Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy.
-Camille Paglia
Men are more creative than women. But let’s not start there; let’s start with sex.
Some time ago nature discovered it could vastly accelerate the process of evolution by dividing species into different sexes. One sex, the selector, would be the gatekeeper of reproduction. The other sex could now only reproduce via the selector. With one simple change the evolutionary pressure on a species effectively doubled. Survival of the individual no longer ensured survival of its DNA; if the male is not chosen to reproduce, he dies a different, more permanent death. On top of natural selection now lay sexual selection.
All the world’s a stage, and women are the audience. All our discoveries, accomplishments and works are offerings to the Goddess. Choose us. See what we’ve created, see what we’ve built. Choose us. Men have held many kinds of power, but sexual power – the power of reproduction – is the domain of women. Men only briefly participate in something women embody.
So men are more creative than women. Because if we don’t create, we die.
A popular tenet of modern feminism has been that, throughout history, “women were smart and strong but men kept them down.” This statement is most often used in reference to the idea that men are the dominant sex within society – “women would be too, if men hadn’t kept us in the kitchen.” Yet in A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilbur raises a strikingly simple point – “If women were smart and strong, how did men keep them down?” (It’s beginning to look like we should put this sort of question to the “men’s rights” movement as well.) It’s a classic catch-22, with only two answer categories – “A”, because men are smarter and stronger, or “B”, because men didn’t keep them down. Not surprisingly many men chose A, but while the feminists have not, neither have they chosen B. That would imply that they willfully submitted to male dominance – also a contradiction of feminist ideals. To be a victim is to assume lack of power; to be otherwise is to assume responsibility.
This is only a problem insofar as we’re making it one. In reality, it was never about “dominance” or “submission,” it was about direct vs. indirect. Female power derives not from directness (physical/mental) but from indirectness (emotional/spiritual). If females “submitted” to males directly, then so did men submit to them indirectly. “B” wasn’t really a compromise; we just thought it was.
And yet the reason this problem arose in the first place is because we currently live with a highly male-centric worldview. Before I invite argument from the likes of MND and The Spearhead, I’ll reiterate – not a male-centric world, but a male-centric worldview. In the male worldview, we equate power with directness, indirectness with weakness. Hence the above problem – when we ignored the fact that the intangible, the true feminine mystique, is power as well, lack of male traits became equated with lack of power. From this mindset arose the ultimate irony of modern feminism, that in encouraging women to be more assertive, more dominant – more direct – they were, in other words, promoting male values!
This is the exact opposite of what feminism should be about (Girl Game knows this, though they might not have said it so directly). True feminism is the promotion of female values and strengths, the strengths that enveloped and bound the men who built cities. I’m reminded of something a friend once said – “Men were placed on earth to move the world forward; women were placed on earth to hold it together.” Vertical and horizontal – it’s powerfully simple, and sums up the point we seem to be missing of late – men and women are not equal, but are of equal value.
That is what today’s society needs to realize; this is the end of the “gender wars.” Like a scale tipping from one end to another, we can continually go back and forth on sex issues – or, we can balance the scale. Which do you want?
Jesse was very high. He told her so; “I’m very high,” he said. Eva nodded her head. Eva was very high, too. Sometimes the leaves held to the trees until the start of November. Not this year; a dry spell had sent them down weeks early, and they lined the roadsides, oak-brown, spinning behind the car as Jesse drove past. It was windy, and dry leaves skittered across the road with every gust.
but the ribbon on the side of my bed tells me everything
And all I have to do is breathe, and I know she’s there
Because she’s all chocolate curls and silk curves
Because she thinks everything’s real
Listen, Cinderella, I say to her,
and there’s nothing more in this world
And then she’s up, so I take it
and the ribbon twirls around the needle once more
and the alcohol swab and the butane flame brush its tip, as if to say
go get ‘em, tiger
And she falls back against the sheets, eyes rolled up in the back of her head
because all there is is ecstasy
because she never thought it would be this good
And when she wakes up, all she’ll have to do is breathe, and she’ll know I’m gone
and the ribbon on the side of the bed will tell her everything
Cinderella, I could tell her, this isn’t how it really is
but I couldn’t really
’cause it was all just Candy
Radiohead – Climbing Up the Walls [Fila Brazillia Mix] || 1999/Brazilification (Remixes 95-99)
