Jack Donovan, author of Androphilia and his just-published The Way of Men, unambiguous atheist and indeed a former Satanist*, is an advocate for what he calls paleo-masculinity, a frankly patriarchal manhood proudly out of step with the contemporary society of Bonobos created by feminism and globalism. Although partnered for many years with another man, he also rejects the idea of same-sex marriage. He co-authored Blood Brotherhood, based on Nathan Miller's historical and cross-cultural research on organically male forms of ritual bonding. What is so unappealing about gay marriage for him? It makes the sexes interchangeable, denying the fundamental and foundational differences between men and women.
Two Bishops of Rome, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, refuse to accept the massive tide of feminist calls for "gender equality" and thus reject definitively either same-sex marriage or the ordination of females to the Catholic priesthood. Underlying a lot of the culturally palliating pablum the Church puts out in regard to women --because women are numerically dominant in Western Christian churches--there remains a rock-bottom theological assumption that the sexes are not interchangeable. And, that the female sex does not belong inside the central circles of Catholic sacraments and governance. The Pope was not titled Patriarch of the West for nothing.
Donovan has a mordant archetypalist's eye for things-as-they-are, nature red in tooth and claw, and an allergy to comforting fictions, pleasant denials and unsustainable illusions and lies about what humans are made of. His guiding spirit might be Darwin, but not Deuteronomy. The Roman Catholic tradition, although saturated with the Bible, also maintains an almost equally powerful interest in the contributions of human reason, created by the rational Creator of a basically intelligible universe**. But even in that transcendent light, the dimorphism of the human species into male and female appears definitive.
Although Benedict would agree with Jack that "a world that's out of step with human nature is not rational", their two different approaches to that nature also provide the material for opposite valuations of homosexuality, although founded on similar intuitions. Perhaps the differences lie in the contrasts between natural law and the law of nature, one a project of ethical reason, the other an amoral description of human, animal and planetary behaviors .
Catholicism, with a teleological version of natural law, cannot understand how sexual activity that cannot lead to procreation is in line with the natural (and sacred) ends of the activity. For Rome, non-procreative intercourse is rather like chewing food for the taste and never swallowing it for nourishment. For Donovan, it simply occurs in nature and there is no reason to make it a matter of ethics; for him it's all about how it practically unfolds, either supporting or dismantling the patriarchy. Patriarchy, in my own droll phrase, is Mother Nature's way, a condition for human flourishing. Or in Donovan's trenchant words, "A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive."
Opposed on same-sex eros, but both sure that men and women are opposite sexes. A homosexual atheist and the Popes. Unlikely, uh, bedfellows.
*Not in the supernatural Rosemary's Baby style, but in the Satan-as-symbol, Objectivism-on-steroids style of Anton LaVey.
**Benedict provoked Muslims to violence simply by pointing out that propagation by violence is inherent in Islam! His larger point was a civilization founded on reason vs those founded wholly on will. The Greco-Christian God is logos. Allah is sheer Will.
__
6 comments:
Let us hope that the pope was not titled Patriarch of the West for traditionalist nothingness, and human sword-flourishing (Gen 3:24) to keep dualism-uniting genealogy out of the Garden!
And what is the real-world plan for self-transcendence offer'd by those who would affirm "things-as-they-are" in contempt for "comforting fictions, pleasant denials and unsustainable illusions and lies"? Because, as I suppose, longing for transcendence, enoblement, strengthening is innate.
Donovan himself says "A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive" (perhaps with a nod to the etymology of 'survive' in super-live, transcendence of ordinary life. For the wise all agree that life as such is no good. (Donovan refers, we must assume, to real effeminacy or cowardice, and not merely to effeminate mannerisms.)
What would be stronger or more courageous or manly (andreia) for men to directly transcend the present arrangements of illusions etc, rather than to withdraw in an effeminate fit of pique and wait for Western institutions to collapse so that un-effeminate thugs, criminals etc can dominate.
The West already is ruled by criminals and thugs, really. The only task they are unable to do is to SAY what they are doing.
(They can underfund infrastructure and serious schooling for youngsters, but they can't say they are doing this. They can renege on maintaining the empire gain'd in the Pacific by blood during WW2, but they can't say that they are doing this.)
Continuing to urge young men with longings to withdraw from civilization and to while away their best years in slacking and porno and promiscuity and reading up on the contemptibility of naive theories of human nature will hasten the collapse, but this does not gather energies for a new kingdom, a new Henri IV, say. Domination by low-lifes will be attempted first, in case possibly modern technocratic systems can be sustain'd by handing them over to a politics of retaliation between tribes, e.g. those of the ancient angles, saxons and celts.
Today Amanda Marcotte makes a similar condemnation of residual Christianity in our culture because volition and responsibility and self-discipline etc are still treated as relevant in social problems and public health problems. »you have to deal with people how they are, not how they "should" be.«
Admittedly, the obesity epidemic does not seem to be caused by a failure in self-discipline in any unpickwickian sense. I doubt that exercise and dieting made American congressmen of 1962 so much thinner than American congressmen are today.
Still, one can see that Ms Marcotte's journalistic activism would be shut down completely if she apply'd her own principle to the stuff she activizes against. I mean, violence and group hostility ('racism') and misogyny and virulent scorn for effeminacy etc have been going on for centuries.
Let me apply her wording to the problem of bullying, or perhaps I should say the 'reality' of bullying:
»You can say "should" until you're blue in the face, and people are still going to pick on misfits. If you actually want to fix the problems of bullying, you have to deal with people how they are, not how they "should" be. I guess people "should" exert often-extraordinary levels of self-discipline, but they don't, because they're human. Meet them where they are, not where they "should" be.«
Apparently we can't control our impulses except to overcome our impulses in collective action that socially engineers an environment wherein our impulses won't have bad results:
»We can't fix people's impulse control, but we can fix their environments through collective action.«
There's paternalism or maternalism in this attitude, but I noticed the other day that there's tons of paternalism in Michael Harrington's "The Other Ameria," which prompted LBJ's war on poverty. Government programmes were to rectify family dysfunction. Fortunately since that time government programmes have learn'd to be value-neutrally affirming or capitalistically laisser-faire vis-a-vis all procreational and child-raising patterns, while still kind of acting as if government programmes can solve the results, so that by committing to social spending white liberals don't have to feel guilty about enjoying things that the poor don't have (sc the future of equality and prosperity for all will make good on the unequal good things one enjoys now; just as calling for an abolition of white privilege excuses one's enjoyment of white privilege now. And if inequality persists it will be the fault of low-class white resenters, Christian fundamentalist creationists etc. It will also be fundamentalist white Christians' fault if Islamic Shariah is imposed as the entirely comprehensible reaction by Islamists for centuries of Christian Islamophobia and rejection).
No fair using revelation to put pressure on "social problems":
»When you're engaging in problem-solving, it's best to start by looking at things you can control, and leave the discourse of sin and redemption to the wayside.« Amanda Marcotte
In a way there's even more responsibilism and blaming the victim in Buddhism than in Xnty, which allows for the unfreedom of the will:
But the Buddha would not be the Liberator if he said that an unjust system of privileges and exploitations prevents everyone except the Brahmin caste from attaining nirvana. Everyone can (will) nirvana by (willing) the eightfold path and doing nekhamma rather than upadana.
In terms of "same-sex marriage," I hardly know where to begin with the pickwickian exegesis! ... Maybe it's a kind of non-consummation or even divorce. Sames as Sun Self (Shamash) divided off from the id-ea or 5 (letter epsilon) and ex (aleph).
'partnership' as involving parting?
maybe also samesex as 2 Samekhs, amalekite front and back boutique hoops, Agag, wheel wheel.
'gay' as goy (js1471)? or-and js1341 ff the leonine pride that goeth before a fall?
Post a Comment