THEE HOLY WOMEN DOCUMENT The Ultimate Woman understanding Document. Remember, to Pretend to understand women is bad manners, to really understand them is bad morals...prepare yourself. By: Darrel Logan Forward: Women; The double standard that I refuse to uphold. ‘That guy has a nice butt,’ ‘He’s so carved,’ ‘he’s so buff’ ‘sooo fine and sexy body’ and they could go on and on with more and more expletives, more and more graphic, to the everyday comments anyone within earshot observes listening to women conversations. We’ve all heard them, everyone of us. So what’s the problem? Disrespect? Of men. True, men disrespect women, and that’s no news, and everyone knows it. But women are much much worse. If we were to say the exact same comments, (gender roles reversed) We would be, (and are) labeled pigs, "typical male", scum of the earth, etc... If 90% of us hung up pictures of topless girls, and scantily clad girls in our highschool lockers, like 90% of all highschool girls do, but male pictures, we would again be labeled again as a chauvinistic pigs, we were disrespecting women, we only wanted one thing, etc... Yet women do this, with no reproach. Basically if we treated, and spoke openly exactly like women do about guys, we would be labeled as we are, yet thousands times worse. Double standard. So, to counter it, we should do exactly what you’ve been claiming you demand. Equal rights. We will now judge you (girls) like you would judge us, if we made similar comments. A significant percentage of us guys will NEVER will falter to the derogatory level that women speak of men. Much, much higher than the percentage that one will ever find, of women refusing to make comments of such about out gender. But we should and will point out the inequality, the double standard, and our personal disappointment upon someone that is so focused on equal rights, and yet refuses participate. Women truly want to have their cake and eat it to. Yet, if men do try to uphold equal rights and point out these belittling comments, women will loath and us. WHY??? Because we tried to treat women the same as they treat men, if we made similar comments! Equal Rights? You (girls) claim you want to be treated equally, but that's just not true. You want special treatment, and to do anything you want to, and not be responsible for it. Women want the rights, but not the responsibility. You want the ability to disrespect guys, but not suffer the labels that you yourself would put on other guys, who would make similar, yet not as graphic comments. It’s true when it says, Some guys are different, but all women are alike. DEL. - Some men are different. All women are alike. - A man gets what he wants by acting smart; a woman, by playing dumb. - Woman submits to her fate; man makes his. - God made woman beautiful and foolish; beautiful, that man might love her; and foolish, that she might love him. - There are two kinds of women: those who wish to marry, and those who haven't the slightest intention not to. - To a single woman men are either dates, potential dates, or date substitutes. - Women: an infinity of cosmetics. - Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power. - Women who are not vain about their clothes are often vain about not being vain about their clothes. - Women are the decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. - Woman's first duty is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered. - There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their beauty. - Woman strives for loveliness, man for dignity. - Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men. - Many women would swap brains for beauty and think they were getting the best of the bargain. - The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think. - "After men, monkeys have the most intelligence," says an author. Others will argue that women do. - Smart men are smarter than they look; smart women look smarter than they are. - To find fault with a woman's intellect you must first find her intellect. - Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. - A man, conceivably, could adjust to the knowledge that he was at a higher level than those around him, although no rational man could possibly enjoy that perspective; but to a woman it would be unbearable. - Essentially feminine, she was able to chatter but say nothing, ask questions and require no reply. - Women can write more interestingly than men on the really important topics of civilization: dress, food and furniture. - She wavers, she hesitates; in a word, she is a woman. - Woman's one notable invention: Perpetual emotion. - Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion. - Women: picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. - No wonder women live longer than men - look how long they remain girls. - You bring up your girls to be ornaments and then complain of their frivolity. - When he has a thorn in his side, she has to have a sword through her heart. - Of what use is independence to a woman, if she is - all alone? - To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it and, what is worse, feel happy about it. - Woman: a biped with two hands, two feet, two eyes and two faces. - A woman has three reasons for everything she does: the reason she says she has, the reason she thinks she has, and the reason she really has. - I will not say that women have no character, rather, they have a new one every day. - I've never met a man of good character who has had anything to do with a woman. - Between a woman's "yes" and "no" there is no room for the point of a needle. -*Even a fickle woman is loyal to one man - until she prefers another. - Her husband's funeral Is often where a widow looks for the next man. - A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes without remorse. - No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her. - A woman rarely discards one lover until she is sure of another. - The formation of a young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling her lies. - With a man, a lie is a last resort; with women, it's First Aid. - Women always speak the truth, but not the whole truth. - Most women think that truth is an irrelevant triviality whose only role in life is as a stumbling block for men. - A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever. - The one thing that man never gives to a woman is spiritual help. - The souls of women are so small, that some believe they've none at all. - It has often been claimed that God is a woman, but to my knowledge no-one has ever claimed that the Devil is a woman and really meant it. So I will. - Men are women's playthings; woman is the Devil's. - Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them. - Women are not necessarily evil - but evil is necessarily feminine. - Where the Devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman. - Women learn how to hate in the degree that they forget how to charm. - Friendship among women is but a suspension of hostilities. - Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another. - No man is as anti-feminist as the really feminine woman. - When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different. - Man's conclusions are reached by toil. Woman arrives at the same by sympathy. - A woman can believe anything in the world if there's no good reason for it. - Can you recall a woman who ever showed you with pride her library? - Women never reason, and therefore are (comparatively) seldom wrong. - Womens' intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking. - Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. - No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all. Common sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it. - Women would rather be right than reasonable. - It took a million years to develop man's ability to reason, but it takes only a few minutes of feminine logic to destroy it. - It is only rarely than one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman. - If God considered woman a fit helpmate for man, he must have had a very poor opinion of man. - God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more fully. - Self-pity is one of the last things that any woman surrenders. - If all men told the truth the tears of women would create another flood. - It is sometimes argued that women have a hard enough time in this world, without telling them the truth. - A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings. - Consistency: the only jewel found among more men than women. - Women's words are as light as doomed autumn leaves. - The easiest way to change a woman's mind is by agreeing, disagreeing, or saying nothing. - The reason women usually win arguments with men is that only dumb men are foolish enough to argue with women. - Cunning: life is a battle of wits, and women have to fight it unarmed. - Some women are so clever that you can't talk to them for ten minutes without beginning to realize how brilliant you are. - There is something about cats and women that is viewed with distrust by mice and men. - On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women. - When they are going to be flagrantly brutally selfish, women love to talk of being fair. - A woman weeps with one eye and laughs with the other. - Man says what he knows, woman what she pleases. - To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue. - When a man dies, the last thing that moves is his heart, in a woman her tongue. - The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals. - Women are neither equal nor different to men - they are inferior. Women rarely if ever organize themselves effectively because they are unable to think logically. - He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows. - He seldom errs -Who thinks the worst he can of womankind. - I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man. - There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future is invariably her husband. - A boy expands into a man; a girl contracts into a woman. - Women chat and men converse, - Men are worried about how many years they have left, women how many they have had. - Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary. - A man likes you for what he thinks you are; a woman for what you think she is. -Time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost invariably. - Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same. - Women try their luck; men risk theirs. -We have emancipated women, but they remain slaves looking for their masters all the same. - The mystery of women is the product of the romantic imagination of men. -For a man to pretend to understand women is bad manners; for him really to understand them is bad morals. -Even when a man understands a woman, he can't believe it. -Men dislike women who don't understand them, and women dislike men who do. -As a woman's womb fills, her head empties. -There will continue to be a vast gulf between the sexes for as long as men and women are attracted to opposite things - namely each other. -The worst mistake a man can ever make is to presume that a woman thinks like a man. -The reason I think women are inferior is that I judge them by the same criteria as I judge men. -A woman will only trust a man who lies to her. -Man is evil because he is conscious of the thought that he is lying; but women are worse because they cannot be conscious of that thought. -Man hates with his mind and body, woman with her heart and soul. -Sadly, a woman's virtue and depth of character disappears during the third hour spent getting to know her. -Women are good at trivial things because women think trivial things are important. Women are bad at important things because women do not realize how much harm they can do to the larger world outside of the small world of their immediate surrounds. -Woman: infinite to see, finite to hear. -Women: from goddesses to grannies. -It is not enough to educate women, they must not be loved. -NEVER marry a girl whose father calls her 'little princess.' -The best thing a woman can do for a man is to marry somebody else. The best thing a man can do for a woman is to make a man of her, which usually necessitates just leaving her alone. -At the age of six, boys and girls are essentially the same. The difference is that boys tend to remain at the mental age of six throughout life, while girls seem to regress. -Women need to feel compassion for others because weakness in others justifies their own weakness. - A woman wears her tears like jewelry. -Feminists would make great advances if they were not so bothered about sexist men; that is, if they were not so womanish. -To be popular with women, be sure never mention the fact that women as a class are less rational and hence inferior to men. -A man should aim to think as much as a woman feels. -Woman believes man's lies because she cares only about feelings, not future. She cannot realistically appreciate an honest man because honesty is superfluous to feelings. -Many women are convinced that the reason Jesus never got married was that he never met the right girl. -Anyone who criticizes women is a misogynist. -Women are mysterious creatures; they sometimes appear superficially deep and at other times deeply superficial. -The horrifying thing about the mystery of woman is that there isn't one. -A woman thinks a man is unethical if he tries to measure her by ethical standards, for the reason that a woman cannot comprehend ethics. -A woman, like a child, has only the shallowest and most insubstantial of thoughts. If you were to try to paddle your feet in her oceans, you wouldn't even get your feet wet. -A man may become wise, If he really tries. But all women are born wise, In their own eyes. -It is good to condemn the feminine, but beware that in so doing you do not immortalize it in yourself. -You can always find another girl, but a game lost is a game lost forever. -She's pretty, when her mouth is closed. <- From "MEN, WOMEN, AND GOD" -> <by Carl Jung> - A woman is at her best only when she loves a man. Personal relationship is her basic need, and when that falters she grows dissatisfied and argumentative in a way that often leads to divorce. But this certainly doesn't mean that men and women should remain placid. On the contrary, some tension must prevail in their daily lives, for otherwise there cannot be the ideal relationship in sex - and this is a "must" between husband and wife. Mentally, morally, physically - in all these ways Nature has created an extreme difference between man and woman, so that he finds his opposite in her and she in him. That creates tension. <- FROM KIERKEGAARD'S JOURNALS -> <WOMAN/MAN> - The more a body is organically developed, the more dreadful is the decay. When grass rots, there is as fragrance. When an animal rots, it stinks. A man's perdition is dreadful, more dreadful even than a woman's. Is this a proof that man is superior to woman? - . . . she is more sensate than man; for were she more spiritual she could never have her culmination point in another. Spirit is the true independent. Of course every religious view, like every more profound philosophical view, sees woman, despite this difference, as essentially identical with man; but it is not foolish enough to forget for that reason the truth of the difference, aesthetically and ethically understood. - The whole plan of "A Thousand and One Nights" is very profound. This battle between masculinity and femininity, the fact that femininity conquers by means of her storytelling, her persuasiveness. In the future the Sultan, who has discovered the basic unfaithfulness of all women, intends to have every woman put to death after one single night. Then Scheherazade offers to save the sex (since the Sultan demands one every night it must end rather soon with the eradication of the women) and she saves the sex by telling stories, which means: go with her and you can never get rid of her. Fundamentally there is a terrible tenacity: No man could go on living this way for three years facing the possibility of death - but a woman can - if only she gets permission to tell stories. A woman does not have the strength for a break or finds it difficult to make such a decision, but she is able to conquer by means of your not being able to get rid of her. - Woman's reflection is almost overpowering to her; this is why it is so dangerous for a woman to reflect. A woman's reflection usually goes like this: if she has won on one point or another, she is so overcome herself that she cannot avoid gazing at her victory - and then she stumbles. The man is more essentially character; and character consists not so much in winning as in continuing after having won, keeping in character. The woman endures something and counts on the approaching moment when she can take a deep breath. This moment is precisely the danger. Character is essentially continuity. - It was Eve who seduced the man - in compensation there is no undertaking more appealing to a woman than to become loved by someone who has gone astray and who now, in loving her, will let himself be led along the right path. This appeals to a woman so much that she is not infrequently deceived, because such a person puts everything over on her - and she believes everything - perhaps also because the thought of being the man's savior is so very satisfying to her. - For woman the temptation to misuse cunning (for example, to deceive) corresponds to man's temptation to misuse power. The fact that the woman's guilt is always more strongly emphasized than the man's is basically an indirect compliment to the woman, an admission of the degree to which she is the stronger sex in cunning. - In the New Testament the matter is put this way: "Let all those trivialities, those egotistical trivialities with which men generally fill their lives - job, marriage, having children, getting to be somebody in the world - let them all go, break with them completely, and let your life be dedicated to loving God, to being sacrificed for the human race. Be salt!" This is what our Lord Jesus Christ calls Christianity. When a man is intending to get married, the invitation (see the Gospel) comes to him: Let it go - and become a Christian, etc. Now Christianity has become the very opposite. It has become a divine blessing upon all the trivialities and putterings of finitude and the temporal enjoyment of life. The lovers summon the clergymen - he blesses them - this is Christianity, in spite of Luke 20:34-35 (which is a suitable text for a wedding). If the buyer of the six pairs of oxen were to summon a clergyman and pay him ten dollars to bless him and the oxen before he went out to test them, he would be considered an extraordinary, incomparable Christian worthy of adoration. Of course it is Protestantism in particular which is total nonsense. This is why Protestantism has elevated woman so high, more accurately, to first place. Everything revolves around woman. Charming, but then one can also be sure that everything revolves around chatter, trivialities, and in a refined way, around sexual relations. To some extent woman may be said to have ennobled social life in that we do not fight any more or drink and swear as did the old heroes - but refined lust or a carefully concealed, refined allusion to sexual relations - that is what has ennobled social life - Christianity!! This is how some of my pseudonyms have portrayed it and which I now also find Schopenhauer rages against in his own way. Woman is not to blame, but she is determined to humble man and to make him mediocre. Existence is also a sovereign and like every sovereign knows very well how to best maintain its regime - specifically by humbling and breaking those over whom they rule. A woman is proficient along this line when a man gets involved with her too seriously. She contributes the first and the most to his humbling. Generally it can be assumed that every married man is secretly mortified because he feels that he has been made a fool of when all this ravishing talk from the courting days, all this about Julie being the paragon of loveliness and beauty, and getting to possess her is the highest bliss turns out to be - a false alarm. This is the first knock the husband gets, but this in itself is not insignificant, because it is hard for a man to admit that he has been fooled, that both he and Julie must have been crazy. The next undermining is that the husband and Julie (who incidentally has had the same experience on her side) agree to keep a stiff upper lip and to hide things from others; they agree to tell the lie that marriage is the true happiness and that they especially are happy. When we have settled this, providence knows that this fellow is easy to control, that he is one of those who will make no conquests in the world of ideas. Constantly lying like this is extremely degrading to the man. It is different for a woman; she is once and for all a born virtuoso in lying, is really never happy without a little lying, just as it is <a priori> certain that wherever a woman is there is a little lying. In a sense she is innocent in this; she cannot help it. It is not possible to get angry about it: on the contrary, we find it very attractive. She is in the power of a natural disposition which uses her with extreme cunning to weaken the man. Thus in the forward march of history - I mean marriage - there come along with woman all the follies of finitude, this puttering around, and an egotism peculiar to woman. As wife, as mother - well, here is an egotism of which the man has no intimation. Society has licensed it under the name of love - good heavens, no, it is the most powerful egotism in which woman most certainly does not love herself foremost but through (egotistically) loving her own she loves herself. From then on ideas, and every higher infinite striving likewise, whistle in vain for the man - yes, even if our Lord and his angels tried to move him, it would do no good, because the egotism of the mother is such an enormous power that she can hold him fast. Woman has a dangerous rapport with finitude in a way quite different from man. She is, as The Seducer says, a mystification; there is a moment in her life when she deceptively appears to be infinitude itself - and that is when man is captured. And as a wife she is quite simply - finitude. - What the judge in the second part of "Either/Or" says in his way about women is to be expected from a married man who, ethically inspired, champions marriage. Woman could be called "the lust for life." There is undoubtedly lust for life in man, but essentially he is structured to be spirit, and if he were alone, left all alone to himself, he would not know (here the judge is right) how to begin, and he would never really get around to beginning. But then "the lust for life," which is within him indefinitely, becomes manifest to him externally in another form, in the form of woman, who is the lust for life: and now the lust for life awakens. Likewise, what is said in by The Seducer about woman being bait is very true. And strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that the very thing which makes the seducer so demonic and makes it hard for any poet to contrive such a character is that in the form of knowledge he has at his disposal the whole Christian ascetic view of woman - except that he employs it in his own way. He has knowledge in common with the ascetic, the hermit, but they take off from this knowledge in a completely different direction. - Woman is personified egotism. Her fervent, burning devotion to man is neither more nor less than her egotism. But His Honor, Man, has no inkling of this; he considers himself very lucky and feels highly flattered to be the object of such fervent devotion, which always takes the form of submission perhaps because woman has a bad conscience about it, wondering if it is not really egotism; man, however, as mentioned, does not see this but feels enhanced by the devotion of this other I. Woman herself does not know that it is egotism; she is always a riddle to herself, and by a subtlety of nature the whole mystification of egotism manifesting itself as devotion is concealed from her. If woman could understand what an enormous egotist she is, she would not be that, for in another sense she is too good to be an egotist. This whole business of man and woman is a very intricate plot or a practical joke intended to destroy man <qua> spirit. Man is not originally an egotist; not until he is lucky enough to be united with a woman does he become that, and then completely. In contrast to a loose-jointed framework egotism, this union, commonly known as marriage, could be called a stone-wall egotism, egotism's proper enterprise. Having once entered this company enterprise, egotism really begins to hum - and this is also why there are two, a company, in order to have someone to blame and to share the telling of lies (just as in the practical world it is recommended to have an associate who can be blamed for everything). And it follows as a matter of course that once man enters this company he is essentially lost for everything higher. This is the reason that Christianity and all more profound views of life take a dim view of the relation to the other sex, for they assume that getting involved with the other sex is the demotion of man. And this is precisely why it is said (in the thieves' slang we humans use) that everyone is duty-bound to marry and that marriage is the genuinely ennobling life. In this context it is distressing to me that an eminent person like Luther came to such an erroneous position. He should have understood that his marriage was an exceptional act, a corrective; therefore, as I have pointed out somewhere in my journal, he should rather have taken pains to stress the fact: Although I am a monk, I have married - the woman is not at all the important factor here; what was needed was an awakening, and it would have been just as awakening if it had been an ironing board, which naturally would have had to be kept secret. This would have been a way of being salt! But instead Luther became the commander-in-chief of that whole swarm of prolific people or breeders who, inspired by Luther, assume that getting married belongs to true Christianity. As far as I am concerned, I will not claim to have understood everything at first as I later came to understand it; if I had not once and for all run aground on the exceptional. I too would have been married. Something very exceptional held me back - and now at long last I see that the exceptional for me is what Christianity would call the universal, the normal, that Christianity insists on the single state and rather makes marriage the exception. Here again a Governance has been with me. But it really had to be done this way, for how could a man born and brought up in this Danish-Protestant eudaemonism have his eyes opened to what is essentially Christian if a Governance, through exceptional collisions, did not help him by always having him first experience formally the essentially Christian, even though he did not perceive this to be Christianity but believed it to be something quite uncommon - and subsequently let him see that it is in fact the essentially Christian, the truly Christian - which, incidentally, has come to be something very uncommon, particularly in Protestantism, particularly in Denmark. - Intellectually, in the realm of ideas, thought, etc., woman as compared to man is usually pictured as being something of a little goose. But in the realm of what could be called instinctive sagacity, man is a big clod compared to woman. In an idle moment as I walked today it occurred to me that if for the sake of curiosity one were to imagine momentarily that the man could bear children - I am convinced that the births would be extremely difficult, and why? Among other reasons because he would not scream. He would say to himself: You are a man; it is inappropriate to scream - and would force back the scream. The woman, on the other hand, screams immediately - and it is well known that this screaming assists the birth. There is something of genius about this instinctive sagacity in every woman; with a stroke of genius she takes a radical shortcut, whereas the man, who is weighed down by a thousand reflections, is also weighed down by an occasional but all too pompous idea of his own dignity in being a man. - The weaker sex can wail and scream etc.; this is perhaps why the woman suffers much less than the silent, enclosed man. In this context one could be tempted to say that woman is the stronger sex, for if it is strength to defend oneself against suffering, then woman defends herself far better than man. But the main point is this: it is strength to be able to accept suffering, to be able to enter into suffering, to bear up under it; and it is weakness to ward off suffering by every means possible. Woman's weakness lies in the very fact that she immediately has entreaties, tears, and sighs at her disposal to ward off suffering; her weakness is simply her propensity to wail and scream and thus mitigate her suffering. Man's strength is that he has no means of defense, no way to mitigate suffering; therefore his strength - yes, it is a paradox - his strength makes him suffer more than the weaker sex. It is paradoxical, but no more paradoxical than something equally true, that it takes health to become ill; there are sickly people who lack the health to become ill. - When a youth or young man goes astray in his passions, there are two powers alert to save him: a loving woman - and God in heaven. If he is saved by the former, he will still be finitized. If, however, he is not saved by woman's love, if he does not find a harbor here - but he is saved nevertheless, consequently by God, then his life becomes meaningful. - Woman was taken from the man's side - but Christianly understood, may not man's relation to woman be compared to what is called making a side remark. Man was structured for eternity; woman leads him into a side remark. In this world man without woman is weaker; he has a weak side which woman protects, and united they have strength for this life. But Christianly this weakness, the weakness of the solitary, weakness for this life, is a part of being strong for eternity. - Basically it is terrible but true, and it expresses the dreadful extent to which it is true - Christianity simply does not exit. This is the real situation in Christendom, especially in Protestantism. The men - and that means the miserable weaklings and clods that are called men these days, compared to the Oriental idea of what it is to be a man - men turn away from religion with a certain pride and egotism and say: Religion (Christianity) is something for women and children. But the truth of the matter is that Christianity as it is found in the New Testament has such prodigious aims that, strictly speaking, it cannot be a religion for women, at most secondhand, and is impossible for children. As a psychologist I maintain that no woman can endure a dialectical redoubling, and everything that is essentially Christian is intrinsically dialectical. The essentially Christian task requires a man, it takes a man's toughness and strength simply to be able to bear the pressure of the task. A good which is identified by its hurting, a deliverance which is identified by its making me unhappy, a grace which is identified by suffering, etc. - all this, and everything essentially Christian is like this, no woman can bear, she will lose her mind if she is to be put under the tension of this strenuousness. As far as children are concerned, it is sheer nonsense that they are supposed to be Christians. A woman and, above all, a child relate to things directly and breathe the air of directness and immediacy. If something is a good, well then it must be recognizable by its doing good; there is no use in forcing a woman (I will not even mention the child) into a good that hurts - it would break her. Just notice why it is that a woman cannot tolerate irony, that as far as her emotions are concerned irony is fatal. Is this not because she cannot bear the dialectical? In this respect I have really taken the comprehensive philosophy examination. Try it: make a girl unhappy, and then tell her: I did it all out of love for you - and you break her, her mind snaps. Adapt yourself to her and say: I am a thoughtless scoundrel - that she will be able to bear, and she will heartily forgive you. But then she also escapes the dialectical redoubling. So it is with everything essentially Christian. Only man has from the hand of Governance the toughness to be able to endure the dialectical. Having to endure the dialectical is the most intense agony there is. A child, the little rascal, is completely safeguarded against it; he can never even get close enough to lose his mind over it, even if you were to pour as much of it into him as you can. A woman can come so close that she collapses under it, or her mind, in order to get her out of this, slips away - that is, she loses her mind. To have to endure the dialectical is the most intense agony possible. It is also easy to see that far more intense than, for example, becoming unhappy, is the suffering of becoming unhappy and in addition having to take this as one's very happiness - and in every respect. Thus anyone who comprehends this (if there is such a person), when he thinks of the figure of speech, a dialectical redoubling, and imagines a woman in such a situation, will (just as when one sees the instruments of torture for the martyrs, he involuntarily hears, as it were, a martyr's shriek) involuntarily hear this scream: O, save me, save my sanity! What has really happened in Christianity, then, is that this sublimity, which is the essentially Christian position, this sublimity which no man has reached, not even when to be man was an ideal and not even one of those with highest ideality even attempted it or felt its weight without its bringing him to his knees, this sublimity under which (to put it as strongly as possible) even the Savior of the world sinks - that God who is love yet can abandon him and do it out of love - this sublimity Christendom has so flatly and heartily jabbered down into the vulgar gossip which is characteristic of the ordinary human mentality, that this sublimity has even become too light and easy for the kind of creatures dressed up to look like and whom we nowadays call men, and it is turned over to women and children, for whom religion really is intended, after all. The New Testament is aimed at the man, religion is related to the man; woman participates in religion at second hand, through the man; she cannot herself endure a dialectic, but by seeing how the man feels the weight of the task she gets an impression of something more than the immediate pure and simple; the child shifts for himself until his time comes. To want to pour true Christianity into a child (if it were at all possible, for the child's nature makes it impossible to appropriate this) is just as crude as wanting to pour brandy into a child (which happens too often), because the parents themselves drink brandy, and the sweet lassie has to have it as well as her parents. And in the name of Christianity to want to pour something into the child which is not Christianity is, after all, indefensible. But, as stated, Christendom has gotten everything transposed over into the immediate and direct - and therefore, quite right, "the child" has become the measure of what it is to be Christian! Christendom does not seem to be at all aware that all this about "the child" has raised an ironic problem, a question which has been kindly answered, the problem of what shall we do with the child, can the child become a Christian - a question to which the New Testament gives no answer since it assumed that the Christian does not get married. Have a third-party relationship to a child, and you will see that everything is just as the New Testament presents it. But then the nice Christians hit upon the very thing Christianity put a stop to, even wanting to start all over afresh - so children got another significance. And thus, quite logically, by means of the child Christianity was turned upside-down, became exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament, got to be sugar candy for children, even to the point that the kind of men we have nowadays were right in turning away from it and regarding it as something that was only for women and children, something which disgusts a man just like gossip, chit-chat, and the temperature in the nursery. No, let it become again what it once was, let it bring the man to his knees to pick up and carry the task, let woman shudder to see how heavy it is. And the child? Yes, let it become as it once was, let us be free from this child-begetting by Christians: then it is possible that Christianity may be seen again. Otherwise it is impossible, and I for my part cannot see how it is possible that anyone with an impression of Christ's life and what the evangelists understood it was to be Christian and with an idea of Christ's demand for discipleship and imitation can think of getting married. - To say that Christianity makes man and woman equal, and therefore the woman must relate to Christianity the same way as man, is baseless talk. Christianity does indeed make man and woman equal, but it still does not change their natural qualifications; otherwise by the same logic one could conclude that Christianity must cause women to grow just as tall and muscular as men, or even (if Christianity normally had this result) have the effect of making the business of childbirth in Christendom so confusing and indescriminating that sometimes it would be the woman, sometimes the man, who bore the child. To say that women relate to Christianity even more essentially then men is a fraudulent trick to get Christianity redrafted in terms of the immediate and direct. No, on the scale of the immediate and direct women certainly have the advantage both in delicacy and depth and inwardness, but as soon as there is a dialectic, women are in the same situation as people in the southern countries when they have to pronounce a Slavic word with five or six consonants before a vowel. <- From "THE JOYFUL WISDOM" -> <by Friedrich Nietzsche> When a man stands in the midst of his own noise, in the midst of his own surf of plans and projects, then he is apt also to see quiet, magical beings gliding past him and to long for their happiness and seclusion: <women>. He almost thinks that his better self dwells there among the women, and that in these quiet regions even the loudest surf turns into deathly quiet, and life itself into a dream about life. Yet! Yet! Noble enthusiast, even on the most beautiful sailboat there is a lot of noise, and unfortunately much small and petty noise. The magic and the most powerful effect of women is, in philosophical language, action at a distance, <actio in distans>: but this requires first of all and above all - <distance>. Woman and music: Why is it that warm, rainy winds inspire a musical mood and the inventive pleasure of melodies? Are they not the same winds that fill the churches and arouse thoughts of love in women? Skeptics: I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they consider the superficiality of existence its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them a veil over this "truth," a very welcome veil over a pendulum - in other words, a matter of decency and shame, and no more than that. The strength of the weak: All women are subtle in exaggerating their weaknesses; they are inventive when it comes to weaknesses in order to appear as utterly fragile ornaments who are hurt even by a speck of dust. Their existence is supposed to make men feel clumsy, and guilty on that score. Thus they defend themselves against the strong and "the law of the jungle." Simulating - oneself Now she loves him and looks ahead with quiet confidence - like a cow. Alas, what bewitched him was precisely that she seemed utterly changeable and unfathomable. Of steady weather he found too much in himself. Wouldn't she do well to simulate her old character? To simulate a lack of love? Is this not the counsel of - love? <Vivat comoedia> (Long live comedy!). On female chastity: There is something quite amazing and monstrous about the education of upper-class women. What could be more paradoxical? All the world is agreed that they are to be brought up as ignorant as possible of erotic matters, and that one has to imbue their souls with a profound sense of shame in such matters until the merest suggestion of such things triggers the most extreme impatience and flight. The "honor" of women really comes into play only here: what else would one not forgive them? But here they are supposed to remain ignorant even in their hearts; they are supposed to have neither eyes nor ears, nor words, nor thoughts for this - their "evil"; and mere knowledge is considered evil. And then to be hurled, as by a gruesome lightning bolt, into reality and knowledge, by marriage - precisely by the man they love and esteem most! To catch love and shame in a contradiction and to be forced to experience at the same time delight, surrender, duty, pity, terror, and who knows what else, in the face of the unexpected neighborliness of god and beast! Thus a psychic knot has been tied that may have no equal. Even the compassionate curiosity of the wisest student of humanity is inadequate for guessing how this or that woman manages to accomodate herself to this solution of the riddle, and to the riddle of a solution, and what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must stir in her poor, unhinged soul - and how the ultimate philosophy and skepsis of woman casts anchor at this point! Afterward, the same deep silence as before. Often a silence directed at herself, too. She closes her eyes to herself. Young women try hard to appear superficial and thoughtless. The most refined simulate a kind of impertinence. Women easily experience their husbands as a question mark concerning their honor, and their children as an apology or atonement. They need children and wish for them in a way that is altogether different from that in which a man may wish for children. In sum, one cannot be too kind about women. <<Mothers>> Mothers find in their children satisfaction for their desire to dominate, a possession, an occupation, something that is wholly intelligible to them and can be chattered with: the sum of all this is what mother love is; it is to be compared with an artist's love for his work. Pregnancy has made women kinder, more patient, more timid, more pleased to submit; and just so does spiritual pregnancy produce the character of the contemplative type, which is closely related to the feminine character: it consists of male mothers. <<Vita femina>> The Greeks, to be sure, prayed: "Everything beautiful twice and even three times!" They implored the gods with good reason, for ungodly reality gives us the beautiful either not at all or once only. I mean to say that the world is overfull of beautiful things but nevertheless poor, very poor when it comes to beautiful moments and unveilings of these things. But perhaps this is the most powerful magic of life: it is covered by a veil interwoven with gold, a veil of beautiful possibilities, sparkling with promise, resistance, bashfulness, mockery, pity, and seduction. Yes, life is a woman. <- From LAWS VI -> <by Plato> - Women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of resistance, and be far too much for the legislator. And therefore, as I said before, in most places they will not endure to have the truth spoken without raising a tremendous outcry. - WOMAN - *- WOMAN -* *- An Exposition for the Developing Mind -* *by David Quinn* * December, 1990 * - An Exposition for the Developing Mind - Someone took a youth to a sage and said: "Look, he is being corrupted by women." The sage shook his head and smiled. "It is men," said he, "that corrupt women; and all the failings of women should be atoned and improved in men. For it is man who creates for himself the image of woman, and woman forms herself according to this image." "You are too kindhearted about women," said one of those present; "you do not know them." The sage replied: "Will is the manner of men; willingness that of women. That is the law of the sexes - truly, a hard law for women. All of humanity is innocent of its existence; but women are doubly innocent. Who could have oil and kindness enough for them?" "Damn oil! Damn kindness!" Someone else shouted out of the crowd; "women need to be educated better!" - "Men need to be educated better," said the sage and beckoned to the youth to follow him. - The youth, however, did not follow him. From Nietzsche, 1882 - CONTENTS - Introduction Part I. Woman at a glance. Part II. Upon closer examination. Part III. Observations on the modern situation. An epilogue - INTRODUCTION - The essence of woman is divinity - simple, pure, spontaneous, and Natural. She is the embodiment of selflessness, the giver, the carer, the bringer of warmth and joy; rarely does she cease devoting her time to others. All the troubles of the world are caused by men and their patriarchal domination of it. All such ills would cease if only everyone were to cultivate love and peace and generally return to the innocence of <femininity>. No judging, no discrimination, no intolerance, no conquering, no striving - such is the formula for the woman's utopia. For all his supposed achievements and fine words, man's stupidity is best expressed in his inability to express himself. And while women have been subordinated throughout history, their openness with their feelings and honesty with themselves has made them more mature than men. Yes, women are more broad-minded than men, more "spiritual"; they respect the complexity of the individual, while men treat others as mere cyphers. Thus sayeth conventional wisdom. Naturally, these beliefs find their most ardent support amongst women themselves. Indeed, the whole woman's movement is based upon them. Yet while the woman's movement is new, the beliefs concerning the divinity of woman are ancient, and go to the very core of society and the ego living within it. Woman is the essence of society. Her very nature acts as an efficient preserver of humanity's values. So important is, and was, her function in this regard that she has remained unchanged throughout much of our evolution. The so-called changes brought about by the woman's movement are merely superficial - she is still woman. And while woman has been important for our evolutionary survival in the past, yet now we ask: Is she valid in herself? Is she more "spiritual", more "divine"? Is she truthful? Is there anything about her true at all? In a world full of violence and confusion, it is the duty of every thinking individual to develop his or her reasoning in an all-out search for Truth. This must be done - if not for one's own enlightenment, then at least for the survival of humanity. One must take rational open-mindedness to extremes, never resting in one belief or another, but always attacking, forever attacking. The more one believes something to be true, the more one must assault it from every angle with the powerful weaponry of reason. And why? Because one does not want to deceive oneself! Only in this way will the Supreme Certainty be reached. I present woman here in a very different light to the accepted dogma. It is woman naked, as it were, stripped of her bright colours and finery. It is a more truthful view <precisely> <because> it is woman without her finery. Is she allowed to protest against such scrutiny? She will, of course - for she welcomes only those truths which overlook her. Inevitably, these essays will be misunderstood by all but a few individuals. History does not treat kindly those who are honest in their dealings with woman. To most, these essays will constitute sure proof that there is something horribly wrong with my nature. In anticipation of this, let it be known that there is not the slightest trace of misogyny in me. I offer these essays as a guide to those who wish to be free of woman in their attempt to live a philosophic life - a life of thought and truth. Woman is a plethora of contradictions, an infinity of finitudes, which must be understood if one is to succeed in relinquishing the ego. For the study of woman (and man) is really the study of the ego and how it manifests in the world. This work is <not> a scientific or philosophical thesis aimed at converting all and sundry with irrefutable evidence. Neither is it a doctrine of social change, or an exercise in moralizing. It is written only for those few individuals who have cultivated a serious interest in matters of the Infinite - all else are advised to read no further. It will be these few precious individuals, male or female, who upon reading these lines will clasp their hands with a joy of having met a long-lost friend. Yes, it is to you I write, and my thoughts are always with you. PART I - WOMAN AT A GLANCE - Most valuable for an understanding of male and female psychology is the study of evolution. The essentials of our evolution are well known: broke away from the apes; grew taller and became upright; became hunter and tool-maker; a rapid development of the brain and an enormous increase in complex social behaviour. Most important was the way our ancestors learned to work together to form a functional unit. This was essential to our survival considering that we were in competition with highly equipped hunters like the cats and the dogs. Indeed, the tribe became an organism unto itself - a super-organism - which had a great advantage over its rivals. Being composed of 10, 20, or 50 subunits, this superorganism could break apart, with some of the fragments staying at a home base while others went off to surround the wildebeest - subunits which organised themselves intelligently and purposively, "joined" together by communication and emotion. Combined with artificial weapons and strategic planning, the tribe's rivals could prove no match. So natural selection acts upon the tribe rather than on the individual person, and the survival of the individual depends upon the survival of the tribe. Now, natural selection does not necessarily favour the most truthful species, nor the most divine, but only those which can sufficiently adapt to changing conditions in order to pass on their genes. The survival of our species depended upon the tribe's ability to work as a cohesive unit. Any clumsiness here would have quickly been selected out, as the tribe would have been unable to survive. Such cohesion was made possible by the emotions. Emotional cohesion between individuals to form a functional unit had the added effect of preserving stability and increasing the flexibility of our species. This dynamic cohesion was central to our excellent ability to adapt to changing conditions. The division of sex roles and the emotional interplay between the sexes helped to maintain this dynamic cohesion. So we see that while cultures may change, and even emotional values may change, the essence of woman does not. The males, through their inquisitiveness, courage, and rationality, open up the possibilities of great change, but it is woman who ensures that all change be kept to a minimum, and that which she does allow be kept firmly towards the "common good". I should add at this point that although there are genetic differences between man and woman, the essential <psychological> <differences> between them are a result of upbringing, and not genetics. That the natures of woman and man have remained basically unchanged throughout much of our evolution is a testimony to the power of culture - and not genetics. * It is no accident that history is a story dominated by male characters. However, this is not due to the subordination of woman by a "patriarchal society", as is often claimed, but is due rather to the inevitable consequences of the evolution of the sexes. Males have evolved to be physically and mentally stonger, to be (relatively) fearless warriors, risk-takers, and adventurers. Attack and defence was absolutely essential for the tribe's survival. The males were reared to perform this function and it was thus inevitable that they would come to dominate the making of important decisions within the tribe. How could history have been otherwise - considering that politics is rooted in the art of attack and defence? But this does not mean that women were thereby subordinated. I cannot believe that women are completely ignorant of the vast power they actually possess in society. Indeed, they have played an enormous part in history. The role of woman was not only one of reproduction, the rearing of offspring, and the gathering of foods - equally important was the <emotional power> the females possessed over the males. Women were the preservers of the social organism; the men were tools to this end. Thus, history is as much a women's story, even though as an individual she is very much out of the limelight. Let us not be mistaken here. Woman's emotional power over man does not come from the individual woman herself, but from the social fiction she embodies - that is, WOMAN! It is this abstract, ethereal entity that we all worship, not the bags of blood and guts themselves. Of course, one look at the modern specimen with its lipstick, earrings, dresses and bubbly personalities is enough to make the above statement seem unnecessary. Every woman is trained for one purpose only: to emulate WOMAN as closely as possible. And though the details of this social fiction may change from age to age, and from culture to culture, the essentials do not. She must be seen to be utterly distinct from the male - transcendent or otherworldly. Everything about her, from looks to personality, must emanate purity and godliness. Note, if you will, how the concept "she" finds no place in the world of natural things. Thus, today, as in all history, the socially ordained lot for women is for them to shed their individuality and merge into the homogeneous mass of WOMAN - an entity as featureless as it is abstract. So strong is the pull towards this fiction, and so terrible the consequences for any who dare resist it, that the possibility of there arising a woman with any genuine individuality is slim. Rather, fashions, trivia, and bubbly personalities are as essentially feminine today as they were ever. Teenage females are identical to each other and the same as they were in all history, middle-aged women even more so, no matter how much they try to distract us from this fact. Women themselves are generally not aware of their sameness but are all too aware of their differentness. This is because they have a sharpened eye for small detail which excludes the larger picture, and precisely this provides for much of the conditions for their sex's fundamental sameness. Women are certainly not the unselfish and non-competitive creatures we are so often led to believe. On the contrary, their competitive nature would do any man proud. Their selfishness is merely concealed, and their competitiveness manifests indirectly. To be sure, the world of the female is distinct and utterly different from that of the male, thus her different response. Woman's prime concern, if not her only concern, is that of <status>. Her only real happiness lies in the experience of power - the gaining of status over other women. Marriage, children, houses, lovers, looks, clothes, wealth - all are means to an end: to succeed in a game which never ends. At the very pinnacle of the status tree, where the greatest happiness is, there lies the woman in love. She has, as it were, transcended the game. There is nothing above her. The world is transformed and she feels so special. Although she lavishes all her attention upon her man, doting on him constantly, never wearying of observing him in all kinds of intimate detail, her happiness ultimately lies not in him but in being in love. The man himself is of secondary importance, a means to a higher end. The woman in love does not even have to give thought to other women in order to enjoy her position in the hierarchy. Rather, her whole being reeks of the knowledge of her own superiority. In any case, if things get a little jaded, she has only to descend a little way in order to compare herself again. This alone will cause her to transcend once more. Because of the competitive nature of the status game, women are obliged to invest a great deal of time and energy in it. Indeed, virtually all women become thoroughly obsessed with it, being involved with the game in thought and deed at every waking moment. When two women meet on the street, what lies behind their smiles and gossip? - two thoroughly alert creatures, each anxiously investigating the other: how good-looking is the man perched on the end of the other's arm?; whose children are brighter, cleaner, happier?; what about clothes, hair, wrinkles, and fat?; how are the renovations to the house coming along? - generally, the looking for any sign that the other woman might have something over her. Here is the root of her injustice and disposition for envy as is well known in psychology. Her morals and concerns are but tools for the game, and if they prove a hindrance she will discard them as easily as she took them up - without batting an eyelash. Also, her total submission to the status game does not favour her making rational decisions. Indeed, the lack of responsibility and conscience in most women can, in part, be traced to this. And because of her deep involvement with the status game woman is an habitual worrier. She feels that her world is continually on the verge of falling apart. Her hair tends to keep falling from the desired shape. Her clothes always seem crooked, her house untidy, her children hungry. There are a thousand little things for her to attend to. Accordingly, she has an eye for detail that the man does not. And because her brain has to incorporate this continual flux of detail and process it into a manageable shape the woman's mind generally thinks at a much faster rate than the man's. Behind her composure, her mind is alight with thousands of tiny flashes of thought. In contrast, the male mind entertains fewer thoughts that come through less quickly and less urgently, but are capable of <penetration> as a result. Women's gossip, then, is a natural consequence of her constant worry over status. As well as receiving continuous input from others concerning the do's and dont's of successful feminine strategy, gossip provides the further advantage of strengthening the belief that the whole woman's world is somehow extremely important. * The backbone of the woman's world is the social fiction, WOMAN. It is the game wherein each and every female competes for status, thus preserving and furthering the fiction. This in turn preserves and furthers the herd values of society. It is not necessary for the individual female to consciously preserve this fiction. It is true that her bones may tell her "all's right in the world" when WOMAN is seen to be in its rightful place . . . but it is enough to train her to believe that ultimate happiness lies in succeeding in the status game. She is blinkered and unaware of all but the road ahead. She knows little of her own motives, believing herself to be a loving and caring individual. Well known in anthropology is the fact that the inhabitants of a particular culture are ignorant of the real reasons why they esteem the cultural values and belief-systems that they do - reasons which can only be determined by taking a broader evolutionary perspective. A people's myths and religion may seem to be expressions of divinity to the consciousness of the inhabitants, but they are unaware that the reality behind them lies in the more mundane spheres of economics and survival. A famous example is the Indian worship of the cow. The Indians themselves believe the cow to have intrinsic spiritual value and consequently do not kill it. But studies have revealed that the belief evolved because the cow has come to be an integral part of India's complex economic system. The cow has become essential to farmers, not only for by-products such as milk and dung, but more importantly for the mechanics of agriculture (ie, for their ability to do work). The sacredness of the cow is a most useful belief in times of drought and great hardship when the temptation to kill it for food becomes great, but which would be fatal for the farmer's future to do so. And we too, in the West, have our sacred cows. I mean the sacred cows of love, compassion, family, and woman. For although they appear divine to us, their real (and only) value has lain in humankind's ceaseless battle to survive the rigors of the Natural world. We worship the false, believing it sacred. This is called preserving the ego. Who has the faith to believe in reason? Who has the desire to be freed from all false gods? We must let go of our mother's skirt at some stage. How can we walk in the infinite if we cling to the gods of the finite? Just observing the way women present themselves is enough to convince one that something's afoot. Their otherworldliness positively reeks out of the light frilly dresses, the lipstick and eyeshadow, the diamonds and ornaments, the flowing movements, the happiness on tap. They seem to have no place in Nature's realm of blood and guts and faeces. The closest they come to tangibility is by way of abstraction - thought-stuff is what they are made of and nothing more. Yet how on earth did the relentless unforgiving process of natural selection produce such daintiness? The answer lies in the structure of the tribal unit upon which natural selection operates. The "superorganism" of the tribe had specialized parts, just as our body has specialized parts. Women became unworldly abstractions to the degree that men became big and fearless. Thus the species became a peculiar mix of big hairy beasts and barely tangible god incarnates. The tribe was like a many-pronged sphere. The men were the outer prongs, who did the killing and defending, while the women were coccooned within, free to refine their magical illusion of otherworldliness. * And to this day she continues to cast her magic spell in her contrived and artificial world. There is no substance here - what matters most to her is <appearance>. Hence, each woman must necessarily be the actor (note: not actress). Her training is deep and began before she can remember, so that by the age of seven she thoroughly knows the attitude and behaviourisms of the mother. The little girl learns and imitates the mother during the years when her brain is at its freshest and most responsive. For the rest of her life she will feel most comfortable in the role of mother, and will find the maternal attitude to be most satisfying. Upon reaching her teens, however, she faces the traumatic task of learning the role of seducer/woman. She has already learnt many of woman's tricks, but now it becomes a serious business to perfect the role. These are years of constant practice - indeed, she is in direct competition with her peers who are themselves constantly working at it. No wonder the teenage girl has no time for anything but fashion and boys. She <must> succeed in this artificially constructed world; it is the only world in which she can survive. Failure here can mean only one thing: to endure the most horrible of all punishments - that of being unwanted. Seduction is the frontline of her being. With skill and confidence it can prove a most effective weapon. Yet it is fragile, and works only in a narrow range of conditions. Woman needs a role and a stage in order to function. Fortunately for her, theatre rules the world and there is little else in our culture apart from seduction. Outside of these necessary conditions, the bubble of woman is easily burst. Yet, paradoxically, she is always infinitely secure. She possesses an impregnable line of defense which can be called upon at any time, under any circumstance: that of caving-in completely. By thrusting her mind into the chaos of her emotions she can escape into a realm in which nothing exists. Deep in her heart, woman knows this; indeed, it almost seems a source of inspiration to her. "Smug" is the adjective that first comes to mind when one observes woman. The most determined of feminists and the most pathetic of waifs are both equally - smug. Behind the glitter and dazzle of woman lies an emptiness which goes nowhere. Little wonder that man so easily comes to despise her - reason and philosophical purpose have no place in her world. Yet how can she stop being the actor if she cannot reason? And of the few women who <are> capable of reason, how can they possibly follow through with it? A life of reason must inevitably lead away from WOMAN. Heaven knows, all society is absolutely against such a direction! Women themselves become the most outraged when one of their sisters ceases to play the game . . . Every reasoning mind which desires to realize Truth comes face-to-face with the problem of WOMAN. This monster of a fiction is extremely effective in deterring any thought from probing into fundamental values too deeply. Anyone, be it male or female, who wanders off the well-trodden path in search of Truth immediately feels the acute pressure to re-conform and knows at first hand how effective a deterrent WOMAN can be. And well it might! Where Truth is, woman is not! The real reason why so few people come to know Truth is not because the human brain is too limited, or because Truth it is inherently unknowable, but because - women won't allow it! PART II- UPON CLOSER EXAMINATION - We humans spend our lives attempting to crawl back to the womb. The ego is fundamentally motivated to find the supreme happiness and security of infancy and early childhood. The infant bliss - a timeless sea of meaningless joy - perhaps felt most acutely between the time when the conceptual faculty becomes developed enough to give consciousness any meaning and the time when we begin to fully appreciate the terrifying vastness of the world we live in. Once driven out into the whirling chaos of the outside world, we rarely experience such dream-like bliss. Ignorance is bliss, and the infant bliss is an ignorant bliss. As infants we know nothing of the outside world, nor are we able to comprehend our own actions. We have yet to form strong emotional attachments, so we know nothing of loss. We are ignorant of change and impermanence and have no fear of the future. Initially, the infant's attachment to the mother is primarily a physiological one based on familiar sounds, odours, and visual patterns. But as the child develops intellectually, with increasing awareness of the world, the infant begins to suffer the contrast between cold hard reality and the dream-like bliss of its former existence. The latter comes to be increasingly rekindled only through the mother's presence, which causes the infant to become increasingly attached to her. In the infant's eyes, the mother becomes a supreme, all-powerful God, the embodiment of all goodness and perfection. Through her, the infant/child can re-experience the heavenly realms of infancy and thus comes to view the mother as being the guardian of this realm. She is the gatekeeper, as it were, the gate being the entrance to supreme happiness; a gate through which the young child may be able to enter, if it so pleases her. This picture, and these forces, form the core and soul of the egotistical mind. It forms the basis of the thought-patterning and emotional make-up which will persist throughout life, and express itself in the search for happiness. As the child grows the mind hardens, and, under a storm of adult conceptions, the mind soon forgets the infant bliss which it had so loved. This leaves a void in the child's mind, inhabited by hungry infantile emotions which are continually driving the child towards an unseen goal. Such is the ego, constantly engaged in the search, with every thought and deed judged in terms of gain and loss, the ego will struggle throughout its life for something it knows not what. It will necessarily come to see Nature as the enemy to be conquered and destroyed. An unfailing faith will spring forth in the belief that worldly skills and success will surely beat a path back to the heavens. Innocently accepting society for what it is not, the ego will throw itself into love, business, friendship and status in an effort to fulfill its hidden agenda. Or else it will be forced away into the fantasies of religion and mysticism, believing that its Holy Grail lies elsewhere, in some other world or dimension. Or else it will simply give up in cynicism and while away its time in the forgetfulness of chemicals, television, books, music and sex. And so it goes on, and all the while Wisdom sits forgotten in the corner, waiting patiently for some madman to follow his reason and to experience the supreme bliss of this world. We have seen that the young child, be it male or female, comes to regard the mother as the supreme God, protector, and provider of eternal happiness. A point is reached, however, when the paths of the young male and female diverge and go their separate ways. The male child gets rejected from his mother, as it were. That is, he is made to realize that he cannot grow up to be a mother, but must become that altogether shadowy and complex figure in the background, the father. Indeed, the mother herself encourages him in this, rewarding him if he performs the conventional "manly" acts. Thus, he is pushed firmly, gradually, further and further out into the cold, away from her warmth of old. A process gradual enough to continually reaffirm his addiction to her, yet strong enough to shatter forever his complete trust in woman. He will never again be entirely comfortable in her presence. Even when in later life he becomes intimately involved with a woman, he remains uneasy - unless she continuously displays her unfailing devotion to him. The smallest of signs that she is not wholeheartedly interested in him is enough to cause a man fear. Rejection is but a whisker away! Now it is at this tender age that the boy is expected to perform acts of independence. His uncertainty with regard to his mother leads him to value the male world more highly than her - it becomes a substitute mother, <a more certain mother>. Success and fame become her embrace, male comradeship her affection. To put it another way, the young boy ceases to see his mother as being perfection, the gatekeeper to eternal happiness, but comes to regard this divinity as being somewhere out in the world. He is made to strive, conquer, and succeed in the world, to succeed enough to be deemed "worthy" by this hidden divinity. Perfection has rejected him - and he spends the rest of his life seeking its favour and acceptance. So at a very young age a boy comes to know the suffering of solitude. He learns to depend on himself, his mind, his wit, and his reason. He learns to introspect in an effort to understand what crime he has committed to deserve such a fate. <Perfection has rejected him> - does this mean that he is therefore evil? Or worse, <uninteresting?> Little girls go through no such trauma - they are far too busy happily being mothers themselves. For it is a fact that "girls mature faster than boys", and they are brought up steadfast in the belief that they are perfect in their own purity. The young girl also comes to associate the idea of perfection with mother. She too comes to see her mother as being the gatekeeper to eternal happiness. Realizing that she herself will become such an entity, the little girl begins to formulate an ideal based the concept. She creates the Dream - the ideal of the perfect woman - to which she will, even now, begin to conform herself, only to develop it into an earnest pursuit later in life. Here we can see an essential difference in the psychology of the two sexes. The female is brought up to believe that she herself will become the divine gatekeeper, whereas the male will see his task as one of conquering her. The female creates the image of the ideal woman before immediately creating a dream-man to compliment this ideal. The male, on the other hand, must learn to manipulate himself so as to resemble <her> image of the dream-man. He is essentially lost, spending his time, as he does, groping blindly in the dark, not having the benefit of a concrete clear ideal as she has. The female is constantly in close involvement with her ideal. It is essentially a static image and it is merely a matter of growing in conformity with it. The content is such that she herself is seen to be the embodiment of perfection, innocence, and love - with the entire Universe worshipping her as such. It is an ideal she unquestioningly believes to be utterly right. Her deepest desire is for it to be actualized and thus for her to be able to submit entirely to it. The image of the early mother, which forms the essence of her Dream, begins to take on a structure and shape through the various influences of her childhood. She reads fairytales and stories, studies her elders, and practices with her peers. By the time she reaches her teens she will have become thoroughly obsessed with the Dream and with the art of making it real. It is a time of trauma for her while she is subjected to real pressure for the first time in her life. The pleasant dreams of childhood no longer suffice and she must now learn all the tricks of a trade in which she must become a master. During this period the young girl will come to reject her mother as being the embodiment of the ideal. The "later" mother is no longer seen to be the "early" one. Her mother has fallen from grace, as it were, and becomes for the young girl an object of pity or disgust. The ideal is detached and placed elsewhere, on to other women. Now, the Dream inevitably involves a man, and the female becomes intimately concerned with finding one who somewhat resembles her dream-man. It need not be a particularly close fit. If she can find a man that has some semblance of the right character- istics she will craft him into an even better likeness - making up the shortfall with fantasy. The more the man comes to resemble her dream-man, in her eyes at least, the more she is able to submit to the Dream. All men feel, deep down, that they are failures. From an early age perfection has cast them aside, and from an early age they are made to feel responsible for their failure. They feel they must now prove their worth and are thus driven out into the world to try to assuage the pain. That man is a failure is concealed, for what man fears most is to have his failure, as a human, <exposed> - either to himself or to others. He fears having his deepest belief about himself confirmed. And as the man grows older this is compounded by the possibility that his entire past life, a life spent in trying to redress the whole situation, is also to be one of failure. Hence, a man does his best to conceal such matters. Just as the female creates an ideal of perfection in her mind, the male too attempts to create one - but at a much later age. Whereas the female's ideal is inexorably directed to the common fiction, WOMAN, and hence is static, the male ideal is far more flexible and open to change. All he knows is that he must conquer and succeed in something. These two contrasting ideals provide the necessary conditions for a dynamic cohesion of the species, so important for evolutionary survival. The man creates an image of himself succeeding in something and fantasizes about the subsequent fame and adulation. If this image gains credibility through some success in the external world then, egotistically speaking, so much the better for him. His joy in conquest lies in this: the distancing of himself from his feeling of failure. It is not true that man fears "re-engulfment in the mother", or that he fears to lose his individuality in submission. No, indeed, it is in fact deepest desire - to dissolve himself in a sea of absolute happiness and security. Nor is it strictly true that he fears the feminine. What he does fear is WOMAN'S judgement and her rejection of him. In the mind of every person, and consequently reinforced in social myth, is the belief that woman is closer to perfection than man. This is no mere accident, for such a belief is the base upon which society was built. 1. Man is given the faculty of will, but the price he pays for it is guilt. The more woman is regarded to be the embodiment of perfection, the more a man will appear lost, despicable, and worthless. That is to say, woman's perfection is emphasized at the price of male dignity. Thus he spends his energies in an effort to gain her approval, and in a most effective way, the wilder, more independent nature of the male is restrained in conformity with the "common good". 2 If the art of winning lies in the ability to conceal one's tactics and intentions, then it is no wonder that woman is so good at conquering man. She has honed to perfection the skilled use of contradiction and disguise. Just look at how she presents herself, with her elaborate attire, make-up, ornaments, shapely dresses, tight-fitting clothes, together with her childlike personality - what is the meaning of all this? Is it simply a desire to be attractive? Yes indeed, but the purpose is always to conquer and control man. Firstly, her manner must <advertise> her sexuality. Whatever form this may take - from the subtle shapes to the more revealing, from the raunchy to the sophisticated, from ornamentation to facial expression - whatever form this may take, she must be able to grab man's attention and provoke his arousal. Men must come to desire her, to want to get involved with her. But wait! The interested man immediately stumbles into a contradiction. Where he sees sexuality, he also sees innocence. Where he sees assertiveness, he also sees helplessness. Her childlike manner - the spontaneous laughing in the present, the seeming naivety, naturalness and unaffectedness - this seems to both at once heighten and diminish her sexuality, and to throw him into confusion. Here is woman in perfect stride. She has deliberately presented herself sexually, indeed has spent many hours planning and pruning herself thus - all for the purpose of manipulating the man. However, it is vitally important for this intention to be disguised. So she appears innocent, carefree, spontaneous, and submissive. The male is now at the end of his wits wondering how to approach her, and woman exploits this to the full. She is cast into the position of power, to use the authoritative Yes or No. But this is not all, for a third factor immediately comes into play, one that provides real bite to her authority - the factor of otherworldliness. Essentially, the otherworldliness of woman is related to mother. In appearance woman does not resemble mother, nor does she need to. Rather, she gains her transcendental power by analogy. This is the purpose of make-up and ornamentation: to appear utterly distinct from man's own earthiness. This distinction, this barrier between her and all things earthy, along with the physical triggers of odour and soft curves, is enough to revive the old infant emotions associated with mother. Thus is man is aroused, confused, and cautious. He aches for her with all his being, but now it is up to her to judge him worthy or not. In an instant, if he should make as much as one false move, she can make him believe himself to be a wickedly evil, ugly monster. Or, in an instant, she can cause him to soar into the heavens with her glance, her smile, her touch. These three factors - sexuality, innocence, and otherworldliness - comprise the arsenal which the female unhesitatingly utilizes in her attempts to bring man under her control. Her body is her hidden treasure, a gift reserved for the most select; from her innocence and naivety pour forth movements of pure clean melodies unsullied by cares and concerns; her otherworldliness bathes her in a sea of mystery, of mysteries eternally elusive to mere mortals. Three factors that create the powerful illusion of <completeness>. The dense atmosphere of contradictions which surrounds the female issues from the complex interplay between these three factors. Being in full control of this interplay is the woman's art. It is what femininity is. 3. Lovers foolishly believe that they become one in a unity of love. Both lovers might experience emotional highs and altered states of consciousness in each other's company, but the woman's bliss is firmly rooted in a different soil to the man's. For the male and female have had entirely different upbringings, have dreamt different dreams, and thought different thoughts. For the woman, falling in love is the start of <real life>. Her past life is nought but a preparation for this. Like the person who strives to imitate his favourite fictional character, the woman in love blissfully performs the expected actions and experiences the expected emotions. She knows the plot through and through - her joy is to live it out. Here, in love, she is in her natural element. Just like the stage performer, who, having rehearsed long and hard so as to become highly skilled, and come performance night rises to the occasion, intoxicated, revelling in the power of his coordination and spontaneity, so too the woman in love never has to say: I am at a loss to know what to do. Similarly, the man in love feels he has entered a higher realm of being, but his joy is different in kind to the woman's. In flirtation and sex it is obvious that his joy lies in conquering her - most obviously in the latter when his emotions often approach hate and destructiveness. However, I strongly submit that in <every> type of interaction with a woman his sole pleasure lies in conquering her. I include here every type of relationship imaginable, from the rawest to the most tender and innocent. In all matters pertaining to woman, the man's joy is that of conquest. What are the traditional roles of marriage but expressions of this? What greater pleasure is there for the man, knowing that he can come home from work and there will be his slave, whore, and mother patiently waiting to lick his wounds and revitalize him for his next day's adventure? Far more subtle though, and consequently harder to detect, are the pleasures of conquest in the so-called modern open relationship - I mean that relationship possessed by the artist, poet, and intellectual; a relationship much sought after by the liberated woman, where equality claims to be reigning. This type of relationship involves the more fragile, the introverted, the wounded - where the male, skilled in the art of <holding> <back>, in subtle manoeuverings, in prolonging the conquest, gains his pleasures in exploring emotional territories, in deepening her acceptance of him, in "overcoming his inhibitions" through an increasing openness towards her - all forms of conquering. Spiritualized sex, as it were. And what more of love? What more of loves evils? No, I shan't even mention that indestructible worm-eaten poverty-stricken tramp, that master of disguises: status! But I will expose that most insidious of all pleasures - insidious because of its brilliant disguises of innocence and goodness - where the male lovingly looks upon her as "soul mate". Or, should I say, as the duplication of his own ego? Ah, ha! <Complete conquest!> 4 The understanding WOMAN more fully, and to understand how it came be, it can help to focus on certain peculiar aspects of human evolution. We shall see that WOMAN was essential in the formation of the human animal, and indeed, without it the development of rational intelligence would have been impossible. The evidence suggests that our nearest living relative is the chimpanzee. I will assume that in the early days, as the hominids brached out from the rest of the primates, our ancestors were organized along similar lines to those of the present-day chimp: fluid informal groupings, stable mother-offspring units, and a modest division of labour between the sexes. Foodsites act as magnets attracting nearby chimps - forming a temporary group - but who later drift apart when the food is gone. While both sexes look for food, it is the males who are slightly bolder. The females, with offspring in their care, are inclined to keep more concealed. Amongst the general flux there is stable social structure in which the chimps remain in close affectionate contact with their siblings and mother throughout their lives. When changing environmental pressures drove us out of old comfortable niches and into new territories, we had to find new methods of survival. As always, a species has to adapt to environmental changes or become extinct. Nature pushed us in the direction of relying more heavily on meat - to scavenging and then to hunting. But it seemed at first that Nature didn't equip us properly for the new demands. We had no rippling muscles, sharp claws, powerful jaws, nor great speed. The only thing inherited from our primate ancestory that could possibly be of use was primitive cunning. So it was this quality that natural selection favoured, built up, and perfected. Nature gave us the greatest of gifts, one that would prove to be more than adequate for the times ahead - the gift of <flexibility>. With an increasing intelligence, hand-eye coordination, tool use, and social complexity, our species adapted by becoming expert at adapting. This growing flexibility of behaviour meant that the normal strict kind of genetic determinism was having its power eroded. Our forefathers were becoming increasingly independent of traditional genetic forces, and if this trend were to have continued unchecked it would have posed a serious threat to the species' survival. Simply, intelligence was not yet enough to allow individuals to unite under a rational purpose, yet was certainly enough to destroy social cohesion. It was essential that the individual's concept of "self" be identified with the group and not become restricted to the individual himself. Here lies the key to understanding the essence of our species. Some mechanism was needed to foster the growth of both intelligence and social cohesion. This dual purpose could not be met by crude genetic change, as a genetically determined social cohesion would mean a sacrifice in intelligence, and in the all-important flexibility. So Nature fashioned a solution by increasing the complexity of the central nervous system combined with neoteny. Neoteny refers to changes in the rate of development of a particular characteristic in the embryonic process. In our species, the rate of brain development was slowed so that the infant came to be born with its brain still in the middle stages of development. This caused an increasingly longer childhood which, as we shall see, was to become essential for the growth of culture. Equally importantly, the prolonged juvenility served to ensure that our increasing intelligence and flexibility was kept firmly under control - not genetic control, but emotional. The newborn infant was becoming increasingly helpless and for longer periods of time . . . helpless while the necessary elements for the formation of personality were being put together. This gave the mother an immense emotional power over her children. The fresh inexperienced brain of the child would construct fantastic images of her, becomes attached to her power, and develop models of the world based on her. Such a mother-centred psychology would create even further differences in the way men and women are expected to behave, and would thus serve to widen the differences between male and female behaviour and psychology. Importantly, along with the increased intelligence and imagination came an increased sensitivity to fears, anxieties and stresses. One way to alleviate these burdens, and allow the continued growth of intelligence, was conformity to sex roles. Sex roles provided an element of stability and predictability in an uncertain world. Also, natural selection rewarded a more aggressive and courageous mode of behaviour, which further widened the gap between the sexes. By having half of the population able to confront great dangers, with the other half acting as supporters and soothers, the species could deal with its new challenges more effectively. So, with time both the emotional and physical well-being of the species came to depend on the differences between the sexes. The evolution of WOMAN was by now well under way. Sex was no longer the sole attraction the male had for the female - he required female companionship for the sake of his emotional health. This need increased to the point where nothing less than the complete possession of a female was satisfactory. The pair-bond had begun. Through cultural selection, which promoted contrast between the sexes, the female became slighter of build and developed more delicate features. Spurred-on by the men, she became more otherworldly, more ethereal, and to conquer such perfection was very satisfying to a man. Yet she perplexed him. For example, she was seen to be the <creator> of the species, the connection between copulation and pregnancy not being made. Further, she bled in menstration but did not die! Surely, he thought, this creature is not of this world! He was spellbound. The sexes became increasingly attracted to each another on an emotional level. Each provided the means for the other to escape the boredom and stress of the everyday. The male found that one of the charms of the female was her ability to bring out the child in him, providing an attractive dreamworld in which he could relax. The female in turn worshipped his strength and virility; she loved to submit to his power. Her happiness depended on being desirable to male strength. It seems plausible that the emotions of "love" arose early in our evolution, certainly before the emergence of the formal tribe and subsequent cultural take-off. Love between the sexes is the product of their differing but complementary egotism. Indeed, it is the very expression of the gap between. In turn, love fosters these differences. Each gives rise to the other, feed off each other, fertilize each other, and develop each other. The pair-bond may seem to be everything to the two people concerned, but it actually serves a deeper purpose - in tightening social cohesion. Social cohesion was further enhanced with the further development of language, which saw the formation of formal tribes. The old pair-bond was transformed into the institution of marriage, which served the same function as the pair-bond and was used as a political tool to forge alliances between neighbouring tribes. Equally importantly, marriage insured that <all> males remained faithful to the tribe. Not only was social division lessened by allowing every male access to a female, but marriage also kept the number of anti-social ideas to a minimum. The institution of marriage became a highly visible feature of culture. Its traditions and rituals underpinned all the customs and laws that ruled conscious life, and was highly esteemed. But even deeper than this, the tribal worship of marriage was in reality the worship of the male's commitment to the values of the tribe; the wedding feast was the celebration of the herd's victory over the individual. The institution of marriage was so successful that it continues to serve its purpose even now. Although I have written profusely on women, it should be noted that I have been writing about primitive myth and its descendent, religion. I talk about woman because I believe she is the deeper basis upon which the human world is constructed. I do not want to tangle with the countless myths and religions, for they are only <later intellectualizations of her>. Yes, all the elaborate myths, legends, traditions, spirits, gods, and other such invisible entities which surrounded and infused the tribe - all were manifestations of the power of WOMAN in the tribe, and shaped the behaviour of the individuals to fit the purpose of the collective. 5 Have you smelt Christianity amongst these lines? For indeed, Christianity is little more than a sophisticated version of the common mother-worship performed by infants. How else could those masked men, I mean the priests, have managed to have fool us for so long, conning us into believing in some invisible supernatural entity - if not by appeal to infant emotions! Look at the paralells: both infant and Christian worship an all-powerful, loving, caring, forgiving God; a smiling face which compassionately looks down at the struggles of Her/His creation; both infant and Christian equate maternal feelings with the highest good; both perform actions and rituals to win the favour of their God; both believe that the greatest happiness lies in their God's presence, and both are coerced into certain patterns of behaviours through reward and punishment. And too, just as the infant-become-child soon acquires skill in the art of manipulating its parent for self-gain, so the Christian approaches his God in order to - <trick Him!> Tears are used to wound Him, for the Christian knows all too well how to gain control over an Almighty God . . . by appealing to His compassion! PART III - OBSERVATIONS ON THE MODERN SITUATION - The glorification of love, so prevalent this century, highlights our spiritual bankruptcy. While the world has never exactly overflowed with spiritual wisdom, at least in times gone by there was the occasional whisper of a higher ideal - skyward shots of passion to attract the eye of Wisdom. Nowadays, however, such restlessness has all but vanished. Where have the thinkers gone? Where are the barbarians who grabbed life by the scruff of the neck and shook it to pieces? Why is everyone so timid? Last century, Nietzsche lifted his head and spewed his ugly truths on a flat world - and the world has bolted for cover ever since. No one since has even remotely approached his love and honesty, and it looks less and less likely that such giants will ever appear again. Was Nietzsche the very last representative of a dying species? No doubt, if our passion for Truth could be converted to sound and broadcast through giant amplifiers, then the twentieth century would boom out a thundering silence. The personality of modern society is that of a teenage drug addict who writes a little poetry on the side. Frivolity rules. Philosophic seriousness is ridiculed - considered an aberration of character. People want mobility, not nobility. 1 Religion has always been the best weapon against truth, but the modern glorification of love has surpassed even religion. O, love is a poison which insidiously croons its way through the mind, wreaking untold damage as it goes. Yet the men of today are so weak that even the most rational of men succumb to it. Witness the pathetic spectacle of the hords of grown men whimpering over their love like lost little boys! Only in this century could the womens movement have flourished - for it is really a mens movement in disguise. That is to say, it is desired by men. Men desire a retrogressive movement from the healthy heights of rationality to the stagnant valleys of emotion below. But what of women? - the only change in woman through all of this has been the lowering of her chin. Now she feeds off this stagnation in her own attempts at will to power, which is sinking humanity even deeper into the mire. 2 Am I dissatisfied with the way male values are being expressed in the world today? Yes. Am I then in favour of the women's movement in its attempt to change the situation? No, because the woman's movement is based upon, and is in its entirety, a pack of lies. 3 The history of the sexes has been one of mutual tyranny. The evolution of patriarchal institutions was the male response to the oppression he suffered under woman. An equilibrium was reached, with power being spread evenly between the sexes. Now woman has no intention of giving up her own power but is requiring man to shed his. The result will be a tyranny so complete it would have Stalin turning in his grave, cursing that he had been born both a male and a century too soon. 4 It is said that the male characteristics of reason and conquering are responsible for the world's ills. Yet who could seriously believe this? It is precisely <unreason> which causes the wars, violence, and injustice. Emotional attachment is ever the culprit. Yet, nowadays, women and holy men unite in extolling the virtues of emotion. I am struck dumb by their belief that modern Western civilization is a product of <too much reason!> What gall! They have <no conception> of what it means to live naturally, yet see fit to denounce such living anyway. Likewise, conquering itself does not cause the world's problems, but rather the <conquering towards deluded ends> which always does. And why does man conquer? - he conquers to please women! Man may pull the trigger but there is always woman behind him, nodding approval. He has not been allowed to conquer toward rational ends, for Truth, but has been persuaded to squander his energy in petty ideals. At root, the cause of all war, violence, hatred, and injustice is not nationalism, economics, religion, racism, or male aggression, but <egotism>. Egotism is in man, and in woman. Male egotism is obvious for all to see, whereas female egotism is disguised, concealed, hard to perceive - but then, the art of concealment is part of woman's egotism. Now because male and female egotism compliment one another, and have evolved together, the valuing of the one automatically means the valuing of the other. Male egotism, as expressed in the world, is dependent upon female egotism, and vice versa. If women were really concerned with the state of the world, if they were in the least bit serious about the task of eliminating the causes of our problems, if they were to possess even the merest speck of genuineness in their "movement", then they would be attacking their own egotism at least as much as they so enthusiastically attack the male's. But woman are as far from this as they can possibly be. Their only concern is to increase the satisfaction and pleasure of their own egotism. 5 The inherent <ungratefulness> of woman is most obvious in her "movement". Acknowledge, if you will, that the world we live in is, and always has been, a woman's world. 6 For most of our history, society was structured such that women did most of the mind-numbing work. This allowed space for men to achieve great things. Women were bred to find satisfaction in drudgery and even encouraged to make it a feminine virtue. In the upper classes, the female was brought up to be childlike. Man wanted her to be a blessed relief from his more serious concerns - a holiday. He loved her naivity, her innocence and self-deception. In short, woman was harmless - charming but harmless. At its best, this allowed man to concentrate his thoughts upon the great problems of existence, while woman soothed and supported him when required. Though she might not understand the weight of his profundity, she could at least appreciate its existence, and the suffering involved with it. But things have changed. With woman's escalating influence in the world of thought, this old doting view of her is no longer acceptable. Alas, she has lost her innocence - or her harmlessness at the very least. Now she plunges into the male mind with her childlike abandon, only to grasp superficially at its contents. Her own lack of depth blinds her to the existence of all depth. She gaily concludes that men worry about nothing at all. Men are lost fools who stupidly think about nothing. She then goes further to say that <she herself is the profound> <one>. Oh supreme irony! Yes, the most terrifying thing about the modern woman is her total lack of awareness of true profundity. With her ever-increasing influence, she is even able to persuade the male that such depth does not exist, and that he should return to the immediacy of her own femininity. Consequently, men are being robbed of their very souls! Her self-deceit, once relatively harmless, is now destroying all quality of mind. I therefore consider it to be one of my duties to expose the truth about woman - the truth that her real nature is far other than what it seems; the truth that her innocence and purity is nothing but a seething broth of lies, schemings, and manipulations! In times past, it was perhaps enough for the seeker of Truth to renounce woman. It is now his or her duty to <denounce> her. But who is capable of this? And what is it, exactly, that is to be denounced? Most certainly not woman's strivings in the intellectual sphere, nor her attempts to become independent of mind and to give full development to her character. What should be denounced, firmly and uncompromisingly, is the feminine. The feminine is a quagmire of delusion which draws both man and woman into its stagnation. For this reason I urge both men and women to never cease increasing the depth of their honesty, so as to destroy once and for all that monster of a fiction called femininity. 7 It cannot be denied that some good has come from the woman's movement. The challenging of traditional modes of thought is always a worthy enterprise, and women are quite capable of this - at least on a social level. Today's world provides men with great freedom, but restricts women to a support role. Women are fully justified in questioning and challenging this state of affairs. But it must be emphasized that whatever the value of the woman's movement, it is only in its being a corrective, <and not a solution>. It is like a medicine which may cure one form of sickness (and not necessarily others), but which produces the need for further treatment of its many side- effects. Feminine philosophy never be a solution but, at best, only a response. The woman's movement only has to go a little distance before encountering an impenetrable barrier. This is a barrier created by their lack of the appropriate skill and courage necessary to eliminate the <true causes> of what women perceive to be wrong in the world. Indeed, it is hard to know if women will ever realize that their very dreams and aspirations contribute enormously to the growth of all that they perceive to be wrong with the world. 8 Depth, as I define it, concerns the degree of relationship one has with one's thought. A developing reason directed at the fundamentals of existence, so as to pene