Feminism seminar: Wayward thoughts

Conventional wisdom declares that there inheres in every man a female and in every woman a male.

This leads to a strange paradox: The necessary condition of being conventionally male consists in submission to his inner female - she must direct the man - this is the secret of his flourishing "manhood". Conversely, the well-developed woman submits to the direction of her inner male.

In a man, the female finds the reasons; the man acts. In a woman, the male is directionless: it needs reasons from which to act, but the reasons in their substance cannot reflect the ones for which man has created for his female from which to act.

Man is, in teleological essence, female - the man is merely compensation for the essentially female character he is at core - at the level of fundamental beliefs and drives - at the level of the substance of ideas. Conversely, the woman is, in teleological essence, male - the female is compensation for the essentially male person she is at core.

Therefore man is the means to the female - in allocating to the man male-as-such, we have confounded means and ends, and so vice-versa.

Now a problem rears its head:

Man is unable, due to his male-as-means deficiency with feelings, to represent to himself the female form that directs him.

Woman is unable to represent to herself, due to her female-as-means deficiency with Ideas, the male that directs her.

Attempts on the man's part to masculinize, or take over reins of his inner female will lead to dissolution of character and sexual deficiency, and attempts on the woman's part to feminize her inner male (usually due, again, to social pressures) - will lead to the careless stupidity that characterizes the combination of female direction and instrumentality.

So its highly important in this respect not to misinterpret society's signals.

Now, is this the 'greatest myth of the woman', that she is directed by emotions rather than by Ideas? Is she, in essence, directed by the emotion or, as her male dictates, an Idea of it? But we cannot ask her: her female-as-means has no positive conception of the inner male, or what it thinks. Nevertheless, she is directed by the Idea and misattributes this source to the consciously represented emotional reaction to its content - for this reason, it characterizes her absolute morality, even though, to repeat, in attributing the corresponding emotionality as the cause, an error has been made.

Here, a problem arises: in what sense can we say that she acts 'according' to principle, if she is unable to represent the content of the principle by which she acts? (Very often, its projected: she wants her mate to act in service of ideals because she will not, as a suppressed man.)

I don't know, and in a certain sense, it is a mechanism that has no proper discourse to represent it, for obvious reasons.

So the male of the woman might be one of the most left-unsaid things in the world, despite its very real impact.

However, its ridiculous impotence in the conscious world means that the woman must fall back on a man-constructed image of the male. Therefore, the female-as-means consequently falls back on a male-constructed image of female. (More should be said though.)

So we arrive at the brand of feminism that advocates an independent woman-constructed image of male, which faces all the well-known problems.

In solution, women in general have chosen the indirect route to greater power by serving as the controlling feature of the female directing the male.

Do we reach a stasis, where women perform the role of channeling male desire, but men perform the role of setting the course? Given that patterns of division of labor are changing, what approach and attitude do we take to the charge of female inauthenticity, and to what end? The question for true equality turns on the ability and desire on the part of women to re-characterize Enlightenment forms in their image in a compatibilist way. (I would think that a good start would be for womenkind to respect their priestly or mannish types: cultural differences are obvious here.) Is this possible/desirable, or does its impossibility pave descents into fantasy - of the "autonomy of the sexes"?