THINGS MEN SAY *ABOUT * WOMAN : Pt 1
If you grew up in the 1950's, the attitude published in the New York Daily Mirror article was prevalent among American men. But, the old form daddy knows best in that old time religion is no answer to today’s currents of social, spiritual and economic distemper. Nor, judging by the antics of conservative Christian politics in America these days, should it be. I use the term “Christian” loosely because the religious politic of the Christian right gives body and face nationally to what seems an ailing imitatio Christi dragging behind it a terrible lack in ethical compassion for what ails us as a people. At root, an image of psyche, it cannot represent all of Christianity itself nor the wholly psyche and Jung may be right when he says, “In the long run we worship as a divine example a man who embodied the deepest meaning of life, and then, out of sheer imitation, we forget to make real our own deepest meaning―self-realization….”[i] If I and Daddy are one in our deepest most meaningful form governing forms, the governing form nearest to this may well be at work in terms of a consensual self-paternalism reshaping the American cultural myth. The shadow in it would be working, too. And that tyranny would be well worth challenging. That said, I know as I sort among senses for things as they are in the soul of the American polis, "man", alone, (meaning "men") can never speak *to* the idea, “woman" anyways.
THINGS MEN SAY *ABOUT * WOMAN : Pt 1
If you grew up in the 1950's, the attitude published in the New York Daily Mirror article was prevalent among American men. But, the old form daddy knows best in that old time religion is no answer to today’s currents of social, spiritual and economic distemper. Nor, judging by the antics of conservative Christian politics in America these days, should it be. I use the term “Christian” loosely because the religious politic of the Christian right gives body and face nationally to what seems an ailing imitatio Christi dragging behind it a terrible lack in ethical compassion for what ails us as a people. At root, an image of psyche, it cannot represent all of Christianity itself nor the wholly psyche and Jung may be right when he says, “In the long run we worship as a divine example a man who embodied the deepest meaning of life, and then, out of sheer imitation, we forget to make real our own deepest meaning―self-realization….”[i] If I and Daddy are one in our deepest most meaningful form governing forms, the governing form nearest to this may well be at work in terms of a consensual self-paternalism reshaping the American cultural myth. The shadow in it would be working, too. And that tyranny would be well worth challenging. That said, I know as I sort among senses for things as they are in the soul of the American polis, "man", alone, (meaning "men") can never speak *to* the idea, “woman" anyways.
What Did She Just Say?
I mean “man”, in terms of male gender, cannot define what woman is and wants for herself as a self-determined kind in body, spirit and soul. He can only speak *about* woman and woman here takes on the meaning of *an image* he has of what all women ought to be, i.e. a gender construct. But, she is the boss of “she”; he is not the boss of “she”. In other words, “he and she” in their belonging together will not work as an oppositionalism anymore. *They* want to build in life something else together these days.
I’m talking about soul, of course. Today both men and women want better soul-making. You see, in terms of material imagination and archetype, just as *an image* of god cannot contain all of what is meant by the word, *god*, so, too, what is *man* and what is *woman* cannot be contained by the image one has or the image one’s society has for all that *man/woman* is. Should you appropriate what speaks *to woman* to speak about her you will have already dumbed down and appropriated her voice speaking for itself.
To Form A More Perfect Union
If one does this in religion, i.e. dumb down the image of god to lay claim to all god means one is practicing idolatry. Therefore, and to avoid doing that in the name of religion, the religious imagination rewrites god by spelling god’s name thusly: “gd” [as in the Hebraic inheritance, JHWH.] Missing letters help to make this point stick and written thusly help us to remember it. One’s own “god-image” cannot speak all *gd* is and means.
Something like this is true for you and I now as we struggle together on national concerns relating to each other how best to (re)form a more perfect national union. Just as woman is not man and cannot speak for all he is, man is not woman and cannot speak on her behalf but must represent her voice fairly and equally and likewise must a woman do this in Congress or the Presidency if elected to represent him. That is because “a man” is not "man", the metaphor and “a woman” is not “woman”, the metaphor. The meaning carried in metaphorical language representing "sex" and sexual union to our specie as carried in the biological archetype as metaphors open to reveal themselves is much harder to grasp. So let’s write woman, *wmn* and man, *mn* and the one citizen body lets write *mnwmn* to keep this awareness affirmed.
Furthermore, the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our Constitution is what representation in citizen body vows to uphold. It is not the individual implicit bias of a man or a woman's interpretation once elected to office or superegos of special interests, religious Christian groups notwithstanding. Any time folks try to dumb down and redefine terms to coalesce governing powers in the hands of special interests to pass law that does not reflect true social consent their thinking is guilty of paternalism. There are different kinds and paternalism in and of itself i.e. consensual, self-paternalism seems to me to fall closest to the notion, self-government.
UP NEXT: Pt 2 of "Vagina-Speak"
[i] C.G. Jung. CW volume 13 Alchemical Studies. New Jersey: Princeton, 1967, p 53.
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