Why does none of the ancient religious texts raise the issue of misogyny?

David Knight quoted the Chinese as saying that, when you don't beat your wife every three days, she'll start to tear the tiles of your roof off - and then went on a tangent.

Let's not do that. Let us first ask what is implied about the nature of women by this saying and then what it really means. The answer to the first question is that women are only soothed by destruction. And as to the second question, would the meaning change, if spank would have been used for translation instead of beat? In German, the rooster kicks the hen, and an egg with a kick is a fertilised egg. Far from being concerned with the needs of women I suspect however that the progenitor of the saying intended to educate newly-wed men as to what the ancient and accepted time interval between intercourse is, because three days is the answer that every man would give.

I had recently criticised Dostoevsky for the way he had designed the character of the mysterious visitor of starets Zosima, stating that men wouldn't likely kill a woman over unrequited love, nor would they likely kill witnesses to escape embarrassment. I was wary that Dostoevsky would use this in order to advance some ill-founded moral philosophy and although I'm still in the middle of the novel, he has already used it in this way by providing a male counterpart to the vengeful Grushenka. In fairness, Dostoevsky's motivation isn't to excuse women's desire for destruction, but to rather advance the idea that the reason why man lives in squalor is that man is more focussed on the punishment of his offenders than on his well-being, something that doesn't just involve vengefulness, but many other things like prestige and competition (according to Schopenhauer this may all be one and the same for women though, who constantly compete for men, counting on their prestige, but I find the notion to be contrived), and in so far as the social order is creating these pressures without serving a higher purpose it is a valid target of criticism.

Yet, Dostoevsky's male counterpart to Grushenka certainly fits western conventions of gallantry, which the ancients didn't seem to have shared though. I once read a travelogue of a gay man travelling the ex-soviet republics, and when he came to Georgia he was apparently very offended, stating that their homophobia was hypocritical, since there was no gayer people on the planet. For those who don't know Georgian culture, here's exhibit A.


And here's exhibit B, for those who don't know English culture.


I can only speculate as to the root cause of the offense, but perhaps Aristophanes' joke in the Symposium that, since we all agreed that men are better than women, we should consequently also agree that gay men are better than straight men, for they showed better judgment, has something to do with this, that is the fact that he meant it as a joke.

What are the Pet Shop Boys singing about there? The glory of being graced by the affection of his eminence, the honour conferred. Hard to imagine that a man could feel that way about a woman. Hence we're all gay. Q.E.D. Or not so fast? Men don't cry, or do they? So, in particular, they also don't cry over having to shoulder life's weight on their own with little help from the intellectual midget they espouse for the purpose of maintaining the race. And a man whose pride is so little developed that he basks in the pride of another man, instead of reaching within and become a well of greatness himself, what a pitiful puddle he is!

As I've said before, I'm spiritually eastern, and I have no problem whatsoever with stating the above and from that vantage point it is really difficult to be gay, because whatever good is to be had from being gay has to outweigh the duty to yourself and the race and it never does. I do understand though that it is a bad practice to infer from experience with other people when dealing with a human being, who has the right to be observed and judged based on his, and also her own merits. Yet, that doesn't mean one should throw experience out of the window, rather it is the reference that tells us objectively who we are and what we do in the context of history.

Anyway, from this vagueness, the uncertain writing of one's own history, springs gallantry and friendly modesty in general. However, it has a component in the west that I do not agree with, namely the idea that it is nicer to be gallant. There's nothing nice about it as such, it is merely a side effect of growth that is honoured in its name. After all, gallantry glosses over experience and when taken seriously becomes the basis of the worst attacks on the truth, as witnessed today.

It is not the lie though that western peoples seek, but the dream; condensed in their ideas about the afterlife, which, as metaphors, are not even a problem, in the sense that the future lies indeed in the direction of our dreams, but westerners are prone to sever the link between the idea and the emanation and take refuge not in guarding the process of the emanation of the idea, but seek an ideal existence, where wishes not only come true, but have already come true, and one such wish is of course that women would be just as gifted as men.

Because of this, we're not only gallant, but also encourage the training of women so that they may better conform with that ideal. But the things that can be trained best, like marathon running or boxing, are the least likely to raise our esteem of a woman. A person's nature isn't the product of training, but rather determines its outcomes and when left unsupervised also its direction. In any case, it's gross folly to demonise the description of reality when it doesn't coincide with the dream. Ours is the power to decide what to do, not the power to choose what to deal with. Yet, even business has now turned to selling accessoires for identities and the outfitting of their worlds. It is a mental disease and every pious person feels it in his heart that he's betraying his Lord, when he gives up on the world in order to enjoy his dreams.