Man, Woman, and Machine — Part I

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Chapter 1

Man, Woman, and Ardhanareeshwara

We are not enemies. We are allies.

Ours is no battleground… what we have is a common ground.

And the terms of that common ground have been laid out for us by the devatas themselves.

In Kailasam¹

In Vaikuntam²

and in our Devaalayas³

The nature of our common ground has been further clarified by the archetype of Ardhanareeshwara⁴

This is not an archetype of transgenderism; this is an archetype of complementarity between Man and Woman – the great coming together that is the basis of all life and living since the dawn of human time.

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The baseline material aim of every traditional community is the imagination and incentivization of an institution whose aim is genetic and memetic bequeathal. That is, the creation of a socio-cultural scaffolding for the responsible making of babies and the subsequent maintenance of a stable and safe environment for those babies to grow up in, imbibing the cultural values of the community. Such an institution fosters, first and foremost, survival, but also commitment, will, and the spirit of sacrifice in adults; and predictability, cultural affirmation, and positive role models for children. The breakdown of this scaffolding is invariably accompanied by degeneracy, falling birth rates, societal collapse, widespread sociopathy, narcissism, and eventually, the erosion of the anima (the will to live) itself. These problems are visible everywhere today in the non-traditional world – treadmill economics⁵, societal control through the encouragement of addictions⁶, broken families⁷, mass shootings⁸, selfishness⁹, abandonment of the aged¹⁰ and the young¹¹, and depression¹².

And as Modernity eats and continues to eat into the last remaining islands of tradition, these problems will become universal. Youth today, who have grown up in the broken world are simply unaware that another, whole-some world once existed. What they do know is that the angst they feel is real, but they have no articulation of the cure because they have never witnessed it.

Unfortunately, for us, many cheer on this cultural predation because we are under the tutelage of the modern propaganda machine which tells us that tradition is bad because it is irrational, and that it is irrational because it does not enshrine the ideals of Liberty and Equality!

This universal application of the ideals of the French Revolution at random and ad nauseum upon every organizational structure is now epidemic. Since many unconscious Hindus today cheer on this Universalism without being able to see the problems it poses for family and religion, let’s take another example.

Presuming that the organizational meaning and role of the Indian Army is still clear to most people, we can ask a few questions –

1. What is the use of the army?
   A. To best protect our borders.
2. Does it do the job well?
   A. Yes.
3. Will it help the army do its job better if there were more women jawans fighting Pashtun adversaries?
   A. No.
4. Will it help the army better maintain focus and internal discipline if women and men shared locker rooms?
   A. No.
5. Will it help the army do its job better if there were more transgenders stationed at Nathu La?
   A. No.
6. Then why in the name of the Gods is the army expected to answer to the summons of Radical Equality¹³?
   A. Silence. Apparently, that’s an out-of-syllabus question.

(Note: There could well be a separate Rani Lakshmi Bai battalion of the army readied to form a second line of defense if and when the frontline falls, but that would not be equal enough for the equalists. Equal representation is now a credo, it has been severed from its connection to outcomes and social reality altogether.)

Bringing the logic of this argument back to our traditional social structures, we now find ourselves at the ridiculous historical crossroad that asks us to raise up the law book of the French Revolution and use it to judge and condemn community, tradition, family, and the very processes that gave us life and love. This is a grave case of making a category error. We must ask instead what is the use of family and marriage, and if, in its current form, it already performs those functions well. If the answer is yes, then why must the family as an institution answer to the clarion call of the ideals of the French Revolution? Will these ideals make the family stronger? More successful in achieving its aims? More capable of dispensing its responsibilities? Bring more children into the world? Bring more stability for those children? Transmit knowledge of the samskaaras more efficiently to the next generation? Looking at current evidence from the West¹⁴, the answer on all counts is an unequivocal “No”. Then what is it we are doing to ourselves?

Let us ask instead, what is it that traditional marriages enable? In fact, what is it that they have enabled since the dawn of human time? Do we have a problem with the lives and efforts of our fathers and mothers? Or that of their parents before them? Don’t you and I stand here today not in spite of the “fascist” institution they were sworn to, but because of it? What does it mean ontologically for us to not just criticize but to actively undermine the very structures that gave birth to us?

What we are secretly and unconsciously being encouraged to participate in today is revolution. We are encouraged to let go of the past and put our entire faith in the future (and the structures that hold that futuristic future). Every revolution becomes a re-enactment of the very first rupture, that of Christianity’s break with our pagan ancestors in exchange for “the ‘Father’ who art in heaven”, an imaginary relationship elsewhere.

As Hindus, we cannot allow this monstrosity to overtake us. Sanatana thought abhors ruptures and cultivates the idea of tradition as a bridge instead. It tells us that the “future”, that is Moksha, can be grasped only in conjunction with the past, that is, by paying off our rnas and our karmic debt from lives previous. Furthermore, it posits that the “future” is not a future at all but is in fact the radical present, the here and now! The Western idea of “progress” whether of the material, technological kind, or the “we are becoming more moral”, idealist kind are both reflections of maya, as far as the Hindu is concerned. Our deliverance is inextricably linked to the past and is redeemable only in the present (if and when we are ready). If at all we use the word “progress”, it has a radically different implication that anything the Western mind has imagined.

Coming back to the meaning of marriage, it’s not that we stand against romance and consent and “following our dreams”, but we can understand their relative importance only when we recover our ability to use our indigenous value framework for judgment. Of course, we celebrate romantic love, our classical literature is replete with references to it. Of course, we understand consent, it is the fulcrum around which the Ramayana revolves. Of course, we appreciate the impulse to follow one’s dreams, we have been the land that pursued excellence for millennia. But the overarching idea that guided the deployment of these ideas was not the self-gratification of the ego and the senses but the honoring of the Gods and the pursuit of Dharma. That is why they have limits and are subordinated to samskaaric duties, without which we would have a society in free fall, held up only on the backs of immigrants who will soon outbreed and out-number us. The most dramatic example of such a fate is America, which is today 57.8% white¹⁵, losing 18 percent points in three decades of dramatic internal cultural polarization.

Success or failure in a Hindu marriage is not to be judged upon the anvils of Equality or Liberty but upon the samskaaric scales of the Ardhanareeshwara archetype. So, let us not confuse our sporadic failure to uphold that archetype with the legitimacy of the archetype itself.

Let’s start from first principles.

What’s our aim? Moksha.

How do we get there? By performing Dharma.

What is Dharma? Dharma is many things, but it has been distilled for the ordinary person into a set of ideals, the pancha rna, and a set of actions, the sixteen samskaaras.

The performance of the samskaaras are linked to an uber framework, the Purushaarth, and given a context, which is the idea of life as a series of four Ashramas.

Now, from this indigenous vantage point, we ask – “What is the use of marriage?”

Marriage, or vivaaha, it turns out, is the central lynchpin around which this indigenous cosmos revolves (for us ordinary people). A full thirteen of the sixteen samskaaras are directly connected to vivaaha and childbearing/child-rearing. Additionally, one of the pancha rnas, pitru rna, enshrines vivaaha and childbearing/child-rearing as sacrosanct. Another of the rnas, rishirRna, tangentially upholds the samskaaras and Ashramadharma as sacrosanct.

Vivaaha, therefore, it becomes clear, is no mere mechanism for companionship or vehicle for romantic love, and though it could be both of those things, that is not its purpose. Its purpose is quite plainly, to function as the bulwark for the protection of our ideals by means of the traditions, and as the crucible for the emancipation of the individual aatman.

The Hindu view of marriage then does not say “women must not work,” or “women must cover their heads,” or “that children must do as their told,” or that “children must not follow their dreams,” or “that men should provide for and protect their families,” or “men should never do housework”. The Hindu view of marriage merely asks that we ask one question – “Will the performance or non-performance of an action lead to better maintenance and more effective transmission of the samskaaras or not?”

If the answer to that question is “No” then we must consider compromising upon or modifying that particular action. Every family’s context is different and each one’s range of acceptable actions will be different. There are no prescribed universal “rules”, but our reading of the common cultures of this land should stem from this deep understanding, not from the knee-jerk application of the Western tropes of equality, liberty, consent, and free choice, while being permanently fixated on the mirror of Marxism and its reflection of patriarchy.

The tug-of-war then, is not between men and women as the Marxists would have us paint reality, but between men and women of honor on one side and men and women of dishonor on the other. And what is honorable has already been demonstrated to us by our civilizational archetypes. It is up to men and women of honor to hold each other up to our civilizational standards of behavior, not to engage in a tug of war over who has more liberty and why we don’t have equal access to the tools of Western Liberty, that is sex, porn, cigarettes, booze, drugs, and enslavement to corporations. Alas, in these modern times, the latter case is far more common than the former. Additionally, the growing ubiquity of men and women of dishonor in our social and media environments has created a steep potential difference in our minds, and especially in the minds of our children, over what is the right way to live. The only way this problem will be resolved is if the systems of governance align themselves with the samskaaras. As long as our ideals are culled from Western Liberalism, we will continue to incentivize civilizationally-adverse behavior, inevitably creating generations upon generations of deracinated children.

Simultaneously, it cannot be that men have more liberty than women, and women respond by demanding more equality than men. Both Hindu men and Hindu women need to eschew the call of “Western Liberty” and “Radical Equality”. Our Hindu freedom lies not in the rejection of tradition but in the rejection of corporate enslavement and sensory addictions. Our equality lies not in the profiles of OnlyFans and the corridors of the divorce courts but in our shared remembrance of the archetype of Ardhanareeshwara.

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Chapter 2

Man, Woman, and Oppression | A View from the Other Side

I will now walk us through a series of excerpts from feminist classics (both “first wave,” and “radical”) to give us a sense of the feminist understanding of how their perceived oppression is progressing, and how they aim to emerge from that oppressive state. (The excerpts are long, but do take the time to read them because getting a sense of the progression of thought is crucial. Every “Woke” idea or challenge we are faced with today has roots in feminist theory.)

At the end of this segment, I will use the traditional view to counter that narrative, point by point. All claims that the Feminists make are indeed true, but they are also false. What we are concerned with, as traditionalists, is not the logical framework of their worldview but the unstated assumptions that underpin that worldview. If we take at face value their materialist, individualist assumptions about the world, then we have no option but to reach the same man-hating, God-denying, civilization-negating conclusions as them. But, if we start with fundamentally different axioms, we will arrive at a different, and in my opinion, more authentic, useful, and beautiful destination.

Biology

Simone de Beauvoir in her 1949 classic “Second Sex” traces some of the roots of what she calls women’s subordination to Biology. She identifies female physical weakness, hormonal instability, and the yoking of women’s bodies uniquely to the “needs of the species,” i.e., population growth.

“In addition to the primary sexual characteristics, woman has various secondary sexual peculiarities that are more or less directly produced in consequence of the first, through hormonal action. On the average she is shorter than the male and lighter, her skeleton is more delicate, and the pelvis is larger in adaptation to the functions of pregnancy and childbirth; her connective tissues accumulate fat and her contours are thus more rounded than those of the male. Appearance in general – structure, skin, hair – is distinctly different in the two sexes. Muscular strength is much less in woman, about two thirds that of man; she has less respiratory capacity, the lungs and trachea being smaller. The larynx is relatively smaller, and in consequence the female voice is higher. The specific gravity of the blood is lower in woman and there is less hemoglobin; women are therefore less robust and more disposed to anemia than are males. Their pulse is more rapid, the vascular system less stable, with ready blushing. Instability is strikingly characteristic of woman’s organization in general; among other things, man shows greater stability in the metabolism of calcium, woman fixing much less of this material and losing a good deal during menstruation and pregnancy…This lack in stability and control underlies woman’s emotionalism, which is bound up with circulatory fluctuations palpitation of the heart, blushing, and so forth – and on this account women are subject to such displays of agitation as tears, hysterical laughter, and nervous crises.”¹⁶

“It is obvious once more that many of these traits originate in woman’s subordination to the species (here Simone is referring to woman’s role as the primary maintainer of the human population, which she sees as a burden unfairly thrust solely upon women), and here we find the most striking conclusion of this survey: namely, that woman is of all mammalian females at once the one who is most profoundly alienated (her individuality the prey of outside forces (that is the needs of the species)), and the one who most violently resists this alienation; in no other is enslavement of the organism to reproduction more imperious or more unwillingly accepted. Crises of puberty and the menopause, monthly ‘curse’, long and often difficult pregnancy, painful and sometimes dangerous childbirth, illnesses, unexpected symptoms and complications – these are characteristic of the human female. It would seem that her lot is heavier than that of other females in just about the same degree that she goes beyond other females in the assertion of her individuality. In comparison with her the male seems infinitely favoured: his sexual life is not in opposition to his existence as a person, and biologically it runs an even course, without crises and generally without mishap. On the average, women live as long as men, or longer; but they are much more often ailing, and there are many times when they are not in command of themselves.” ¹⁷

de Beauvoir then goes on to say that bodily weakness is not sufficient cause to explain women’s subordination and that we must look to history.

“…the body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and in the bosom of a society (that is, reality is social and not just physical)”. ¹⁸

For such an individualist who primarily draws his/her personhood from their ability to act free of biological constraints, menstruation, instead of being a doorway into the unique and Gods’ given creativity of womankind, is seen as horrific, the arrival of femininity as descent and the destiny of woman as disgusting.

“I have already pointed out how much easier the transformation of puberty would be if she looked beyond it, like the boys, towards a free adult future: menstruation horrifies her only because it is an abrupt descent into femininity. She would also take her young eroticism in much more tranquil fashion if she did not feel a frightened disgust for her destiny as a whole….”¹⁹

History

Simone acknowledges the need for masculine protection in a low-tech world. She also imagines a time before the plow when women’s contributions were as valued as men’s. She sees that as civilizational complexity increased, work outside the house began to be far more lucrative than work done in the house and so women were progressively subordinated.

“…from the most ancient records of prehistory, we see man always as armed. In times when heavy clubs were brandished and wild beasts held at bay, woman’s physical weakness did constitute a glaring inferiority: if the instrument required strength slightly beyond that at woman’s disposal, it was enough to make her appear utterly powerless.” ²⁰

“In the Stone Age, when the land belonged in common to all members of the clan, the rudimentary character of the primitive spade and hoe limited the possibilities of agriculture, so that woman’s strength was adequate for gardening. In this primitive division of labour, the two sexes constituted in a way two classes, and there was equality between these classes. While man hunts and fishes, woman remains in the home; but the tasks of domesticity include productive labour – making pottery, weaving, gardening – and in consequence woman plays a large part in economic life. Through the discovery of copper, tin, bronze, and iron, and with the appearance of the plough, agriculture enlarges its scope, and intensive labour is called for in clearing woodland and cultivating the fields. Then man has recourse to the labour of other men, whom he reduces to slavery. Private property appears: master of slaves and of the earth, man becomes the proprietor also of woman. This was ‘the great historical defeat of the feminine sex’. It is to be explained by the upsetting of the old division of labour which occurred in consequence of the invention of new tools. ‘The same cause which had assured to woman the prime authority in the house – namely, her restriction to domestic duties – this same cause now assured the domination there of the man; for woman’s housework henceforth sank into insignificance in comparison with man’s productive labour – the latter as everything, the former a trifling auxiliary.” ²¹

Simone then looks to historical materialism and seeks solidarity from within the camp of the socialists and rationalists whose work speaks of eradicating systems of oppression. Women and workers both become subjects who are ripe for emancipation. She recognizes that the equality of women that she seeks is dependent to a large extent on a high-technological world without which Equality is an impossibility, but she does not critique that fact. Readers familiar with my earlier work will see this as a crucial step in the movement away from values (which are human, humane, and organic) and toward modern ideals (which are mathematical, un-human, and only achievable through a monster state). Simone was naïve enough (as were many other intellectuals of that era) not to see that the monster state they dreamed of was nothing if not the super-magnification of all the masculine traits that she so reviled

“The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some most important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis – in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action.” ²²

“Thus, woman could not be considered simply as a sexual organism, for among the biological traits, only those have importance that take on concrete value in action. Woman’s awareness of herself is not defined exclusively by her sexuality: it reflects a situation that depends upon the economic organization of society, which in turn indicates what stage of technical evolution mankind has attained.” As we have seen, the two essential traits that characterize woman, biologically speaking, are the following: her grasp upon the world is less extended than man’s, and she is more closely enslaved to the species.” ²³

“‘Woman can be emancipated only when she can take part on a large social scale in production and is engaged in domestic work only to an insignificant degree. And this has become possible only in the big industry of modern times, which not only admits of female labour on a grand scale but even formally demands it…’” ²⁴

“Thus, the fate of woman and that of socialism are intimately bound up together, as is shown also in Bebel’s great work on woman. ‘Woman and the proletariat,’ he says, ‘are both downtrodden.’ Both are to be set free through the economic development consequent upon the social upheaval brought about by machinery. The problem of woman is reduced to the problem of her capacity for labour. Puissant at the time when techniques were suited to her capabilities, dethroned when she was no longer in a position to exploit them, woman regains in the modern world her equality with man. It is the resistance of the ancient capitalistic paternalism that in most countries prevents the concrete realization of this equality; it will be realized on the day when this resistance is broken, as is the fact already in the Soviet Union, according to Soviet propaganda. And when the socialist society is established throughout the world, there will no longer be men and women, but only workers on a footing of equality.” ²⁵

But she was foresighted enough to see that the situation of women and the situation of “workers” were not one and the same and that women had unique requirements that could not be wished away simply by marching to the notes of Mother Russia.

“No more does Engels account for the peculiar nature of this oppression. He tried to reduce the antagonism of the sexes to class conflict, but he was half-hearted in the attempt; the thesis is simply untenable.” ²⁶

“I have pointed out in the Introduction how different woman’s situation is, particularly on account of the community of life and interests which entails her solidarity with man, and also because he finds in her an accomplice; no desire for revolution dwells within her, nor any thought of her own disappearance as a sex – all she asks is that certain sequels of sexual differentiation be abolished.”

“What is more serious, woman cannot in good faith be regarded simply as a worker; for her reproductive function is as important as her productive capacity, no less in the social economy than in the individual life. In some periods, indeed, it is more useful to produce offspring than to plough the soil. Engels slighted the problem, simply remarking that the socialist community would abolish the family” ²⁷

“A truly socialist ethics, concerned to uphold justice without suppressing liberty and to impose duties upon individuals without abolishing individuality, will find most embarrassing the problems posed by the condition of woman. It is impossible simply to equate gestation with a task, a piece of work, or with a service, such as military service. Woman’s life is more seriously broken in upon by a demand for children than by regulation of the citizen’s employment – no state has ever ventured to establish obligatory copulation. In the sexual act and in maternity not only time and strength but also essential values are involved for woman. Rationalist materialism tries in vain to disregard this dramatic aspect of sexuality; for it is impossible to bring the sexual instinct under a code of regulations. Indeed, as Freud said, it is not sure that it does not bear within itself a denial of its own satisfaction. What is certain is that it does not permit of integration with the social, because there is in eroticism a revolt of the instant against time, of the individual against the universal. In proposing to direct and exploit it, there is risk of killing it, for it is impossible to deal at will with living spontaneity as one deals at will with inert matter; and no more can it be obtained by force, as a privilege may be.” ²⁸

A Fulcrum

de Beauvoir’s work represents a watershed. Behind her, it is the old kind of Western woman, and ahead of it, the new kind. You will see from the last two paragraphs that de Beauvoir is still trying to make peace, to define a modern common ground between men and women.

“To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles – desire, possession, love, dream, adventure – worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us – giving, conquering, uniting – will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.” ²⁹

She wants female equality without the baggage of femininity but she still wishes for the possibility of “love, dream, and adventure” with a man. She wishes, in her own way, for the Ardhanareeshwara. But the traditionalist asks, without the dipoles of masculine and feminine, what is it that will hold the two “working individuals” together? Will the complexities of raising children and upholding culture be accepted wholeheartedly in the absence of a sense of duty by two “individuals” whose fundamental focus is their own ambition? It’s a fragile dream…possible maybe, but fraught with dangers.

In a mere three decades after Simone’s ground-breaking work was published, Radical Feminists (Rad-Fems), while being sympathetic to her position, had already dismissed her as belonging to the old guard who made common cause with men by referring disparagingly to her relationship with her husband.

“Why did Simone de Beauvoir adhere to the misogynist Jean Paul Sartre?”³⁰

Obsession with Sex and the Perversion of the Road Ahead

By the 1960’s the invention of birth control had opened a Pandora’s Box for the West from which it has still not recovered. The act of sex was finally severed from its sacred and social dimensions. Sex now emerged as one of the fundamental forces that drove the Western person. Success and Identity became tied up with it. Ethics became defined by it. One-half of the feminists insisted that free sex had made them equal to men. The other half argued that free sex had enslaved women even more to patriarchy.

“What part does sexuality play in the oppression of women? Only in the system of oppression that is male supremacy does the oppressor actually invade and colonise the interior of the body of the oppressed. Attached to all forms of sexual behaviour are meanings of dominance and submission, power and powerlessness, conquest and humiliation. There is very special importance attached to sexuality under male supremacy when every sexual reference, every sexual joke, every sexual image serves to remind a woman of her invaded centre and a man of his power. Why all this fuss in our culture about sex? Because it is specifically through sexuality that the fundamental oppression, that of men over women, is maintained.”³¹

The “fascist” heterosexual family lay broken, true, but advertisements, movies, and pornography now manipulated female self-perception on a much grander scale than family expectations ever had. Radical feminists began to theorize that an understanding of the problem could not be limited to merely the structures of Man, but had to be expanded to include Man himself.

“The heterosexual couple is the basic unit of the political structure of male supremacy. In it each individual woman comes under the control of an individual man. It is more efficient by far than keeping women in ghettoes, camps or oven sheds at the bottom of the garden. In the couple, love and sex are used to obscure the realities of oppression, to prevent women identifying with each other in order to revolt, and from identifying ‘their’ man as part of the enemy. Any woman who takes part in a heterosexual couple helps to shore up male supremacy by making its foundations stronger”³²

“Penetration (wherever we refer to penetration, we mean penetration by the penis) is not necessary to the sexual pleasure of women or even of men. Its performance leads to reproduction or tedious/dangerous forms of contraception” ³³

“Why then does it lie at the heart of the sexualized culture of this particular stage of male supremacy? Why are more and more women, at younger and younger ages, encouraged by psychiatrists, doctors, marriage guidance counsellors, the pom industry, the growth movement, lefties and Masters and Johnson to get ****** more and more often? Because the form of the oppression of women under male supremacy is changing. As more women are able to earn a little more money and the pressures of reproduction are relieved so the hold of individual men and men as a class over women is being strengthened through sexual control.” ³⁴

“Every man knows that a ****** woman is a woman under the control of men, whose body is open to men, a woman who is tamed and broken in. Before the sexual revolution there was no mistake about penetration being for the benefit of men. The sexual revolution is a con trick. It serves to disguise the oppressive nature of male sexuality and we are told that penetration is for our benefit as well. Every act of penetration for a woman is an invasion which undermines her confidence and saps her strength. For a man it is an act of power and mastery which makes him stronger, not just over one woman but over all women. So, every woman who engages in penetration bolsters the oppressor and reinforces the class power of men.” ³⁵

Woman, it was deemed, could never be herself as long as she had men in her life.

“But it sounds like you are saying that heterosexual women are the enemy!
No. Men are the enemy. Heterosexual women are collaborators with the enemy. All the good work that our heterosexual Feminist sisters do for women is undermined by the counter-revolutionary activity they engage in with men. Being a heterosexual Feminist is like being in the resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe where in the daytime you blow up a bridge, in the evening you rush to repair it.” ³⁶

Destination Dead

And finally, we are at the endpoint where this kind of hyper-sexualized, individualistic thinking leads. It is inevitable. There may be a whole range of feminists out there today, but rest assured that if they were to examine their intellectual positions, they would all end up here. In this religion, like all others, the spectrum of feminists is only an indication of how devout one is.

“We do think that all Feminists can and should be political lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not **** men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women. The paper is divided into two parts. The first cover the reasons why we think serious Feminists have no choice but to abandon heterosexuality.” ³⁷

“For instance, women with newly raised consciousnesses tend to leave marriages and families, either completely through divorce, or partially, through unavailability of their cooking, housekeeping and sexual services. And women academics tend to become alienated from their colleagues and male mentors and no longer serve as sounding board, ego booster, editor, mistress or proofreader. Many awakening women become celibate or lesbian, and the others become a very great deal more choosy about when, where and in what relationships they will have sex with men. And the men affected by these separations generally react with defensive hostility, anxiety and guilt-tripping, not to mention descents into illogical arguments which match and exceed their own most fanciful images of female irrationality. My claim is that they are very afraid because they depend very heavily upon the goods they receive from women, and these separations cut them off from those goods.” ³⁸

Sex is no longer a sacred act between a married man and a married woman. The family is no longer the worldly remaking of a fundamental truth in the image of a sacred archetype. Childbearing and childrearing are not glorious acts of care and optimism that repay our ancestors by paying forward the miracle of our own births. Nope. None of that nonsense that was designed to fool women into voluntary enslavement is acceptable anymore at the table of the human condition.

“We know that for some women, for example, those with children, those with no easy access to the movement, and those without the experience of living on their own, the break is more difficult than for others and they need more time and practical support. we know how difficult it is to find a women’s house to move into and what it is like to feel like a ‘new girl’ at the women’s disco’ But part of the support must be in explaining as clearly as possible the political reasons for our own choice and talking honestly about all the difficulties with the women who are making it.”³⁹

“Matters pertaining to marriage and divorce, lesbianism and abortion touch individual men (and their sympathizers) because they can feel the relevance of these to themselves—they feel the threat that they might be the next. Hence, heterosexuality, marriage and motherhood, which are the institutions which most obviously and individually maintain female accessibility to males, form the core triad of anti-Feminist ideology.”⁴⁰

Yes, we read that right. When motherhood itself is considered anti-feminist, we have to conclude that Feminism is anti-Woman. Clearly, this is no longer about rights or respect or love…. This is a pure, unhinged, “Me, Myself, and I” revolution – license masquerading as Liberty getting its foot in the door under the cover-fire of Equality.

By abandoning everything ancestral, organic, decent, and customary, Rad-Fem has embarked on a revolutionary, emancipatory path that elevates the sexual act to the status of a political messiah into whose crossroads, ultimately, all kinds of deviant pathways have converged – Gender as a social construct⁴¹, Queer Theory⁴², Transgenderism⁴³, Pedophilia⁴⁴, Bestiality⁴⁵, Incest⁴⁶, BDSM⁴⁷ and the hijacking of children from their parents for Trans-indoctrination⁴⁸. Because after all, these are all self-expressions of “oppressed categories of people” by the same catholic definition of oppression that the Feminists have used to define their own oppression. Feminists today decry the usurpation of their language⁴⁹ and societal gains by Trans-activists but it was a scaffolding that they themselves erected.

“Oppression is a system of inter-related barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize and mould people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group (individually to individuals of the other group, and as a group, to that group).”⁵⁰

Any ordinary human will see that the above sentence is total nonsense, not because it is untrue, but because it is so generic that it could mean anything at all to anyone at all. But for the traditionalist, this whole scaffolding is a problem, a big problem. It cannot be countered at the level of logic; it can only be countered at the level of a priori assumptions.
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Rebuttal

There are some fundamental a priori assumptions made by feminists which need to be called out.

1. Materialism is Truth
2. Individualism is Good
3. Sexual Expression and therefore Sexuality are key components of a person’s identity

All three of these assumptions are false.

It is Brahman that is True and all material is imbued with its divine intent.

It is community that is good, and family that is the most fundamental societal unit. Ordinary individuals without community and family are incomplete and therefore act in ways that are at odds with the divine intent, thereby accumulating karmic debt.

A person’s major identity comes from his community and family whose dharma he must fulfil. His minor identity comes from his personal acts. And in the case of exceptional people, identity is drawn from the sacrifices for the greater good that they make in their journeys toward Moksha. Sexual expression is either irrelevant or limited to the Kama part of a person’s Purushartha, which in turn is subordinated to Vivaaha and Dharma.

Aside from the Hindu metaphysical critique made above, we can also look at the internal contradictions and lacunae in the Feminist stance from the perspective of an ordinary Hindu…

1. The Feminist stance abandons the Gods. By rejecting the unspoken, but obvious truth, that by making men and women different, the Gods intended them to be different and complimentary, Feminists automatically declare themselves as atheists and are in contravention of Deva Rna. A feminist is forced to ask, “Why did God make women weaker than men?” or “Why did God give women menstruation and pregnancy?” or simply “Why didn’t God make men and women equal?” which is no different from asking “Why did God make women at all?” It is an attitude of self-denial. As a corollary, no believer (in the traditional sense) can be a feminist.
2. The feminist stance abandons culture, tradition, and ancestors. By summarily rejecting the traditional ways of the ancestors (instead of at least attempting to evolve or consciously expand them with changing civilizational complexity), feminists are in contravention of Rishi Rna and Pitru Rna. As a corollary, no traditional Hindu woman can be a “feminist”.
3. The feminist stance abandons the civilizational imperative and the need for a stable model of survival and growth. How do they expect the human species, their own civilization, and even the economy to survive without the bearing and bringing up of children? Besides, who do they believe will fight our civilizational enemies? For all their “understanding” of history, they seem incredibly naïve about historical forces. Perhaps wars are “man-made” problems but their effect on women cannot be wished away. Also, important to note that women in power do go to war too, including Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir. So, I must ask, are they really endorsing the Matrix solution of extra-corporeal wombs with exclusively female cloned fetuses?
4. The feminist stance abandons the needs of children. Children need to grow up in stable households with male and female role models. Additionally, the more cultural affirmation there is around them the better it is for kids. A fragmented society results in fragmented psyches.
5. The feminist stance ignores one million years of history during which honorable men have loved honorable women, lived and died for them, and protected them from wild beasts, creepy crawlies, and marauders.
6. The feminist stance ignores ten thousand years of history during which honorable men and honorable women have put their energies into putting food on the table and freeing humankind from the vagaries of nature. It is upon that foundation that the “Rad-Fems” stand today. By defining all the social structures that evolved over those millennia as “oppression,” these radical feminists fail to acknowledge that foundation. That is self-contradictory.
7. The feminist stance ignores three hundred years of recent history during which it was an industrial surplus that created the appliances and devices that freed women from physical work and gave them the time and space to articulate a demand for Equality. It ignores the fact that Equality as demanded by Feminists is only possible in the presence of that surplus. And equality in the workplace which seems so obvious to us today is only possible in the presence of so high a technological society that all the physical, navigational, and analytical advantages of men are nullified by machines that can be run by any human regardless of sex.
8. The feminist stance ignores that the continued present-day maintenance of that entire engine of human artifice is carried out largely by men… in the armies, in the mines, on the electric poles, in the sewers, in the machine shops, on the oil rigs, and on construction sites.
9. The feminist stance does not introspect enough about the meaning of such an “equality” that is predicated on a surplus that has been earned by the oppression of others (colonialism and slavery), the work of others (inventors and manufacturers), that is contingent upon the continued goodwill of other (maintenance staff) and requires us all to surrender our agencies to the Tech-State that orchestrates it all. This late-Modernist Autonomy does not come for free. As a corollary, no true adherent of the sustainable, agricultural, or ‘Small is Beautiful’ worldview can be a feminist.
10. There is a fundamental paradox here that puts feminists in a bind, but about which most refuse to speak. In order to live autonomously without men, feminists have to embrace the hyper-technologized world and all its structures that are built and maintained by men, BUT if they reject those structures (because they are built by men) and choose instead to return to a low-tech world built and maintained by Mother Nature, they are ironically forced to go back to a relying on men (whom they use as a shield to ward off the dangers and difficulties of the outer natural world).

In conclusion, I would like to point out that there are feminists like the Jungian, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women who Run with the Wolves who take a different route. She is unwilling (as all Westerners are) to abandon Individualism, but she does abandon materialism. And that makes a huge difference to the conclusions that she draws about the role of women in society and the nature of their relationship with men.

“If women want men to know them, really know them, they have to teach them some of the deep knowing. When men show that willingness, then is the time to reveal things; not just because, but because another soul has asked.”⁵¹

“In mythos, as in life, there is no doubt that a Wild Man seeks his own down-under-the-earth bride…. Similarly, there is no one a wildish woman loves better that a mate who can be her equal. Yet, over & over perhaps since the beginning of infinity, those who would be her mate are not quite sure they comprehend her true nature.” ⁵²

“Understanding the dual nature of women sometimes causes men, and even women themselves, to close their eyes and hail heaven for help. The paradox of women’s twin nature is that when one side is more cool in feeling tone, the other is more hot.” ⁵³

“…there is also the… attitude which finds and claims woman’s duality, finding it valuable, courtable and desirable…whether an internal or external figure, such a man, represents a fresh but faith-filled lover whose central desire is to name and understand the mysterious and numinous double in woman’s nature.”⁵⁴

As Hindus, both individualism and materialism are unacceptable starting points. For us, the basic societal unit is the family and not the individual. Moreover, the family is held in the protective embrace of community and tradition. As Hindus, our focus is not on identifying ourselves with sense gratification, but with breaking from desire and addiction. As Hindus, our interest is not in elevating sexuality to the pinnacle of human experience but in bounding it within purushaarthic limits.

It is very important for us all to break with the Western lens and see clearly again the true nature of our reality. For the Hindu traditionalist, both the Marilyn Frye view of all men as toxic oppressors, and the Rollo Tomassi counterview of all women as hypergamous, alpha-male magnets, are false. Such perverse views arise in a culture that has severed its links with the Gods, Prakriti, Community, and Tradition. In such a state of anti-culture, the individual is bereft of many of the vital links that make for his optimal flowering and he descends into various shades of narcissism. It is this narcissism, which has been taken by post-Freudian Western society to represent the truth of what humans really are. Their entire societal and legal framework has been designed based on this erroneous understanding. All Western structures are merely extremely complex mechanisms by which the state aims to control and manipulate this narcissism. The Western state (and by association, all other modern states) is riding a tiger and an illusory (maayic) one at that.

Wendell Berry captures this phenomenon in this anecdote from his friend Wes’ farm in Salinas:

“Wes pointed to a sunflower growing alone apart from the others and said “There is a plant that has realized its full potential as an individual” and clearly it had: it had grown very tall, it had put out many long branches heavily laden with blossoms and the branches had broken off, for they had grown too heavy and long. The plant had indeed realized its full potential as an individual but had failed as a sunflower. We could say that its full potential as an individual was its failure. It had failed because it had lived outside an important part of its definition, which consists of both its individuality and its community. A part of its properly realizable potential lay in community, not in itself.” ⁵⁵
—————

Men, by asking for more liberty than women will lead to more of this –

“Till death do I stay single: South Korea’s #NoMarriage women.” ⁵⁶

Women, by asking for more equality than men will lead to more of this (observe the difference in the way the two titles are worded):

“MGTOW — Men going their own way: the rise of a toxic male separatist movement.”⁵⁷

And both men and women by embracing Individualism get more of this:

“Marriage as a Wretched Institution.”⁵⁸

This modern disharmony cannot be resolved within the framework of even more “Western Idealism”. It is only when Western idealist morality is replaced by a value-centric outcome-based morality that harmony can be restored. Unlike the West, which has long abandoned harmony as a value and believes that the problems of disharmony can be resolved by technology, we Hindus continue to be deeply invested in the value of harmony. We are less interested in abstract ideals that end up causing disharmony and more in shared values that result in harmonic, dharmic, societal outcomes.

Hindu women can and must hold their men up to the ideal of Sri Rama just as men hold their women up to the ideal of Savitri. It is not tenable that women are held up to the archetype of Savitri while men are free to model themselves on Ravana. The Hindu solution to the man-woman dichotomy lies not in both sexes clamoring for more and equal access to Western ideals but in aligning with the samskaaras under the grace of the archetype of Ardhanareeshwara.

———-

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