Mansplaining the Metaphysics of Masculinity.

[beenherebeforeagain]

The thread name pointed out that I would be taking a stab at mansplaining the metaphysics of masculinity. I can agree with your statement to the extent that we concede, with little difficulty, that masculinity is, for all men, a spectrum rather than an objective singularity. Once we concede that, it's fairly easy to admit that your statement isn't problematic for the proposition that for "masculinity" in general (rather that for "men," since "men" speaks of a spectrum of masculinity) everything is a sublimation for sexual desire.

We could then say that for men on one side of the spectrum of masculinity (closer to the feminine pole) few things are sublimation for sexual desire, without affecting the concept that on the other pole, closest to strict masculinity, everything is sublimation for sexual desire.



John

I disagree with your assertion that sublimation for sexual desire = masculinity. Women are just as capable of sublimating their sexual desires as men are, and range from doing so very little to doing so a great deal. Sublimation of sexual desire does not explain much in the real world...in my view...certainly not what is 'masculine' and 'feminine'...

 

[John D. Brey]

These are merely your opinions. My opinion is different. Everything is not a sublimation.

Do you consider yourself mostly masculine?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Sublimation of sexual desire does not explain much in the real world...in my view...

According to psychoanalysts (and I have Freud, and Norman O. Brown in mind) the newborn infant is "polymorphously perverse." Which is to say the baby is sexually attracted to anything and everything that brings it pleasure. The same child violently disdains anything that brings it anything but pleasure.

Here again Freud is only seeing face to face what religious poetic mysticism has divined darkly and expressed symbolically in the cult of Madonna and Child. Evelyn Under-Coventry Patmore: "The Babe sucking its mother's breast, and the Lover returning, after twenty years' separation, to his home and food in the same bosom, are the types and princes of Mystics" . . . At the mother's breast, in Freudian language, the child experiences that primal condition, forever after idealized, "in which object-libido and ego-libido cannot be distinguished"; in philosophic language, the subject-object dualism does not corrupt the blissful experience of the child at the mother's breast. . . where the first satisfaction of the sexual instinct is simultaneously the first satisfaction of the self-preservation instinct.​

​

Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death, p. 51-52.​

According to Freud, the pleasure principle (the child's polymorphous sexual perversion) gives way to the reality principle (the self-preservation instinct), only when survival in the "real" world necessitates it. When this begins to take place, the child doesn't give up on his former polymorphous perverseness (his constant and perpetual seeking and attaining of pleasure-fulfillment, most notably at the mother's breast) willingly, as if he finds the tradeoff fair and desirable. On the contrary, every loss of pleasure-fulfillment is postponed only for the sake of survival such that each and every trade off, from pleasure and desire, to necessity and survival, transforms the necessity into a mere sublimation.

The ugly necessity is, in the mind of the child, merely a temporary path that will, eventually, lead back to the mother's breast. When, on the wedding night, necessity has been endured, and those lips lock once again onto the cornucopia of polymorpous-pleasure, every necessity endured up to that point has been rightly sublimated as the path, and thus part and parcel, of the sole desire, which is a return to unrelenting pleasure fulfillment, with the woman's breast as the primary symbol of this highest purpose for existence found lurking behind the necessity of survival. In this form of sublimation, every necessity of human survival is part and parcel of the endgame that is the return to Eden that exists just the other side of the chuppah. Every act of survival is foreplay, sublimation, since it's made a part and parcel of that for which sake it's endured.

​

John

 

[Secret Chief]

Do you consider yourself mostly masculine?



John

No.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

According to psychoanalysts (and I have Freud, and Norman O. Brown in mind) the newborn infant is "polymorphously perverse." Which is to say the baby is sexually attracted to anything and everything that brings it pleasure. The same child violently disdains anything that brings it anything but pleasure.

Here again Freud is only seeing face to face what religious poetic mysticism has divined darkly and expressed symbolically in the cult of Madonna and Child. Evelyn Under-Coventry Patmore: "The Babe sucking its mother's breast, and the Lover returning, after twenty years' separation, to his home and food in the same bosom, are the types and princes of Mystics" . . . At the mother's breast, in Freudian language, the child experiences that primal condition, forever after idealized, "in which object-libido and ego-libido cannot be distinguished"; in philosophic language, the subject-object dualism does not corrupt the blissful experience of the child at the mother's breast. . . where the first satisfaction of the sexual instinct is simultaneously the first satisfaction of the self-preservation instinct.​

​

Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death, p. 51-52.​

According to Freud, the pleasure principle (the child's polymorphous sexual perversion) gives way to the reality principle (the self-preservation instinct), only when survival in the "real" world necessitates it. When this begins to take place, the child doesn't give up on his former polymorphous perverseness (his constant and perpetual seeking and attaining of pleasure-fulfillment, most notably at the mother's breast) willingly, as if he finds the tradeoff fair and desirable. On the contrary, every loss of pleasure-fulfillment is postponed only for the sake of survival such that each and every trade off, from pleasure and desire, to necessity and survival, transforms the necessity into a mere sublimation.

The ugly necessity is, in the mind of the child, merely a temporary path that will, eventually, lead back to the mother's breast. When, on the wedding night, necessity has been endured, and those lips lock once again onto the cornucopia of polymorpous-pleasure, every necessity endured up to that point has been rightly sublimated as the path, and thus part and parcel, of the sole desire, which is a return to unrelenting pleasure fulfillment, with the woman's breast as the primary symbol of this highest purpose for existence found lurking behind the necessity of survival. In this form of sublimation, every necessity of human survival is part and parcel of the endgame that is the return to Eden that exists just the other side of the chuppah. Every act of survival is foreplay, sublimation, since it's made a part and parcel of that for which sake it's endured.

Coitus is immoral because there is no man who does not use woman at such times as a means to an end; for whom pleasure does not, in his own as well as her being, during that time represent the full value of mankind.​

​

Otto Weininger, Sex and Character.​

John

Yes, I understand that there are people who think the way you do. You can keep on citing them, and mansplaining everything through your own personal analytic lens, but it is not what I think...and I really have no interest in trying to convince you that other points of view exist and do a better job explaining the world.

So, have a nice day. I'll not be responding to your posts.

 

[John D. Brey]

No.

. . . Ok. Let me rephrase that. Do you consider yourself more masculine than me? . . . I'm trying to gain a one up on you so far as our opinions concerning masculinity are concerned.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Yes, I understand that there are people who think the way you do. You can keep on citing them, and mansplaining everything through your own personal analytic lens, but it is not what I think...and I really have no interest in trying to convince you that other points of view exist and do a better job explaining the world.

. . . Fwiw, you would have a very simple time convincing me there are other points of view. In fact, there would be no need to even attempt to convince me of that since engaging other points of view is my primary intention. Imo, that's kinda the most useful purpose of forums like this, and threads like this.

To your credit you noted that at least now you see the prism I'm using when I use sexual metaphors throughout my argumentation. And I can appreciate you not being interested in pursuing this line of thinking.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

According to Freud, the pleasure principle (the child's polymorphous sexual perversion) gives way to the reality principle (the self-preservation instinct), only when survival in the "real" world necessitates it. When this begins to take place, the child doesn't give up on his former polymorphous perverseness (his constant and perpetual seeking and attaining of pleasure-fulfillment, most notably at the mother's breast) willingly, as if he finds the tradeoff fair and desirable. On the contrary, every loss of pleasure-fulfillment is postponed only for the sake of survival such that each and every trade off, from pleasure and desire, to necessity and survival, transforms the necessity into a mere sublimation.

The ugly necessity is, in the mind of the child, merely a temporary path that will, eventually, lead back to the mother's breast. When, on the wedding night, necessity has been endured, and those lips lock once again onto the cornucopia of polymorpous-pleasure, every necessity endured up to that point has been rightly sublimated as the path, and thus part and parcel, of the sole desire, which is a return to unrelenting pleasure fulfillment, with the woman's breast as the primary symbol of this highest purpose for existence found lurking behind the necessity of survival. In this form of sublimation, every necessity of human survival is part and parcel of the endgame that is the return to Eden that exists just the other side of the chuppah. Every act of survival is foreplay, sublimation, since it's made a part and parcel of that for which sake it's endured.

Where everything that necessarily intrudes between breast-feeding and the wedding night is considered a sublimation, so far as the groom is concerned (i.e., every act is in some sense directed toward his lips once again, post-adolescence, returning to the cornucopia of Eden), it's not difficult to make sense of the fact that in Judaism, as in Christianity, the wedding ritual clearly represents, and is quite literally, and very generally, advertised as a return to Eden, a return to the unadulterated pleasures of sanctified-adultery (polymorphous-perverseness) that the flesh doth surely hold.

Throughout Jewish and Christian teaching, the wedding ceremony is nothing less than a ritualized return to the joys of uninhibited "nakedness" that the first man and woman possessed while in a state of "innocence" that parallel's the infant bridegroom. The infant bridegroom's participation in the mother's breasts is the Eden of sanctified polymorpous-perversity prior to the time when unrestrained sexual desire becomes transformed by the necessity to survive the new rules of the fallen world.

Not only is the covering up of "nakedness" related to sin and the Fall, but sexual desire itself must be covered up (sublimated), the genitals clothed, so that only after the wedding ritual is a return to marital bliss, i.e., sexual perversity (uninhibited "nakedness"), thereafter sanctified by the church and the synagogue.

In Jewish mysticism, ritual circumcision is seen as an uncovering of the male genital from the covering, the sublimation of its most naked purpose, such that its fitting that etymologically, logically, and even historically, circumcision was originally a wedding ritual. The father-in-law is the mohel, the circumciser, uncovering his son-in-law, under the chuppah, signifying that the union whereby his son-in-law returns to Eden is not only central to the ritual wedding, but, since circumcision is central to Jewish identity itself, this uncovering of the sexual organ which symbolizes a return to Eden situates "Israel" or "the Jews" as the corporate emblem of a future return to Eden in a "Kingdom of God," a new world order/civilization, where polymorphous-perversity will no longer be perverse. In this mystical exegesis of the symbolism of marriage, the human history that takes place between the Fall, and the instantiation of the Kingdom of God, represents the global, or universal, age of sublimation; a passage of time that parallels the period beginning when the future bridgroom's lips are removed from the mother's breast, and ending when they finally return after the wedding vows. In the parlance of Christian mystics, we couls speak of the passage of time situated between the Last Supper, and the Wedding Super of the Lamb.



John

 

[Secret Chief]

. . . Ok. Let me rephrase that. Do you consider yourself more masculine than me? . . . I'm trying to gain a one up on you so far as our opinions concerning masculinity are concerned.



John

Ok I'm not sure if we're having a joke here. So I'll play it straight: I have no notion or opinion whatsoever regarding your masculinity. Indeed it is a stereotype that I do not relate to. To me, you are some words on a screen....

 

[John D. Brey]

Ok I'm not sure if we're having a joke here. So I'll play it straight: I have no notion or opinion whatsoever regarding your masculinity. Indeed it is a stereotype that I do not relate to. To me, you are some words on a screen....

. . . It is clear that the zoharic authorship, consistent with standard medieval views, reflecting in turn ancient Greco-Roman as well as Near Eastern cultural assumptions, identified the writing instrument (pen or chisel) with the phallus, on one hand, and the tablet or page with the female on the other.​

​

Professor Elliot Wolfson, Circle in the Square, p. 62.​

It doesn't take a great Professor of Jewish mysticism to guess what Wolfson says the words on the page represent. It turns out that what the pen is, when it's playing it's role (in the hay) proliferating words, is similar to the penis when it's proliferating flesh and blood. Which of us has spilled or spewed more verbiage in the forum?


John

 

[Alien826]

I could not have thought that, since the only pet I tolerate is a huge spider. Her name is Arabella,

Ciao

- viole

I'm reminded of a talk given by a Minister a long time ago. He said that if you are looking for the goodness of God, stay away from the insect world. Not suggesting you are looking for anything of the sort, but if you imagine yourself as being on the same same scale as the spider, any affection for Arabella would quickly fade away.

That said, I find spiders quite fascinating in many ways. Have you watched a spider build an orb web?

 

[Secret Chief]

. . . It is clear that the zoharic authorship, consistent with standard medieval views, reflecting in turn ancient Greco-Roman as well as Near Eastern cultural assumptions, identified the writing instrument (pen or chisel) with the phallus, on one hand, and the tablet or page with the female on the other.​

​

Professor Elliot Wolfson, Circle in the Square, p. 62.​

It doesn't take a great Professor of Jewish mysticism to guess what Wolfson says the words on the page represent. It turns out that what the pen is, when it's playing it's role (in the hay) proliferating words, is similar to the penis when it's proliferating flesh and blood. Which of us has spilled or spewed more verbiage in the forum?


John

Well that was irrelevant to what I said.

 

[Alien826]

It wouldn't be original for me to point out that, at least for men, everything is a sublimation for sexual fulfillment, everything.

I dong don't agree. My penis thoughts are rarely about sex. When I think about pussies women, it's always their tits personalities I wank over concentrate on. After all the penis pen is mightier than the pork sword.

 

[John D. Brey]

I dong don't agree. My penis thoughts are rarely about sex. When I think about pussies women, it's always their tits personalities I wank over concentrate on. After all the penis pen is mightier than the pork sword.

There's a slight but meaningful difference between Freudian slips versus "sublimation."



John

 

[Secret Chief]

I dong don't agree. My penis thoughts are rarely about sex. When I think about pussies women, it's always their tits personalities I wank over concentrate on. After all the penis pen is mightier than the pork sword.

Is your name Richard?

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Philo's implication that masculinity is essentially invisible

Philo was a Hellenized Jew. He would have absorbed the extreme misogyny of Greek culture. This was a culture that so hated and demeaned women, that sexual relations with women were deemed inferior to sexual relations with teenage boys. I would like to humbly suggest that Philo is not really a go-to guy for any commentary on masculinity.

 

[John D. Brey]

Philo was a Hellenized Jew. He would have absorbed the extreme misogyny of Greek culture. This was a culture that so hated and demeaned women, that sexual relations with women were deemed inferior to sexual relations with teenage boys. I would like to humbly suggest that Philo is not really a go-to guy for any commentary on masculinity.

Philo is both a Hellenized Jew, and also a highly respected metaphysician. I don't think there's anything misogynistic about his metaphysical claims. It's his Judaism that could be considered misogynistic in how they believe the female is an after-thought of God, a mere helper, rather than the original human, the original Jewish mother.

Philo is saying that in a metaphysical sense, "masculinity" is abstract, invisible, although real, while everything physical, empirically observable, is feminine. Many metaphysicians, to include Paul of Tarsus, consider binary gender to be something like the poster-child for all binary realities in the cosmos. The material world is female, and the invisible world is male. Flesh is feminine, spirit is male, etc..

Building on Philo and Paul, I've proffered the idea that in line with Philo, Paul, and even the God of Abraham, there's no true masculinity in the biological sense. There's only female and faux-male. A faux-male is a phallic-female; a female with a false rod of toxic, or fabricated (Genesis 2:21) masculinity. Every biological male is a faux-male: a female with a fleshly symbol of invisible masculinity: the phallus.

In this light, the Hebrew of the Torah can be corrected to acknowledge that Eve wasn't the anomalous gender in Genesis chapter 2. She was a perfect clone of the first human. A perfect, identical, facsimile, of the first human. It's in Genesis 2:21 that the first new gender was created. And it wasn't female. It was faux-male. Ha-adam has the labial flesh of his body sutured shut (the penile-raphe) creating the emblem of the faux-male: the phallus.

Consequently, in Genesis 17, when God determines to undo the dastardly deed ha-adam did when he took on the faux-male flesh, God has Abraham symbolically remove (brit milah) the faux-male flesh ha-adam had allowed to be added in Genesis 2:21.

As bizarre and difficult to believe as all this may be, it's fair to say that any Jew who has seen the mohel ritually swallow the blood of the faux-male flesh during metzitzah will be expected to pass a test on everything written above before they're allowed to partake of the wedding supper festivities that begin the World to Come. Just think of it. You might be the first one seated in that cosmic game of musical chairs.



John