A Woman's Place
Do Women Have Souls?
You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that [forbidden] tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.
You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die. (Tertullian, De cultu feminarum [On the Apparel of Women], Book I:1-2)
It would be an easier life, I think, if I could somehow not believe in God.
People who think humans are merely highly intelligent, sparsely-haired primates can explain the way women are and what we’re for any number of ways, coming to a far more flattering conclusion than I have.
But if you believe in an omniscient, all-seeing creator who formed humans in His own image with great care and purpose, then it simply isn’t enough to shrug and laugh. “Women, amiright?”
I am not in a good place as I write this, and it was probably a mistake to think deeply about what anonymous males on Twitter say about women. But there’s just so many of them and they all say such similar things.
And what they say so closely matches what I have seen myself. Maybe the bile they spew bears closer examination, even if it hurts.
Even if you end the night with Googling: “Catholicism, do women have souls?”
You Know You Like It
We really do like it, don’t we? Being stepped on. When you think about it, there simply isn’t another explanation when you look at the global, historical behavior patterns of what we seek out and what we tolerate, even after the thrill is long gone.
From a Christian perspective, submission and obedience is the right and proper way of the female, meaning the role of the male is one of dominion. Anyone raised in any kind of Christian church knows that. It’s not even controversial.
Men lead, women follow.
Men give, women receive.
Men impregnate, women become pregnant.
It’s not the dynamic I’m questioning. It’s the reasoning behind it, mostly because of the sexual aspect of the male-female relationship, less so for the child-rearing part of it.
The sex, the desire for it (primarily from men) is the main driver for relationships to even exist.
There have been so many men who have said right out loud that if it were not for the sex—and their all-consuming thirst for it—they would have nothing to do with us at all.
And yet we still seek them out, looking for the one man who likes us, actually. It sounds simple. But it’s not.
Because we have desires of our own.
A healthy sexual dynamic between a man and woman will generally include his desire to possess or conquer her, and her desire to be possessed or conquered. However, this desire is very specific... he wants to conquer a woman who wants to be conquered by HIM, and she wants to be conquered by a specific man because she believes he deserves her. Their desires align.
The degenerate man desires to conquer a very specific category of woman: the woman who rejects him.
He has no interest in the woman who desires him. He has no desire to be worthy of anything or anyone. He delights in the core practice of his degeneracy: imposition. It is seeing her repulsed but helpless is what excites him because he is a sadist. That is the core of male sexual degeneracy: sadism. (@Dvorstone on X)
That sounds so nice. And it makes sense.
The majority of men, after all, do not prefer to buy prostitutes and disdain those who subscribe to an OnlyFans cam-whore. That’s not a conquest; it’s a transaction. It’s not manly.
And deep down, they know the hooker doesn’t really want them, cheapening the experience even more.
The conquering is only fun, only worth it, if she wants him. If she wants what he plans to do to her.
The degradation of women during sex is baked into the process, a fact that neither men nor women likes to admit. We all agree on the lie that actions like expelling body fluids onto someone's face and/or into their mouth, pinning a person so they are immobile, and sticking foreign objects into someone's throat until retching occurs are not behaviors indicating respect or esteem.
They are actions of domination, of destruction--yet they are actions that women desire.
But why do we want it? What exactly went into our construction to make us want, NEED, to be ruled?
It sure as hell wasn’t sugar and spice.
What is it that makes us, in the millions, read books that feature these tropes as a means of sexual arousal:
Stalking (Hello, Haunting Adeline)
Cheating/infidelity
Serial killer
Nonconsensual/Dubious consent
Bully
Mafia
BDSM
Knife play (seriously wtf)
Kidnapping (Oh, hey 365)
Primal play
Somnophilia
Those are the most popular tropes in dark romance, something I’ve talked about before.
I have to. I’m compelled to talk about it. Mostly because I like it too and I don’t understand why.
Looking at that last trope on the list might make your lip curl if you’ve heard of it. Somnophilia is when the MC is intimate with their love interest while they're unconscious, sleeping, or comatose.
Sound familiar?
It should. Because Gisele Pelicot, a woman in France, was the victim of a man who enjoyed this very trope. And he decided to make it real.
Her husband.
Police found more than 20,000 videos and photographs of Gisele drugged and being raped by various men on her husband’s devices in a folder titled “Abuse.” She didn’t consent. She didn’t ask for it. She didn’t even know that hundreds of men (friends and neighbors) lined up to rape her unconscious body after her husband drugged her.
No one, not even the most vile of frog pfp accounts, thinks Gisele liked it, wanted it, or would have consented if asked.
And she is a hero for sacrificing her anonymity to make sure her attackers are likewise publicly named.
In the furor surrounding the news, many women rightly called out PornHub and other similar sites that have terabytes of video showing unconscious women being drilled in all manner of horrifying ways.
Did these women sign up for it? Who knows? Not PornHub, that’s for sure. They don’t care.
And neither do the men cranking it to the videos.
The common rebuttal to repudiating this type of porn, or really outrage at online porn in general, was this:
“You know, 60% of women fantasize about being raped.”
“Women love to be degraded. Just look at the books they read.”
Hideous thing to say in the context of the news story.
But they’re not wrong, are they?
The Sixth Day
It would be a mean thing, a cruel thing, to make a creature for servitude while giving them a drive for conquest.
Luckily, it seems the Almighty spared us this cruelty. He even gave us an inborn psychological defense mechanism against the subjucation--arousal at acts of domination.
As I said in the beginning, things would be easier if I were an atheist, or could even fathom being so.
I know there are other religions with other origin stories. But they don’t count. Not to me. Sorry.
Christians, Muslims, and Jews know that God Almighty made Adam first. And was pretty pleased with what he made:
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:26-27, KJV)
Now verse 27 is a little ambiguous in who exactly was made in His image, as “man” can mean humanity as a whole.
But I don’t think that blessing applies to women. I really don’t. Mostly because of the reason Eve came about in the first place:
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:20-22, KJV)
She wasn’t designed in her own right, to fulfill her own purpose.
She was designed to help him with his.
Nothing ambiguous about that at all.
Men: Look After Your Pets and Women
The ordained superior nature of men would relegate women to the same or slightly higher category as animals. Men are charged with being good custodians of the earth, including the animals within it. They are also commanded by the Almighty in multiple passages (mostly in the Old Testament) to care for their women. It is his solemn duty to protect, guide, and teach her. Even into adulthood. Because she is less, even on a spiritual level.
Following the pattern of feminine inferiority, Irenaeus considered women generally as the cause of sin and the subsequent alienation of humanity from God. However, he emphasised that Mary's piety was far more important than Eve's curse. For him, the 'virgin Mary' has redeemed all women from the sinful innate lust of the female gender (Sawyer 1996:157). After the same pattern, Clement of Alexandria proposed that God took away the weakness of Adam and used it to create Eve. For this reason, he considered women as weak, limited, passive, 'castrated', 'immature', 'licentious, and unjust' (Ide 1984:66).1
I have no insight into Clement of Alexandria, and am not so glib as to ask, “Who hurt you, bro?” I can only point out that it is somewhat hypocritical to accuse women of lust and licentiousness, when men obviously suffer such things with far greater intensity.
But in all honesty, men’s lust and their unslakeable thirst for sex are not an accident.
Like the saying goes, it’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
As women were made to crave our own degradation and subordination, men were made to crave dishing it out.
Why does man do anything? Why does he create, build, and innovate?
In crass terms, for pussy.
It’s well known that men are perfectly happy to live like this:
So why do they spend so much time trying to get rich? Why the fancy cars, the bling-y watches? Why the too-tight high-water pants that cost $1500? (You all look ridiculous, by the way).
For chicks. They’re signaling their wealth to attract women. Everything they do is to get girls. Including building the civilization and infrastructure we currently enjoy.
Camille Paglia said, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”
And she’s right. Women make a house a home. But it’s men who build the house in the first place.
Men only build for pussy and progeny (their legacy). Remove the promise or even the possibility of either, and they turn into destroyers.
That innate drive within them will seek to conquer one way or another. Which is where we come in.
We were created to make them better. Not ourselves. We only matter in terms of what we improve in them.
Men were made to be leaders, to be BETTER than us. So why aren’t they? Why are they stagnating globally and, in the West, getting worse?
Is that our fault too?
In a way… Yes.
What to do with the men
In pursuing greatness for ourselves, on a societal level we have left great swaths of men feeling the promise of pussy slip away.
It’s not just because we’re sleeping with guys outside of marriage. It’s also the access we all have on a global level. A pretty girl need only start an Instagram page to be solicited by wealthy older men who will give her the type of lifestyle the nice boy down the street never could.
There’s also the issue that we, as a whole, are getting fatter and uglier. American food is borderline poison, throwing our hormones out of whack. Just look at the skyrocketing instances of PCOS. And we dress like shit.
And many of us are mean. Rude. Unwelcoming. It’s a societal model fed to us for three generations that if you want to be a strong woman, that means being a relentless bitch.
Men, despite their unyielding sex drive, are ceasing to be interested.
The juice ain’t worth the squeeze as the old saying goes.
Men perform more and better if they receive female admiration and attention, even if no sex is involved.
A Woman’s Calling?
Many women, even those in the church, chafe at the term “helpmeet.” The definition is benign—a helpful companion or partner—but the reality of our nature doesn’t fit with our current “main character syndrome” society.
It also reframes the common male complaint of “nagging” or “witholding sex.”
Based on the wreck and ruin I see around me, it seems both of those things are not only in order, but my sacred duty to apply.
Maybe the gold diggers are onto something, fulfilling their female role in the best way they know how.
Our job is to nag you. To shame you. To hold sex over your head like a fucking death sentence.
Oh, baby wants a blowjob? Then I guess baby better build me a fucking sewage system.
Oh, baby wants to pass his genes onto the next generation of men? Then I guess baby better get a job that pays six figures and gives me health insurance.
Because if my entire reason for being is to bring you to your highest form—to encourage and cheer you into excellence while taking none for myself—then it stands to reason that it is my solemn, sacred duty to civilize you and to nag you either into your grave or into your highest form. Not sorry.
And before you redpill boys chime in with recommendations based on non-western marriage practices, I invite you to look at how those societies function.
Look at the societies where men only need purchase young (very young) virgins from their fathers. They don’t need to earn the affection and loyalty of women. They just need to buy them, trade for them, and maybe impress the girl’s father. Maybe.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, FLDS communities in the US…
They don’t do a lot of building, innovating, and creating. Do they? They aren’t known for high IQs. Or even physical attractiveness. Mormons in general are often strikingly good looking. But if you look specifically at the Fundamentalist ones… the same can’t be said
Striving for a worthy woman is what makes you what you are.
We each have our own nature to provide an incentive structure to the other. This incentive structure is to draw out the finest in the individual and, on a wider scale, the society.
Yes, that does include a hierarchy and doing what you’re supposed to doesn’t automatically guarantee you the top-shelf prize.
Only the highest tier of men (looks/money/swag) have access to the most beautiful women.
Only the most beautiful and appealing women get to be stay-at-home wives to a rich man.
Them’s the breaks. The rest of us have to sweeten the pot with acts of service.
He needs to be emotionally present and fun to be around, at least most of the time. He needs to engage in non-sexual intimacy so she feels attractive and valued. He needs to be an involved father and participate in the household maintenance.
She needs to make his doctor’s appointments and dinner. She needs to raise the children and be mindful of what their teachers are telling them. She needs to maintain her appearance and have sex with him regularly.
These are the rules—the give and take that keep the relationship and our very lives on an even keel.
After so many years of being lied to, it seems wrong, dirty even, to think about willfully subordinating ourselves.
But deep down, it feels right.
That’s why we seek it out in fiction, a safe way to play act what we know is the truth:
Men were made in His image. Not women.
We were only ever spare parts.
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Owusu-Gyamfi, Clifford, & Dei, Daniel. (2022). Tertullian's moral theology on women and the accusation of misogyny. Verbum et Ecclesia, 43(1), 1-8. https://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v43i1.2384
"She wasn’t designed in her own right, to fulfill her own purpose.
She was designed to help him with his.
Nothing ambiguous about that at all."
There's an orthodox podcast I listen to, and one episode they pointed out that when mankind was 1, the first commandment of God was given to him. But then after, when mankind is split apart into man and woman, the commandment is also split. Adam is to put creation into order, and Eve is to fill it with life.
Of course, neither can really do it right without the other. Eve's need for Adam is obvious, but your posted picture of how sparse men are willing to live inadvertently (IMO) points to how Adam needs Eve. Sure men can organize a space, make the shelter, build the house, but it takes a woman's touch to make it home. To make it nice.
I also liked the book "The Silence of Adam" - which made a compelling argument that from the original language in Genesis, when Eve was being tempted, Adam was standing RIGHT THERE... and did nothing. And that's to man's eternal shame that we were cowards when women needed us. I generally buy into it because it seems to fit with a repeated pattern of men and women throughout the world and history. And if anything, it's the first account of the knight rescuing the damsel from the dragon - only it's a story where the knight failed. And so we keep telling the story of the knight succeeding, because deep in our soul, humanity still feel that aching failure and regret of that day.
A) Personally I enjoy female company more than male overall. Obviously in a love relationship (not in one at the moment) I prize the company of my mate more than any other person. We are probably wired to enjoy opposite-sex company as much as we are for sex.
B) In a good relationship, neither person is above the other in hierarchy, but as you mention, there is a set of roles each sex tends to gravitate into.
C) I am a Christian but don't think these ancient writers were correct about women
D) Obviously both sexes express the nature of God to an equal extent.