Women & Evil

[Joel Slater]

 In a great many low-tech societies (the kind that are sometimes assumed to be more like the way every culture was a long time ago) women are perceived as sources of potential pollution to adult males-and in some way the culture proscribes certain behaviors and sets up certain rituals to deal with the pollution.  Women are perceived to carry a threat in some way.  In the Bible and in early Greek religions-it was a female that brought evil into the world.  My question is 1)if in fact women are associated with evil more so than men then, 2) why is this the case.   So, If any one wants to discuss this further we can do this on this forum or by email.   

[Elijah Hamilton]

Yes, Louann, I think it has to do with her status as a sexual temptress.  The issue isn't her sexuality itself so much as what happens when women abuse their sexual power, and the effect it has on men even when not intentionally abused by women.  Men all basically compete for the favor of women, which often can lead to conflict/death.  So a womans seductive power carries potentially lethal consequence for the men who are under it's spell.  Think Helen of Troy, Delilah, Sharon Stones character in Casino, etc... many a powerful man has lost his life and his kingdom due to his weakness for a womans love.  So because a mans life and livelihood can be forfeit based on the influence of a womans sexuality, he naturally associates that sexuality with "evil" and "danger".

[Elijah Hamilton]

I also think there are mostly two ways in which a man is threatened by a woman's sexuality.  
1) He puts himself in harms way to win the affection of a woman in the first place (engaging in risky behavior, war, fighting for her)
2) Even if he doesn't engage in risky behavior himself, just by being with an attractive woman he has to then defend his "property" and ward off or deal with other men who may want to challenge him and take his woman

[angel macedon]

It seems pretty clear that many women misuse, confuse, and otherwise abuse the position of strength they have as sexual gatekeepers and backseat drivers of relationships.  It is a tremendous power to be able to sit back and pick and choose as men make themselves available to   There are not many women willing to go the rejection that men must go through if they are to find a mate.  And because flirting by definition allows for plausible denial, most women are never called upon to look at how they use or misuse this advantage.  I have personally experienced women who have  used their sexuality in egotistical, corrosive, ways that hurt, humiliate, degrade. Since one on ten women in good marriages and relationships secretly get pregnant by another man, dupping their husband/partner into providing for and loving a child he thinks is his. This is an  an act of fraud and betrayal of the most intimate, hurtful kind. What kind of person could do such a thing? how calculating, manipulative, egotistical, hypocritcal and secretive must a person be who could do this? How long has this behaviour secretly taken of men? men? How can anyone legitimately argue that women aren't deserving of some long overdue critical analysis of their behaviour?

[Joel Slater]

   I find it kind of interesting in relationship to Freud and Levi-Strauss that it has been a very long tradition in the West (since the Greek Philosophers) to associate woman with nature and men with spirit.  (I think this tradition continues with women associated more closely with nature than men).  Nature is a place you don't want to be.  Aristotole claimed that women were weaker in morality than men are.   Women were less logical, and would hurt their brains to engage in ethical debates, but women were deprived of a strong ethical sense, and so what little sense they had-had to be relegated to caring for children and the home. (In this regard I think Freud, and Kant, and Aristotle would essentially agree with the Feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan that woman do in fact have a different approach to ethics-and from the male point of view of rules and duties and not letting feelings sway ones judgement-women would appear to be inferior.

     But it is not that men fear their minds so much as they fear their bodies.  This is a very old tradition that goes far back beyond the Judeo-Christian beginnings.  Probably one of the first associations of female and defilement was associated with menstrual blood-"the curse".  She could infect the adult males around her.  (Nodding is a bit too Jungian for me)  The obvious question is what is the nature of this perceived danger, and why.  Menstruating women were a danger to rationality (this is not me folks), by arousing their "untamed desires".  She got the men all horny, and I agree that a horny man is not at his most rational.  (But for me for this to make sense is that the men would have to feel that horniness in general is something to be feared and projected-not buying this yet).  "women serve as scapegoats for the evil men fear in themselves".

    But the more basic question remains I think-what is the nature of this evil men fear in themselves?  Is sexual arousement per se something men feel guilty about.  Is a menstruating woman all that sexually arousing-given that many societies went without much clothing anyways.  Feeling guilty about sex seems like a very bad Darwinian idea.

[Elijah Hamilton]

As men, being the so called "rational" ones, women only have the power to "[use] their sexuality in egotistical, corrosive, ways that hurt, humiliate, degrade" us if we let them.  I used to experience this a lot because I didn't have good skills with women and I didn't understand the courtship process or how women think.  I'm still learning more every day.  

Once I got a little more "game" and started spending more time with females / reading about female psychology and courtship dynamics, I came to understand that most women abusing their sexual power don't do it intentionally.  In fact many of what we perceive as mind games are simply a womans natural self defense mechanisms.  For example, say a woman isn't interested in a man.  She can either reject him outright (prompting him to think she's a b****), or she can be nice to him (causing him to accuse her of "leading him on").  They have to put up with this constantly starting in their early teens.  They also have to deal with the fact that most of the men who they really want or feel an emotional attraction to (women being emotional creatures) have so many sexual opportunities that they will not settle down easily with one woman.  So the men with high survival/replication value are unattainable to the average female, who are left to deal with all these losers who they don't feel attraction for, but hit on them and try to wine and dine them in an effort to get in their pants.   

Women aren't any more evil than men, they just manifest their evil in different ways, and it usually isn't intentional. 

[LOUANN BRIZENDINE]

The concept of: "Women serving as scapegoats for the evil men fear in themselves" implies men feel a great deal of shame about their normal sexual urges? Do you men think that is still true today? i know one man, after reading THE MALE BRAIN, told me that reading the book had helped him: "forgive himself for many things in his life". I didn't ask him like what?, but i made the assumption it meant his normal sexual urges. As a woman, I guess it is news to me that men feel guilty about their sexuality since i thought we women owned that 'guilty' territory.

[angel macedon]

Hey Elijah, what's going on? First, of all i can assure you i have more game than EASports, having grown up in a culture in which having copious amounts of game was/ is a requirement of uber masculinity. Having game, as it were, in this context you describe means, manning-up. it suggest that the real problem isn't that women can and do misuse and abuse their sexual authority for personal gain. No, the problem is that men lack a certain masculine ability to rise above it when it occurs. I would argue that you have misinterpreted the origins of game. The true origins of game rests in the idea that women must, just like they demand of men, can and should be held accountable for their behaviour; intentional or not. it seems to me your position is actually patronizing of women in it's claims that they can't help themselves: part of the denial game. Game was meant to free men from the negative consequences of pursuing sex at all costs. A true player doesn't chase women in ways that put himself or her in positions of compromise. None of what you presented denies that women abuse their sexual authority. In essence it makes excuses for them, which speaks directly to my complaints. Also, you mention that the men that women don't choose are losers----wow!---- and judge them as only interested in having sex ------double wow-----. I find your position ultimately to be very anti-male in a very old school romantic way. Now on to possible solutions. Since poor women are so tired and fed up with having to sort through the losers, sexual opportunist, and other failures who are constantly hitting on them ( except for Marsha the grad student, who hasn't had sex in so long she'd boink anything with a heartbeat, pulse not necessary, "if only i could get up the courage to ask Brad out", she thinks, as she devours another pint of Cherry Garcia ). And then there was the married woman out with the girls, who groupped me while dancing, whispering, "Do you move like that with your clothes off ?"Clearly this woman was not on charge of her faculities. The problem isn't that men don't understand the courtship process or that they don't have good skills with women, the problem is the PROCESS! All of your concerns about this process assume that men are unintelligent, unskilled sexual predators and buffoons, who would make life a lot easier for women if they could just raise up their game. Seriously?! I say we should have a role reversal so women and some men could see that the process is deeply flawed.

[angel macedon]

What i don't get Elijah is that you point that men have done and continue to do things that harm themselves in the pursuit of a woman and yet you don't argue for change that would provide for both participants to share the responsiblites and risks associated with starting relationships. Your  blanket dismissal of men who don't measure up to some, proably very flawed,short-sighted standard of measurement made by someone who knows little about being on the receiving end of countless rejections, was creul and dripping with negative  sexual competitve male energy. Why?

[Elijah Hamilton]

No, my "dismissal of men who don't measure up" was made because I know very much about being on the "receiving end of countless rejections".  The perceived unfairness of the whole thing had made me very hostile towards women, the world, and myself, which is what led me to study the male / female dynamic so that I could learn why women behave in the way they do.  In the process, I let go of a lot of that hostility. 

You say that my position is "patronizing of women in it's claims that they can't help themselves".  No more than it is patronizing of men.  We all follow our instincts.  It's human nature... or in the words of Too $hort, "You can't turn a ho into a housewife".  That's why I like Louann's books, because they acknowledge the facts that we have certain predispositions as men and women.

You can't remove those predispositions just by wishful thinking.  You say the problem is the process?  Well that's the same process that's been going on for thousands of years.  Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Joel Slater]

The assumption that men are projecting their own feelings of evil onto women (as distinct from seeing women as intrinsically evil) seems to be excepted without any further discussion.  (For me this really weakens the entire argument in this book).  And so helping men overcome this scapegoating is seen as providing another feminine description of evil.  She claims that Christianity demonized sex with such beliefs as "no Christian should receive the eucharist after he or she had sexual relations", (note both genders), "a menstruating woman should not receive communion", "or even enter a church".  And in general a woman after child birth had to renew her membership in the Church in some way.

     The "primitive" view was not that women had these periods because they were personally evil, it was just a manifestation of the evil in the universe-and women were more easily the carrier of that evil.  She accuses J.P. Sartre of believing that female sexuality is obscene and the sex act itself the "castration of man". (I always thought Sartre was a bit whacked, myself).  Wow, he was crazier than i thought. Sartre was a major critique of any sort of human determinism, he was a strong opponent of any essentialist ideas about human nature.  Humans made themselves via choices.  But their is an exception-the woman- Women are determined by their unfortunate sexual anatomy, which limits them to roles approximating the non conscious, unliberated Being -in-itself.

  (The think I find interesting here is only that Sartre appears to be expressing exactly what Freud and others have theorized about the equation of woman=nature, man=culture).  John Paul could not have expressed this idea more clearly it seems to me.  Women are associated with nature "Being-in-Itself".

   The author does think that woman are more accepting of physicality than men are.  (Is this true?)  The industries built on denying physicality seem to be legion: 1) plastic surgery, 2) botox, 3) physical workouts to make us look younger and stronger, etc., 4) the fashion and diet industries etc.  So, I think we are all insecure of our bodies these days (there is money to be made from insecurity from both genders).  But are women less insecure about body, and does that mean that they accept "physicality" (not exactly sure what that means) more easily than men?