It seems that a lot of what we see happening in the West is tied up in this strange question of 'what is a woman?' This got its start with the fairy godmother of feminism, Simone du Beauvoir:
In Simone de Beauvoir's famous work The Second Sex (
https://amzn.to/43I96q7), she wrote one of the most famous lines in feminist thought:
"One is not born but becomes woman." This statement, and her articulation of what it means, outlines the modern-turned-postmodern Gnostic cult we know as feminism. Her point is that women, meaning people who are female, have two choices in how they "become woman."
They can follow the social expectations laid upon them by patriarchal society, in effect becoming Woman-for-Man, or they can throw off the entire sex binary, patriarchal control, and all societal expectations and, in effect, become Woman-in-Herself, the gnostically liberated Woman as she can only be outside of the influence of the demiurgic power of patriarchal society.
So women are not born, but made. I think that's fair enough, and can be true for everyone. It's an expression of human potential. I found it interesting that she's using the same logic as the older understanding, the need to craft human beings. But de Beauvoir's point was to subvert the older understanding of men and women being
made for each other, and open up the option for women to step away from the 'energetic union'.
As has been mentioned here already, part of what makes feminism good COINTELPRO is that it contains an element of truth. Laura write in The Wave that 3D earth has a major current of 'murdering the feminine'. There is the fact of predatory men. The trick was to begin extending an understanding of predatory men to include all men and society itself. This thinking may have been all the more acceptable after the horrors of WWII. As it took hold, I think one effect was the empowerment of predatory women.
Now it's all gone bonkers with the trans movement that posits that a woman is anyone who says they are a woman. It's a textbook case of 'women are not born, but made'. Watching the horrible social implications of this idea of womanhood roll out has been crazy. It's not easy to watch.
Matt Walsh and other conservative voices have found their own answer in that a woman is 'adult human female'. When I first heard it, I thought that this is a decent enough rebuttal to the trans movement's denial of reality, and a good example of men defending women and children. But I also liked John Carter's
analysis of the conservative ideal of a woman, what he calls a 'wheat field tradwife'. He says its just as empty as the trans movement version of woman, or just as fake as OnlyFans e-girls. I'm not sure if that's totally true, but I Iiked it as a way to question easy answers provided ready-made by conservative media.
From what I'm reading here about the manosphere dudes, they have their own answer to 'What is a woman?' There's the psychology of women's traits, combined with a biological drives, and also a general understanding of patters of male/female attraction, all of which is true at some level. This provides men with a kind of operating manual that can be used for any number of purposes, from gaining confidence in dating all the way to more effective predation. To my eyes it looks like the manosphere agrees with Walsh's somewhat flat answer that a woman is an adult human female, but an element of action is added to it.
Then there's the approach to this question 'what is a woman' as it might be seen from a deeper understanding of reality. This piece by Luc opened things up for me in a really good way:
Definitions don't help. And this makes gender ideology even more dangerous.
luctalks.substack.com
In some sense, one might even agree with Macy Grey who (in)famously said, in a mea culpa moment after having been harassed by the trans activist mob, being a woman is a “vibe.”
But only in some sense. Because clearly, what we mean by woman has to do with biology as well. It’s just that it would be ridiculous to reduce this meaning to “reproductive organs” or chromosomes. In many ways, such definitions are a crutch, a reaction to the gender ideologues. We don’t need biology to know what a woman is.
So—does that mean the gender ideologues are off the hook? Au contraire.
What I said here is the reason why the assault on womanhood by the gender-benders is even more insidious than it at first seems: not only do we lose the straight-forward, although unsatisfactory, biological answer. No, their mind games are much more destructive and evil than that.
We risk losing the bottomless richness of our intuitive, non-verbal understanding of what a woman is. The kind of knowledge that is as sure as it gets, and because of that, cannot be expressed in words.
In short, we risk losing the history of the entire cosmos; our connection to the infinite depth of our existence, to every experience we have from cradle to grave; to our entire history, society, dreams, drives, feelings, aspirations; our connection to something higher, above our whims, to true love.
We not only lose some biological definition. We lose All and Everything.
That was a breath of fresh air amidst all this cultural tumult. The mention of 'All and Everything' reminded me of the book by J.G. Bennett called
Sex; the relationship between sex and spiritual development. He writes that sex has two normal functions - regulation of emotion or appeasement of drives, and reproduction. There is also the third function of sex as an expression as Love. There is no clear definition of a woman in what he writes, but rather the description of marriage as a powerful process of forming a conduit for higher energies. I infer that without a woman it's not possible.
"As for the third sexual function, we can see that it plays virtually no part in today's world. We have taken old traditions and have not looked at their relevance for a modern society. Our monogamous system, with one man and one woman permanently mated, very seldom works in practice because we have taken the kernal of truth - that marriage is one of the most sacred things in human life - and misinterpreted it, turned it into something utterly degrading by the imposition on people of a pattern of life where there is no corresponding inner reality. Marriage in the true sense, that is the indissoluble union between male and female, active and passive principles, represents the pinnacle of human life, and cannot be demanded of those who are not capable of it. It is not merely wrong, but even impious, to fasten onto people a label which they are not capable of bearing, and the awkwardness of our present social arrangement is that it is based, not only on a misunderstanding of human nature, but also on an even more serious misunderstanding of spiritual reality.
If the regulative and procreative roles of sex could be rightly established, then marriage could be seen for what it truly is. It would be understood by all to be a source of blessing for all mankind. Blessing is an objective action whereby spiritual power reaches into the existing world to renew faith, hope and love. Without this blessing, human life becomes insufferable. True marriage is the very kernel of human unity and any society that even approximates to the spiritual pattern of humankind, needs some, even if only very few, such unions.
The union of man and woman comes about to fulfill a common destiny. The two are one in the secret place, even though they may be separate in time and space. When this place opens in love towards all, all who are surrendered to love, may enter. It is the communion of saints, an inner society, which brings into the presence of mankind the influence of what, in time, is the far distant future of mankind when all will be in communion.
There is a union even beyond this. In the Sufi terminology we have been using it is called Beit-ul-Ma'mour, or the Abode of the Lord. In this union, God enters the soul. This is the same as saying that the supernatural reality beyond the limits of the solar system is immediately present in the Sacred Marriage. Whereas the first abode Beit-ul-Muharem, is a union on the level of conscious energy, and the second the Beit-ul-Mukades is a union on the level of the creative energy, the third union is on the level of the energy of love. The supernatural reality of the third cosmic or reconciling force can manifest directly. It makes possible a redemptive action, unconstrained by the limitations of space, time, and number. God enters into the marriage as the child and the source of their union. In the Beit-ul-Ma'mour the man and the woman have lost the illusion of their separate existence; they have even lost entirely the illusion of existing at all."
So the Sufi manosphere was pretty wild! That's their ideal of male/female relationships. They must have had an interesting dating scene... Anyways, Bennett goes pretty far out there into the aether, and I'm not sure if it's all that useful in terms of daily life interactions.
What I am getting from all this is that men and women are made, not born. They are different influences in this self-making process, be it the manosphere or feminism or whatever. They can choose to be made
for each other, ie., marriage. Their marriage can be
for them, yes, but the highest ideal is that the relationship is a way of giving back to All and Everything. So as not to get lost in the aether, this giving back is a practical, everyday work on the self in service to the the wellbeing of the significant other in all of their complexities. This work is what grounds the current from above.
