The Abolition of Woman

Recently, contraception has entered the national, and even international, political arena.  Unfortunately, as with many issues of our day and age, this has led to the polarization of both sides, with either side reducing the other to an inhumane psycho-robot bent on world domination through the subjugation of inferior beings.  Rational debate and charity are disposed of for baseless assertions and vitriolic insults.  If our humanity is found in relationship, this is not the way to find our humanity.

So let us consider the question from a human standpoint.  Let us assume no malice on the part of each other.  Let us consider the other as a human being.  Which brings us to an interesting question: what is a human being?  Or rather: what does it mean to be human?  This is not a scientific question.  This is not a psychological question.  Were it forced into a hole, I’d say this it is closer to philosophical.  But even that seems to be overly confining the matter.  This is a human question and the answer lies in our experience as human beings.

The question, rather than being ignored by our society and culture, has been forcibly silenced.  Why?  Because it ultimately seems unanswerable, and the best way to fix the problem posed by this seems to be to deny the question.  We refuse to face the reality.  This is one way to cope.  The person committing suicide ultimately recognizes this and attempts to silence the question, which has become as a deafening drone in their life, by wielding his mortality in desperation.  They recognize a torture in a self-aware reality.

We are faced with the prospect of a search without end in finding our humanity.  And should we want anything less?  Should there really be a point of achievement, which finally ends the search?  Motionless boredom awaits those who seek this end.

So let us approach the question.

I think it is plainly obvious that relationships have everything to do with what it is to be human.  Nearly every human action is in this context.  And what’s more, men and women are made for relationship with one another.  This is the subject of poetry and prose, books and movies, song and dance.  Something about this enlivens us and seems to make us realize the depth of our humanity.  In relationship we discover our dignity in a profound way.  Even the most successful individual deeply desires such a relationship, no matter how much they outwardly deny it.  It is precisely their solitude that makes the lone hero so tragic to us.  They show us a love so powerful, and yet unrequited all the same.

So what does this say about us?  It seems to say that such a separation and denial of the unity of man and woman is a denial of our very nature.  It does not say that there is no difference, rather it emphatically demands a difference: relationship must have an “other” different from myself.  I think most will recognize that a truly beautiful relationship not only requires and recognizes this difference, but that it even exults in it.  And tragically, the worst relationships are those that recognize and attempt do destroy this difference.

What does this mean then for society?  It seems to say that a difference between men and women is inherent and must be understood; however, it can go horribly wrong.  History is a drama of humans trying to get along, and often failing.  Men and women have succeeded tremendously at hurting one another.  The present is no different, but the threat seems unique to us moderns.  Instead of denying the inherent worth of the other, we seem to deny their existence.  There is no difference, there is no other.

Such an attitude does not square with our humanity; however, it is difficult to address without first understanding what it is to be a man or woman.   And thus we find another question of difficulty.  How are we to answer?

I believe the answer lies in that which has already been discussed, mainly that we are beings purposed for relationship.  We discover our full dignity in relationship to an “other”.  And so we find ourselves precisely in how we relate to this “other”.  Whether it is to an acquaintance, and old friend, to our beloved, or even to God, we realize ourselves in these relationships.  This is not to say we are solely defined in these relationships.  We must not deny our individuality, for without that there is no basis for the relationship.  A silhouette doesn’t destroy the subject, but brings clarity to it through contrast.

As such, men must understand themselves in the context of their relationship to women, and similarly women must understand themselves in the context of their relationship with men.  And this fact is altogether denied by our society and culture.  Why?  Because the embattled sexes have inflicted so much pain on each other in their relationships that it seems safer to close them off rather than open themselves.  Instead, we end up denying ourselves, taking up our humanity, and following ourselves.

For better or for ill, the station of man has been taken as the norm.  That traditional role of men as self-sufficient stoics is the neo-human.  With the denial of relationship as an ultimate good, purpose is reduced to the fleeting professional career.  Success is measured in coins collected rather than lives touched.  And the receptivity to life physically embodied by women has been likened to an entry-level mailroom post, meant only for those who lacked the ambition.

And where does contraception fit in?  It is more of an embodiment, rather than a cause.  With the denial of the true nature of humanity as those in relationship and the destruction of the difference between men and women, both have lost sight of their identity.  And it becomes a spiral into a greater darkness.  As the difference is denied, man becomes less of a man and woman becomes less of a woman.  Fathers cease to be fathers and mothers cease to be mothers.

Physically, fathers are seemingly more distant from childbearing.  But this is blind of child rearing, where fathers are immensely important.  Children develop their relationships with their mothers in the womb, but it is in growing up that they discover their fathers.  However, because of this remote quality of the father in childbearing, it seemed good to us that procreation become a single-sex spawning phenomena, in which women cognitively decided to have a child without a father.  And so we deny the relationship, and the very foundation of what it means to be human at its core.  For what symbolizes this more than the life giving power of a relationship realized in the birth of a newborn?

And so we denied our fathers.

Fathers were removed from their children, and women, seeing their abandonment, wished to be free of what was now viewed as a burden.  For if it was not a burden, why should men seek to remove themselves from it?  But the drive towards relationship still existed, and men and women sought each other sexually because it is in their nature to do so.  This created a problem: men and women now lived in denial.

And so the spiral continued.  With procreation removed from the human experience, the difference of men and women became inconsequential and cumbersome.  The role of men as keepers of society became the only good, whereas the historic realm of women as keepers of life was lost.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Women then sought the identity of men who had ceased to be men.  They took to the workplace and denied the dignity of their role in humanity.  In the name of women’s rights society denied that women had ever been worth anything.  Motherhood was evacuated of any significance.  Contraception only seemed natural.  Fatherhood no longer existed, so what was motherhood?  We must banish motherhood as well.  Damn it to the same place.

And so we find ourselves now with genderless men and women, starved for relationships.  It pains me to see my generation, promised so much and fed so little.  While I see the abolition of woman as readily apparent, the despondency of men, ravaged by their own abolition seems like the neglected war memorial.

Men became boys, and women became girls.  And we all became inhuman.