Finally, I Understand "Normal" - And It Isn't Pretty

I had a cold around that time, and did I ever write some even more depressed stuff on it. I will spare you. Then I read this...

"Girls back home never could stand the fact that I was different. Before I had tits I was a misfit...who liked to read and watch horror movies...They teased me and made fun of me, but didn't give me much thought. Once the hormones kicked in, that's when I became a genuine threat. It wasn't just that I loved sex, it was the fact that I didn't use it as a bargaining chip. I didn't want to trade it for a house and a mess of kids. I actually enjoyed it for its own sake. For that, all the girls hated me. Boys on the other hand, they loved me. That is, until reality kicked in, and they traded me in for a more sensible, wife-worthy model." (Christa Faust, Money Shot, pp119-20 Hard Case Crime edition.)

That, right there, is almost the entire Manosphere - Feminist / Mars - Venus / Slut - Wife / Fundamentalist Religion - Socialist Atheist thing in a  nutshell. Ms Faust's website is here and she looks pretty darn funky to me, but I doubt I could hold her attention for very long, plain commuter guy that I am. The point is, she's an actual woman, not a guy with a pen-name.

Because if she was a guy with a pen-name, that quote could be dismissed as loser male cynicism. Since she isn't, there are three possibilities: first, Ms Faust doesn't mean it, it really is fictional; second, this is an idea that all sexually over-sensitive / over-powered / obsessed people, female as well as male, have about the Straights; third, it's true. I'm going with the second and third.

"It wasn't just that I loved sex, it was the fact that I didn't use it as a bargaining chip. I didn't want to trade it for a house and a mess of kids. I actually enjoyed it for its own sake. For that, all the girls hated me." For someone who regards sex as a complex and many-faceted pleasure that is enough in and of itself, the idea that it would be used to manage one's partner is almost morally repulsive. Who would do that, and why? 

I have puzzled, as have many, over the answer to that question for a long time. In the depths of a dry spell as a younger man, the answer was "manipulative bitches who don't have the capacity to love". Dry spells do brutal things to a boy's world view. It won't do as a considered answer, especially as there are women who like sex for its own sake, and I did meet a few. What's puzzling is why almost all men should think there is nothing wrong with women using sex to manage them, as they must, or there would be rude words to name the women who did it. But there aren't. It is regarded as natural and maybe even desirable. Most men go along with it. Shall I say that again? The vast majority of men consider that it is entirely natural, right and proper for women to use sex to manage them. 

At this point, someone could say "Blue Pill / Red Pill. Duh!" That's all too much tied into Evo-Psycho for me. I prefer to look to the way we experience and interpret the world on a very fundamental level. Of course I would, I'm a philosopher. I suggest that folk like me, Ms Faust and some of the Manosphere guys, are very differently wired from the Straights.

We are people for whom living is aesthetic, about sensation, feeling and thought, intensity, variety, being lost in a moment, enchanted by a detail, when someone's smile can be the high point of a day. The way we live can often look slightly addict-y, exactly because those sensations are a kind of High. We seek out sensations from whatever our preferred sources are, and those are the reasons for our actions. Why do we do what we do? Because it feels good. (Note: not because it is "satisfying", "fulfilling", "meaningful" or any of that morality disguised as psychobabble. I said "feels good" and that's what I meant.)

The Straights aren't like that. They are all about relationships with other people. Their reasons have to do with co-operation, competition, sabotage, status and display, about recognition and help from, or victory or control over, other people. They do stuff because it creates, develops or changes a relationship with someone. So for a Normal Person^TM everything is about managing, competing with, manipulating or using other people. That's why Normal Men don't find it odd that Normal Women should want to manage them with sex. It's all just part of the drama and content of their lives.

Sick, isn't it?

What's worse is that under the guise of "psychotherapy" and other related witchcrafts, they try to shame us into being Normal People^TM, by telling us we are sad and miserable, empty and unable to have intimate relationships, and lacking in meanignful and fulfilling occupations. Don't we want to be married and have children? Don't we want the relatives round for Christmas? Don't we want to celebrate our birthdays with everyone in our mobile phone? Don't we want to toss frisbees on the beach and play mixed touch rugby? Don't we want to live like them? No. We Bloody Well Do Not. And within short order, they are reduced to shaming.

Oh. And if you find yourself asking "But why are you after sensation, instead of entering into human relations? What went wrong?" then you are still caught in their, or still exercising your own native, shaming mode. Nothing went wrong. We were made Ferrari's, and Normals^TM were made, well, Volkswagens. What's wrong is if we try to carry the baggage for their family holiday to the house at the end of the dirt track. Not where we're at our best. Just like the Normals^TM are not suitable for abstract thought, scientific, technological and medical discovery, sustained creativity, problem-solving and single-task focus. That's our stuff.

So we're nearly there. In true form, I have come round in a large circle, but seen parts of the world I haven't seen before on the journey.