Sunday 9 December 2012

Patriarchy and post-feminism: the triumph of the mundane


The male sexual drive stands as a perfect example of the evolutionary imperative. It is one instance of the unequivocal nature of life. The desire for life itself, must be satisfied. Masculine sexuality is sacred in so much as it embodies the inherent relish life has for its own existence. Life does not question itself. Life is. Existence is. 

Male sexuality is 'being' in full throttle. Existence is its own value, the thrust of life is by nature good. Not good in terms of an opposite to evil. I mean 'Good', as in the Aristotelian good, the life affirming truth about life itself.

When we experience our own sexuality, what we are in fact experiencing, is life affirming its own potency. We are feeling the full heat of the sun rise up from the spark of a biological imperative inside of us. Male sexuality is not something to be ashamed of. It is in fact, a statement of its own sanctity to itself.

So whenever you desire a woman, even if she does not desire you back, the experience of desire is itself a triumph of life over the mundane. Notice I do not say, 'life over death'. Life does not triumph over death, anyway. Death is life affirming. Death is the proof of life's sanctity, it's preciousness.

The opposite of life is not death, but the mundane. And importantly, when I say 'mundane', I do not mean down time, or a life of contemplation, or life lived in humble quietude. One does not need to live life in fame and historic flourishing, to affirm life in its fullest. What I mean is life lived in dullness, in the depressive claustrophobia of cynicism and meaninglessness. The quality of existence is drained of its presence, in the conquest of the mundane.

Patriarchal culture is a conquest of the mundane. It robs us of the beauty of death. It sets up false dualities. Mind/body, death/life, masculine/feminine, good/evil/, success/failure.
So what does this all mean for male sexuality?

The triumph of the mundane manifests itself in masculine shame. Inherent in the cultural ideals of masculinity is a shame about that very sexual drive itself. I have to ask you to really see the significance of that. To absorb the destructiveness of such ingrained cultural reflexivity in our society's masculine concepts.

Original sin. Sexual preciousness. The prissy self-righteousness of Victorian femininity. All these are manifestations of what I deem to be a conspiracy against the masculine. It doesn't take much to divide life against itself. All you have to do is plant mundane concepts that render its own drive for existence, shameful.

No I am not talking about just religion, or the Catholic church. I am talking about something far deeper. Something much longer lasting in the human cultural history. I don't even know what it is. All I know for sure, is that has embedded in life a fear of life itself. It has turned life into a cancer, through the mechanism of creating shame around the masculine urge.

I have talked elsewhere about masculine shame, and how it manifests. But suffice to say, I don't think modern culture is in any way some great triumph over religious shame or fear of the masculine. 

That's why I think it is deeper than religion. The shame exists in science, in the desperate need to eliminate mystery and awe, to triumph over the human subconscious. It exists in politics, in the need to create moral certainties, laws that determine rights and wrongs. It exists in academia, in the need to create systems of thought to alleviate the anxiety of life in the face of horrifying chaos.

It exists in all revolutions. One begins with an outburst of life, a triumph of the sensuous, only for it to be usurped by the egotism of ideology and dogma. When revolutions become dogmatic, they have become mundane. They are the enemy of life. The seek not death, but the interminable drudgery of existence. They annihilate the masculine.

The feminist revolution is just such a revolution. What started out as a life-affirming liberation of a suppressed portion of humanity, has now become yet another way of deepening the masculine shame. 

That's why I distinguish between post-feminism and true feminism. The former seeks to deepen shame around the erotic drive for life itself. The latter, is an expression of universal life, the triumph of the erotic over the mundane.

Post-feminism rides on the false dualities that feminism once tried to eliminate. Post-feminism is that movement which seeks to gain its power through the repression of male sexuality. It secretly likes patriarchy because patriarchy gives it a solid enemy, some monster to wage war against. It equates masculinity with abuse.

In doing so, it manifests the mundane, the ideology that turns life in upon itself. It creates war, it does not dissolve it. It has no love for life, instead it fears life and seeks to drain the quality of existence of its natural, masculine fruitfulness.

Post-feminism is not the enemy of patriarchy. It is patriarchy. 

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