What it means for Man to conform is for him to grow into his strength—his ability to perform any task given to him … to allow what he produces and creates to define his social worth, and to develop in all things an exceptional competency.
…
What it means for Woman to conform to the standards of our society is … for her to embrace her weakness—her inability to perform any task with a degree of basic competency … to rely on her femininity to define her social worth, and to embrace in all other things a basic mediocrity.
The Tame and the Feral are the ways in which we believe that other people perceive us—or, in more Sartrean terms:
The way in which we see ourselves as Othered by Other people.
A Tame person is someone who we see as docile and meek; as someone who possesses less Agency than us, and whom we may therefore consider to be subservient to or beneath us. Thus, we feel comfortable in their company under the assumption that—if worst came to worst—we would be able to simply force them to comply and submit to our authority.
A Feral person is someone who we see as free and bold; as someone who possesses as-much or more Agency than us, and whom we must therefore consider to be either a rival or an enemy. Thus, we feel threatened by their existence under the assumption that—in the worst case scenario—they could pose a danger to us by being unwilling to respect or submit to our authority.
Thus, the Tame and the Feral can be read as the Feminine and the Masculine, where:
Tame men are considered meek, and therefore not “real” men, and
Feral women are considered threatening, and therefore not “real” women.
People who fail to conform to this sex-aligned Tame/Feral binary are thus stigmatized as Other and ostracized as weird—as uncanny, wrong,or perhaps even evil.
People who fail to conform… are not considered “real”people.
This basal assumption, however—that men or women are inherentlysupposed to be any specific way at all—is, in actuality, only an assumption, the logic of which is fundamentally flawed. Obviously, it is the case that there are biological and physiological characteristics which differentiate men and women… but those physical differences don’t constitute inherent determinations of Value. Value, after all—at least, in the real, physical world—is only ever really Social in nature. Sex, therefore, implies difference in physiology, but does not imply characteristics inherent to the essence of given people. The physiological constraints imposed upon a person by their biological Facticity do not in themselves determine a person’s ObjectiveValue, because ObjectiveValue (in the real world) is assigned not by the demands of a Metaphysical essence, but instead by means of Social consensus.
Put simply:
Value is defined by valuation, and valuation is obviously Subjective in nature—therefore, the Objective Value of a given thing is determined in the confluence of Subjectivity: in the realm not of Metaphysical Objectivity, but instead of Social Objectivity.
Within a misogynistic society, women aren’t supposed to have more Agency than men—thus, when they do, they are seen as threatening. Women aren’t supposed to have power over men—and so, when they do, they are considered immoral; considered Evil. Woman is thus shamed for choosing to enter or return to the world of Dionysus—to the real, physical world; for the world in which might makes right and competence determines Value is supposed to belong to Man. Woman is allowed only to inhabit the Apollonian—confined to the Social realm in a fundamental infantilization; in a fundamental denial of the reality of her Agency.
3 | The Priest’s Gambit & the Charlatan’s Box
And so … the Priest convinces the Slave that the Social Order which the Master has created isn’t absolute… and must, therefore, be fake. That it’s instead the Priest’s Order—the absolute, inherent, Metaphysical form of Order—which is true… and which, therefore, must obviously supersede any Social Order made by Man or mankind.
In playing thePriest’sGambit—in seeking to restructure the philosophy of his society—the Priest attempts to flatten the DialecticalCube; to transform it into a box instead.
If he succeeds—if he’s able to beat the Tame-Feral axis flat into line with that of Order and Chaos—then he would be able to diffuse the idea of Social Objectivity into the Metaphysical. … In this new Priest’s world—in this Charlatan’s Box—there remains only one type of Objectivity; not two. There is the Metaphysical—the real, true, absolute Objectivity, to which any form of unabsolute, Social Objectivity immediately finds itself subordinate… and, therefore, inferior.
Within the Charlatan’s Box, there are only two axes—and thus, four types of Woman. There is the Empowered and the Weak, the Submissive and the Defiant—and thus, also the four corners and Archetypes which exist at their extremes.
In playing the Priest’s Gambit, the Priest initiates an era of repressive action. By deposing prior Social Order in favor of a system of Metaphysical morality, the Priest attempts to manufacture Social stratification, buying the allegiance of the men who follow him by awarding them the enslavement of their women. By assigning to the traits of Weak and Submissive the moral quality of “Good”—by assigning to the traits of Empowered and Defiant the moral quality of “Evil”—the Priest thereby mandates the ideal of Woman as soft-spoken, demure, and meek. By defining the action and Agency of women as a great Social ill, the Priest creates a strict, Apollonian, patriarchal dominance-structure, where in reality—in the physical, Darwininan, Dionysian world—dominance is measured not by one’s degree of adherence to morality, but instead only through one’s own degree of competence and Agency.
Through the creation of the Charlatan’s Box—by manipulating his people’s philosophy with a lie—the Priest re-draws the line between the Tame and the Feral; the permissible and the forbidden. In so doing, he begins to rip stones from the old Master’s walls, using them to build new walls to divide and control his own people.
4 | Conclusions
Men don’t “get” women because they’ve been conditioned to not think of women as people.
Men don’t “get” women because they’re conditioned to think of Women as only technically human—as a form of lesser being.
Man considers Woman to be different—to be Other—and thus, as fundamentally notthesame type of entity as himself. The way men are conditioned to think of Woman is to place her on a two-dimensional plane—as purely Social Objects: Apollonian beings, fundamentally out of their depth in the Dionysian world of Man, in which one’s Value is determined only by the extent of one’s Agency.
Men don’t “get” women because they’ve been conditioned to think that women are supposed to just be nice and pretty—that they’re supposed to be Tame by nature. They believe that Woman exists to belong—not as her own Subject in a world of Objects, but instead as an Object in the world of Man.
Spitting straight FACTS bro. I've always told my friends and family that the fundamental problem between the sexes is that men don't see women as complete human beings, but I've never articulated it through this perspective. Great stuff.
Spitting straight FACTS bro. I've always told my friends and family that the fundamental problem between the sexes is that men don't see women as complete human beings, but I've never articulated it through this perspective. Great stuff.