Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Men and Women

holy frenzy The perception of the opposite sex is not only determined by the passion of love that inevitably arises, but is also influenced by various social factors.Prominent social status increases the value one brings as a close friendship.To a certain extent, the evaluation of the object of love is the evaluation of the natural qualities and acquired advantages of the opposite sex.And the mutual evaluation of mutual attraction and idealization of the opposite sex is also full of strange things.Firstly, it involves women's social status, women's quality and advantages and disadvantages.Women have always been the objects of intimacy and obscenity by men, but their real value has been maliciously damaged, destroyed and belittled for a long time. 

In pre-class societies, women raised children, maintained order in primitive settlements, kept fires burning in fire pits, gathered fruit, and made hunters obey "house rules." Women were masters and respected mothers.In the class system, men become the possessors of all earthly wealth, while women are reduced to men's eternal social appendages.Women are the butt of banal one-liners and objects of moral reproach.God created women out of Adam's rib, which perpetuates the deep-rooted belief in society that "women are inherently inferior to men and will always depend on men". 

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato expounded a new idea in his fictional future utopia, thinking that in his fictional future utopia, both men and women should do the same work, and even serve the battlefield like men, but this does not mean that men and women values ​​are equal.Plato said, "Women outnumber men to the extent that they are inferior to us in merit."He believes that for women with many deficiencies, the most suitable thing is to become a tool for men to obtain happiness in the world.  Aristotle also had a similar view.He occasionally speaks hypocritically for women in his Political Treatise.Thinking that women are nothing more than weak, imperfect human beings.Aristotle is usually very "moderate".He does not equate women with slaves, but he classifies women as children and minors.Women also have the ability to think, but "to a very shallow degree".Therefore, Aristotle said, "the husband rules over his wife like a king, and over his children like an emperor". 

In ancient Athens, the wife had the status of a minor.The legal duty is to be, in the words of the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, a "faithful dog" to one's lord.Some ancient theorists even "prove" that women "are not human."The wives of wealthy Greek slaveholders were usually housebound.They were not allowed to go out.The noble ladies of Athens were raised and imprisoned in the home of their husbands and lords under strict surveillance.According to Aristophanes, they were even guarded by huge bulldogs.They are used to being obedient to their husbands and remain prisoners of the family cage until they die.An ideal wife for a man is one who is humble, faithful, quiet, hardworking like a bee. 

The discrimination and curse hanging over women still persisted in the Roman Empire.Women have no right to determine their own destiny.The ancient Roman poet Catullus advised husbands to put a bridle on the "unruly beast."Roman law prohibited women from holding any office (whether private or public).In addition to the curses of the moralists during the slavery period, the religious curses of the feudal system were added later.Church people see female attractiveness as the devil's finger.This leads them to endlessly curse the beauty of love and its great vitality.  Christianity uses teachings to allow people to establish women's status in their minds. "Genesis" in the Bible says that after Adam and Eve violated God's teaching and sinned, God said to the woman: "I will increase your pain in conception, and you will suffer more when you give birth to children. You will love Your husband, your husband will rule over you." (Chapter 3, sentence 16) The letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians in the New Testament also fully conforms to this judgment: "Women should keep silent in the assembly, because Let them speak. They are to be submissive.... If they want to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in assembly." (Chapter Fourteen, Thirty-Four-Three Fifteen sentences) The apostle Paul once again emphasized this eternal judgment in his letter to the Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church. Just as the church submits to Christ, so wives must submit to their husbands in everything.” (Chapter 5, 22nd-24th sentences) Fourteen hundred years ago, the Makang Senior Clergy Conference solemnly A question was discussed: Do women have souls?The Christian meeting finally decided by a majority of only one vote that although women are low-level creatures, they still have something like a soul after all.This is really magnanimous! 

Medieval monastic philosophy reinforced traditional men's discrimination against women.In order to discredit women, Christian theologians have collected all the bad evaluations of women by the most authoritative thinkers of antiquity.Thomas Aquinas believes that it is necessary to keep in mind a maxim of Aristotle: "Nature always strives to create men, and it only creates women when it is powerless or accidental." Bruno once said in a sarcasm that the old pedant Bo Rini.Pollini declared women to be "passive substances" and men "active, creative forms."Pollini said: "Material and women are irrational chaos, criminals, robber forests, dirty objects... Women are mischievous, fragile, capricious, delicate, small, immoral Despicable, despised, low, mean, despised, dishonorable, vicious, harmful, disgraceful, indifferent, unseemly... This is rust, nettles, weeds Grass is the plague..."

The renaissance era and the Reformation in Europe brought some relief to women's humiliating status.As in ancient times, women have become the object of aesthetic appreciation and the theme of art.Typical of the Reformation—Luther dealt a severe blow to monk philosophy.He restored the trampled rights of sensual pleasure, declaring that because of the "natural necessity" of life, "every husband should have a wife, and every wife should have a husband."However, the traditional husband's rights are still preserved.Even Rousseau considered women to be individuals of little value, emphasizing that the capabilities of men and women are "gradually balanced."But he still favors traditional male power.Rousseau said, "The first and only important quality of women is meekness." The tragedy of the millennium has evolved into the sin of mankind.Capitalism started its shameful business of buying and selling women, capitalism branded women like a commodity.However, the protection of men's rights stipulates various detailed rules. 

Napoleon Bonaparte's attitude towards women in society is typical.He took many steps to improve women's education.He encouraged and supported Mrs. Kempen's boarding school.Under his influence, Italy opened the first girls' schools. In 1810, Bonaparte appointed a woman, Mrs. de Genlis, as the inspector of Paris.But Napoleon still claimed that the only purpose of raising women was to raise the next generation of heroes.Bonaparte looked down on women with the eyes of a dictator.He "... was disgusted with all talented and learned women".He finally expelled Germane de Stael from France. 

Among the well-known figures who are hostile to women are Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Strindberg, etc., who developed hostile attitudes towards women into theories that, although extreme, are extremely interesting to analyze.  Schopenhauer's following passage expresses his hostility towards women: "Only men whose reason has become confused because of the impulse of sexual desire will think that women with small stature, narrow shoulders and wide hips are beautiful. The whole of women Beauty lies in this libido.... woman by her very nature is doomed, she needs a master.... the best representatives of womanhood have never produced...anything that can be called great and style works."

"Old-fashioned French coquettishness and German-Christian folly have given rise to an absurd worship of women, which has only resulted in the immeasurable arrogance of women, who are like the holy monkeys of Benares, Insolent to the extreme, knowing her own sanctity... Women are only children all their lives... Nature armed the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the boar with tusks, the bull With its sharp horns, the cuttlefish is endowed with the ability to stir up muddy waters, and the woman is endowed with . A defense of abstinence and ascetic isolation.He believes that intimacy is a cunning "deception" played by the soul, and he maintains that it can only be eradicated by entering the Nirvana realm of Buddhism, which is in fact consistent with the abstinence of Christ. 

Schopenhauer's hostile views on women were, though, a product of the general outlook of the time.But such extreme indignation is actually a reflection of his personal experience. The life experience full of broken love made him develop abnormal discrimination against women.Hence his pessimism.  Another fervent misogynist was Friedrich Nietzsche, who, unlike Schopenhauer, did not disdain the physical union of the sexes but encouraged the tyranny of women.He advocated sensual violence, declaring that in order to realize the superhuman ideal, children should be born incessantly.In this mystical drama of sexual miracles, the man is usually the "saint" and the woman the "mother goose."But this is not all that Nietzsche despises women's psychology in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".He went on to write: Women have never understood what "friendship" is, and women are "cats" and at best "cows." "A real man has two desires: to possess toys and to experience danger. And women are toys, so he needs women, but women are the most dangerous dolls, and men must always be on guard... Man's happiness is 'I want'. Woman's happiness is 'he wants'." Nietzsche also wrote: "A woman's greatest skill is to lie." Her desire for liberation came from the influence of "a learned stupid jackass".As soon as a woman gets rid of her "fear of men" and wishes to be free, she loses her "most feminine instinct."Nietzsche believes that men should regard women as "objects of possession, private property that should be locked up."The crystallization of this theory is Nietzsche's famous saying: "Are you looking for a woman? Don't forget to bring your whip."  Nietzsche's views on women are rooted in a pathology.The tragedy of Nietzsche's life is a profound contradiction: on the one hand, he pursues the mystery of physical pleasure like Dionysus, on the other hand, the unsatisfactory personal life, especially the frustration of love, often lingers in his heart, and the more he touches, the more painful it is , coupled with the looming disease.This sick complex is highly contagious.The dark Schopenhauer and the mad Nietzsche are still a little less than the pessimist Otto Weininger.Weininger's bestseller, Gender and Character, is the pinnacle of this work, having published thirteen editions in every major European language in the five years since his sudden and tragic suicide.Weininger wrote: "Woman is a non-existent thing, so she can be made into any kind of thing at will, but a man can only obtain what he himself pursues." Nor can it become "anything," or something of some value, in the course of history, under the influence of theAccording to Weininger, men are spiritual creatures, while women are purely physical creatures. The number of sexual reproductive organs in men is small and limited to strict parts, while women are "sexual desire itself".Men are above all creating the already existing purely spiritual realm, while women are "only concerned with sex."  Weininger said that women "have no nature", "the only nature of women is the lack of this nature".Women may be elusive for this reason.A pure woman is "an empty vessel", an absolute "nothingness", a fiction. "A man is to a woman as a subject to an object. A woman is the property of a man or the property of a child".This childish animal sex doesn't know what human freedom is.Women "lack imagination," lack imagination, and lack an aesthetic sense of all kinds of art.Men always "strive to go deep into the essence of things and don't care about details, but women's thoughts always wander "between things" without studying anything or knowing these things. Generally speaking, women are completely "Having no desire to know objective truth." She sticks to the minutiae Festival, is not solemn in nature. "Women can talk, but they can't discuss"; "Women always lie, even when she is objectively speaking the truth, she is talking nonsense." Not only that, but Weininger believed that women excluded genius.Regarding the various inventions that women have made, Weininger believes that they are nothing more than "appropriating other people's ideas for their own."In depicting the moral face of women, Weininger used the darkest colors on his palette. "Women have no morals," lack empathy, self-respect, shame, ignorance and curiosity.  According to Weininger, there are really only two types of women's natural embodiment.Since "women need sexual intercourse, not love", she views sexual intercourse first as a mother, that is, as a means of obtaining children, and secondly as a prostitute, that is, as a means of obtaining pleasure.What is the final conclusion of Weininger's opposition to women's rights? What exactly is he trying to achieve?Women are reduced to animals.He said: "No matter how humble a man is, he is always far superior to the noblest woman. And to an incomparable degree."  Weininger's starting point was to imagine the combination of the basic qualities of an ideal man and an ideal woman, but gradually lost the internal balance and the rigorous style of a scholar. Particularly convincing evidence, but no favorable argument and scientific basis.In his book, the final conclusion is that, through the derogation of women, it is concluded that the future of human development is more or less ominous. It is precisely because of the interference of women that human beings are slowly committing suicide, and the final result of civilization is destruction.  Swedish author August Strindberg was also a well-known opponent of women's rights.This can be clearly seen in his novel "Apology of a Madman".He created a grotesque image of a woman in this novel, and he thought this image was very representative.She is completely dominated by instinct, dishonest, selfish, and delirious by morbid sexual desire; at the end of the novel, there is a warning: "Beware of women!" Strindberg wants to convey to the society through this novel A warning is issued of the great dangers of equal rights for two sexes so disparate.Human beings should remain vigilant and avoid danger at any time."Equality of the sexes," said Strindberg, "is absolutely regressive, an absurdity, the latest dream-babble of romantic and idealistic socialists. Women are man's necessary vassals, the offspring of his spirit, Women cannot acquire the rights of husbands, since women constitute only 'half' of humanity in arithmetic, and at best one-sixth from a relative point of view (don't know how he calculates that)..."  Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Weininger, Strindberg and others' opposition to women's rights shows a kind of bias and prejudice.All kinds of morbid theories are to a certain extent to make up for the trauma of the soul.Strong anti-feminist claims are usually based on some kind of personal tragedy.A woman's powerless position in society is also a major obstacle to her cultural display.The less culture there is, the less cultural awareness there will be.  big man, little husband The social discrimination against women for thousands of years has been matched by the frequent praise of man as the omnipotent master who embodies the intellectual, physical, aesthetic and moral essence of man with his irrefutable ability. The mystification and glorification of man was at first a mythical exaltation of man, an illusion of the forces of nature into male gods.This is deeply reflected in the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, so in the eyes of women, men are no longer touchable and mundane things to some extent.For centuries, "mighty" men have ruled the world.  Simone de Beville wrote: "Women themselves admit that the world belongs to men... Women are confined to their own carnality and family, and before these human-like gods who determine goals and determine values ​​​​Therefore, it is not unreasonable to say that a woman is always a baby... A woman is destined to submit to a man... She is used to recognizing the authority of a man... Therefore, a man's world appears to a woman A transcendental reality, an unconditional existence." In the era of matrilineal clans, people worshiped female gods.The "Supreme Mother" in the era of matrilineal clans (Hecate in Crete, originally the moon god in Greek mythology, in charge of judgment and atonement. It is generally worshiped by people in Asia Minor. In Phrygia, it is Kibera—— The Mother of Gods worshiped by the Phrygians of Asia Minor, etc.) was replaced by the "Supreme Father" as the rightful master of the universe.Thus began the era of demeaning women.Religion, propaganda, art, science, power are all concentrated in the strong hands of men.He can rewrite myths at will, create public opinion, falsify truth, and determine the standard of beauty.He was so conceited that he was so stupid that he wanted to compete with women for the right to be a mother and have children. The "Bible" says that God first created a man, the ancestor Adam in mythology.But he has no "helpers" for labor. "God took a rib from that man, made a woman, and led him to that man." (Genesis, Chapter 2, sentence 22) Ancient Greek mythology is even more bizarre about this childbirth.Zeus, the god of thunder, had a splitting headache after he swallowed Metis, the goddess of wisdom, who was about to give birth to a girl.His own son Hephaestus, the patron saint of the iron industry, smashed his skull with a hammer, so that the heroic goddess and extremely wise Pallas was born.Zeus thus proved that men are superior to women even in childbirth.  Even more interesting is an interesting custom "Kuvada" of certain clans.Immediately after the child is born, the mother is removed and the husband is put on the bed.He pretended to groan and cry, as if going through the pain of childbirth.Finally, the door was opened and the baby was brought out for everyone to see.The father of the fake maternity hid in bed to receive congratulations from his family.  There are many explanations for the social significance of this custom.This is likely a legacy of matrilineal clans, where men imitate mothers in order to gain "authority in the family," Tarde said.But Tarde himself leaned toward Starke's explanation, seeing the strange custom as a way of passing on "the father's bravery" to his children.The point of this custom is to reinforce the dignity of the father.There is also an opinion that this farce, performed by the man, is intended to displace the mother, and thus to deceive the devil, who at this time assaults her. The custom of "kuvada" is obviously a ritual that dramatically embodies the wishes of men, in an attempt to degrade women's authority as mothers, deprive women of their natural honor, and endow men with special abilities.Make people believe that men can not only control life, but also create life.Ridiculous though this custom is, from a historical point of view it undoubtedly played an important social and psychological role in establishing patriarchal dominance well.  In Aeschylus' trilogy, Orestes, we see a particularly striking tribute to men in a slave society.The idea of ​​this work, held up as a model of ancient aesthetic literature, is the dominance of men and the derogation of women. "Orestes" defends the rights of men in slavery, and is actually a hymn of aesthetics and spirit to men.It consists of three parts. The first part of the trilogy describes the triumphant return of the hero Agamemnon, who won the Trojan War and returned to Argos.His cunning wife, Clytemus, does not wait for him like Penelope does.She found a substitute for her husband.Clytemne also plotted to murder Agamemnon.The pretext is that he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods. The second part of the trilogy is the return of Agamemnon's son Orestes to Argos.After he learned the truth about his father's murder, he killed his mother, Clytemus, and her lover.In the third part, Erinyes (Goddess of Nemesis) pursued Orestes so closely that he had to hide in the temple of Apollo.The case was later heard in the temple of Pallas.The Goddess of Wisdom, defender of men's rights, presided over the trial and was appointed judge.This already hints at the end of the story.The Nemesis accused Orestes of killing her biological mother, and Apollo defended the accused.Orestes only said to the women: "You have no right to blame me, you just sit at home and enjoy the fruits of your husband's labor." A dispute at the temple of Pallas between Erinyes, the defender of Clytemne, and Apollo, the defender of Orestes, is interesting.Erinyes justifies from the standpoint of matriarchy that Orestes deserves the most severe punishment because he killed his own mother, while Clytemes is innocent because she killed It is the husband, and "the husband is not a blood relative".Apollo made the opposite ethical claim.Orestes, he declared, killed his mother, but not his own blood, since a man's blood is connected only with his father: The child is not born of the one called the mother, She only tends the sown seeds. The child is born of the father.And the mother just preserves the fruit, ...... A father can give birth without a mother.Look, standing in front of you is Pallas, she is the daughter of Zeus of Olympus. She was not born from the womb— Which goddess could bear such a child? Finally, Pallas ruled as arbitrator:   Now it's my turn.The judgment is for me. I cast my stones in favor of Orestes. Because I was not born of a mother.man's everything It is closer and more precious to me... I am my father's daughter, I shall be faithful to my father, I have no pity for the woman who killed her husband. The husband is the master of the family.  And Orestes was saved, Although the two make autumn equally. But Erinyes sighed in despair: O young gods! You have trampled upon the ancient law. Ah! You have taken the murderer from us. Ah, how shameful! Ah, how angry! The defeat of Erinyes marked the decline of women's authority in the era of slavery.The salvation of Orestes, who killed his mother, shows the triumph of man's rights, man's will, and violence.But the dominant man did not have an intellectual advantage at the time.Lafargue said: "Physical strength is the second-to-none virtue of the patriarchal heroes of Homer's time."  According to the myth, even Zeus himself had extremely limited knowledge.He couldn't come up with a bright idea.Although he is extremely strong, his intelligence is very weak.When Zeus had to solve a problem on Mount Olympus, he often turned to the goddesses of the matriarchal age for advice.He endowed Pallas with wisdom.Women were the embodiment of intelligence at that time.This is the anomaly of life.Men were renowned as runners and throwers, pioneers, priests, lawmakers, prophets.Art is a great celebration of his achievements and discoveries.The colossal statues of Egypt, the marble statues of Phidias and Braxiteles perfectly embody the male figure.Men are also represented in the poems of Homer, the tragedies of Sophocles, and the mosaics of Rome. Men weave laurel wreaths and put them on their heads, symbolizing eternal honor.Caesar and Napoleon, Virgil and Goethe, Voltaire and Byron were crowned with laurel wreaths.Ziluopao① (① Ziluopao was a symbol of power in ancient times.) is draped over the shoulders of men.Crowns, even though they were occasionally worn on women's heads, were made for men's heads.Men are the sun of society.Women can only rely on his shade.Men are warriors and riders.The symbol of his power and ever-growing physical strength is the sword, which can only be hung at the man's waist.He was dressed in iron armor and an iron helmet.His meritorious deeds surpassed the ages, as if the god of thunder descended from the sky.The gap dug between the sexes in ancient Greece and Rome has been widening for thousands of years. Men carefully guard their plausible world from women.This is the cruel world of chariots, swords, and armour, of invented alluring magic, of bloody wars and the mysteries of science.A man is Alexander the conqueror of the world, Homer the great poet, Aristotle the thinker, Galileo the physicist who uncovered the secrets of the universe, Luther the leader of the religious reformation, and the discoverer of America. The navigator Columbus is Shakespeare, a genius writer who has insight into human nature. For centuries, the world of male self-representation is cruel, mysterious, and dazzlingly dazzling.He is smug, self-satisfied, and shameless.His power was exaggerated and distorted by himself, and went to extremes. However, things have changed.Excessive flattery invites unjust insults, followed by inappropriate praise.Extremes must be reversed.The praise of men prepares the conditions for the accusations of men.This seems to be a kind of compensation, so as to maintain the balance of the lives of the two sexes. The hostility toward men sometimes reaches grotesque proportions.Kazangiyev seriously criticized Weininger's opposition to women's rights.He wrote: "A man not only rapes women of all ages, but often lies for the purpose of sexual desire. The man often makes all kinds of promises, swears and swears, pretends to achieve the purpose of possession. Afterwards he despicably escapes or It became unbearably brutal." He claimed: "Men have much more petty calculations than women" and "men's shamelessness in sexual relations... has poisoned the social atmosphere, books, magazines, etc." The perpetrators of women's long-standing tragedies should undoubtedly be severely punished.The nemesis of history was hovering over him.The men were ridiculed, they were mercilessly beaten with the whip of irony.Vicious, merciless taunting is the lot of man.According to the French feminist Clemens Royer, men are gradually regressing.This is the regulation of nature, and it is also some kind of punishment.Women, on the other hand, are increasingly evolving both intellectually and physically.Feminists are quite sure that in the future women will definitely replace men, hold dictatorial power and dominate the whole world. The struggle for women's emancipation had a fiercely anti-masculine slant in the activities of some women's organizations.The radical wing of the feminist movement in the United States has spared no effort to attack the dominant male, so much so that the extremists of this faction claim that the appearance of men is a biological accident, because men's genes (different from women's genes) are due to insufficient chromosomes. Not enough.The Amazonians in modern America① (① In ancient Greek mythology, there was a warlike woman in the country named Amazon.) claim that even if there is a shortage of men as a factor of production, they can be fully compensated by machines in the future.It seems that history is repeating itself with another farce.Equality between men and women is, of course, a regular and progressive trend.But this corollary should preclude humiliation, reprisals, taunts, and disrespect for either party.Excessive practices in this regard will inevitably drag history into another extreme and contradiction, such as the daunting slogan: "Be careful of men!"