Abstract: Militant feminism suffers from several problems: 1) Blurred definition of feminine, lost rather than clarified by sex, gender; I show that it is better found in a temperament trait. 2) Collapse of collectivism supported until then by women and not taken up by men. 3) Debacle of heterosexuality which is a complementary pair and not a male friendship. 4) Aggression for which feminism does not have the means in a world still strongly managed by raw instincts. Activism presents women as rival men instead of equal citizens. Let’s keep the complementarity between women and men without making sex a predistribution of roles.
Sommaire
A world of identity always moves away from the truth
Feminism today has clearly founded an obsession with identity, that is to say that certain activists exist less through the great variety of their talents than through the fact of being women, and this status is considered demeaning in a society which would not yet fully recognize gender parity. This is also the subject of a first paradox in feminism. Activists tend to attenuate the contrasts of genetic sexes and criticize those of cultural genders, but they continue to base their identity on the fact of being women. So, different or not?
Clearly feminists would like to erase certain differences linked to sex and preserve others. But how can we succeed when these differences are not mutually exclusive? For example, we should forget the statistical differences in physical performance but remember the different physiologies for medical treatments. We should think that psyches are similar but forget that it is easy for an algorithm to tell the sex of a person on their brain MRI.
Using statistics correctly
The teleological ideal, our will which wants to hold the world in its hand, uses categories. It comes up against the ontological constitution, the mechanisms of the world, devoid of will and classifications, but which show statistical regularities. The mind categorizes or decategorizes but our genes don’t care. It would therefore be stupid to say that women are more or less gifted at certain tasks. This generality makes no sense. But it is accurate to say that every woman is more likely to be above or below average, depending on the task.
How can we escape the generality? Through individual assessments. This does not obliterate the statistical regularity, whether female competence is above or below average depending on the tasks. So if evaluations are a sincere basis for the allocation of positions and salaries, we should have more and better paid women in certain jobs, rare and less paid in others. Feminists are right to denounce overall wage inequality, while inequalities in certain jobs are justified.
Positive discrimination excludes more than it includes
Being a woman is not in itself a reason to demand equal wage. Proceeding in this way amounts to positive discrimination, that is to say, weakens the egalitarian claim. The fair way is to claim the same salary for the same skills assessment. Perhaps AIs will enable analyzes freed from cultural clichés? At the cost of dehumanizing companies?
Positive discrimination is childish. The one who benefits from it is seen as the worst apprentice, the one who puts her pretensions before her achievements. By definition, discrimination excludes people from the social game. It is obvious when it is negative, but the positive does not collectivize more.
Changing a temperament, a challenge
The idealist cannot think without categories. She needs sexes, genders, cultures. She broadly outlines her policy based on an immovable principle: the social ideal. When it comes to feminism, it’s equality between women and men. But how can we realize these ideals and principles when they have no ontological existence? Nature doesn’t care. Yet it is at the heart of each of our behaviors, often well hidden in the unconscious. Our conscience is blind when it thinks it is in control of its destiny. At best it provides feedback. Change a masculine or feminine temperament? This makes quitting smoking or correcting excess weight seem easy in comparison.
Yet this is what the feminist discourse abruptly demands: Change your masculine or feminine temperament! Feminine too? Yes, when she is too docile, apathetic, sheeplike in the face of male domination. Feminism is paradoxically also at war with the feminine, since it contributes to difference, is an obstacle to equality.
An original approach to the feminine
What if we redefine feminine and masculine? Isn’t the paradox due to the fact that no one agrees on the scope of these concepts? Genetics, psychological traits, cultural gender… what ultimately is being feminine and being masculine? How can we define them in a truly universal way?
I proposed an original approach, based on a principle omnipresent in physical, psychological and social reality: the individuation/belonging principle, or TD principle (soliTary vs. soliDary). Applied to our psyche, soliTary becomes the masculine tendency, the desire for individuation; and soliDary becomes the feminine trend, the desire to share. Definitive advantage of this approach: it makes us all have a masculine and feminine side, which puts an end to the absolute nature of both sex and gender. Gone are the categories of idealists, make way for ontological vagueness, which mocks borders.
Without denigrating nature
However, the ontology of our physiology has its imperatives. This does not prevent certain individuals from ending up right in the middle of a category, perfect examples of classic women and men. The egalitarian ideal must not be the negation of these people, who are obviously strongly gendered and have every right to be so.
You easily understand why I aligned the masculine with individualism and the feminine with collectivism. Nature having selected the woman to generate and mother the offspring, it was necessary to add to her a preferentially soliDary temperament, while the man, a fleeting sperm donor, would benefit from the advantages of being soliTary. Evolution is not a will but a spontaneous organization.
Feminine and masculine inseparable
However, the characteristic of a temperament trait is to have two poles, one cannot exist without the other. This is exactly the case for the female/male setting. Each of us has these two poles, never expressed in the same balance. For genetic reasons, women are preferentially soliDary and men soliTary, but many individuals have a reverse TD setting. There are +feminine men and +masculine women, or with my new less stigmatizing terminology: +collectivist men (D) and +individualist women (T).
Note that this TD setting dominates couple formation, regardless of genetic sex! Both heterosexual and homosexual couples readily associate marked feminine and marked masculine. The trait of strong temperament fascinates those who possess it to a lesser degree. It is not a question of rivalry but of complementarity. On the contrary, rivalry affects those who have the same TD setting, couples who are often less stable.
Other examples to follow
This example and others that will follow show the importance of the TD principle, from which I derived my feminine and masculine. I hope I have convinced you to begin the sequel: an innovative perspective on our contemporary social unrest. Militant feminism is no stranger to these symptoms, but has innocently triggered them. It believed it identified the injustice done to women in cultural gender inequality. It lacks depth on the intimacy of our mind. Between genetics and gender there is an individual psyche. And this mental ocean uses the concepts of sex and gender in its own way.
The global shift towards individualism
The just feminist cause is to allow women to exercise their individual rights like men. Unfortunately one principle has not been taken into account: individualism is intimately linked to collectivism, like the poles of all temperaments. Decisions that favor one disadvantage the other. The massive transfer of the TD setting towards soliTary, among women, had as a side effect a collapse of social collectivism, of which they were the main representatives.
To avoid this disaster, men would have had to undertake such a significant transfer from their TD setting to soliDarity. Some have done so but remain few in number. Are we already aware of the problem? Then, managing to combat a sexual temperament is even more difficult than correcting bulimia or compulsive smoking.
Less discomfort in leaving collectivism
Why have women not experienced this kind of difficulty in fighting against their soliDary tendency, if it is also strongly genetic? Two answers:
1) Militant feminism only takes root among some women, triggers discomfort in others. We can assume that the first are the most masculine. All remain well under the influence of their temperament.
2) Contemporary society constantly promotes the individual and values her as much as she wants. Western no longer exists without a preferential T. SoliDarity has become the business of institutions and no longer of individuals. It is very easy to satisfy one’s soliDary tendency by saying “I participate through my personal work in the collective effort”, which exempts us from judging whether the ratio is really favorable to the collective rather than to oneself. The institutions screen is practical.
However, these institutions are fragile and worse, strongly criticized. If they collapse we will discover the true residual soliDarity between us, and it will certainly be anemic, will shrink to the family circle. We will only cooperate for immediate benefits, and undoubtedly our disabled people will be even less protected than among our cave-dwelling ancestors. Anticipation films are all about it and this is also my diagnosis after 40 years spent listening to the desires and complaints of my contemporaries.
The end of the heterosexual couple
Another side effect of feminism: the collapse of heterosexual couples. There are fewer and fewer of them to last, but now also to be formed. They take the form of associations of circumstances, sexual, fiscal, artistic, etc. These are friendships with the possibility of consensual sexual exchanges, of regrouping the means to live properly. Love is no longer there, love as a drive that devours the ego and leaves it throbbing waiting for the attention of the other.
Because love is an inherently soliDary feeling. I am not talking about false love, the one which appropriates the other, the one which in “I love you” actually means “You belong to me”. I am talking about authentic love, the one that allows almost everything to the partner when it is true happiness that she derives from it, because I identify with her in soliDarity, her pleasure is mine.
Single relationships
Love finds its satisfaction in the “Third”, this whole made up of the united parts of the companions and which does not belong more to one than to the other, even when one of the two puts more of her own into it. This is almost always the case, in fact, since we noted above the marked contrast in TD tuning generally observed in couples.
But the Third is in decline everywhere. Two puny supportive parts make a hungry Third, regardless of the sex of the companions. Couples have become soliTary associations. Only masculine in the relationship! The woman who has become masculine seeks the feminine in her partner but rarely finds it. She doesn’t stay. The always masculine man no longer finds any feminine in his partners, apart from the anatomy. He doesn’t commit. The contemporary heterosexual has the terrifying impression of having fallen into homosexuality in his one-night encounters with the opposite sex…
The passion to be other
To conclude this article, I affirm that women and men must present themselves to each other not as equals but on the contrary as sexual beings, therefore unequal, without these inequalities being limited solely by the genetic.
Genetic sex drives are unavoidable, and denigrating their existence inevitably creates neuroses. Some treat their body like a toy, others do it with their mind. Once the reality of our soliTary and soliDary tendencies is accepted, it becomes possible to establish our full and complete identity on top of it. Unique efflorescence among a great diversity. And therefore, great inequality.
Our inequality is what attracts the feeling of soliDarity in others. There is no soliDarity between two equals; this is misplaced egotism. In the end it is indeed inequality, at least claiming it, which establishes and unites couples, by exacerbating soliDarity among companions. Deep love is that of difference. The passion to be other.
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To show the universality of the T masculine / D feminine principle, I will gradually comment on situations. Do not hesitate to comment on them yourself or to suggest other situations which confirm, or refute, the principle.
Let’s start with the Caledonian news of May 2024. The Kanak insurrection caused immense damage in Nouméa. On the barricades, the T-dominant Melanesian women are agitated and laughing loudly, pointing out the columns of smoke and the destroyed buildings. Looting resupplied them. Further on, the D-dominant Melanesian women remain in the shadows or at home, lamenting for the unfortunate people who this disaster will plunge even more into precariousness.
By preparing and setting up barricades, T-dominant individuals have a significant physical expenditure. They produce surging waves of hormones, which further accentuates their strength and aggressiveness. Those with D dominance, holed up at home, on the contrary accentuate their passivity through bodily inaction. Metabolism thus exacerbates the tendencies. It exponentially stimulates the agitation of the T while it is saved to promote the meditation of the D.
Doesn’t this observation apply to all activists, including feminists? Those who step up to the plate already have the most exacerbated egos, but further accentuate the masculine T aspect of their character through physical hyperactivity. Do we realize how much we are manipulated by our own workings? Certainly the human species benefits from these contrasts, while individuals lose their balance.