The Male Gaze and Women’s Space: Transcending The Inner Watcher

Women are socialized to depend or be depended on but they are not to be independent and know how to fill their time and energy for themselves. Women are trapped in a binary of the need to nurture and the need to depend and the foundation of a true strong woman is one free from this binary. A strong woman knows when to ask for help and when to respond to others requests for help. This is key to being able to go in your own direction and not obstruct the direction of others. This is how all get to be individuals without ones individuality being founded in the taking of someone else’s. Compulsive nurturing acts to obstruct another path by giving those help they have not asked for; it prevents others experiencing a lack, giving them no space to step into. Normally the compulsive nurturer does this at the expense of walking her own path and stepping into the empty space in her own life, instead she fills the space of others so they don’t have to experience a lack.

When you go in your own direction you experience aloneness because you make decisions without running them through the relay channel. Women are punished for acting without consulting because the social position of women in society is subordinate and subordinates must consult, they must not act like managers of their own time and energy, this is to be managed by men who view it as a resource they own. The wrath women can face from others for decision making and acting is the wrath similar to the way one who acts above station at work is treated, “how dare she“. How dare she reject the sex role scripts, how dare she recognise aloneness as space with potential, time she can use for herself and how dare she transcend compulsive nurturing and compulsive dependence and embrace her strength. How dare she remove the need for a man in her life, and show other women they can do the same. How dare she make us all see the reality of our oppression, and how dare she try and do something about it with out asking first.

Thinking, deciding and acting and effecting change in the world is instrumental, and women are not to be instrumental without running it past their oppressors. Acting in this way is part of growing up, women are denied full adulthood and are keep childlike in some aspects. Women are taught that when people step away from them they have done something wrong, to feel that space as aloneness and not see it as a call to step out in ones own direction. Women are told their duty is to maintain connections at all costs, through connection women are to tie themselves up, to de instrumentalize themselves, to feel and to not think.

Radfem theory says the male gaze goes beyond the surface of a woman, it is penetrative into her mind and it’s internalised as her inner watcher. How women view independence and individuality is related to internalisation of the male gaze as watcher. The inner watcher that tells you how to feel, it acts as obstructer to knowing the self. The male gaze views a woman who has transcended the compulsive nurturer/compulsive dependant binary as alone, not as an individual. This is because the male gaze sorts women into a mass, all the same to be stereotyped. Internalisation of this stereotype is essential to ensure women act like a de-individualized mass, their wants and needs shaped to reflect what men want and need from them. Their ambition must be to depend (wife) and to nurture (mother) and this is to be the fabric of how women move through the world even if they never actually become wives and mother themselves.

The watcher inside the woman will tell her she is the odd girl out, alone or excluded (normally by the other girls/women) as soon as she starts thinking outside of her social script and risks becoming an individual. Because of this women sabotage their individuality and progress and anything that makes others give her this space. Women are not to take up space in this society, and because of this women retract away from women that do. They retract away from women who are going off the charted course, so they don’t end up going off the charted course too. The woman who is acting out of script will feel rejection because of this, as the other women are unable to support her without taking a risk themselves. This is why a woman must transcend the binary she was socialized into, the binary of compulsive dependence and compulsive nurturing before she can fully reject the sex role script. Otherwise her need to nurture others and to depend on others will always turn the space she is given from potential to aloneness.
Some say strong woman is an insult to women, because all women are strong, this is in part true as all women are born strong and the patriarchy cuts them off from that strength. Strong woman is one who has opened a door patriarchy slammed on her and recaptured what was hers to start with, something that always existed within her and can act to wake up the strength in other women. She does this because she deactivates their internalised script, shows them a new direction. She does not do for them what she can see they are capable of and is not apologetic about it. She does not allow others to do for her what she can do for herself even people who have built their self worth around nurturing others. So she does not reinforce the incapability and self disbelief women are taught. Through this other women can transcend the inadequacy that makes them crave to depend and they can see it’s the same thing that makes them compulsively nurture to gain back the self worth lost in that inadequacy.
Over time the internalised male gaze is rejected, and a woman can for the first time find her own and experience life through her own eyes and look at the world for the first time. Look at the parts she has avoided looking at, knowing she has within the capability to change it and knowing it can be changed. Seeing the patriarchal roots of oppression is painful but it also brings with it potential, they can now destroy the very thing they were raised to both depend on and nurture.

A tale of two sisters.

What she is isn’t good enough, even if she is born female with the fully functioning biological package. Hated for being just that a female and prevented from becoming a woman on her own terms. She is to become an object, constructed and sculpted by the patriarchy and its tools. Put to sleep by constant pressure to be other, and othered by the world if she wakes up to be herself and demands subject status in a man’s world. Her mind is to be filled with inadequacy, her ambition to be tied up in inhibition from constant discouragement every time she shows sign of original thought. The discouragement will come in many forms through her life, in can be in the “let me do that for you love” from a strange man on a train or from the boy who says “you’re just here to look pretty” when turning up to a gaming event she was invited to.

Some girls view it as constant compliments and assistance, and are quick to put others girls down as ungrateful when they show ambition to do it themselves only seeing it as rejection of male wish to do it for them. The discouragement will become more overt, the closer a girl gets to the line created by the sex role scripts. At this stage it’s like a slap in the face “why don’t you start acting like a girl” or “let your brother do it that’s not a girl’s job”. The message is very clear; she will not be rewarded for doing the things boys are rewarded for. Maybe she will want to be a boy, like many girls do at some point. When a girl is placed in the tomboy box a clock begins to tick, in the first few hours while she is still young her parents may just let her be. She is the one who is expected to grow out of herself, she is the one who is expected to abandon all she likes or is good at, whose praise comes together with discouragement. That’s if she’s lucky, if not the clock strikes 12 for her almost straight away and she is forced into femininity and is never even given any time in the tomboy box at all.

As she goes through her teens as a tomboy with more liberal parents she finds society isn’t as tolerant and the onslaught of daily reminders begin, even if it means destroying the will of the person, it is to be done rather then let her become herself unobstructed. Through her teens the clock speeds up, conform now or we will force you. We will force you by making sure most jobs require conformity to gender in some way, by making sure you have no friends, by making you feel like a freak. Or by convincing you that you’re not even a woman if need be, anything but allowing you to reach adulthood as female and without the sex role script installed. If all this fails, someone will come to you directly and tell you to grow up and start acting like a young lady. This maybe your liberal parents at the age of 22, the ones who accepted you believing you would grow out of it as you went through college. This may be a strange man in the street that stops you to tell you how you should be walking and dressing. At that point the clock has struck 12; she can either conform and drink a sudden onslaught of approval from all directions or forever walk the line as other.

The one who changed

The sudden onslaught of approval she will get for giving in will be short lived. For some time you will receive compliments for everything she hates about who she has become, through this she will grow to hate complements. Her new way of being wont suit many of the things she likes to do, she won’t be happy but will be expected to smile more now then ever before as she is not some young tomboy anymore, she is a grown woman in patriarchy’s eyes. She will fall asleep as subject in her own life experience, just as all the other girls did long ago. She will be the one who says “I used to be a tomboy but I grew up” and by this means she became an adult woman on patriarchy’s terms. She may find her way into feminist circles, and be told how empowering femininity can be, especially the pornified version. All the time another like her has chosen to walk the path of other, for not conforming to femininity she is viewed as a failure and not a true woman by society under patriarchy. Here in these feminist circles she learns she did the right thing by changing and giving into the pressure. Here she learns rejection of her sex role is really the rejection of her own sexuality and power. Here she learns that who she really is on the inside is not accepted. Then one day she meets a woman who on the outside is just like her on the in, she is the one who walked the path as other, she never allowed the patriarchal wind of change to shape her. She does not fit in as well in the feminist circles, this is to be expected but what shocks her most is how she is viewed as a failure to feminism.

The one who resisted

They view her as conforming to the stereotype that all feminists dress like lesbians and want to be men. All while they join in with men’s anti second wave feminist and ugly feminist banter. She can walk away from feminism, feeling like her lack of femininity makes her somehow diminished and less powerful, or even under the illusion she is masculine. But everywhere she goes her gender non conformity is viewed in some way political. Despite all the rights women have gained over recent decades the one thing she can’t be is herself. She can be a doctor, a lawyer or a boss but an adult woman outside of the femininity script is still not allowed. Over time she comes to believe she is masculine and falls asleep under a different illusion, one where she thinks she has to become other to be a subject. She may at this point want to change her sex, thinking that’s what’s wrong. If she moves past this point, with a solid sense of masculine identity she may find a place in the world as a she or maybe a he. She has accepted her status as other, and through that she becomes a subject. She will then resist any attempts to tell her she isn’t masculine, as she has worked hard to attain that masculine sense of self. For her learning how her sense of masculinity has been constructed will be a painful one. Mean while her counterpart the one who changed is finding the minefield of femininity swamping her, and as she ages her privilege and status diminishes. Her power was an illusion, resting in her usefulness as an object in the male game. Now she sees what the old feminists (second wave) she met in her early 20’s were talking about. Both of them together went on the same journey, but took different directions and both arrived at the same destination. The journey of life as a woman in a time when all believed the lie of equality and thought they were free, the direction was the compromises they both made to navigate around a structure they both thought had long gone. The structure of women’s oppression through sex role scripts, a structure as hard and inflexible as ever, not a fluid continuum of self expression. The destination is the end of the illusion and the realization that how one dresses or identifies does not give them any real power or freedom to be themselves and it wont until sex role scripts are abolished.

In the end they realized they have both always been resisters, all women are resisters on some level, and all have to juggle being themselves and surviving.

Radical Feminism: De-Constructing Gender vs De-Constructing Sex.

Radical feminism is against gender enforcement, and it’s completely for women having control over their own body. The way to dismantle patriarchy isn’t by lumping gender and sex into one box, and then de-constructing it. Gender is a power structure, a hierarchy and structured around sex at birth. If sex cannot be determined at birth, it is assigned by modifying individuals to fit the sex binary. The sex binary exists in nature, most fit it, and a minority don’t. The sex binary is the foundation gender is built on.

The gender binary has nothing inherently to do with biological sex. It’s a power structure, constructed by the patriarchy to assign roles based on sex. The roles are an oppressive hierarchy, creating a middle gender or several genders along a gender spectrum isn’t the solution. The entire concept of masculine and feminine is based on nothing more then a socially constructed overlay, placed on top of male and female and its grounded in what the sexes are forced to do to keep the patriarchal system intact.

The solution is to strip away the power structure completely, to stop socializing people into gender via sex role scripts. Every one should be viewed as human first, sex second. At present we have a situation where man is one kind of human being, and woman is a different lower kind of human being there to serve man. If someone’s outside the sex binary and people aren’t freaked out simply because what’s in their pants is different, it’s because they don’t know what’s up stairs in their head and are unable to know how to interact with them as a result. Society does not collectively have a template for seeing someone out side of the social boxes of man or woman. People changing their sex or being born outside the sex binary wont matter post patriarchy, it matters now because they don’t want to make a mistake when allocating someone to one sex class or the other and because people are passing through a socially created class system when doing so and this makes waves. The gender system has made biological sex political and that’s a fact outside individual control.

When radical feminists talk about sex as a class, and woman as a class they are talking about the class of woman created under patriarchy. The ones raised female from birth, and socialized into the subordinate class of woman. When gender is stripped away, we will be left with biology only. Most humans will still fit a sex binary, and will have different needs because of it, females will still be the ones having children. It’s also likely some people will still develop sex dysphoria and wish to transition, but without gender enforcement less people will develop a concept they have an identity incompatible with their biology. This is because under patriarchy female biology and its capability is forced into a narrow box centred around reproduction. The patriarchy, its notion of man and woman and what it has to turn both sexes into to maintain the hierarchy, is not natural. Radical feminists are not going to remain silent on the fact that many are transitioning who would never have become dysphoric without the patriarchy. A lot of what is considered cisgender is a constructed illusion.

Pretending the biological sex binary is constructed isn’t the way out of the patriarchy. The sex binary is very real, but the patriarchy wants everyone to continue to think their sense of self as a man or a woman is grounded in innate gender. The gender they constructed (masculinity and femininity), the gender that acts as a voice in the head that asks before one thinks of acting. The voice in a woman’s head that asks if her behaviour is sex appropriate or not. The voice that acts to keep them subordinate or risk being othered as not a woman.

Time, Space and Energy

Time, space and energy are the original currency and under patriarchy women’s is taken from them and they are paid less in return for it.

Masculinity & Femininity are two socially shaped directions attached to biological sex. They are both shaped around the format each sex is expected to live, work and reproduce under patriarchy. All things we do as human beings are done within time and space and all require energy, but the results of all we do are not equally valuable for reasons beyond human control. Not all use of resources results in an outcome that adds greater functionality to life, so is wasted. Through the gender system and the class system other peoples time, space and energy is siphoned off, the ones at the top get most of the productive results and the person exploited gets less for their currency. A person could build ten houses but not get the money to afford any of them, so in reality their energy is taken.

Most of the space around us is claimed to be owned by someone, even on public trains and buses and that someone is more often then not male. We are born into a system where we have to give up our time by default to live due to the fact most of the space and the energy it contains is owned, and we have to give our time in return for the energy we need to live and to get a small amount of space in the world to live in.

Men as a class are allocated more space in the world,  women’s bodies were historically viewed as space in the world and as goods. Today women are still treated like the space their body occupies in the world is not their own. The patriarchal entitlement of ownership of all matter on earth including all living creatures is extended to women because women are not seen fully human in the way men are, for this reason women are looked at as a resource. The view of women as a resource results in them being looked at as potential along the lines of what can be extracted from them, and the three main things are time, space and energy. Women are given the space they need to remain alive until someone sees fit to dispose of them, and in many parts of the world the penalty for killing a woman is lower and sometimes similar to what one gets for destroying property. In the UK several hundred years ago the charge for rape was trespassing and the crime was viewed as a crime against the woman’s husband or farther or other male owner. Its said by some that rape is made easier by how women are forced to dress, and by the fact women are socialized into a non confrontational way of being and the solution to rape is for women to become more equip to fight back. Its true women should be able to be more assertive and wear clothing that allows a greater range of activity, but so they can shout across open fields and hike in mountains or run for a train and not have sore feet, not for the purpose of avoiding rape because it won’t work and they shouldn’t have to structure there life around the treat of male violence.

The reason why it won’t work is because if your bodily space is viewed as a resource and men by default feel able to access it they will fight for it no matter how much you object. Men as a class have built armies to fight for things made difficult to get to and they do the same to women’s bodies, women in the army are still raped despite being trained as well as the men and wearing clothes that are the same as the men’s. A mans neck tie could easily be used to strangle him, and in the days when men wore high heels to show social status they did not give them up because they felt in danger wearing them, they gave them up for greater functionality and because the times and meanings attached to them passed. The main reason to give up high heels and restrictive clothing is because they take from you your time, space and energy and the proceeds of doing so may not be worth it. The decision of whether it is should not rest on an obligation based on someone’s sex. If a person is so into fashion and style they decide it is worth all of there time, space and energy then what they choose to wear should not be scripted around sex and they should not receive backlash when they stop doing it. Its clear women do and this is why its not a choice and will never be a choice for as long as sex role scripts exist.

Women’s time, space and energy is looked at another resource like land or water, and like land and water patriarchy tries to shape and purify it in accordance with what it wants.  The first thing that must be removed from the female commodity is any resistance to its use. The socialization of girls into femininity achieves this while also adding invitations for its use. Women are not only taught to not use there own time, space and energy for themselves but they are taught to actively give it away and to learn to enjoy being used. Women’s sense of being useful is to be rooted around how usable they are to others, not the things they can usefully do themselves. A man may be seen as useful for putting up a pair of shelves, a woman will be seen as useful based on how young, fertile and fuckable she is and how much she is willing to cook, clean and service while asking little in return. The useful tasks given to women are the ones where her time, space and energy are used for a lower return rate for her. Some insist that the solution is to raise the value of the work women do, rather then change the work women do or change the value of women. Problem is that women are allocated jobs that are already low in value, even if they are jobs that have once been done by men and the reason for this is because women’s time, space and energy is already viewed as worth less because women are viewed as worth less or in some cases nothing outside of the value men place on them. The tendency to pay women less for the very same job will not be solved by equally valuing all tasks, all which happens, is men move into the higher positions in upward moving industries regardless of the sex the task is associated with.

The masculinity and femininity system both have an high currency cost and most of the results go to benefit men, this means most of human time, space and energy is flowing in the direction of men as a class and this is why men more then women actively backlash against those viewed as gender non conforming and homophobia is included in this too.

The core rules of the femininity script are that women must be decorative and as inline with the beauty template as possible. They must have a personality that is not objectionable, and be able to fit around the plans or interests of men and because all men are free to have different plans and interests as full individuals of society women must be able to fit like a universal key. The only way to achieve this is if women don’t have as many plans or interests outside of the universal things most men want from a woman, and can only create individuality out of the things men don’t notice as much or things that don’t take away from what men expect of women. It’s for this reason women’s clothes have lots of choice but they are all fundamentally the same in the sense they lack the simple functionality of menswear and are made for a look over function. The reason women notice the subtle colour differences, is because the way they present as an object can be done in many ways, but the fact they have to present as an object does not change so women can get back some sense of individuality by simple details that men don’t care about. If a woman is wearing the wrong type of earrings for the occasion or the fashion has past it will likely be another woman who spots it and gives her backlash of some kind but if she steps out of the mould as object completely and dresses in a way that is not as much about being looked at, then men will notice they are not getting the full measure of what they feel entitled to from a woman. Women as a class collectively know they are not allowed to be full individuals and through this they develop other ways of trying to get a sense of individuality, normally by trying to get some sense of control over the things they have to do anyways. Unfortunately this depletes women’s time, space and energy further and results in women feeling a great sense of freedom at all the choices they have in clothing and of fashion and not addressing the fact they have little choice outside of it.

A lot of the worlds time, space and energy goes into making women into objects, all the clothing, cosmetics and effort it takes women to organise themselves into them tends to all come at the cost of all women the world over (just as men’s clothes do or all clothes). The things made for women dont even serve a function for her, there for the onlooker and they are increasingly high priced for quality and time they can be worn. All the time women put into shopping and dressing is for short lived results, they can’t buy something that will serve them years in the way men can and women are not allowed to wear clothes and have them show signs of wear like men can. This is because only subjects wear clothes, worn patches show signs of life and objects that show signs of wear are usually discarded and this is what happens to women as they show signs of wear. In this sense women’s bodies are inseparable from the clothes hung on them, and women are coat hangers not wearers of clothes and those who make women’s clothes make them from that angle. This is why women’s clothes can come with non functional pockets, can be any shape and why shoes even when flat can have soles millimetres thick. Inside pockets are rare on women’s clothes, because no one can see the inside so there is less reason to put it there. The reason women are not to sweat, age or show wear and tear in their clothes is all the same thing, they are all the signs the person is a living subject independent of how patriarchal society views them. Living subjects are ones that do work and have it recognised. They are the ones that are allowed to object to their use and to have ambitions of their own. They are the ones who by default are seen as owning their own time, space and energy and who will be given a fairer price in return for it and who will be highly rewarded and noticed when they are giving it up because they are not expected to do so by default. They are the ones who are still seen as looking good when showing the signs of life, as opposed to looking tarnished.

Women’s energy is not viewed as potent as men’s, and a lot of this is because women are never valued for what they do, and the energy cost of reproduction to women is greater but this fact is not socially recognised. When women are active in sports or in ways outside their sex role scripts, what they do is immediately recognised and attempts are made to shut it down. When women are active in their service roles, they are often expected to do it in shoes less suited to the job, and on occasions where men get to wear shoes more suited to the job. Women working in banks, schools and offices can be on their feet as much or more then men, but are expected to wear shoes that put a bigger strain on their feet just simply as a default based on sex. This is because women’s feet are seen as there to be displayed to the onlooker not for use of the woman herself, much like the rest of her. The second a woman puts on a pair of trainers and starts jogging people are concerned about the harm she may do to her body, but no one cares when the risk of harm is in doing something pleasing to men, it’s only when she is doing something tied up in her own ambitions. This is how all objects are treated, the wear and tear on them during their normal use is a risk that comes with using it, but when the object is used out of normal use then the chance of damage is a risk less worth taking. If a woman is to have wear and tear it must be a product of her expected use and if it is then its ok, but it cant be a result of her using her body for herself as with that comes another risk far greater, the risk she may benefit herself and that some of human time, space and energy may flow in the direction of a woman.

Men are subjects in the world are trained how to be the best users of time, space and energy. They are taught through masculinity script training that their time, space and energy are to be used to capitalize on that of others (more so women’s). The one thing both sex role scripts fail to tell everyone is that their time, space and energy is not to be spent exploiting everyone else’s regardless of sex everyone’s is worth the same. If sex role scripts said this there would be no reason for sex role scripts to exist, they are there to sort out territory based on sex and this territory is time, space and energy. This territorial divide that results from sex role scripts is what gives us a gender system and its where the backlash directed to those who cross over it comes from. Playing with gender is crossing territory and threatening to the fundamental structure of patriarchy, but incapable of changing it because no one really gets over unless they become fully able to pass as the opposite sex. When they do their past use of their time, space and energy and where its results went remain part of them. For the minority of people who transition, and the ones who live close to the line there are thousands of others living directly from the script and holding the territorial markers in place. What’s at stake here is not who can be a man or a woman, its what is socially expected for every new person born and entering that category, that’s what is remaining unchanged when individuals transgress. The abolition of the gender system is not about what we call ourselves, its the difference between being born to live and born to serve, born to use or born to be used and sometimes if we are even born at all.

Freedom is not found in the enjoyment of the things you are obligated to do anyways. Liberation is not found in breaking the rules of your oppression, it’s found in abolishing them.

The relay channel

Sex roles create a need to separate action from primary drives towards those actions, if for some reason there is a mismatch between the two sex roles will be more intolerable for some than others but they are still exploitative for all. How at ease we can do the tasks the exploiter expects of us is not a marker of how exploited we are. Girls are socialized out of instrumental behaviours and are to use their instrumental traits to carry out sex role specific actions, not their own ambitions. The relay channel is a short cut that girls learn to take over putting thoughts and resulting ideas into actions and finding out the results and this has to be learned because girls are discouraged from experimentation and risk taking. It’s for this reason that girls learn from a young age that its better to ask permission of test the water before they go ahead and act, for girls mistakes or the evidence of experimentation (mess or dirt) is punished harder, for them forgiveness is less obtainable. This teaches girls to not learn directly from their own actions, and to instead get their sense of certainty from others responses rather than finding out through trial and error what works and building direct security. Girls are punished more for getting their clothes torn or dirty, for making a mess and taking risks so for them failed projects are not worth the hassle as the reactions of other outweigh the experience even if the project is a success the responses of others will take from any task based reward.

Everyone naturally runs ideas past others to some degree, but sex role expectations greatly change the degree its done for females and it is a habit that opens them up to lots of unwanted advice and trains them to ruminate. It’s necessary for everyone to ask permission before carrying out things that will impact others, but the degree the female sex role demand one do so is greater than the male one because women’s time and space is not viewed as their own to structure or waste and their body space not there’s to risk.

Women’s time and space is always there to be filled up by sex role expectations, and women learn to fill up their own time with sex role obligations by taking on lots and leaving no time free. Women’s time is to be full in service to others, and when it’s not others will step in to ensure it is, if women are seen alone not occupied they tend not to be left to it in the way men are, the expectation the woman justify the use of her time to others still remains despite claims of equality.

Women’s space within themselves and their space in the outer world is all filled up by sex role expectations. Women are not allowed private inner space where their own thoughts, feelings, tastes and interests can flourish to form plans that can be manifested in the outside world to the full extent that men are.  Women are forced into emotional expression and have their mood scrutinized by others, they are told how to feel. Women are interrupted in the street and asked their thoughts, they are told what to think and how to feel and told what is appropriate for their sex. It could be argued we are all controlled by sex role expectations, but its only women who receive scrutiny before their inner  thoughts or feelings have being turned into actions and only women who are taught they must reveal all and are not allowed their own thoughts and feelings independent of others.

The inner space                      Outer space

-Thoughts                               -Actions
-Feelings                                -Expressions
-Interests                               -Activities

Over time women can get as if they don’t think for themselves, constantly asking others opinions on small things, and have their originality stifled so end up following the crowd. Men on average get more individual with age and women get more similar, due to a life time of being an uniformed commodity aimed at men. The reality is women are socialized to become objects that serve, not people with their own thought, feelings and interests and who live there life and fulfil them. The inner space of women has to be stuffed full of other people’s thoughts, feelings and interests and there actions, expressions and activities must be rooted around others and there wants and needs.

The relay results in women’s minds working in a way that separates them from their own wishes as default. The relay is held in place because over time it causes women to base most of their self-worth and ego structure in serving others, and social penalties for women’s mistakes are higher so the willingness to take risks socially is lower and this situation will worsen. The process of adverse social backlash will continue the more a woman starts to think for herself outside of whats expected, if she happens to be thinking for herself and aligned with expectations no one will notice it as much and she will remain unaware any expectations are on her. An example of this is that all women are scrutinized for what they wear and that demand women be always inline with fashion is down to how women are punished for showing originality(regardless of how it turns out). Women who like keeping up with the fashions and dressing as they are expected to dress inline with sex role expectations may not notice getting scrutinized as much, but when the time comes where she can no longer keep up or wants to move onto other things she may notice some form of backlash about how she dresses now. In reality she never had the freedom she thought she had, because true freedom does not have a punishment for not taking it. If women have freedom to wear heels, freedom to wear make up or freedom to follow a wide range of fashions there would be no social penalty for not doing so, the fact there is shows these things are an obligation. Enjoying doing a task that someone demands you do does not make that demand any less oppressive, that energy put into it has still been taken.

Some argue having to take less risks, getting more help and not having to think for one’s self as much is a form of privilege, but true privileges don’t come with punishments to those who give them up. Only women get told they have privileges and then punished for giving them up, women don’t get to say no to the help and then walk away, women are not praised for giving up there privileges because those privileges are really not privileges at all.

Its time to close the relay, to stop asking permission to act outside the sex role script, to stop assessing what people will do or think and put more of your own thought directly into action. Its time to decide when you want to smile, what you want to express and to find your own primary interests. Its time for women as a class to take back there own time and space as individuals and to re establish there own boundaries. Actions need to be judged by outcome not by the person doing them, and opinions need to have value outside the sex of the person holding them, activities need to be open based on interest not based on a persons sex.

The natural feedback one receive while doing an action in there sexed body needs to be separated from the social created feedback one receives while doing an action in there sexed body.

Instrumental Skill Set.

Planning, Organizing and Structure.

If the assignment of sex roles via the gender system could be summed up in three words Planning, Organizing and Structure would be them. Sex roles plan, organize and structure peoples lives based on sex and the expectation they will live a certain way and do a certain thing. By doing so they impact what emotions one feels and the tasks they do in life and both the instrumental and expressive skill set is organized by them.

Instrumental areas

-Decision making
-Opinions
-Tastes and preferences
-Space and time
-Tasks

Associated emotions (some of these may not be officially classed as emotions but they are feelings directly related to the mind more then the emotional centres and are triggers for emotions)

-Motivation
-Apathy
-Surprise
-Disappointment
-Excitement
-Worry
-Accomplishment
-Bored
-Certainty
-Doubt

The instrumental skill set is a place where women as a class are not allowed to act from directly under their own lead, this is because sex roles and the expectations they create result in a disruption between planning and action. Women as a class are given plans and organization externally and expected to use their instrumental skill set as part of their service role to organize others, more so men. This process produces many of the emotions associated with women, including worry and resulting anxiety, doubt, uncertainty and disappointment. It also causes women to be seen in the light of those emotions. Women’s time and space is used and arranged and disappointment is projected onto women when they try and claim that time and space for their own used because they are seen as obstructing the already existing plan for it. The same applies to women’s bodily space, emotional space and mental space, it is all part of patriarchal plans and when women have there own opinions, tastes or interests and wish to make their own decisions on their own life women are immediately seen as taking something away from others because their own personhood is already spoken for.

Women are taught to plan, organize and structure but independently of their ability to make decisions or have opinions or tastes or preferences which would result in self generated ambition to use their own time and space and energy to carry out self planned tasks and get any sense of task created accomplishment or disappointment. Women are taught to put into place other people’s plans and get accomplishment via serving others solely not from the task its self. This is why everywhere you go you can see women always trying to help and doing it by organizing others often at the expense of doing what they need to do for themselves while they wait for others to do the same for them or to show appreciation as their source of self esteem. All these things are a normal part of human existence for both sexes, but for women the balance is tipped too far and it becomes the standard way women are expected to navigate the world. This is because women’s time and space is already spoken for and when others see a woman using her time and space (including body and mind space) for herself they unconsciously backlash. This is the main source of conflict between women, more so mothers and daughters as there have been generational shifts that have lead to women today having more of their space and time for themselves. Post feminist backlash is centred on taking away more of women’s time and space and ability to plan, organize and structure for themselves in return for the increased power women have gained. Beauty routines are a strong example of this because they are the mass planning, structuring and organizing of women and at the determent of women’s time and space. Space in the instrumental sphere occupied by women has increased as women got the right to vote and participate in male dominated jobs that rely on the instrumental skill set. Forcing women to comply with an ever narrowing beauty standard and sex based code of behaviour acts directly to push women out of their instrumental skill set. It reduces their need for decision making, and to have ones own tastes preferences and opinions.

Over planning can cause one to worry, not like surprises and experience more disappointment and in the end cause one to shut down and become less motivated. This is a feedback loop that exists naturally in the brain, where one establishes tasks and follows them through and gets results. If someone is made to carry out lots of low quality repetitive tasks which have low reward or uncertain payoff the disappointment acts as feedback to switch down future motivation to prevent one experiencing more. In the end the person will be less willing to take risks, and over plan more to avoid disappointment in the future. If you are planning and organizing for other people and not allowed to put your own plans into action directly then your feedback is dependant on other people and how they respond to what you have done, your self esteem becomes rooted in how you can best serve others, dependant on their gratitude and you become that person who has their day ruined because someone did not say thank you. When you are planning and organizing for others, worry and disappointment will be in relation to them and it will disrupt expressive connections with others, in other words your relationships become tied into your service role. This problem is one of the features of the mother daughter relationship where a large proportion of a mothers self esteem is in her service script and without knowing it she is acting to prevent her daughter developing certain skills herself because when she does the mother feels a loss and may turn her disappointment into seeing the daughter as ungrateful. The problem is that as soon as the daughter moves on to trying to plan, organize and structure for herself she clashes with the person who is still doing a large proportion of this for her so the daughter has to either claim that back for herself or end up like the mother using her planning organizing and structuring for someone else. Women become aware that they are not allowed to use that part of themselves directly into tasks because to do so would be to act directly on the world rather then indirectly via the people in it and it’s this woman are denied. The consequence is the overdoing of nurturing and service and women as a class developing in a way that makes pleasing others at the expense of them rewarding to the point of being dependant on it.

If you get used to over planning when you stop you have to learn new ways of coping with the randomness and this is how you truly learn to live. Women tend to not be afforded this space though as their mistakes are less tolerated because mistakes are something you make when you are trying new things, experimenting and moving out of the established mould or when you are really young. If a woman does not know where she is going then the general response is to think the woman is stupid, she is not given time to explore and find her way that’s only reserved for men because they are to be the ones living with a mind to explore and women are meant to literally know their place and wait to be taken to new ones. This is age old, but in reality little has changed the modern world is increasingly organized and the problem less visible. But if you really want to see, then be a woman who gets in the wrong lane, or be a woman reading a map and find yourself interrupted and given directions normally the annoying left right past supermarket long list directions that you never asked for. If a man is wondering around no one goes over to ask if he is lost, if he is stood people leave him to it. On the surface this may look like some kind of female privilege, but in reality it’s a side effect of something counter productive. Sex roles provide something on the outside and it affects the inside, and when you step out of them it’s like removing a support and realizing how weak it has kept you. There are women who don’t know how to pay bills, how to get to places or how to purchase certain things (like cars) and it’s all centred on this instrumental skill set. Over planning and too much structure leaves no gaps, no room to dream or wonder and no room for original creativity. Women are not allowed to change their mind, because women are not socially sanctioned to have a mind, to think or to progress themselves. Changing ones mind is a sign one is thinking and forming opinions, and like anything else they need space to flow a little before they become established. Women don’t tend to get this space because when they do they are called changeable, told they can’t make up their mind and because of this they are forced into a sense of rigidity of opinion which in the end will lead to being told they are stubborn. This pattern always related to how women’s opinions align with expectations created by men and if the change along with expectations or not. Part of women’s service role is the expectation they be agreeable and people with their own opinions are going to be less of a standardized servant compatible with a wide range of people from the class that are allowed opinions. Women are to know others tastes preferences and opinions over their own and are to support and nurture the ideas and opinions of men without using that thinking part of their mind and disagreeing. Doing so is seen as the opposite of service and nurturing but in reality it’s not because sometimes it’s the best thing you can do for someone.

In patriarchal society women are discouraged from the following

-Making decisions for self and ones own life
-Owning ones own time and space
-Having opinions of their own
-Making decisions for self based one ones own tastes and preferences or ambitions How women end up trapped in the service role and enjoying being exploited.

In others the service role creates a variety of responses in others.

-Expectation
-Guilt
-Gratitude
-Demand
-Patience
-Entitlement
-Independence

The true motivation to be independent comes from having experienced the assistance of someone performing the service role, to have seen the dark side of it and not want to become it. This is when you reject the things that many other women have been socialized to do, and reject them honestly by no longer expecting others to plan, organize and structure for you and decide your not going to act in the service role yourself. From here the person doing the service role seems overbearing and imposing, this is where the illusion of other women’s power emerges. This is where other women see your strive towards breaking the role as a threat to them, where they can no longer do what patriarchy demands of them, where they must let you do it for yourself and through it they learn that they too much do it for themselves. Here is where all women try and claim their own instrumentality and stop trying to shape the world through others and look to do it directly and find out they can’t and they want to know why. Its here where women find out their time and space is not really there own, they find out hoe enmeshed there lives are with other peoples and how obligated they are by sex roles.

The loss women feel when they can no longer live off that social approval for doing the service role right is what’s needed to recover and resource their sense of achievement. When a large proportion of a persons self esteem is tied up in tasks of service, rejection and loss is experienced when people want to do those things for themselves. Women as a result take their anger out on their daughters, on other women who act independent for removing their ability to act in ways that give reward under patriarchy. This is the very mechanism by which women hold male power in place, as when other women step out of that role and take their instrumental skill set into non service tasks they are refusing to serve men and are viewed as competing with men. The reason for this is because patriarchy is the main task in hand and is planned, structured and organized by men as a class and its existence depends on women not planning, structuring and organizing the world directly from there own thinking base .

Swapping manhood for masculinity, patriarchy’s currency exchange system.

Feminism tends to be equated with ball busting and viewed as the ultimate threat to manhood. The reality is the social system of masculinity is the biggest threat to men, and because of it men are made into the biggest real threat to each other. Those who champion traditional masculinity and war also champion young men going off to be killed, they champion men getting their balls blown off in combat and they champion men as agents of instrumentality to be foot soldiers in a system that benefits men as a class over women as a class but is a cost to many men as individuals as they are the ones who pay the high price of masculinity.

Don’t look to the woman who wont lick your wounds, be them psychological or physical, look to the man who inflected them and to the system that made him doing so the norm. Ask why masculinity has to be achieved, and note that by the time it does the male body you came with it well past its youthful prime, infact the act of achieving masculine social status will siphon off your energy and give you credit in the form of wealth. Looking to women and saying it’s their fault, they evolved this way to look for accomplished men is pointless because we live in a system that separates the male youthful energy from its evolved goal by several years. Even if it true that women evolved to look for certain traits in a male so he can build things for her and find food while she reproduces and nurtures the young, it still does not translate to the modern day idea of women seeking out today’s idea of success in men. Today the actual traits and behaviours that lead to men building things or finding food are used up in a work system where people get paid very little in return, so take years to become successful and save up money. In the natural evolved environment all that work would go directly from a man to the resources and back home to the cave, and as he aged he would be less able to be accomplished because without money he cannot save the proceeds of the work he does today for the future. He may have got a social standing as an elder in the group, but only through exploitation would this give him access to women. Today a man age 18 will have hiss time and energy siphoned off for 20 years, then he may have saved enough or worked his way up enough to be considered today’s version of accomplished. There is no way that the more primitive part of the brain would suddenly switch to women finding older rich men attractive because it evolved in a more early time, a time when many did not survive to old age and where storing wealth was not a thing, your wealth was in what you could achieve in the now and still is really. This system steals everyone’s true wealth, energy is richness, skills are richness and your own creative potential is richness and we are forced to trade them all for less then they are worth.

The system is designed so only a few men do become accomplished, most become labour factories that won’t get all the things in return for being socialized into masculinity that’s promised, so today they give free internet porn and soon they will produce all kinds of sex machines via robotics. If there is a war the decision will be made by older men and those who fight it will be young men and some women, those who appose it will be more likely feminists. War is a symptom of instrumentality being directed against others, and it assumes the thing fraught over matters more then the cost of the war, it assumes ideas created by older men long dead matter more then the lives of the young. There were times in evolutionary past where people fought for the limited resources needed to live, they fought to live and that’s justifiable. But when war reaches the stage where the resources we all need to live are destroyed in the process of maintaining power and domination over other and over how they think or live it’s not justifiable. To kill to get resources that make your life easier or to get resources for people who will be your decedents and don’t exist yet is not justifiable.

Patriarchy’s gender system acts to separate men from their emotions and natural connection with others, all the things that would get in the way of them wanting to both rule and kill others. Men are not born masculine, they are made to do so and in the process their true humanity is destroyed. And it’s replaced with an illusion of individuality and independence that comes at the cost of women. Men who are seen as too soft due to retaining many of their expressive traits which make them more connected and caring towards others are bullied until they become hardened and withdrawn by other men. They are made to feel like they are not a real man or even made to think that somewhere along the line some feminist stole their masculinity, they are set up as an example of what will happen to all men if feminism reaches its goals.

Patriarchy created a world where we have to fight to be free, have strength to navigate the world; because it created a system where no one has the freedom they are born with. It created a world where having once been dependant on a female body for life is a reality that has to be forgotten and replaced by a story of a male god who made us all.

Men as a class know the cost of the masculinity system, and they have been willing to pay it. Having control over women as a class and over their reproduction and labour is something they are not going to give up without a fight. Feminism has made women less accessible on men’s terms, and it has made the pay off of the masculinity system less rewarding for more men, but it has not fully reached the men higher up the social system yet. They are the ones that benefit from the exploitation of all women and men economically below them.
Feminism cannot destroy the original essence a man was born with, but patriarchy can and does and masculinity is a symptom of this destruction, a sign a separation in self has been achieved. it’s a bit like weight vs. mass, mass stays the same, gravity determines weight and the patriarchy is the gravity and the gender system the scales, masculinity a measure of how much you weight under patriarchy. Your mass will remain the same when the gravity adjusts, when the measure of the scales are removed, if your strong you will still be strong, the essence of what you think makes you a man still remains, what changes is you don’t get to be more or less of a man based on what traits you have and what you do. Any capability you have in yourself will not be destroyed by feminism, what will is its use to further the current system or to exploit women. The exploitation of others should not be needed for anyone to maintain your sense of self, strength only in contrast to someone made weaker is not true strength. Power only because you have social permission to tell other how to use their own power is not true power as true power can only exist in the self and rest in the ability to be in full control of the self. True power cannot exist in a system where people don’t know the boundaries between self and others, where connection is used to control and people don’t know the difference between being effective and using other peoples power. Winning that depends on someone else losing, success based on another failing are only comparative forms of success that exist as a measure on patriarchy’s scales. True success or accomplishment is in creating something that stands in its own right regardless to what someone else does, and where how rich you feel is not based on how poor someone else is. None comparative value is hard to imagine, because we live in a hierarchical system where things have value outside their actual properties and also where that value is tied up in competition with others.

Youth vs. Money.

If everyone was young, youth would still have value, and it brings with it the possibility of more energy, less chance of disease, longer life. Most people would rather be 20 then 80 no matter how many other people are 20.

If everyone had the same amount of money and lots of it then money would lose all its value. If everyone had all the food and water and shelter money could buy then food water and shelter does not lose its value because it’s still needed. Others having it do not make you want it less or make it less appealing.

If everyone had the same social status, then social status would not exist at all. Power over others could not exist at all. Exchange could exist because everyone’s mass in the world would still consist of different things, some strong, some nurturing, some creative some adventurous, people would not be weighted based on the traits they contain and assigned a value as a man or a woman. The things achieved would be valued for their use, not who made them.

Patriarchy produces a system where one is expected to trade the things that have true value for the things that have false value (social status and money). Men under this system are socialized to get these things directly, and women are to get them through men after being forced to trade reproduction.

This is a system that had to end.