Toxic Femininity

[kimberlysteele]

Here are some terms that were not in place when I grew up in the 70s/80s: woke, equity, social justice.  Political correctness of the type that is currently de rigueur was laughed at.  Nobody would have dreamed of putting a biological male on a women's swim team, let alone a women's prison.  Racism of various stripes was allowed to slide when it was not baldly displayed out in the open.  In my teens, I had a relative who used the word "gook" to refer to Asians.  It was not uncommon to hear white people using the N word to refer to black people, and not in a friendly, trying-to-be-cool way.  In the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, Mickey Rooney did a turn as the ostensibly-Japanese Mr. Yunioshi, a buck-toothed, thick-bespectacled idiot landlord.  In elementary school, we swung our bodies on the jungle gym to this refrain:

Chicky chicky China sitting on a fence
Tried to make a dollar out of sixty-five cents
She missed, she missed, she missed like this
Have you ever seen a China girl who missed like this

The acceptance of everyday racism and sexism made every interaction with non-white people awkward.  I felt this especially as a child, being the worst of both worlds: half-yellow and half-white.  Half-breeds everywhere know the pain of not being colored enough for the color of one half and not being white enough for white people.  As a girl, guys did not wait for my boobs to come in order unsnap my fledgling bra and to grab my butt in the halls of junior high.  This kind of walk-by molestation was called a "goose" because that is what they yelled as they did it.  To this day, I think it is a miracle I did not murder anyone in junior high or high school.  Back then, if you were a girl or a woman, you just took it.  For thirty years of my life, I was thought not to think much of it if a guy cat-called me.  

As weird and icky as it used to be, I would gladly take yesteryear's racism and sexism over the current reign of Generation Cuck and the Thought Police who get their binders in a twist when they spot a minor transphobic infraction to report to their ghoulish social media followings.  At least the goosers, the racist movie directors, and extended family members had a sense of humor.  The politically correct scolds of the modern era are as joyless as  a skiing accident.  

Consider the toxic masculine pyramid of the 1980s: at the top were Gordon Gecko types and electric guitarist/singers of hair bands who wore as much and more makeup than their 2020s drag queen equivalent, yet did so while calling themselves straight.  The pendulum took a dramatic swing, passing right through a moderate period during which it wasn't OK to call Asians gooks at the dinner table but it also was not OK to lump all white/straight people into an evilly evil blob slated for Stalinist persecution.  By the 2000s, toxic masculinity was on its way out, taking its refuge in game culture.  By the 2010s, the last of toxic masculinity hid in the chans and attempted to assert itself through the MGTOW movement.  Toxic femininity exploited the vacuum left in the wake of toxic masculinity.

Shame

It is a human thing to project the shadow.  Anytime a human does not want to deal with something she is doing, said human props up an enemy that resembles herself and then pretends the enemy is the only person doing the wrong thing.  Toxic feminists seek to shame because they carry a great deal of unprocessed shame.  This is their Achille's heel.  If you want to destroy a toxic feminist from the inside out, tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves and that you and they already know why, even if you are completely talking out of your ass.  

Look underneath the hood.  Toxic feminists try to pretend they are shameless, but they hate the bodies they pretend to be so "body positive" about.  They know they are hypocrites and their troll act is just that... an act.  They despair over the empty, vacuous lives they try so hard to paint as interesting on TikTok and Instagram.  Deep down they are horrified about just how deep they have dug, but they cannot yet look in the mirror and admit it.  Consequently, they wag fingers and scream EVIL instead of being honest and throwing down the shovel.

Chasing the Unlimits

At its core, toxic masculinity is a refusal to accept the limits of masculinity and a placement of excessive limits on femininity.  Toxic femininity, on the other hand, attempts to remove any and all limits, including the hard limits of natural law.  Toxic femininity at its core is a refusal to discriminate about anything: gender, beauty, law, getting up in the morning and going to work.  

When I saw the Broadway production of Wicked in the 1990s, I remember making a mental note about how many of the songs were about the removal of limits.  Many years later, I made the same mental note about the film musical The Greatest Showman, which features the song A Million Dreams (because a mere thousand or hundred dreams would never do) and Never Enough:

Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it will
Never be enough, it will never be enough

In the decade of the Millennium turn, McMansions got larger just as hard limits were slamming down everywhere else.  For many, many years, the salary class and the politicians who make its existence possible have done whatever they possibly could to continue kicking the can down the road.  In the 1980s, what was left of American manufacturing was sent overseas to China and its satellites, gutting the American lower-middle class and propping up the salary class with obscene wealth.  In the 2000s, inflating property values and tech bubbles to frothy highs did the job until that had to be bailed out in 2008.  After 2008, toxic femininity began its ascent because there was nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, and no resources left to cannibalize.

Toxic femininity is a kind of cannibalism.  It cuts through the gills in order to scrape the last bits out of the tube.  By removing the limits of human decency, it enables sexual access to children.  By lumping in morbid obesity and freak show amputation/disfigurement into an amorphous standard of beauty, it opens the floodgates for medical profiteers to cash in on mental illness and dysmorphia.  By making it acceptable to shame white and/or straight people for the appearance of their skin or their natural sexual urge to cohabit with the opposite sex, it provides endless avenues for vice disguised as virtue.  

Communism

The gay luxury communist utopia where nobody works and everybody eats bugs (ahem delivered by drone) represents a toxic feminine ideal of detached, isolated, self-hobbled bliss.  Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are the ultimate figureheads of the lifestyle and they both have the man-teats to prove it.  Toxic feminists love communism because they love violence: they advertise their love of it all the time by trying to equate free speech with violence.  Communism itself is a symptom of the ongoing decay of monotheism: it creates demiurges like Pol Pot and Stalin who create mini-Apocalypses in their urge to re-create the world in their own images.  Communism is feminine.  It wants to conquer by infection in equal proportion to dominating via military might.  The irony of communism is its domination by male leaders, and this is also the irony of modern toxic femininity.  It is dominated by males, whether it is transitioning males on the playing field or XY chromosome holders with Her/She bars in hand.

Covid: Attack of the Killer Couch Potatoes

The lockdowns and vaccine hysteria of the 2020s were quite successful (but ultimately failed) attempt at installing toxic feminine communism worldwide.  Without placing males at the heads of its nearly-unlimited hydra, toxic femininity cannot force its will at the end of a gunpoint because it does not know how to handle firearms without men at the helm.  That is why for every Theresa Tam there are three or more male equivalents calling the shots.  Toxic femininity is a cult of people who want to stay home and continue being poisoned, brainwashed, and spoon-fed.  Toxic femininity is soft, pliant, and wants to take in and consume everything it touches.

In its current incarnation, toxic femininity is the juggernaut of the salary class.  The toxic feminine takeover of masks, vaccines, and lockdowns was the most psycho in salary class strongholds.  Neurotic, sclerotic rich people in cozy enclaves fought as hard as such types can fight for keeping Versailles peasant-proof. 

Lockdowns are like McMansions in the way they are designed from the inside out.  In the McMansion, there are enormous rooms the size of small houses that are bundled together in what from outside looks like a packed-together village.  On the inside, there is always a cavernous foyer, a dining room, a living room, a finished basement with another huge living room/wet bar, a master bath, ostensible kid's and guest bedrooms, and at least seven large bathrooms.  What the outside looks like hardly matters as long as all of these standard features are present. 

Similarly, the toxic feminine salary class did not care about practical concerns  such as a functioning economy and the state international shipping as long as it got its wishlist.  The wishlist was mostly a removal of limits on the salary class.  They were sick of commuting, so the primary goal became to give themselves couch time (Netflix and chill and GrubHub) while dictating orders to lower classes from a virtuous perch. 

The handover of wealth from small businesses to mega corporations was fairly obvious when people were allowed to shop at Target or pick up Burger King at the drive thru but the tiny gift shop and café on the corner were forced to close.  Of course the rules were childish: they were endorsed and followed by stunted adults who bought the luxury communist ideal hook, line, and sinker when they were not pressured into accepting its worst parts via shame and threats.  

Subtle signs of yet another pendulum swing are lurking about.  Shirts that read Nobody Cares, Work Harder are suddenly all the rage.  The mainstream TV news media has to try extra hard to drum up interest in the latest failed effort to indict Donald Trump.  Experts are coming out of the woodwork condemning Covid vaccines and all hope of censoring their dissenting voices has been dashed.  I only hope that as the pendulum swings, it finds a few more stops in the middle this time.    

 

 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I remember when I was 12 or so looking at a bottle of fizzy sugar water and misreading the label as Cuck. I had no idea why at the time, although these days I wonder if the future wasn't leaking back into the past.

Makes me wonder what kind of future is leaking back to us now, as I have a current irrational interest in the Amish.

So where do the Karens exist in this pantheon of toxic fem?

As far as the pendulum swinging, I don't see it, what I see is dead static lockin on things that happened ~50 years ago. Pink Floyd, for instance. Music that's beyond old, but kids are still wearing t-shirts based on it.

[kimberlysteele]

LOL Cuck! If the shoe fits... Sometimes I think the future does leak into the past. Seriously.

I must be out of touch. I did not know the Amish were getting extra airtime lately.

The Karens pretty much deserve their own essay, I think. Too much to cover in a little paragraph. Maybe that will be my sequel to this essay.

The funny thing is kids (mostly boys) were wearing those shirts in the 80s and 90s too. I remember sitting through an hour plus of The Wall in 1991 at the Robert Crowne Center watching colorful laser lights dancing on the walls and ceiling. It was a school trip, emphasis on the "trip". I still have no idea who put that trip together or why they did it. Must have been big time Floyd fans or something.

[(Anonymous)]

This feels like yet another book. Don't let go of this direction, it's mad rich.

X

E

[kimberlysteele]

Thank you!

[lp9]

I grew up in the Rust Belt and am just a few years younger than you. I assumed that because the 70s were the peak of the good times here, before the steel industry fled for greener pastures, that's why we had/have so many classic rock stations, teens continue to wear t-shirts from 70s bands, etc. But maybe that stasis is more widespread than I thought?

[(Anonymous)]

Sooo loving this!
X
Erika

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

I have to admit I've had a great deal of schadenfreude at watching the real feminists get thrown out of the Left, but since I remember what that's like, as a person who cares about the wellbeing of the white working class I'm keen to help them once I'm done laughing. Troons ("trans goons") are abominable sex predators, and I have a family to protect.

To survive this Bioleninist ( https://spandrell.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism ) NKVD terror anyone with any common ground in truth, beauty, order and goodness has to be able to cooperate.

[kimberlysteele]

Great term! Very well coined. That said, Spandrell's screed/farticle is a laughable vignette of toxic masculine tropes. Some zingers:

"men have higher performance than women. They are stronger, they work harder, they have a higher variance, which means a fatter right tail in all traits (more geniuses)" The 'right' traits? According to whom?

"White men just run stuff better. They are natural high-status." LOL, did they ever give anyone else a shot at it though so we could see if it was true?

"Every single article you see out there by a Chinese writing about how China should be more progressive (i.e. more American) is written by either a woman or a homosexual." No comment required!

[(Anonymous)]

"Right tail" sounds like they mean it in the statistical sense, that is, more men at the high end of the distribution.

However, there's also the left tail, corresponding to the low end of the distribution, which from a super quick scan the writer didn't seem to mention. Most folks I've seen delve into the difference in variance understand that it would be a tradeoff/gamble -- men might be more likely than women to be geniuses, but they're also more likely to be morons. I'm not sure if the writer here realizes that, though.

[(Anonymous)]

To put it into context, yes this is statistical reasoning and it is being used correctly. The author is absolutely aware of the left tail but it wasn't relevant to the point he was making.

The NRx scene of which Spandrell is part is some of the spiciest samizdat available anywhere, and in this case the reason for bringing Spandrell into the conversation is solely because that was the first time anyone had lifted the skirt on the otherwise inexplicable behavior of the regime and revealed the true name of the horrifying bulge beneath.

[(Anonymous)]

You keep calling Millennials "Generation Cuck" but boomers and gen x were more radically feminist/infertile and set the template for today's society. This society is what your generation created, not ours.

[kimberlysteele]

Maybe I should call you guys Generation Butthurt instead! Though I am sure someone else is surely to blame for that too...

[kimberlysteele]

Also, if Boomers were infertile, why are there so many Millennials?

[(Anonymous)]

It's called demographic momentum. There are "lots" of millennials because there were lots of boomers.

There are still far fewer millennials than there would be if Boomer women had maintained the 3.5 fertility rate that existed when they were born.

This chart shows the US fertility rate spanning 1940-2018:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/figures/mm6901a5-F.gif

As you can see, the US fertility rate fell off a cliff in the mid 1970s, dropping below replacement around 1975. The women responsible were the mid-to-late Boomer cohort. There was a slight bump to near-replacement fertility in 1990 when the later millennial cohort was being born, but this still less than 50% recovery of the fertility rate that existed in the 1960s. Furthermore, much of this apparent increase was being driven by immigrant women from Latin America and Eastern Asia, not native-born women.

In other words the fertility rate today is well within the pitiful levels that existed around the time you were born. There was nothing "traditional", uncucked, conservative or normal about the society you grew up. The basic social template for today's world of femdom and infertility had already been forged. The main difference between now and then is that your generation and the boomers experienced a much lower cost of living, better opportunities for home ownership, much lower educational standards, more personal freedom, less punitive school rules and criminal sentencing, the list goes on and on... If you had to endure the hell that millennials did, your fertility rate would probably have been near zero.

[kimberlysteele]

Le sigh -- as someone who deliberately chose not to have children, believe me, it is bitter attitudes like this that helped cement my decision to keep my womb barren. Nothing turns a girl off faster than being eyed up as if she is a breeding cow. If you're so concerned about the fertility rate, by all means, get yourself to a sperm bank, a bar, an orgy, or a fertility ritual STAT. Time's a tickin'. Or maybe you have nine kids already, and if so, gods bless them; I think they're going to need it.

[(Anonymous)]

This is also why I wanna be in the real... for Adult Time.
That you answer is oh so kind.

E

[kimberlysteele]

Thank you. One thing the above commenter never pauses to consider is that some men don't want to sire children. This concept most likely has him clutching his pearls and reaching for the smelling salts.

I had children in several of my previous lives and I can only imagine I will have them again in future lives. I love children but I feel I can give them much more in this incarnation if I assume my seemingly fated role as their teacher. I am grateful for those who took on the onerous responsibility of parenting so I could be a teacher.

To each his or her own.

[causticus]

3.5 fertility rate (or greater) + modern medicine and sanitation infrastructure = massive overcrowding/overpopulation, which means an overall decline in the quality of life for everyone except the rich. Well, that second part is happening in abundance already even with our below-replacement rate! Imagine if American cities were even bigger overcrowded slums than they already are.

The way I see it is that the population is going to decline any which way as the industrial era draws to a close. People having less kids is a much more "soft" means of population decline than the usual factors like war, disease, famine, ect.

Of course, the fertility rate will certainly rebound after post-industrial circumstances force us back into an agrarian lifestyle.

[kimberlysteele]

Totally agreed. One of my larger worries was that the quaxx was going to result in a dramatic die-off that would be severe enough to lead to nuclear meltdowns. Not that we don't achieve that without a die-off (Fukushima, Chernobyl) but I am always cognizant of how much worse it could be. Population is already declining but thankfully it is not dropping off a cliff.

[(Anonymous)]

Quality of life is declining right now as the fertility rate continues to decrease for 50 years. What causes a decline in quality of life is not population increase or density, it is social decline related to infertility. Right now, American life expectancy has been declining for about a decade due to suicide, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, etc.

Quality of life keeps increasing in central Asia and Africa where the population is increasing. No industrial revolution necessary.

Face it your people forfeited the future

[kimberlysteele]

Is this intentionally satirical?

[causticus]

Great essay and a very generous portion of food for thought!

Would you say that this toxic femininity is the essence of the current iteration of the PMC? It seems like that to me. And it plays into my theory that Political Correctness emerged out of 80s/90s corporate culture, rather than being a result of some covert Marxist movement within academia that a lot of people on the right today like to suggest. It seems like it was a ham-fisted attempt to get men and women to co-exist as office fauna within those confined, sterile office spaces.

Another thing that came to mind is that this "culture" is part of the broader (bowel) movement to transcend the limits of nature, that is the defining character of the industrial West. Spoiler alert: Nature is undefeated.

[kimberlysteele]

Thank you!

Well, I could write a whole book on it I think.

"It seems like it was a ham-fisted attempt to get men and women to co-exist as office fauna within those confined, sterile office spaces."

THIS ^^^^^^^ 100%. Toxic femininity is the PMC's attempt at installing its beloved backrooms/sterile office environments all over the world forever and ever. There is a hatred of wildness and wild spaces: humans must conquer all, including outer space! Bring on the flying cars! Yeah, not gonna happen.

[(Anonymous)]

Political correctness has been around longer than the 80s and 90s. While the last peak prior to the 2010s was indeed in the early 90s, the same insanity could be found since the 60s and 70s with nearly exactly the same terms and debates, and with the people involved explicitly stating that they were approaching social justice from the lens of a Marxist oppressor/oppressed dynamic.

Back in 2017 a small time youtuber I used to watch, Hagbard Celine, did a retrospective based on a BBC documentary looking back at the 2nd wave of feminism. From their own mouths, take their words for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-5cG-UdR4

[(Anonymous)]

In terms of a pendulum swing and the spiritual byproducts of toxic femininity, I just learned of a truly shocking and demonic Internet rabbit hole: the monkey torture community.

This is a subculture of people who congregate on various platforms, including YouTube, Telegram and small forums and share pictures and videos of baby monkeys being abused and killed. The videos are produced mostly by people in Southeast Asia who can get paid more than a month's wage in their countries by Westerners who want to watch monkey torture. For people deep into this stuff it apparently becomes a daily habit and many collect thousands of the videos, which doesn't stop them being constantly ravenous for more material.

I see this as possibly a kind of backlash against the cloying popular Western culture that seeks to eradicate any trace of aggressive behavior. Children aren't allowed to roughhouse or even have much unstructured playtime anymore, people can be destroyed for edgy jokes the made on the Internet a decade ago and most of the venues for masculine competitive behavior have been removed.

Empathy has been weaponized to an incredible degree - the system of current "progressive" politics is founded almost entirely on appeals to compassion. "Your ancestors owned slaves!" "You're killing Grandma!" The value people assign to empathy has been relentlessly exploited and on a subconscious level many people are beginning to understand this.

This epitomizes to me what you describe as toxic femininity. I've heard stories from cities where homelessness is becoming a severe problem but anyone who brings it up is targeted with relentless hate and vitriol by people who consider themselves champions of the downtrodden - whose "compassionate values" give them a license to tear into anyone who disagrees. It also feeds into what JMG was discussing in this essay: https://www.ecosophia.net/hate-new-sex/

It makes sense that these social currents would lead to rising numbers of people who reject empathy completely and take pleasure in the torment of helpless creatures. It's an embrace of viciousness and the basest type of cruelty. Some of the testimonies from monkey torture fans suggest that dark spiritual forces are at work. Consider this quote from an enthusiast:

"Its like this boiling up of hot oatmeal inside my pelvis and stomach and then behind my eyes and I want to squeeze one while it makes that teeth baring face and then seizures and croaks and goes floppy."

Other testimonies indicate that people often stumble into this netherworld from regular YT animal videos and quickly become addicted, joining a hivemind of users commenting on the videos with the same disturbing jargon. It's notable that the material is mostly focused on infant monkeys, likely because they project such stark expressions of terror and pain whereas adult monkeys are much more stoic.

Something that separates this community from every other fetish interest I'm aware of is that a plurality or possibly a slim majority of the members are women, many of them middle-aged. Something about it seems to align with the devouring mother archetype. In any case, it's one of the clearest indicators of the condition of the astral plane.

And I doubt that people who have become caught up in this phenomenon will limit their sadism to monkeys...

[kimberlysteele]

I had not heard of baby monkey torture but sadly I am not surprised. Not even slightly.

"And I doubt that people who have become caught up in this phenomenon will limit their sadism to monkeys..."

Yep. If they're getting paid a month's salary for a baby monkey, imagine the financial bonus when it is a human infant.

[(Anonymous)]

It feels like every week I learn about something new and horrible that has arisen due to the internet.

The internet itself feels like quite a toxic feminine force generally, in the sense of uniting everyone in a nominal equality, but with all sorts of unspoken rules and cliques and social shunning punishments doled out for minor infractions.

Anon poster and Kimberly - have either of you read Rintrah Radagast's blog as well?

He's a Dutch psychedelic user, who has the occasional spectacular insight and used to post a lot on Covid. This post from late 2021 is the one I think of regarding toxic femininity:
https://www.rintrah.nl/myth-exists-outside-of-time/

He mentions the "Rotting goddess", who turns up in various religions.

It makes me think of fungi, the organisms who rot everything, and the parallels between a fungal network and the internet.

Mr Crow

[kimberlysteele]

Fascinating! Have you seen the film Tragic Jungle? It is about a young woman who escapes a betrothal to a wealthy landowner in 1920s Belize and falls in with a bunch of chicleros (guys who chop and tap trees for the sap that makes chewing gum). She ends up becoming the human incarnation of the ancient goddess Xtabay and picks off the guys one by one.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I've not heard of that film actually. It sounds good, but I've been trying to limit my watching of sketchy supernatural horror movies these days, as they mess up my dreams for a week or so.

I just re-read the essay and it's actually in the comments that someone mentions her as the rotting godddess - Rintrah referred to her by the South American name of Pachamama. As an aside, in 2019, there was a very weird Roman Catholic mass which the pope did that was devoted to Pachamama. I've seen some clips/pictures and got some very creepy vibes from it.

Also, a fun fact for you - before fungi evolved, dead trees just piled up everywhere and the soil slowly became depleted. This went on for millions of years and is the only reason coal exists, but it will never be renewed now that fungi exist. The surge of nutrients opened up a whole host of new niches for exciting new species to evolve. As annoying as it is that my shed is slowly rotting to pieces, the fungi certainly have their purposes.

Mr. Crow

[kimberlysteele]

Fascinating! Considering our species has left so much plastic and metals behind, I imagine that the next dominant species on Earth will wonder about the shiny layer of compressed plastics that will be our only lasting legacy. I think a fungus will evolve to eat plastics though, and that means our layer will often be hard to find because it will be consumed and broken down and/or deep underwater.

Yeah, I saw photos of the Pope deferring to Pachamama. My thoughts were fairly basic... the Pope is an idiot.

What I find funny about Christians and monotheists in general is they never once consider that they could be punished for their blasphemies against various gods and goddesses. Much of the rotting goddess could be construed as a bit of heady revenge for the incredible hubris of monotheists. The male gods in ancient Mesoamerica seemed just as bloodthirsty if not more bloodthirsty than the female ones.

From Rintrah: "The Dionysian element returns to life and the matriarchal Goddess cult of human sacrifice is revived. It essentially took them a few weeks of heavy use of psychedelics, to revive the core of Aztec mythology."

The trouble with psychedelics and tripping your way to expanded consciousness is that you do get to the destination, but you built no strength or resilience along the journey. It's as if I was gifted with being able to play piano at the concert level (something I cannot currently do) and I didn't put in the multiple lifetimes it takes to become super good at it. Rintrah thinks he revived the core of Aztec mythology but he seems more like a golfer who hit a lucky hole in one while on massive steroids and now thinks he is young Tiger Woods.

Human and other animal sacrifice is (in my humble opinion) a vestigial behavior from the Iron Age that has heavy ties to maleness and dominance over herd animals. There's a guy who is like a broken clock -- he is right twice a day but in many ways is an arrogant crackpot -- his name is Dr. Will Tuttle. He wrote a book called The World Peace Diet that (in a biased and arrogant douchebag way) explains the ties between herding, animal sacrifice, and the rise of capitalism fairly well. The way I see it, people have always eaten animals (including other humans, which is always the primary reason to sacrifice them, free meat) because the amount of fat and calories you can get from eating meat is better than you can get from any other source. It doesn't mean that meat is healthy or unhealthy per se -- mostly meat isn't great for humans as we are mostly-herbivorous apes. Human males have seminal vesicles, and that is an herbivore thing; no carnivore has them. Nevertheless, if you were a nomad busting through 4000 calories in half a day running around in the long grass, it was eat meat or die, including the arms, legs, rumps, etc. of the human enemies you just raided and killed. Religious excuses were made in order to turn it into a sacrament, but something about it always seemed wrong, especially when it came to killing other humans for their flesh. I think the monotheist herding gods Allah, Yahweh, and Jesus are all pro-meat, pro-sacrifice gods. I believe they are male gods, and that isn't a statement meant to define good or evil. It's just what I believe to be facts. They are male and they like meat as an offering. They seem to like their followers to eat dead herd animals and display flesh as a ritual sacrifice and symbol of male dominance on the table for Sunday dinner. Of course I could be wrong; I'm not a god. I don't pretend to speak for gods and the above statement is pure speculation.

[causticus]

Rintrah here I believe is parroting the simplistic Apollo/Dionysus binary that Nietzsche originally pulled out of his own backside more than 100 years ago. As we know, the actual source mythology is a lot more complicated than that. The rest of his essay seems to reflect a similar limited understanding of polytheistic mythologies. Whether he knows it or not, he's displaying the same old Monotheistic bias that assumes all goddess archetypes must somehow be representations of chaos and/or destruction. (Nevermind that Cosmic Order/Law was often portrayed a goddess, but I digress). Overall, I've developed a rather limited patience and interest for "spiritual" thinkers who consume psychedelics in lieu of actually doing any spiritual practices or studying serious philosophy. The end product always ends up being some sort of garbled subjectivism mixed in with current pop-culture thinking fads.

Your idea that the monotheistic gods are the gods of nomadic herding cultures makes a ton of sense and seems like a painfully obvious truth that has been hiding in plain sight all along. The ancient Egyptians associated their storm god Set with the desert and desert nomads. Originally he represented the parts of the natural environment that are hostile to sedentary human habitation, whereas his twin brother Osiris is the god of fecund/fertile lands very suitable for human civilization. The myth of Set dismembering and killing Osiris is quite fascinating. Isis (his wife) resurrects Osiris and their son Horus avenges his death by battling Set. Symbolically, the victory of Horus and Osiris is the yearly flooding of the Nile (and the restoration of fertility and life) and subsequently the harsh desert being pushed back to the margins of the Nile valley. Later on, after Egypt had been repeatedly invaded by foreigners from the desert, Set was demonized. Such demonization of an archetypal part of nature (not to mention deities themselves) seems to always result in some sort of blowback. Looks like Set got his sweet revenge and now we're left with a different type of archetypal imbalance that will correct itself sooner or later. I believe that early Christianity adopted a bastardized form of the Osiris/Isis/Horus/Set myth and the end result ended up as an unwieldly mythological chimera (something Set would love in his role as the adversary), whereby an amalgamation of Osiris and his son Horus is Jesus, and Set (Yahweh) is his father, and of course Isis is the holy mother who eventually becomes symbolized via the Virgin Mary in Catholicism/Orthodoxy. Weird stuff going on here, LOL.

[kimberlysteele]

I won't deny Rintrah that there is more than a grain of truth to the black widow instinct. I have a song about it called The Floating World about a beautiful succubus who lures men to death and eats them like a spider, and I have always meant to write a novel about a female serial killer who commits the perfect crimes because she seduces and kills so efficiently and ruthlessly.

"The ancient Egyptians associated their storm god Set with the desert and desert nomads. Originally he represented the parts of the natural environment that are hostile to sedentary human habitation, whereas his twin brother Osiris is the god of fecund/fertile lands very suitable for human civilization."

Thank you for that -- it is easy for me to forget basic details when meditating, and Set as the desert god versus Osiris as farm/agriculture god is a rich topic. Supposedly the Egyptian Book of the Dead is very similar to the Bible, but I don't own a translation and have not studied it. How do you think Set got his revenge?

[causticus]

The bit about Set getting his revenge was a joke on my part. But if I'm to indulge just a bit, I'll point out that it's the One True Desert God who reigns over Egypt today (among so many other places). An interesting tidbit to consider is that the biblical story of Cain and Abel essentially flips the script on the Osiris/Set myth. Abel (the nomadic herder) is now the good guy, and Cain (the farmer) is the bad guy for murdering his brother. So basically Osiris gets "jealous" of Set (why though?????) and then murders him out of spite, because reasons.

I agree that the black window archetype is a real thing when it comes to negative female behaviors. I skimmed so fast through Rintrah's essay; does he equate this with the Rotting Goddess concept? BTW I do find that concept quite fascinating, but I'm loathe to associate it with human behavioral archetypes or any kind of moralistic framing. Using the CosDoc scheme, I would posit that one of the "Lord of Form" (Lady in this case) is the spiritual force presiding over the process of decay and perhaps the intelligence that guided the evolution of fungi. This is a very beneficial mechanism here on Earth, in that it clears away bulky dead husks to make way for new life. If we're to stick to a pagan worldview, we'd know that the forces and processes of Nature can't really be looked at from the perspective of simplistic human morality. Now the idea that eating psychedelic mushrooms gets one in tune with this force is interesting and perhaps destructive when done in an unguided or excessive manner.

On the topic of the Hebrew Bible and Egyptian religion, that is a fascinating topic I can drone on about for quite a long stretch. I will say this though, the way I see it is that Ten Commandments were clearly ganked from the "42 negative confessions of Maat" which is found in the Book of the Dead. Of course the former was taken way out of its original context after the Bible authors appropriated these precepts and retconned them (way after the fact) as being "Laws of Moses." The original Egyptian confessions were not presented as concrete laws of human conduct beamed down from the sky on one day by some deity, but rather a checklist of "don'ts" for when the soul enters the afterlife and has its karma judged; if any of the checklist items aren't fulfilled then the soul is denied entry into the realm of immortality. The implication here is that coming up short means reincarnation; more and more rebirths until these karmic issues are finally balanced out. Other parts of the Bible, like the so-called Proverbs of Solomon, are clearly derived from much older Egyptian Wisdom literature. Overall the Hebrew Bible came about as an exercise in borrowing copiously from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek traditions, and rewriting those source materials to fit their own narrative.

[kimberlysteele]

I had never thought of Cain and Abel in that way! At this point, I'll never run out of fodder for meditation...

As Mr. Crow mentioned, fungi are relatively new on the evolutionary scene, where as femininity is not. I think Rintrah was certainly on to something, but like any kind of false transcendence, his came with a great deal of presumption. Actually, I think the Devouring Mother is the Ring Chaos of molly coddling. Not only are you on your own if you have a devouring mother in your life, actually you are in danger all the time. You have to become a survivor; there's no depending on anyone else except yourself. The softness and perpetual childhood created by molly-coddling creates an equal and oppositely horrible hardness/premature adulthood when exposed to the Devouring Mother. The gushy emotions of molly coddling spur on the broken glass state of the Devouring Mother and vice a versa. As always, balance and harmony is somewhere in the middle.

The black widow is also a reaction to the weakness of the male. When males evolve into a corner of delicate weakness, they are only good for one thing (sperm) and then Nature in her cruelty does away with them ASAP. Nature being what it is, this is the same if a human male is soft and feminized and the woman assumes the protective typically-male role of provider/fighter. I think this is the trend we are seeing en masse -- women either opting in or being forced into the provider/warrior role, or some melange of both. In my opinion, this is a toxic state for any civilization because men have a natural propensity to be warriors and providers and women have a natural propensity to be nurturers and etheric plane harmonizers a.k.a. homemakers. Nobody can be all these things at once and to have everyone running around doing each other's roles leads to the exact kind of dumpster fire we are in right now.

[causticus]

I'd take it a step further and say that very weak (which renders them unattractive) men aren't even good for their sperm, as they will be effectively invisible to the vast majority of women in today's "dating" climate. Remember that it takes only 1 man to knock up an entire town. But yeah I'd broadly agree that it's a critical mass of weak men that is likely responsible for the Black Widow phenomenon. Generally speaking, a man who is habitually unable or unwilling to take charge drives his woman nuts. I don't think most women want to have to compete with men in mixed-gender work environments; yes, some women can and do thrive in that sort of setting, but I'd say they're in the minority. Also, mixed-gender office environments produce the dual problem of angry harpies and emasculated male office fauna who try their level best to keep their heads down and avoid getting caught up in office drama. The only person in an office setting who gets to be truly masculine is the male boss. The most dominant man in the workplace will have much of the female staff competing for his attention, which produces the third main problem of mixed-gender offices, which is all the gossiping and backbiting that takes place and sometimes ends up ruining people's careers for the stupidest of reasons.

I also agree that nobody can be all these things at once and to have everyone running around doing each other's roles leads to the exact kind of dumpster fire we are in right now. It's one giant intractable clustercluck, and the so called gender wars are a direct result of this. I'd argue this problem actually goes back to the beginnings of the industrial revolution, but that's another topic for another time. Sadly, I think this is going to keep getting more polarized and ugly until things finally bottom out.

[(Anonymous)]

Well you'll be pleased to know that there are *already* bacteria and fungi that can eat plastics, and plastics have only been around for at most 100 years :) It's quite the treasure trove we're burying in the soil. As I said the other week, lots of lovely hydrocarbons brought up from deep underground. I also happen to think that species evolve much, much faster than most biologists give them credit for.

While I do think the pope is an idiot (or more accurately, a puppet), I also think somebody knew what they were doing with that ritual. Much like the weird ritualistic opening ceremony of one of the tunnels at CERN a few years back, but I won't get into that today.

Yeah, I would take anything Rintrah says with a small pile of salt. He often tends to contradict himself a few weeks later. What interested me most was the rotting goddess as an archetype, which is distinct from, but similar to, the devouring mother. They consume and absorb and unify but also remove all individuality and nuance. Like in Communism, or when trying to interact with a computer system - there are no named heroes in Communism and the machines are infallible. The Borg is a good analogy, and the Borg cubes are led by a queen.

Equity is a weird term that seems to have sprung up recently as well - wheras equality was notionally about everyone being treated the same regardless of their obvious differences, equity is explicitly saying that some people are less skilled or intelligent than others, and so have to be brought up to the same level through artificial means. I saw this explained and I just thought "But isn't that just compensating for incompetence...?"
Anyway, where the toxic masculine uses outright force and overt menace, the toxic feminine uses subtlety, shame, guilt and manipulation. Both are destructive extremes, but I feel that the pendulum may already be swinging - I don't know if the news of the "Andrew Tate" court case reached American shores, but he is a British guy who is facing trial for sex trafficking for a sleazy, but probably still just about legal ring of cam-girls he orchestrated in Eastern Europe. He rose to fame for his youtube videos (as far as I can tell - I've never watched them) where he is an unapologetic misogynist, who believes that women are inherently worse than men in every conceivable way, and treating them like trash is therefore not only justifiable, but logical. He's become extremely popular with teenage boys, who also shame their peers with the terms "simp" and "cuck" if they appear to be showing undue respect towards women.
I feel like the separation of men and women again in society is not that far off.
Interestingly, despite having made his videos and commanded his harem for several years, the police only went after Mr. Tate when he spoke out openly against the vaxes. Go figure, right?

I also pondered the other day that shame and appeals to empathy only work as a weapon against those who feel guilt or care about the feelings of others. Some people don't feel either of those things, and there's a name for people like that - psychopaths. If we assume that each imbalance sows the seeds of its own destruction, the toxic feminine in society is likely to give rise to a whole host of male psychopaths. Yay...?
Going on the Greek principle of Anacyclosis, where societies go through stages (https://anacyclosis.org/), we seem to be just leaving democracy, which I would say is an overall feminine type of government, towards ochlocracy, or demagogues and mob rule by force and threats of violence, which is very much a masculine form of government and one in which the psychopath would thrive. Related is the idea of enantiodromia, where something becomes its opposite,like you mentioned on another comment where the Left has become what the Right was.

I totally agree on the psychedelics. It's like some guy has given you the keys to an intergalactic spaceship and as he's walking out into the teleporter he says over his shoulder "You read the manual, right?". Some (actually, probably most - what child ever listens to their parents' wisdom?) truths have to be learned slowly over time.

I was doing some meditation one night on the theme of sacrifice, and it hit me that when you sacrifice an animal or person, unless they have offered themselves willingly (and an animal, by definition, cannot), what you are really offering is *yourself*. The god is effectively saying "will you take the karmic consequences of murder as a sign of your devotion?"

No offence to any South American readers, but I think some geographic regions just have more bloodthirsty gods generally. The jungle is a fertile, noisy, vibrant and dangerous place for everything that lives in it. No reason for its gods to be anything different. Our gods over here in Northern Europe? More stoic and cold, but also ruthless, rapacious and duplicitous (think Odin, and the British Empire).

And apologies to the original Anon poster, I've kind of derailed this thread! I said to myself "don't write any more 10 000 word screeds", but here we are, these ideas have just been stewing in my head all week...

Mr. Crow

[kimberlysteele]

I agree -- and don't bacteria and viruses evolve faster because they have shorter lifespans? I wonder what kind of explosions will occur (if any) as material deep underground rots and gets pulled apart into basic elements such as hydrogen and oxygen? I would imagine enormous sinkholes and fissures pocketing parts of the Earth in a few short million years from gases igniting underground.

Hmm, I have heard about the CERN stuff but I have not watched it. Sounds like a substack post of yours I would read!

I heard of Andrew Tate being arrested but I honestly never knew anything about the guy. Does he have a famous brother? Is he in a Romanian prison or something?

The interesting part about toxic masculinity is the female psychopaths it breeds -- if you want to create a female monster, by all means, pigeonhole women into pre-fabricated, pre-ordained roles and expect them to be happy about it or else. Women don't have the same instinct to crow about how many they've murdered as men do, so you'll never know how many quiet female serial killers there are out there in a patriarchy. It seems that toxic femininity breeds a certain class of male vigilante. By disenfranchising large swaths of the population with forced vaxxes and woke garbage, toxic feminists have done two things: they have created lots of men with nothing left to lose (and revenge to gain) and the fun of easy targets who don't know how to physically defend themselves when laws break down.

That's an interesting thought about sacrifice. Carol J. Adams coined the term "absent referent" for the dead body on the family table. The corpse acts as a symbol of male dominance; the slain sacrifice whom all must partake in eating to complete the power structure of the pyramid. Now consider Christians worship a dead and resurrected human son of God, and that all the Abrahamic religions are named after a guy who nearly sacrificed his own son Isaac to God. (As an aside, I named one of the feral cats who pops into my yard every now and then "Abraham" because he killed his own kitten son a couple of years ago and left the poor little ginger kitty's dead body on my side porch). Also consider that Christians take communion by symbolically eating the body of their god and drinking his "blood" in the form of wine. All of the Abrahamic versions of God, for better or worse, started out as deities of blood sacrifice and that's why we have the legacy of male dominance, females as second class citizens/breeding chattel, and eating animals and their secretions as the building blocks of monotheism in the West.

[mr_nobody1967]

Interestingly enough, I just posted this comment on JMG's Covid-thread before even reading this post:

One thing that continually amazes me about the socio-political effects of the pandemic is the utter contempt in which I now hold the left, with whom until about two years ago I had always identified, and this includes what passes for the left in mainstream discourse and the so-called real left. All I can see when I look at them now is a bunch of sorehead censorious losers who will always be Part Of The Problem.

[kimberlysteele]

They're the new Right. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, the Right was the force for censorship and mass surveillance. They were the ones inveighing against Beavis and Butthead and MTV in general. They were the ones who worshipped Dick Cheney and who installed Bush junior in the White House. They were the Koch brothers. The Left is everything they used to despise: they're warmongers and censorious pearl-clutchers. Instead of the Koch brothers, the names have changed to Gates, Harari, Schwab, Fauci. They have inordinate amounts of power just as the religious Right used to have. I remember it seemed the power of the religious Right could not possibly come to an end, but now it is in the hands of insane leftists and their zombie minions.

[kimberlysteele]

Offlist: I am not publishing your "I heart censorship!" comment because you are annoying. Don't talk to me about courage. You don't even have the balls to tell me or my commentariat who you are, where you are from, or why your black pill opinions are worth more than the powder to blow them to hell. Go haunt some other blog, you're done here. My blog, my rules.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it is a total cop-out for jmg to say that there is no sacred masculinity and no sacred femininity.

Sacred femininity is the Qualities of Deity that resonate with our human and hormone-mediated experiences of womanhood: to wit, mothering, loving unconditionally like Kwan Yin or Theotokos; compelling erotic power and luscious beauty like Aphrodite and Venus; crafty, well-woven wisdom like Athena, mystery like the Moon, Life and Death connection to animals like Artemis the Huntress, and many more examples of feminine energia, traits found in Goddesses and reflected in us.

Sacred masculine traits have been unduly elevated by several centuries of patriarchal political oppression, largely coincident with the rise of fossil-fuel-powered mechanical and industrial ’progress’ along the lines many male minds prefer to run.

And where the spiritual worship of exclusively male powers prevailed, so followed a whole heck of a lot of money and violently expended resources, which the story of Orion killing all the animals in the world and laying their corpses proudly at Artemis’s feet illustrates all too well.

Sacred masculine traits of Mars and Jove and other Greco-Roman gods became over-favored in a most unbalanced way during these same centuries.

Where was the trickery and androgyny of Hermes respected when laws against homosexual relations stood on the books, or ‘race’ relations were called miscegenation?

Where was the worship of Hebe / Ganymede allowed in USA culture of the past? Only in druggy haunts of the 1920’s.

Male jealousy of the Other was Law.

So it does not occur to anyone over there in Ecoland where Sophia is supposedly honored, that people like having two or more different kinds of sexual relationships?

Men like to have sex with the loose, fast girls, the ones who give it away and demand no emotional or other expenses.

Men also like to have sex with professional sex workers, at costs that run into the multi-thousands of [insert your currency, jewels, clothes, etc.], preferably sex with no strings to tie them down to kids, home, jobs, responsibilities, holidays with in-laws, household maintenance duties, parenting, walking the dog when it rains, and running the hoover.

Men also like to have a built-in sex-on-demand utility which is why conjugal relations on demand was encoded into law to the point of disallowing the whole concept of marital rape.

Then there are SOME men who actually LIKE women and do not object to the whole household upkeep schtick. Or maybe just like to have casual relations with different kinds of women or have a polygamous setup.

So why should not women also like to go to bed with the wild guy, the drifter who does not hang around and does not care if the floors are clean and the dishes are done?

Women who are not pregnant or on the Pill prefer the smell of men who are genetically dissimilar to their own genotype — programmed you might say — to prefer the outsider / stranger to stir up the joint and widen the gene pool.

Women who are pregnant or on the Pill prefer the smell of men who are genetically related, less distant from their own breeding lines. The men who are of their own culture and thus stable, known to be reliable and culturally bound to help raise and protect her children, no matter who fathered the young. It used to be the uncle who was the alpha male, not the sex mate.

For the record, most women can distinguish Fantasy Man in the Novels from Paycheck-Providing Man who has a more durable and reliable source of attraction at his disposal. So the notion that women only like bad boys is really bad logic and a male fantasy that shows a poor grasp of reality.

Women like power and privilege just as much as men do and if Law and Custom both block them from getting it, they get power from association, like slaves and servants always do.

Some women just really like men, being around them, being admired by them, being useful to them and being loved by them. Especially when the men are their sons of whom they are proud.

So the idea that there is but One Kind of Love for all women and Two kinds of Love for men: the one that robs his pocket and the one that kills his liberty-loving soul is sheer nonsense. Some love liberates and nourishes.

And the idea that what is sacred has no gender or is exclusively gendered male is also pernicious nonsense. But that is what was forcibly adverted at women by men for centuries, and reinforced by excluding women from receiving education so we could refute the argument with contrary evidence of which there a gracious plenty.

Is it only coincidence that the colonalization and Xristianization of many Goddess-worshipping peoples by Britain and the US was fueled by fossil fuels?

So if there is an influx of negatory feminine traits being expressed in our culture, that is only to be expected when the dark chthonous feminine oily power source that gave men more power than they could safely handle is now giving out and giving way and going bye-bye. Like big time.

if many-armed Durga is not to be allowed to carry out her peaceful and innocently busy activities of life, will she not call upon her Killing Avatar: Demon-destroying Kali? And where Kali walks, we all must be prepared to surrender all that we are and all that we have.

Tides turn when the big splash is past. And we will all be swamped in the wake thereof. So, we learn to be light and neutral like balsa wood and we ride the waves. Or we go to the bottom if we choose not to float.

For the boat to stay topside we have to keep the balance: else.the sea washes over the gunwales and we descend.

Down to join the many bones
kept in the locker of Davy Jones.

The Wealth pump, the Health pump, We take it all away
We drain you of your health and wealth
And then we go and play

We are the top important most wonderful of folk
We alone deserve to live and you are just a joke

We shock you we mock you, we make you be our slave
Everything you’re born with or earn we take away.

We’re sneaky, we’re cheeky, We lie through smiling teeth
How big and white our teeth are We’re rotten underneath.

We’re winners, we’re sinners we follow no one’s rules
We gather all goodness away from you damn fools.

We’re going to crush you We turn you into pulp
Puree you and strain you And swallow in one gulp.

Oh yes, we are monsters we hook you into need
As soon as you’re our dupes we gratify our greed

Like vampires, like zombies We feed on blood and brains
And if there are scraps left We’ll toss you what remains.

We follow no leader Great mammon is our god
All money is honey Our beehive is your bod

You make it, we take it, we are the masters here
what’s real is what we say you subjects now may cheer

Support us, transport us Come service all our whims
Deplore us, adore us And keep our hedges trimmed.

You’ll never get better employment, wage, or hope
We’ve known you, we pwn you We fill you up with dope.

You are less than nothing, A munching mouthing mob
We scorn you, suborn you But mostly we just rob.

We know so much better than ignoramus you
We read all your letters and log your phone calls too.

Whenever we want to, we know just how to lose you
We budge you, we nudge you Use AIs to confuse you

Superior are we Our riches make us prime
We’ll lump you, we’ll dump you Back into rural slime

We can do it anytime.
It’s no crime.
CRASH! Hey buddy, got a dime?

[kimberlysteele]

What was interesting was that as soon as JMG had typed "sacred femininity/masculinity huh whut?" I ended up posting an exploratory comment on the Sacred Feminine with another commenter whose comment eerily resembled my own but from a Sacred Masculine perspective.

If you've ever read Carol J. Adams or Will Tuttle, you'll know where I was coming from about ten years ago when I had the attitude that males were the inferior sex. I no longer hold that belief, but the way I saw it back then was that the Earth was quickly tumbling towards a runaway scenario of being inhospitable to most lifeforms (like Venus) and that is was maleness that was leading us there. Adding insult to injury, the worship of the male principle and the idea that the feminine is lesser and disposable carried the inevitable result of Steve Cutt's Man:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Cb81cPNAdNbe/

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently, people regularly and routinely become infected with Ideas. We begin with the Home Ideas that surround us in our childhood, the mental atmosphere of our own social unit: family, tribe, whatever.

These used to be widely scattered and isolated from one another, hence not so infectious to the other set unless a lone traveller encounters them. When populations grow or climate changes drive different sets close to one another, we not only swap viral and bacterial parasites, worms, corona sniffles and measles, diphtheria and dipsomania, but we also infect one another with alien ideas.

Once humans get badly idea-infected, we go around acting like drunks on a spree. Jocose, morose, bellicose or comatose. Everybody is our friend or everybody is our enemy to be conquered, or everybody is condemned to Hell and needs to be subjected to Calvinist control.

The Sufis have said that it is wise to treat most of humanity as if they are drunken hence not in command of themselves. To be sober and aware of reality is most uncommon. The means of mental exchange offered by printing press, radio, TV, and internet have greatly increased the swapping of idea-germs. Seeds of thought.

Which ones germinate and which ones die depends on how the mental soil is prepared just like it says in the parable. Dry, rocky, stone-hard soil, moist, turned, receptive soil, soil overgrown with weeds, and so forth. What the parable does not say is how ideas are received when a mind is tended by a conscious and discriminating Gardener who decides which ideas are fruitful and should be planted and goes around uprooting thoughts that interfere with health and productivity.

When we accept the Ideas of our childhood or social milieu uncritically and promiscuously, we turn our minds over to chance, hate, groundless hope, and hazard. Doing the Work means choosing the best ideas from all the available varieties, carefully cultivating those and taking the hoe to the least wanted is what people do when we are wise grown-ups, not idiots or children.

You would think, with the whole body of work put out by Doris Lessing being freely available, that childish notions of women’s inner life could completely be put aside. There it is, all laid out and neatly labelled in brisk, well-crafted and lucid prose: why women mate, hate, reject, or marry men. Her Children of Violence series in particular relates how women marry for reasons of social pressure, war fever, political affinity, economic necessity, escape from class-based henpecking, escape from boredom—it’s all there.

Do people neglect to read Lessing? That is like declining to follow through on toilet training. She even documents the proto-Karen behaviors of maternity ward nurses, rigidly enforcing the stupid, cruel, hateful ideas of Imperial Discipline being imposed on hungry, screaming infants prevented from nursing to Teach Them a Lesson: that the Clock must be Followed. Karens who also sadistically torture the mothers whose milk is let down at the sound of their children’s voices, mothers yearning to soothe and nurture their helpless babies. When the Clock is Right, there is less milk or none left to feed the infant, so they go on being hungry. But the mothers, too, are Idea-Infected that Empire comes first and Authority must be obeyed.

The roots of rebellion, psychological rhizomes of perpetual hunger for self-indulgence, and the seeds of violence are thus sown again and again for whose benefit? why, for the Class Who Would Be Kings.

It is all there, written down and clearly explicated. If Less is More then Lessing is Most. But I suppose it is too unfashionable to read dead women as well as dead men.

[kimberlysteele]

Thank you! I have read a couple of Lessing's novels but I didn't realize that she had so much to say about the matter. I look forward to doing a deep dive into her works.

And yes, right now we live within a spiritual dark age -- I have called it a demonic paradise -- where bad ideas and horrific intentions rule the airwaves and it is the rare individual who can form an oasis in the desert. That is what the book I am working on, Sacred Homemaking, is about how to make an oasis of astral shapes to defend against the contagion of various plagues of the imagination.

[(Anonymous)]

from Mark Twain, “The Awful German Language”
...Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way.

To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.

See how it looks in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera.

To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female—tomcats included, of course; a person’s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it—for in Germany all the women have either male heads or sexless ones; a person’s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven’t any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect, he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land. ….Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him in Spots.

[(Anonymous)]

Mark Twain on German pronouns:

“Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, *sie*, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six—and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says *sie* to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.