318. The cauldron (VIII)
Spend only a brief moment to review contemporary right-wing ideas and you will find that masculinity—its lack—constitutes a major concern for the right. We are far too feminised, says the right; even the mildest conservative suggests that the affable suburban dad is slightly at a disadvantage today and you do not have to look deeply to find others who go much farther. For the right, masculinity is almost synonymous with responsibility and reality-adjusted action—two elements that characterise the right—and femininity can be taken to be synonymous with decadence, with the desire that everyone be the same and, quite simply, relax into a red wet depression: a chaotic miasma, humid and soft, where everything that is cold, hard, and beautiful wilts away.
Yet there is one regard in which women are far to the right of men: sexual reproduction. We can tell this is so when we think about the AIDS epidemic and the circumstances that led to it. Homosexual men have sex in the way all men would like to do; for example, on the app Grindr arrangements between the users are brisk and business-like: they connect, share photos, discuss preferences, and arrange a place to meet. Short, sharp, and rational; in other words, sex as arranged between two men. Hence, once laws on homosexuality were relaxed—an event that coincided with antibiotic treatment for most STDs—it became possible for homosexual men to indulge in unrestricted sexual activity as men desire; as a result a few men racked up 1,000s of partners and the conditions for a novel epidemic—not even impeded by the STD infections of old—were created.
Heterosexual men are no different from homosexual men in this respect; it is just they have to deal with women, with people who discriminate harshly when it comes to sexual relations. Men may well be responsible and obey reality when it comes to action than lets them rise up the hierarchy; they may well discriminate as to activities and jobs, but when it comes to sex they lose their ability to discriminate. Woman is the genius of the species; her eggs are expensive, while sperm is cheap: her eggs are the only real property she understands, and her only real responsibility. Accordingly, she guards them with a fierceness that men reserve for competition between other men and the protection of their own property.
Homosexual men often have a certain contempt for heterosexuals in this regard; since heterosexual competition grants unimpeded success to a relatively small proportion of men, for the most part men will take their opportunities with women as they come; in this regard they lack discrimination, and many feel lucky to have come away with anything at all. This means that, from the homosexual perspective, many heterosexual men are hopelessly subservient to women, since they are basically starved for sex; and so they will often settle for an inferior product. When it comes to men, women discriminate brutally; he is assessed for height and looks—although in public they usually ask his career first, since it is more socially acceptable to establish his bona fides for provisioning.
Prostitution is rebarbative to women—although all know, and will admit, that at some level they can always resort to it if still serviceable—because it means to sell their product below market price. The prostitute gives it away to anyone for money, but a woman really “makes it” when she entraps a suitably high-status mate to provide for her. The prostitute might be rich, but she is really poor; she has sold her goods cheap.
Now, this feminine capacity for responsibility is not transferable; it pertains only to her vital yolks. It is men who are adapted for a generalised attitude to the world that is responsible and reality-adjusted. Yet perhaps we should recall, as a new eugenic day dawns, that we are the product of those women who had their criteria fulfilled, beaten down, or short-circuited—we children of discrimination.