It isn’t Misandry —or, Mis(s)-Medea’d
Women! Your men will eternally fetch you, hoist you on their broad, thick, shoulders and carry you like a knapsack full of kittens —either to the corner they baptised “whore,” or that other, opposite cubby-hole called “prude.” Do not let them paw you with their blunt armatures —once in your specified cell these men will turn you on your tail, peeling back the petals of your skirts, intent on finding your flower’s dewy anthers. Once they’ve sat you up properly, with your nether face held high, your jailer will pull up a seat and gaze at your supple visage and —from those lips, my sisters —he will know, without need of your (clearly wicked and false) opinion, that he has found female “truth.”
This dichotomy —as lascivious as it is vicious —caricaturizes two wholly distinct (though both are used as means for the same end) male-created ideals of femininity. The pig pen into which men throw the “whore” is thick with nature, also debased by this caricature of fertility —abused, taunted for her own virtues, poked and prodded until all her loving generosity melted into mud. In this mud the “whore” wallows.
Behold, prudence! the alabaster prison cell into which the whore’s enemy, the “prude,” was carried. Prudence, once valued and aimed for as the highest good, is now the simple handmaiden to virginal purity. Man stalks prudence, studies her movements, and —when she leads him to her mistress —he forces darling prudence away, and overtakes purity.
Prudence is exiled to the white walled prison, until she becomes the prison; once purity’s aide, she is now her physical captor. For, from the day man sentenced prudence to solitary confinement onward, purity mayn’t wear her custom skirts and dresses —rather, she is guided to the muddy pit once reserved for fertility’s clown. In these quarters, purity is commanded to don the garish visage of her former opposite, now her comrade. Now in her gewgaws and spangles, purity is led back to her alabaster pedestal, where she —like fertility perverted —is poked, prodded, and finally sacrificed for the cause of all female subjugation.
Such is our treatment at the ruddy hands of the more barbarous sex; little wonder, too —for their lust rubs against their legs as they march indomitably onward. So fond are men of the luscious temptation concomitantly provided by this shark-like perambulation, that I wonder if it is not the reason they purport the constant value of Hegelian progress towards ultimate rationality. But does rationality seem to move these somnambulists? Or rather, is the reason they move ever-forward simply their physiological inability to stop? Do they, like all sharks, fear death in all passivity? Or do they fear that, without their lower head’s mind being continually excited, they will forget for what they were marching?
Finally, I say to you this: If you are forced to play the part of whore or prude —slut or spinster —never hesitate to choose the latter. For —while in bed, before dozing, a man may fancy to imagine all women as Eves —if you play the Mary, he will worship you accordingly.
Or, perhaps, you are a bolder breed of female, who flauts this Manichean treatment with vibrantly enflamed, steadfast force. Legs firmly straddling the chasm between good & evil, you are the most dangerous kind of woman —both waspish and winning. Hardly content to be cornered, your fiery gaze guts men before they may even know your name. But this power cannot be permitted, as we now know —frightened by your flames, the mind of the Male cannot comprehend anything that can span the fearsome, fertile gash that seperates red from white, dark & light. You will be crowned with the hat of a clown, entitled “maddened git,” who must be safe and softened with down. You become the most fearsome of forms: the hysterical woman. Your denial of the demure is devilishly dangerous to the masses of malificent men, who merely wish women were sexy or static, but would dare not act dynamic.
But you are a dervish, a dynamo that drinks in passion, while pissing out the perfidious portion wrought by musty lust. That wretched excrement enflames the lot of awe-struck onlookers; it then trundles tirelessly into the sun; even engulfed in these greater flames, the acrid, acerbic stuff continues to burn on its own with a brazen buffoonery that the masses maim with descriptive names. They call you crazy, and concoct a feathery soft cell that —so they say —is for the good of your Self, which was lost on your descent from Enlightenment. Your obedient body was shattered by light. But, in a comfortable cave, they will introduce night; in dulling shadow, doctors will proscribe all “frantic feelings” —all will to thrive —until your one wish is to simply survive; your embers they douse with draughts of “normal” & “nice”. Pressed into a prison of politeness, you are drained of brash vice —social structure seeks to blanch your vibrant vicissitudes, until you’re nothing more that müde.
Their process won’t end until your resolve does.
