The woman-problem.

The morality of the European was evolved at a time that women were subjugated- kept silent. Our morality was made by men and for men, with their particular impulses in mind, as the virtue of chastity. This is why women cannot understand morality- fundamentally they are all immoral. It is not because they are less intelligent, but because they never had any part in the creation of our morality, which is an image of masculine nature and cannot be made to coincide with their own.

Of course women can appear moral in our sense of the word, they can follow “the letter of the law” and yet they have no true understanding of it. And this is why we cannot understand them. Even for those men who have rejected morality, they still think in terms of it: it is much harder to reject the categories of moral understanding, which survive vestigially in almost all of our art, philosophy, even our language. Even the prototype of the moral world order, ethos-- constituted by such ideas as virtue, honor, etc. was evolved by the acts of men- in writing, war, politics, and articulated in a direct relationship to his nature alone. The problem still subsists here.

Weininger, the sexologist, correctly understood that the basis of the “woman-problem” lied in morality, that morality was the source of our misunderstanding of women. Yet he believed this was because of a difference in our psychology- women lacked an ego in our sense of the word, which was the principle of identity, which was the principle of logic- and morality, thought Weininger, was the most complete articulation of logic itself. Thus woman could not grasp morality, and we could not grasp her. The problem is not in our psychology, but in what I described- it is a historical problem, a genealogical problem.

As a consequence of this incongruity every attempt to force women to submit to morality has caused them pain: one cannot make women moral (which means, make them imitate morality) without causing them pain, confusion, etc. It is like trying to force one animal to behave like another. Sometimes I think the only way for a man to truly overcome morality is “love”-- to learn to understand in some different order of categories the joy, suffering, shame, and impulses of a woman and through this new order to at last grasp the world and, with it, himself, in a different light. What would we find here- in feminine nature? Are they closer to nature, or are they closer simply to human nature than we, in our moral cultivation, have become?

I am a man and not a European and hence am not sure if I am considered qualified to participate in the discussion on the topic, but I would be happy if you can accomodate a few questions of mine.

What exactly is this European morality that European women cannot internalise?

Is the divide just in the gender or is it wider like in class too?

I meant specifically Christian morality, or Abrahamic morality. The divide is in gender.

I call this a man-problem not a woman-problem. That problem is sexism and the way that oppression works through imposing a so-called, male-created “morality” ON women but not following it yourself. It is imbued with hypocrisy and double-standardism on the part of men, the historical oppressors, and it works through capricious enforcement. Morality is thus evoked when it’s convenient or needed, and ignored when inconvenient or not needed. The whole thing stinks.

The male-created morality was followed by him just as much as it was imposed by him on women. It was intended to empower man by re-organizing his instincts, but it had the opposite effect on women. In this time man no longer really believes in anything, so it is a matter of convenience for him. But man still thinks in moral terms, and the problem of his misunderstanding of women is still morality.

Can you give some examples of what is considered Abrahamic morality?

Do you think women agree with it intellectually, but cannot internalise it?

… Double post.

I explained that this morality was developed while women were subjugated and kept silent- they had no say in it. It was developed by men for men. Women cannot understand it because it has to do with the organism of man’s compulsions and drives, not with their own. She can neither understand, “agree” with it, or internalize it, all she can do is imitate it superficially, imitate what the men who follow it do.

Vanitas,
I think that everything you have said about woman can be applied to men. What man is moral, as you define being moral? Doesn’t morality imply that which we are not with that which we are? It is immoral to murder another man because it is commonplace for man to kill his fellow men. It is immoral to cheat because it is the norm that men cheat. So, if you haven’t found a moral woman, don’t fret, for you will not find a moral man, as you define being moral.

Morality needs to be forgiven. People need to make peace with morality, out of their own need for morality. The critique against morality is in itself a moral thing to do. And if you are a man, who do you address this to? And if you’re a woman, the same question? The implication is that man as man can only legislate to fellow men, just as women, as women, legislate to women. In each case, the opposite sex remains subjugated because the moralizer cannot inhabit a different sex perfectly without ceasing to be themselves.

Moral men respect the moral laws because those laws organize his unique impulses and drives, they heighten his feeling of power.

Women never created a morality. If they can live without it so can we.

i never noticed that women have any harder time understanding morality than men do. tho men have been known to say they do, which promotes a weird and subtle form of degradation that i think Jonquil was partially reacting to earlier: women can only ape the moral actions of men. such an assertion animal-izes them. the moral woman is in fact only a trained seal. this is what it sounds like you are saying - at least to me.

I understand where you’re coming from with this, but I don’t think that’s quite what she means. She just means Christian morality has a lot to say about how men should act because it’s based on the nature of men, but it doesn’t have much to offer for women…that’s how I understood it.

GIVE SOME CONCRETE EXAMPLES PLEASE!! (to vanitas)

No. I am saying exactly what I said. The moralities that have been created were made by men for men. The only reason women cannot understand them is because they were not designed with their unique impulses, drives, shames, and fears in mind. It isn’t because they are less intelligent.

Concrete examples, I mentioned chastity so I will use it.

Chastity is a virtue because man attains to a feeling of power by conquering women- this however also makes him subservient to them, makes him act in accordance to some way that would promote him in the eyes of women. But morality taught him to become chaste, to redirect his conquest in the eyes of God. He attains power by conquering himself through chastity, and this frees him from his subservience to the needs of women. Because he is no longer a slave to his desire for women, he has power over them, and he also has power over himself in denying his impulse. It is a general “empowering” of man, the consequence of this virtue.

Women do not attain to the feeling of power by conquering men though. They attain it by finding a man they truly love and bearing children with him. Their power stems from motherhood, from their role as a mother. When chastity is applied to them they are stripped of power, not empowered. The virtue of chastity is literally incomprehensible to them, the only thing it results in is sexual oppression.

personally, i don’t like the idea that women are “imitating” men.

and i also think men and women tend to have pretty similar moral instincts, even if it is men who determined the orthodox rules of any given specific morality.

See my above example.

We do not have similar moral instincts. And it is not as though they are imitating something “good” nor is it even as though they are imitating something they want to, they do it because society forces them to.

There is no such thing as a “moral instinct” anyway. Every morality is a kind of organization of the instincts intended to mutually empower them and the individual.

i did see it - but i’m not convinced that men and women have radically different moral leanings, which apparently you are

. . . or are you suggesting that women have no moral leanings to begin with, and that moral thought is the sole province of men?

ok fine, but that doesn’t change the implications of what you are saying.

Moral leanings don’t exist.

If morality is only an organization of drives intended to channel, redirect, and intensify an individual’s feeling of power, and if women have fundamentally different drives than men, then it follows that the morality which empowers a man cannot also be a morality which empowers a woman. At best it just does nothing for them, and at worse it results in their confusion, shame, and oppression.

yes they do.

i don’t understand what this means

they don’t. women and men may have some different drives, but they also have many of the same drives, particularly the drive to behave in ways which they can subsequently classify as moral. that’s basically what i’m talking about when i use the term “moral leanings”

it might follow if all those things were true, which they are not.

if they are imitating, they are doing so to their own individual benifit - even if it’s just to get by in an oppressive patriarchal society

women may well be confused, ashamed and oppressed as a result of masculine moralities - but that doesn’t change the fact that they share a majority of fundamental moral instincts with men (i.e. murder and stealing are wrong, parents have a responsibility for their children, monagamy is good) - you are right about social pressure with regards to sexual virtue, but of course there will be a disparity between the sexes in that regard - it doesn’t mean they have fundamentally different moral impulses, it just means that the social pressures to which one is subject will vary depending on whether one is a man or a woman.