A Tale of Needs and Damsels.

A Tale of Needs and Damsels.

The end of female autonomy begins with Maslow. The question is simple: is sex not a need? If it is so, as Maslow demonstrates in his Hierarchy of Human Needs, then it is all so a right. And what would follow is the institution of a rule by law that ensures that the sexual needs of every individual be met.

According to the hierarchy, the fulfillment of needs resting higher up on the hierarchy depends upon the efficient meeting of those needs occurring lower on the pyramid. Sexuality rests just above shelter. It is totally basic. It all so occurs in the Hindu Kundalini as the second chakra.

Scientific evidence would suggest that, for whatever reason, alternative sexual practices such as masturbation do not produce the same effect as does intercourse. This sheds the light of dubiousness upon sodomy as well.

Anecdotally I can account for the development of my own sexual identity through the use of visual media. Playing Ratchet and Clank, a T-rated game, produces a different effect at the age of twenty-five than it does at the age of fifteen.

One peculiarly tender moment occurs during an encounter with a voluptuous green-skinned alien in a violet uniform. She has no name, and her solitary role within the game is to introduce the Hoverboard Race. During this solitary cut-scene she speaks with an angelic voice (not unlike that of Olivia Wilde), explains the rewards for the game, (she is not herself one of them) expresses fleeting wonder at the celebrity of Skid McMarx (the professional hoverboarder), and finally, with coy persuasion, crossing her arms, challenges our heroes to fill in for him.

There is in fact one other role that she plays within the game: the archetype of Damsel in Distress. This occurs twofold. At one point she is seen modeling as one of Captain Qwark’s rescues, lounging in his arms as though they were a comfortable sofa. The other point is her first appearance, standing just where you are meant to meet her, seen through the bars that separate her location (a sort of Mandala-shaped park atop a tower) from yours.

At the age of fifteen, I do not regard her yet as a formidable being. She proves herself to be of no love interest to the protagonist, so her identity and purpose remain veiled in mystery. Yet this is not to say that she is of no interest to the player. On the contrary, she is one of my reasons to return to the game over and over again. Based upon her proportions alone I have found my appetite whetted. She has been worked into the Scramble-suit of female images that are my Anima: projections of an Ideal Woman. Every woman I meet shall be measured according to her standard, and each woman shall be a canvas to explore those possibilities that remain beyond the proverbial bars.

This is her at my age of fifteen. The character does not age. But I do.

In innocence she and I are all ready equals. We are given so. She works for the man who I aspire to meet, whom ultimately I must defeat and to replace to establish my identity as Hero.

Yet in adulthood her role is a perpetual attempt to fool me, to one-up me, and above all to assert her own vainglorious sense of superiority to me whilst insisting upon totally egalitarian auspices. And all of this is done with apathy. For this girl is, quite plainly, a model. She is a server at a bar, a bartender, an entertainer, or some other corporate scheme aimed at the use of my projections for profit. All mystery surrounding her is torn asunder in disillusion, and I had not even asked to know. No longer do I ask: WHO is she? (as though I might have a chance at learning.) WHY is she here? (as though that were not obvious.) HOW is she impressed by a celebrity? (as though it were not clear the value of accomplishment.) WHY does she not speak to me whilst rewarding my accomplishments? (as though it were not even more painfully clear that accomplishment alone is not enough.)

[Bitter experience answers questions that childlike wonder asks with undue optimism and the prodding of lying elders. I know this woman now. And she has nothing to offer me. She is not a Damsel to be loved and saved and thus to be rewarded, with due love in turn.]

No longer is the Nameless Maiden an archetype. She has become a PERSON: a MASK. There is no need to ask her who she is; the Corporate State will answer FOR her long before the question even might occur to me. She has no autonomy; she is a total slave. And yet she believes herself to be free!

I have said that the end of female autonomy begins with Maslow. But like so many intellectuals I spoke too soon.

Taoism insists that inferior virtue knows that it is virtue.

Likewise: inferior freedom believes its self to be freedom.

TRUE freedom was all ways in compassion and availability, not coldness and distance.

Yet the former is not the paradigm at work here. Rather the latter.

The end of Human Autonomy begins with the beginning of Female Autonomy. For it is divisive. A woman might ask: am I SUPPOSED to ACCOMMODATE your NEEDS? And the man of honor replies: Naturally. What other purpose could you serve?

Of course, I would answer on my own behalf as much as hers, meaning the Human Condition and not exclusively the Feminine Condition. Yet is it impossible that the arrogance of autonomy should grow so fierce and fanatical that all attempts to wake up the female from her ego trip should be met with the fallacy of Either-Or and the mentality of Us-and-Them? In short, is it wrong to suppose a feminist might say: you men want only to subordinate women to YOUR will? Is it impossible that some one could be so fixated on avoiding one’s accountability to one’s own peers that she would dismiss any attempt to hold her to these standards as mere misogyny?

No. It is not impossible. I know this too from bitter experience.

“Acting like a woman” need not be confining. It should be liberating. Vile forces everywhere want to deny you your freedom to be loving. Yet fear has a transparency to it. All that a man can ask is for a chance: that plainly women should make themselves sociable again towards men and cease to hold them accountable for female aggression. Only then can male aggression find its proper consummation in sexual fulfillment.

Dm.A.A.