride, but we certainly do a fine job at raising up something quite the opposite: whining appetites who want more and more and more, and appetites seduced by pleasures, not duties.

(And I do not agree with xerox's premise; that renunciation is the key. I think it is more difficult to take questions on, to live them out, and that is the only way, in the grand drama, that things get worked out, that things evolve.)

For the time being, this is what I have to offer you, as a response. As a final note, I will mention that I like some of what Sue talks about. I am not sure if I like it because there is a voluptuousness to it, a sort of truthfulness that all recognize but none can openly agree with and admire but that when you say it it is sort of like savoring chocolate, or if it is tied merely to my own desire to 'see women brought down a peg or two', which indeed is a sort of resenfulness, if not 'ressentiment' which is quite a bit more complex.
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Shahrazad, thanks for your clarification, but I did understand that part. What interested me was why Pye said that women represented man's 'way out', and the exercize of 'patriarchy' blocked this route.

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1) With me, the gender conflict goes somewhere, it does not bog down or stall out. And with all ideas that I engage with: the process has utility simply because I deign it has utility. My intent is stronger than your apathy or pessimism or nihilism and I can resist all your pronouncements, therefor. This is my general attitude of disagreement toward the pronouncements of this forum. (There is some agreement in specifics).

2) Absolutely, I have power to change the destiny of the world, and I do this right now, just as I have done it before. I am doing it right now. My intent speaks to, touches and moves the greater Intent which produces us. I say never fail to understand that you have free-will, in a sea of those who don't think they do, and that you are therefor creative. Going to sleep is forgetting, waking up is remembering.

3) It is part of the game of life to engage---as daybrown has suggested---with all that is one's 'karma'. Within a given time (this general Now) there are millions and zillions of separate realities, and through a magnificent and very, very strange 'grace' all of we millions here now can connect at some point, and work our given angles. And though it all passes away, yet it always still exists, has meaning and importance. We have been intended to live, move and act.

"My memory carries me back to one particular afternoon sixty years ago in my father's library in Buenos Aires. I see my father, I see the gas lamp, I reach out and touch the shelves. And though this library no longer exists, I know exactly where I may find A Thousand and One Nights by Burton and The Conquest of Peru by Prescott".

---Jorge Borges, Arte Poetica

4) Never give up, never disavow, never repudiate, but always keep moving forward, hold to what is one's own, claim it and work with it, that is the 'tragic alternative' to psuedo-spiritual nihilism.

5) My magic will win over your sorcery. Always has and always will.