Bumped forward from January 2012
because where the Spitfire below
was a pretty thing Leia was prettier...
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I've mentioned her before, Leia, the dreamweaver who stepped up to take the throne when my muse Alex retired. She's incredibly skilled at that art, when Leia dials it on the weathermen know it sight unseen, the jet stream changes directions. One afternoon, well, afternoon for us, early morning for her, she did just that, she dialed it on and it was hot. I mean hot. I don't mean warm, or sultry, or provocative, it was that scorching melt things blue-white hot only the wholesome can fully achieve. It was the kind of thing a woman offers her man when he's the one she'll trust when she knows she'll be beyond rational thought, utterly consumed by passion, or pain, the kind of thing to motivate a man to cut his way across hell and back to fetch her dill pickles and chocolate ice cream if that's what's needed. It was just way hot. Of course that wasn't the only time she'd done it, but that time sticks in my mind because of what she said when that segment of her show was over, something she obviously understood that I'm coming to understand that not all women do understand.
As the chorus of wows and oh-my-god's and sundry such exclamations of delight from her audience began to wind down I added my compliment to the roll, words to the effect of "sweetheart, that was awesome, but don't ever do that for a man live and in person unless you plan to keep him for a lifetime." She smiled, her wise woman smile, the one that really is so very warm, and with a wink and a twinkle in her eye replied "nos, I'm not fifteen."
No beautiful woman, you're not fifteen. But if you at the age of fifteen understood the unspoken thought you were indeed a prodigy of feminine wisdom, and judging by what I've seen in the world at large since then it is a wisdom apparently a great many of your sisters need to understand.
Leia is full dreamweaver, it is her art to paint a dream using the psychology of her audience as her palette. As such of course she understands the full power of the erotic persona, the power the feminine allure has in the life of a man. Equally of course she'd have to understand the resentment a man will feel if that power is over used, she'd almost have to understand how deeply a man's life is actually diminished if he must defend himself against that power being mis-used beyond its' proper domain, how that power mis-used is actually the source of a great deal of the misogyny in our world.
Leia understood that, I'd say pretty much all of her sisters-in-seduction worthy of mentioning in the same context with her gave evidence they understood it to one degree or another. But apparently this is not a widely understood thing among all women. The longer I look the more consequences I'm beginning to lay to the feet of that ignorance. Interestingly, those who seem to actually understand it the least are those you'd think would be most likely to have a grip on that thought: the fashion industry, the feminists, the women's advocates of one form or another.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and work from the assumption it is ignorance, because to assume they behave as they do with that understanding in place would be to say they act with malice towards men, deliberately exploiting their own femininity to maintain a status quo of unhappiness and conflict for the sake of a profit motive, or worse, the motive of justifying a life based on bigotry and prejudice. For their sake I'm going to assume it's ignorance and not evil.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and work from the assumption it is ignorance, because to assume they behave as they do with that understanding in place would be to say they act with malice towards men, deliberately exploiting their own femininity to maintain a status quo of unhappiness and conflict for the sake of a profit motive, or worse, the motive of justifying a life based on bigotry and prejudice. For their sake I'm going to assume it's ignorance and not evil.
To find such a woman is a rare thing, even if we don't get to keep her to ourselves. I know a few here. Yet I wonder if we men have made it almost impossible for women to discover or develop such wisdom.
ReplyDeleteHear me out. Men have mostly developed the physical and mental structure of dominance and empire and ownership, especially of women. Until recently, unless a woman was very strong, the only way she could gain and keep a measure of independence was to use the arts of "beauty," seduction and giving or withholding of sex--"feminine wiles" in the old parlance. We men set up the paradigms; women used the only defenses they had against men's violence and possessiveness. We see this most clearly among the Orientals, but we Europeans are not guiltless. Can we blame the women for using what they had to develop?
But our insistence on ownership has hurt us too; we have made it hard if not impossible for women to give themselves freely and give us the white-hot connection most of us long for. You and I may say that we have not treated our women badly; yet can we say we do not benefit from the old ways of empire etc.?
We are at the stage in our human racial journey when we find ourselves having to question everything about our lives. "How does it work for us to inherit the ways of empire and entitlement? What have we lost?" It is something we must find, if we are to get ourselves out of this hole we've dug ourselves into...
Jochanaan, true in very high degree. The concepts of possession and entitlement are both the reddest of flags in my world.
DeleteAs an Emperor I make a really good plumber, I've been a victim of expectation far more often than anything else. The girls carry their own burden of social momentum, it's not just us vile males. The feminists will argue the opposite most vehemently, but then again, they do have a bit of an empire of their own to protect.
To anyone who is a functional Objectivist the repression and mistreatment of women is proof positive of the inferiority of that culture's masculine. Once again, I point to the frontier relationships (of all places and peoples) where society had yet to distill its' poisons to serve as reference standard of man - woman without the deformations of society applied.
Rhetorical question here... m/f or f/m ... exactly what is it that is owned? The rights to sexual access, or is it the right to usurp some percentage of productive output? The ownership thing is quite a minefield of balances, some very public, others very occult.
Well, as a poet here said succinctly, "You don't own your possessions, your possessions own you." There is possessiveness both ways. I much prefer the paradigm of sharing.
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