THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
MAN AND WOMAN.
I have seen it written that the modern generation takes gender equality for granted. But, if true, is this because gender equality is a fact of nature, or because it has been turned into a cultural imperative by the modern fashion in feminist dogma? If it is not a fact of nature, then it is unacceptable to have it imposed as a false culture on the human understanding. What we really have, in that case, is gender equalization rather than gender equality, because a dogma cannot make the same what nature has made to be different.
One can observe that the principle of total gender equality is littered with flaws and contradictions, even on the part of dedicated feminists themselves. We are told, even by feminists, that girls at school are more cooperative than boys, that they are less critical, and that boys are more defiant or negatively more individualistic and competitive. We are told that boys prefer, and are better at, for example, maths than english, whereas the reverse is the case with girls.
So where is the vaunted total gender equality that the decreed theory insists must be factual?
Modern feminist theory insists on negating any significance in any difference between man and woman, or girl and boy, and attempts to deny, while at the same time admitting, even the existence of any differences, apart from the obvious, physical ones (which, of course, are not allowed to matter as far as feminist theory is concerned).
It is noticeable, consistent with the modern fashion in promoting the girl or woman to the detriment of the boy or man, that personal qualities of boys, such as those mentioned already, are usually referred to in their negative context, whereas those of girls are usually presented in their positive context.
The truth, however, is that any personal qualities, in either sex, can be manifested in either a positive or negative form.
Cooperativeness and personal attentiveness, as beneficial, are assumed to exist in their positive form in girls. But these qualities also have a negative form, which would involve a predisposition for invasiveness of the psyche of others, and a psychic collectivism, both of which threaten and are detrimental to liberty and individual identity.
Individualism and independence of a competitive kind, in boys, as disruptive and destructive represents the negative forms of these. But these also have a positive expression, which would involve individualism and independence of a non-competitive kind, which support liberty and individual identity. Friendship, indeed, depends on a sharing of individualized identities, whereas cooperation without individualism is not friendship but anti-individual collectivism.
In addition to these considerations, I think it is impossible to get rid of the intuition, based on daily experience, of some kind of differences between man and woman, in addition to the obvious physical ones. Feminist theory, of course, will try to dismiss such an intuition as merely a cultural programming hangover from a previous, unenlightened, chauvinist past, despite the differences, like those mentioned already, that feminists themselves cannot avoid mentioning. It is easy to SAY, or decree, such things, but less easy to show that they are true. Even a small child, not yet culturally programmed, is able to recognise that there are differences between mum and dad, or mummy and daddy, even though the child is no more able to successfully articulate these than the rest of us.
If we try to articulate an intuition of the differences between man and woman, we might start by trying to identify what men can or can't achieve and what women can or can't achieve. We might say that women can't be fighter pilots, mechanics, welders, naval commanders, and so on, and that men are no good with young children and the like. But you will immediately find that feminists will provide women, as is the case in the modern world, who will train as fighter pilots, mechanics, and naval commanders, and succeed in these tasks, and men, also, if compelled by circumstances, will learn to look after very young children successfully. If we try to rely on the traditional idea of the man as the warrior and hunter, we will find that the modern woman also demands her right to train as a warrior (soldier) or hunter. All such efforts to identify the differences between man and woman clearly don't work. We must therefore try something else if we are to hope to make any progress at all.
Let me therefore ask: are there any circumstances in which these differences, if they exist, are overtly and unmistakably manifested, in ways additional to those already mentioned? Let us go back to the domestic situation, from which emerges the intuition of young children about the differences between mummy and daddy. In this context we have certain unmistakable differences in the kinds of gifts assigned to mother's day for mothers, and to father's day for fathers. If we try to compare the types of gifts, we can find that gifts for mothers tend to emphasise gifts luxuriously decorated with 'hearts and flowers' and the like. They emphasise items related to personal pleasure and comfort, like bunches of flowers, boxes of chocolates, luxurious furnishing accessories, like decorated cushions, or other things for personalising the home. Gifts for fathers also include personal items, like wallets, or key rings, and also beer or wine hampers. Both sexes may have gifts associated with cooking, but those for dads are more likely to be barbeque associated items. Hardware stores promote power tools, tool boxes and the like as suitable gifts for fathers, but not for mothers. Personal items for mothers thus tend to focus on her sense of pleasure and comfort in her own identity that the things around her give to her, whereas those for fathers tend to be simply practical and useful.
So one can identify definite differences in the types of gifts for fathers or mothers. Feminists cannot simply dismiss these out of hand, however much they might like to. It might, therefore, prove instructive to examine the possible reasons for the persistence of such differences. E.g., why would people hardly ever consider buying a toolbox as a mother's day present, but would much more easily do so as a father's day present?
If we accept that the differences in the gifts actually relate to real underlying differences between males and females, we have to try to identify what underlying qualities the particular kinds of gifts are trying to relate to or satisfy.
In the case of females, for example, what is the reason for emphasis on 'hearts and flowers', and on personalised luxury and comfort? Perhaps these indicate that the woman's psyche focusses on her own personal experience of her relationship to things, rather than on the things themselves. If this is true, she gathers together the things of her environment by uniting them on the basis of her own psyche and emotions, rather than on properties inherent in the things themselves.
Does the father's interest in things like tools, auto accessories, and the like support the traditional idea that, whereas the woman in interested in herself as a person, and in other persons, the man is interested in things rather than persons? I think that that is actually not the essential difference. When the man gathers things together, he tends to do so on the basis of the way they can be united in accordance with their inherent properties, rather than, like the woman, on the basis of the personal psychic or emotional experiences they may support. The man, from this perspective, is a builder, a creator of structure, based on the objective properties inherent in things, whereas the woman is more like a collector, who unites things on the basis of herself, rather than on the basis of their inherent properties.
This difference is why one would give a man gifts of tools and implements of a practical kind, which can be used for constructing things, and would hardly ever give such gifts to a woman.
The woman's nature will tend to see the union of things among themselves in the spirit of a recipe she can implement, whereas the man's nature will tend to view them in terms of the laws of nature, which are independent of himself.
In relationships with other persons, the woman will tend to try to unite people on the basis of her own personal qualities of sympathy, affection, emotion, etc., whereas the man will pay more attention to the structural problem of how different personal identities can be united without one destroying the other in the process. This is a counterpart to the difference between the attitude to things in general, mentioned above, on the part of the man or the woman.
Are these differences strict and unalterable? I think not. The woman can train herself in the understanding of structure, and the man can see things with the eyes of the collector or recipe maker. But the woman has to make a definite, deliberate effort in this regard, in order to achieve what is not spontaneous to her nature. She acts in some degree outside her natural inclinations. That is why there remains something intuitively uncomfortable caused by the spectacle of a female fighter pilot, mechanic, or naval commander, etc. It cannot really be said to be merely a matter of some kind of hangover from traditional so-called 'patriarchal' culture.
In designing a house, for example, one has to consider the layout of rooms, the eventual type of decor, but also the properties of the materials have to be considered, like span tables for different types of wood or other materials, the properties of load bearing walls, and so on, which are engineering considerations. A man, unlike a woman, has a more natural interest in such engineering problems. A woman can take an interest in them too, especially if she is a feminist interested in using them to prove gender equality in practice, but she will be much more making a forced effort against her natural interest than will the man.
The feminist insistence on obliterating any signs of significant gender differences beyond the physical ones which cannot be denied, and on demanding gender equalising quotas and affirmative action in all spheres in which women are less represented than men, is not redressing the denial of the natural roles women should have always had. Instead, it is generating an artificial culture and environment, which will remain forever artificial, in the way it has been first generated.
Women appear to be forcing themselves to succeed in roles that are less consistent with their nature than with that of men, and dedicating more energy to this than the men themselves. However, the results will become something dangerously untrustworthy should women succeed in largely displacing men in all such spheres of activity. If boys grow up to abandon the roles in society for which they are most suited, and lose interest, they will remain like that, and not automatically return to what men used to be, no matter what emergency might require it. We already see that boys, in school, appear to have become disgusted and demoralised by an 'equalised' competition with girls in everything, and may be developing a lack of interest in, or even a kind of rebellion against, such a new society or culture. I sometimes cannot help wondering how many young converts to Islam, including even its worst jihadism, might be manifestations of this! The false 'gender equality in all things whatever' is an intuitively psychically painful dogma of which feminists who insist upon it appear to be completely oblivious.
Finally, the importance of the subtle difference between a campaign for liberty and the current campaign for equality should not be missed. A campaign for liberty is a campaign for a personal right, focussed directly on the self. A campaign for equality, on the other hand, is not focussed directly on oneself, but only indirectly so, and is directly focussed, instead, against someone else. So the feminist campaign for equality is not a campaign for the liberty of women, but against all that men are. That is, the only way to be sure of success in this; the only way to be sure one has achieved equality; is to achieve mastery, because if you are the master you are certainly equal, because you are more than equal. Otherwise you can never be certain you are fully equal. If feminists had always campaigned only for liberty, and not equality, they would naturally have devoted their campaigns to enabling women to make the choices women would naturally want to make, and not the choices that prove that women can equal or outshine men in anything at all.
So the feminist campaign for equality with men is not a campaign for the liberty of women, but is really automatically a campaign for the mastery of woman over man.
So let us ask what might the mastery of woman be expected to look like in practice vis-a-vis the role of men in particular? I believe that one can forsee that she may expect a harmonious and obedient man to use his particular talents to undertake searches for solutions to problems that she is not inclined to spend her time on. But she can be expected to insist on determining overall goals and also she, and not he, will decide what problems he is to work on. Furthermore, she, and not he, will actually implement the solutions he has been able to suggest. It is much more consistent with the female psyche to implement solutions than to work on problems for which no solutions yet exist. She will find such an arrangement to work best of all, and to be the most consistent with her own nature, and will suppose it to be the most consistent with nature in general as well. It is like the old story of Eve who, being dissatisfied with her relationship with Adam, thought that the creation would be much improved if she were to seize the initiative from him and assign it to herself.
If the man is the leader in the spousal relationship in particular, then he will identify problems and seek the solutions that seem to him to be the most workable, and she will then help him implement them, since implementation most harmonises with her nature, and her help will support and sustain them. Then they will fulfill the image of him as Adam, as the loving father of his family, with her, as Eve, as his helper.
The conclusions of modern feminism thus cannot be the end of the matter, especially for the man. We really need to enquire as to what might be the underlying cause of the differences that exist between man and woman, especially if we want to understand what might be the objective cause, originating in nature itself, rather than something arising out of historical cultural influences.
The only obvious natural differences between men and women are focussed in the sexual organs. If these are purely physical only, how could such purely physical differences affect the psyche of either gender? If they are linked to psychic differences, it must mean that the sexual organs are not really purely physical only, after all, but must cause a different influence on the psyche of the man compared to the woman. This would suggest that the difference in the sexual organs cause the man's experience of sex consciousness to be different to that of the woman, leading to a difference between the psyche of the man and that of the woman.
So, to have any hope of understanding this, we have to understand what is really the essence of the sexual experience, or the sexual nature.
We can see immediately that the focus and purpose of sexuality in a physical sense is essentially, and immediately, the production of seed, and so the meaning of sex can be expected to be embedded in the fundamental meaning of seed.
What, then, is the fundamental meaning of seed? The seed of any plant or animal is able to produce its own kind. This means that the seed, since it can produce a new creature, must contain a kind of total summation of the creature, and this, in turn, would imply that the seed-consciousness, or sex-consciousness, within a creature is connected with the creature's consciousness of its own totality. This indicates that sex-consciousness must be a profound component of self-consciousness in general, so that a difference in the seed-consciousness of a creature can, in this way, create an important difference in the psyche of one creature compared to the other.
So what is the difference between the seed-consciousness of the man and that of the woman? By seed-consciousness here I refer mainly to that which has the most influence on consciousness, by being a permanent part of consciousness, i.e., sperm or ova, both of which I will refer to as 'seed' for the purposes of this discussion. The fertilized 'seed', though it also has its influence on consciousness, is only an occasional and temporary reality, and should therefore be a separate consideration (which I will not deal with here).
The most obvious difference is that the man is able to move his seed, even though not in a way fully subject to his free will, while the woman is not. The significance of this is that it causes the man's seed-consciousness, and consequent consciousness of the concept of his own totality, to be more distinguished and objectified for him than is the case with the woman. It naturally makes him more aware of himself (and hence all things) as structured, in which the totality of the being is distinguished from the forms that lead to it, whereas the woman's consciousness naturally focusses more on the overall result, in which the forms and the totality are not so structurally distinct. This is why it is against nature for the woman to master the man, or be his leader, or seize the initiative from him. It is also why her nature will be generally more at home with implementation and completion than with structural problem solving. It could also easily tend to make Eve think she is naturally superior to the man, but this would really just mean that she simply doesn't understand him. Again, this supports the assertion that the woman should not master the man, or be his leader.
We are thus able to conclude that psychic and other differences between man and woman arise out of the sexual nature and its seed-consciousnessare, which are an immediate consequence of the physical nature of the sexual organs, irrespective of whether these are physically used or not.
So the modern feminist dogma that specifies gender equality as a fact, specifies merely a theorised fact, however insisted upon, a fact of dogma, something invented, a demand, a sanctioned policy, etc., but not a fact of nature itself.
It is necessary to recognise that there can be considerable differences between individuals of the same gender, so that the differences between men and women cannot be strictly applied to any particular, individual man or woman. But one can expect them to be applicable in the majority of cases.
What I have written here is not something to be used to advocate its implementation via laws or formal rules imposed on either men or women. The realities, in their practical implementation, are cultural in nature, and should be implemented only by people being individually persuaded of their truth and, as it were, voting with their feet. Artificial quotas and affirmative action are also objectionable, because they create situations that do not emerge, of themselves, as cultural developments.
It is worth making a final observation on the modern supposition that one can change one's gender by modern surgery and sex-hormone therapy. Although hormones do produce physical changes, these are limited, and no method can produce a gender change that is really complete. So there must always remain an indelible element of fakery in the results of any gender-change procedures.
© Alen, September 2014.
alen.1@bigpond.com
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