Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

What a piece of work is Man. And that goes double with mustard for woman. And when both are involved, hold up.

Going on the assumption that we were created, by an Author or something else with some intelligence up to and including Fate (yes, I know it’s a big assumption for some of you, but grant it to me for the sake of argument, okay?) have you considered perhaps it was so we’re used to dealing with aliens before getting to space?

Okay, so, no: we’re not entirely alien to each other. While I don’t think it’s possible to absolutely know what it’s like to be in the other’s body (the young man in the back can stop sniggering or stay after class to clean the erasers) in the same way that it’s impossible to absolutely tell what it’s like to be someone else (but a little harder when it’s the opposite sex, with different hormones and pre-verbal socializing), it is possible to understand…. how the other half lives. Enough at least to write them and to understand social trends and what the other sex does in certain circumstances.

A lot of what I’m going to say here is going to upset some of you, but bear with me, okay? (Those offended because I’m talking of only two sexes, can take a powder already. A lot of this is historical/evolutionary, and most of history humans didn’t have the excess money and time to be as absurdly neurotic as we’re now. Deal.) I’m not talking about the way I’d like things to be. I’m talking about the way things are. In an ideal world, males and females would function enough alike that having one prevail or having been the ones in a certain field of endeavor from the beginning. This is not an ideal world, and both sexes were shaped both by the biology of Great (or at least moderately good) Apes and by evolutionary pressures that allowed us to select for things which made us the dominant and allegedly sentient (we have our moments) life form on this planet.

Men were shaped not just by hormones necessary for reproduction, but by the hunting band. A guy who tried to play f*ck f*ck games while a mammoth was bearing down on the band might get away with it. He might even push enough buddies in front of the mammoth to eventually become leader. But sooner or later the other guys are going to catch on and put an end to the sorry bastage, after they lose half or more of the band. Now, whether he reproduced is something else.

So male confrontation tends to be obvious and physical, conflicts can be resolved that way, and guys can form friendships after the hierarchy is sorted out. Also there tends to be a hierarchy and a code, either overt or not. There needs to be because you can’t have continuous infighting, if you’re going to get something done.

This was brought from mammoth hunting into civilized pursuits, and physical confrontation averted as much as possible by what I’ll call “being a gentleman” which is something males (and some females) used to be taught, at least by the class that expected their kids to achieve something and get somewhere. A lot of it is encoded in western civ via Judaeo-Christianity. Don’t stab your brother in the back. Don’t covet what’s not yours. Don’t gossip. Etc.

Oh, and the stiff upper lip is there somewhere. In subsistence hunting, war or for that matter business, a guy who dissolves in tears and wants to talk about his feelings probably got left for the mammoth to trample long before he had descendants. I am sick and tired of all the feminists (and movie, story plots) that are all about a man “showing his feelings” and “learning to cry.”

Men do cry and show their feelings, but for men worth a good d*mn, when they get to that point, you’d best be taking cover, or otherwise dealing with something major. (And males feelings are often expressed as anger, because it would help if the last survivor of the band could kill the mammoth before it kills him. Yes, I’m exaggerating but I can see it.)

Women, on the other hand, while having competition the same as anyone else, mostly — historically — were competing by the males. And who the heck can understand males, with their codes and pacts and weird aggression? The most we can hope for — if we’re older, not as pretty, etc — is to trick males into treating us and our kids really well.

So our competition and our methods tend to be those of the seraglio. Words are our weapons (though trust me, we’re also quite capable with sneaky and evil physical aggression come to it, which is why poison is the weapon of female mass murderers. (And children are the most common victims, but that’s something else.)

I don’t actually need to tell you how women function. Go read any of the polygamous families in the Bible and history, and by the end you’ll have a good idea of how women fight. When women have it in for you, no reputation or relationship is safe.

But we’re good also at alliances and social, even those of us who aren’t tend to be better than males who aren’t. Because the women, the gathering group, the village, needed to mind each other’s kids at least a bit for the kids to survive. Or they had to refrain from pushing each other’s kids down the well.

A female truly disastrous at social stuff didn’t leave descendants.

However, we know that the structure of the queen bee and the bullied exists also in our Great Ape relatives. Often females are bullied enough they die. And their kids die shortly after.

Female competition isn’t pretty, and the fact that males think we’re sweet, forgiving and caring (more than them) is one of those instances of blindness between sexes.

Then we get to sexual behavior. Males are — sorry guys — sperm delivery systems with legs. Yes, they’re also more than that. Civilization, big brains

What the heck brought this post about? Well, now we get to it. Yesterday in the comments someone said something or other about the danger of homosexuality getting “above around 8%” and how that made society effeminate.

First of all, homosexuality has always been with humanity and probably will always be, absent some radical “cure.”

Scientists have speculated it exists in all great apes because of the low differentiation of form between male and female, but also because — some scientists speculate — at least for males, they tended to be useful to the tribe. In early primate terms, these were the males you could send to negotiate with the other tribe, who might not get killed outright, because they wouldn’t immediately jump to aggression. In the same way, because not reproducing, they would be the males who could accumulate wealth or whatever, but leave it to their families. (there are several instances of this, historically.) And therefore the gene didn’t go extinct because the band/family/group that had this show up periodically had an advantage.

I don’t know. I know it exists, and also that it’s more or less constant through history. And it’s not anywhere near 8%. More like 2%. So, not enough to endanger population. Yeah, I know, I have read those surveys too. I understand for younger females the proportion is showing up something like 50%. Forget it okay? That’s not homosexuality, that social signaling, and females are always more susceptible to fashion. (In fact, historically, female homosexuals tend to be rarer, but it’s harder to know, since most women are more sly/cunning than most males.)

I very much doubt there has been an increase in homosexuality. The attitude that if you ever experimented/ever had a single vaguely gay experience you’re homosexual forever is responsible for the appearance that it has increased. (Most humans, at least when developing, are susceptible to “one-off” experiences. And there’s at least for males homosexuality of deprivation. See jails and all-boy schools.) The other part of it is, as I said, signaling and maneuvering for advantage in a society that practically gives out prizes for strange sexualities, because it confers immediate victimhood which is the social currency of our time. (This is also why the left is convinced the white race is going extinct. Why, in surveys people identify as minorities at a much greater rate. Coughs in Elizabeth Warren. Those who believe these surveys go under a highly technical term: idiots.)

On the other hand there’s truth in the fact that the public spaces and public life have become dangerously feminized.

Why dangerously?

Because they aren’t designed for females. And no, they can’t be designed for females. (I did say I was going to offend everyone, right?)

The politics and behaviors that make you successful in the seraglio also do make you successful today in politics, business and science, that’s true. Partly because your male rivals are curiously defenseless against them. And so are the females who care about the endeavor and the success of the politics, business and science.

You see, the politics of the seraglio are designed for PERSONAL survival. As long as you, and by extent your kids, survive, everything is peachy. They don’t extend to building the thing, or establishing a better society, or finding out the truth of anything. That’s secondary, and frankly a tool to use against your rivals, to achieve your personal (and kids, though most women today repress that) survival.

Also the politics of the seraglio and women in general (because physically weaker) are far more ruthless than any man. Everything will be sacrificed for the sake personal survival. And personal survival means getting to the top, so you’re the “queen bee.”

Also they have nothing to do with conventional intelligence, btw, only the type of social intelligence that allows a woman to climb to queenbeedom. Which explains the success of quite nonintellectual women like Kamala Harris. And btw she provides us with the best example of how these behaviors allow women to defeat males in competition. In the debates with Biden, who had been a sort of mentor and helper to her, she went for the jugular in public, accusing him of supporting segregation. It was the only time I ever felt sorry for the old pedophile. He looked utterly stunned and wounded, because Kamala had just violated an almost instinctive code of males “don’t betray the mentor.” But women don’t have that code, and so women get the advantage over men. This scene is repeated in corporate life everyday.

The problem again, is that ability in women has nothing at all to do with the ability to do the job or even to start doing the job. And also that women instinctively pay very little attention. It’s all group dynamics.

This is why, in general, when a place/institution gets taken over by the left which, male or female, by socialization tends to female behaviors, it collapses. Fast or slow, it collapses. The cooks are all stabbing each other and clambering over each other, and no one is minding the soup.

Now, does this mean that women can’t be in business, science and politics without destroying everything?

Oh, h*ll no. Women can contribute and be brilliant, provided their socialization has included a heavy dose of “be a gentleman when in business.” Explicit training. (Because even if it’s almost instinctive for males to a certain point, it certainly isn’t for us.) Explicit rules on fair play.

The problem of course is that feminism has not only stopped that training, but penalizes any teachers or institutions telling women they have to behave in public life. This is you know, calling them “bossy” and is mean, evil bad. Also that the stereotype that has been pushed as a “strong female” is in fact “queen be on wheels” and brings out the worst possible attitudes in females. (And the males that have to survive in the midst of these females.)

Also, forgive me, but the American culture is messed in the head when it comes to daughters. Yes, I get it, okay. In a pioneer society women are incredibly valuable and must be protected at all costs. And that’s our roots. But every single American man sees his daughter as his “little princess” who can do no wrong. (Okay, other western cultures too, but America is most like that.) (It will tell you something about early-Sarah that my dad never called me a princess. His endearing term for me was “Indian.” (feather, not dot. Different word in Portuguese) mostly I think because like most boys I was noise with dirt on it and perpetually up to some kind of adventure involving getting in trouble. And calling your daughter your “little savage” would have raised eyebrows, no matter how nicely said.)

Girls raised to feel they can do no wrong are more likely to indulge their deepest instincts, which don’t play well in groups that are supposed to do anything else at all.

If we really want women to succeed in business, we are doing very wrongly by them by not teaching them to function in public life as though they were males, who mostly care about the “thing to be accomplished.” And not being the queen bee.

At the same time, and bizarrely (or not, since we’ve been infected with the Marxist mind-virus which destroys civilizations) we’re also indulging the worst, pre-civilization instincts of male.

The male instinct is to “f*ck anything.” Females care about surviving and having the kids survive, which tends to limit our instinctive sexual predation. We usually sleep with males we think can protect the children. (Which, yes, is why billionaires have an easier time getting laid, no matter how gross they look.)

Males on the other hand care about passing their genes on (at the base. Instinctively.) This means sleeping with as many partners as possible, so everyone in the future is descended from you. (Think Genghis Khan.) This used to baffle females, and still baffles me somewhat. I can appreciate male beauty and even imagine kissing a beautiful guy (well, my husband is very good looking) but unless I have some kind of relationship, I don’t REALLY want to kiss a stranger.

But male sexuality has been overlaid on society as the default. The idea that you should sleep with everyone to be “healthy” is a bizarre bit of Freudian nonsense and was pushed on me (unsuccessfully, because I’m Odd) 55 years ago, when I started talking to people about relationships. It’s pushed even harder now. And it breaks society, females, and families.

Look, just like men created civilization by working in groups to “do the thing” females civilized and domesticated men to bond to one woman and look after her and her kids.

The opposite isn’t good for anyone or any family. Particularly when you’re also penalizing guys for being guys.

A lot of the #metoo nonsense was “He looked at me funny.” Look, the poor dears can’t help it. Even the best of them, who would never do anything to a non-consenting female are still males, with all the instincts thereof. They are visual, and they appreciate…. most female forms. (What Heinlein said about there being no homely women, some simply more pretty than the others, applies to most males.) They are going to look. Stop busting their chops about that while doing the crazy stuff that leads to the rest of #metoo: using your female bod to get ahead.

Yes, most males will take advantage of that, given a chance. Yes, it’s toxic. Yes, some women had no choice, if they wanted to succeed.

But what you have to ask yourself is how did we get to this point, where most women are willing to trade on sex and aren’t even vaguely ashamed of it.

Well, since we taught women that having sex indiscriminately is what will make them as successful as men. Yes, men are going to take advantage of that, at least the bad ones. (The good ones will just get run over and marginalized.) And bad women are going to use sex as a weapon, because …. they always have.

It’s up to society to say that’s not all right, but if it’s not all right for men to take advantage of it, it’s also not okay for women to go along with it, or in most cases offer it (let’s be honest.)

For some reason, the left really wants to force both sexes to act like the worst examples of the other sex. To a great extent, they’re succeeding.

This has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality. Some of the worst mean girls I’ve dealt with in my career were heterosexual males, acting like females in the seraglio. And some of the worst predatory males are — looks at Kamala Harris — sexually speaking toxically masculine.

This is what is unmaking society, and what we have to stop. And frankly it’s a lot harder than pushing gay people back in the closet.

Society-wide, they’re an almost irrelevant minority. How they behave (and remember most of them aren’t the activists) can be annoying, but it is not what’s unmaking civilization.

What’s unmaking civilization is forcing men into women roles, women into men roles, and demanding that everyone rely on the government to keep the inevitable train wrecks from happening.

That is a really huge problem and one which all of us have to fix.

And perhaps I’m being too hard on the Marxists — yes, it is possible — because part of this might be humanity meeting industrialization (which minimizes the need for physical force) and contraception, both of which opened doors previously closed to women.

But humans are the self-taming species. Which means self-civilizing. And is time to do it again:

Business and science and public life are enterprises that come about to achieve something other than personal safety and power. Therefore women venturing into it should go carefully, and behave like gentlemen. And so should men (Most of them at this point are behaving like mean girls.) Personal loyalty and the unspoken code matter.

And sex is powerful medicine. It not only creates the next generation, but it builds strong bonds that, when broken, rip families and societies apart. I don’t care who you sleep with, or what number. I do care that you be loyal to them, establish rules of the relationship, and keep your contracts and your promises. No, it’s not natural to behave like dogs in heat, whether you’re male or female. You’re a human being. Keep your brain on when the gonads come calling. Freud is dead, and society doesn’t feel so good itself. A little repression and sublimation in the right place is what communal hunts and spaceship launchings are made of.

And yeah, it’s got so bad, it’s going to be a hard slog getting out of this hole. Here, stop digging, and let’s see if we can make a ladder out of these shovels.

 

Reprinted from Two By Two for July 15, 2022