D!FF:

Men and women are both prone to duplicity, but there nonetheless remains something so peculiarly female that only a heterosexual male would notice it, for it is so consistent in women and unheard of in men, and while a bisexual might feel inclined to weigh the one group against the other, only the heterosexual would have to.

Suppose I wish to make friends over Instagram with someone whom I had encountered externally. Without fail, this will be met with silence, and any attempts to defy this condition will be disdained. Yet suppose then that I qualify my advance by making an observation in passing, one which also happens to hold practical value. She might then grace me with her consideration, as a child does, but only to an extent. She will not, for instance, go ahead and add me as a Friend, though one thousand people may follow her, quite literally, online. (Literally a thousand, not literally following her around.) She may smile upon my consideration, but only to the extent that it is an end in and of itself, as well as a means to her own ends, though never mine. She may presume that her own ends predominate, though that sort of self-entitled posture remains inexplicably covert. She may commend me, indirectly, for doing “the right thing”, but this will accord me neither status nor mobility in her sphere of influence. The moment that I seek to employ my decency as a means towards an end, in other words, she seems to call it into question.

Yet this leaves us wondering: how did she acquire such status to begin with? Both men and women alike, if they are relatively inconsistent and flimsy characters, may put up a façade of virtue which they will discard when they must cave in to primal desires. The desires themselves are not the problem; humanity would not endure without them. It rather would appear that people of lesser character will resort to vicious means when they grow desperate for what they want, discarding decency as one throws off a mask.

Yet while both men and women do this, women alone tend to PRESCRIBE it, directly for their fellows and indirectly for their suitors. Women will look at a man who is consistent in virtue, and they might praise him for his service, but the moment that he shows a sign of human longing, the sheer instant that he might try to acquire what all men want by noble means (instead of vicious ones), a woman might think him less practical for being so kind and less kind for being so practical. Women drive men, especially heterosexual men, into the state of duplicity, segregating practical life from noble life, for were they to stop doing this then men would not only use their virtue to lord their rightful value over women, but they would by so doing render all lesser means inferior, both in principle and practice, compelling all others to follow their example.

It is ironic, though, isn’t it? It’s almost mysterious:

The opportunity to get to know a person, to share lives, even bodies, is so profound and tantalizing that one would expect others to be more curious, seeking any excuse to pursue this long-repressed urge. Yet some women will behave as though they know already not only the definition for your intention, but also its nature. They know not only that you “like” them, though they have not yet asked you what it might mean, but they behave as though such matters of liking were commonplace problems whose outcomes are familiar.

I am always testing them, to see if they’ll exhibit the Virtue of Wonder.

Do they know that they are being tested?

Are they so insolent that they would fail?

One can hardly hold contempt for the examiner. After all: if she confesses that he is afflicted by a thirst that motivates him, she must just as readily confess that it is a thirst that does not afflict herself. Any social propriety which is maintained by an oligarchy of privileged people can only expose the hypocrisy of those beneficiaries. At least he means to use noble means to quench it.

What sort of a creature would recoil from such a force, as if the power of a character were more frightening than its strength was reassuring? Who runs from Reason?!

[({Dm.A.A.)}]