“James, relative to your answer to Maureen ‘How Do You Deal With Aggression?’ that it was harder for a woman to pare herself down economically than it is for a man, I’d like to know more about what you’ve observed that’s different. Why would it be more difficult for a woman? In which ways or areas of life, particularly?”

“How do I pull myself from this slavery to money?”

“I sit here, waiting breathlessly, for your erudite reply.”

Habibi

Forgive me Habibi, but if I don’t write it, Jeremy will!

Young lady, you might begin be letting go of that pole, walking off that lurid stage, and having a seat right here on Big Daddy’s lap, while he tells you all about—what was the topic again?

Oh yes—those—I mean that…

I have written extensively on materialism and will recommend the essay M. We might begin with noting that the myth that women have higher pain tolerance than men is false. Indeed the keen ability of the woman to suffer is behind such aboriginal customs as the Iroquois and Tuareg detailing the torture of captive enemies to their women. Material and maternal are etymologically linked terms. The human female is subject to more hormonal variance than the male, and is less physically robust, making her more vulnerable to physical aggression, which is essentially the use or compromise of one’s body by another for their own pleasure or objectives, or for the submission of your will to theirs.

Generally speaking the man is the transcendent gender, whose inventions enabled us to evolve beyond mere animal concerns. Reay Tannahil makes an excellent case for this in the opening chapters of her book Sex in History, which places the subjugation of the female human as a slave-mate as a bi-product of man’s domestication of animals and observations concerning paternal relations to the young. In a violent world—and even our rarified world is beset by violence—the female is dependent upon the male—or a male invented device—for protection. It is no accident that most spiritual traditions and religions have male prophets. Since that first ape man split a rival’s head open with a rock, the man’s mind has been far more prone to wondering and wandering beyond the immediate mortal-material-maternal-matriarchal concerns than has the more physically and socially bound woman.

The woman’s dilemma, in material terms, is most austerely felt when she hits economic bottom. This isn’t fun for anyone, but is tougher on the female.

For example, Habibi, if I found myself homeless I could well expect to rise as a leader of my wretched kind, due to the combination of my mental powers—which though pale on campus would certainly shine behind the dumpster—and my combat ability, without which my mind would achieve scant purchase upon the dim minds of my fellows.

You, on the other hand, should you find yourself homeless, with your nigh un-concealable, ah hum, proportions, would immediately descend from erudite and sought after companion of night club patrons, to the soiled property of vile men. You might be brighter than Ms. Tannahil herself, but without the ability to impose and preserve your will through physical means, in any marginal or criminal setting your status would descend like a stone in a pond to that of property, either owned or potential. To be exact, so long as you were able to maintain your hygiene, you would be attacked regularly by criminals and police officers. Once your hygiene and appearance slipped, you would only be attacked by criminals.

This means that your material assets, with which you might pay for an apartment in a secure building, or even hire male escorts to take you to public attractions so that you will not be singled out as a crime target, or, in this mangina-rich age, might use to purchase for yourself a burly male-wife, are more crucial to your survival—and the survival of your dignity which is crucial to the survival of your spirit—than are my material goods to me.

For instance, if you are caught at a bus stop without your mace, and attacked, you are toast. I, on the other hand, minus my knife, might still knock my attacker’s teeth out with my hard fist, beat him to death with an iron trash bin, etc. Your mace means more to you than my knife means to me, simply because I am more dangerous at base, at bottom, in the pit of despair that awaits all civilized heretics if they take that final irredeemable fall from material grace.

Aboriginal societies generally recognized this by attaching property to the female, with men usually only owning those tools used to acquire property. As settled societies grew, and were conquered by nomad livestock breeding societies, then conquered people began to be treated like livestock, and eventually as a crop, such as under our current tax farming system.

The aboriginal Big Man [and this was emulated by the two most successful conquerors in world history, Genghis Khan and Alexander] would have regular ceremonies in which he gave his acquired goods away. This was not some egalitarian redistribution scheme designed and implemented by H. G. Wells in his wonderful time machine, but merely a means by which one warrior declared to his tribe, that he was fully confident in acquiring such goods again. “I am Alexander, and you are not!”

Contrast that idea of the Big Man to the civilized Honcho, a fat man sitting on a vast pile of goods gotten by others, and wasting away into a rancid parody of the aboriginal alpha male.

The problem is, Habibi, when we give it all away and hit economic bottom, even in the most abundant society on earth, we end up sitting on a curb next to some predatory ethnic minority who relates to our humanity no more than did the leopard to our tree-dwelling progenitors. And, should we survive his unsavory attentions, we must deal with the societal sentinel—in the form of the police officer—who has been placed just above the bottom of the social barrel in order to keep the scum like us from rising to the top.

Ms., I am not qualified to advise women on doing a version of what I have done with my life. Instead of attempting such a feat, I will delineate the four basic social templates that have permitted women in past cultures to live fairly independent of the gross material abundance and government oversight that the postmodern woman requires, as they instead relied on reciprocal relationships with men and other women.

The Queen, the most successful of which was Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was related by marriage or blood to four kings, including her son Richard ‘The Lion Hearted’ Plantagenet, is the preferred method of preserving autonomy for the woman. What is required is a moral debt owed by a man of material or violent means. I know numerous women who get through life according to this system, whereby they depend on different men for different services in a predominantly ethical setting. Such arrangements are going the way of the condor for the mangina generation. Chivalry is, if not dead, in a coma. The idea that a man should provide for the needs of a woman in return for emotional support, acceptance, and even solace is now perhaps the least extolled notions in the Western World. Neither feminist or masculinity advocates will be found arguing for the notion that every woman should be a queen—because this would permit men to be kings. The notion that every person must dirty their hands in the economic workplace, and abandon familial concerns, is central to the myth of the ideological construct that is the Modern State.

Living As A Man is a very rare option used by such women as Joan of Arc—who gained only pain and fame from it—and my favorite vicious lesbo bitch, La Maupin, born in 1670, and known to have cut down many a Frenchman in sword duels, and to be prone to eloping with the wives of rivals. Habibi, from my expert and clinical [to make it a proper control study I watched it sober, then while drinking, and then while drunk] viewing of your dance video, I am of the opinion that you are no La Maupin, but rather the kind of gal that La Maupin would kidnap and spirit off to some giant doll house after running your night club manager through with a sword cane.

The Matriarch contrary to the myth that African-American culture is matriarchal, I would like to point out that matriarchy was the tradition of the European West. Black women in America are merely the slave girls of the federal government, who at near 50 million wives has outdone Genghis Khan and all his sons for collecting subservient females into a harem. In traditional Western households a woman would be provided for first by her father, than husband, then sons, and then grandsons. Rather than her accumulating great wealth her men reinvested their earnings into ongoing efforts to keep her in her sacred place—the home. This has fallen completely out of favor. However, I am glad to know a few women who still serve as the linchpin of extended families, who own very little, give away what little they have, and will not suffer want, as they live at the center of a successful family hub.

The Spinster is, admittedly the poor sister of the matriarch who failed to find for herself that place at the center of an industrious extended family. In the postmodern setting she is likely to be the grandmother, displaced by the mother to a periphery role. The extended family was targeted for extinction by the State about 100 years ago, and by the time of my early adulthood the ideal was all but gone from the mainstream American consciousness. However, with the implosion of the housing market and the continued economic downturn, some people have been reinventing the notion of the extended family as an economic unit. The oft reviled spinster is actually the counterpart of the male shaman, a person that practices their arts in seclusion, but within easy access of those younger family members who might need advice, expertise or support.

My Grandmothers were such women and I learned much from them. I have aunts that still live in this fashion, and are essentially what remains of the glue that barely keeps the family together. Most importantly, is the potential personal connection between the curious young and the thoughtful internal exile of the family.

Having grown up in a default secular nuclear family trying to live the homogenized American material dream, I had no sense of heritage or history—which is the point of a homogenized society. In my thirties, having let my three reclusive uncles pass without learning much about them or myself—and holding tightly to their images and words—I knew in my soul that the familial experiment my generation, and my parent's generation, had lived was a lie. I then began to take a ten mile walk once a week to visit Grandma LaFond, or, as my Aunt Marie’s family called her, Grandma in the Room. For about six months I visited Grandma LaFond every Wednesday morning after work. She was blind, and sat tiny and smiling, knitting in her chair, while we spoke. She told me about our Canadian family history, and told me about what it was like to be a working woman in the 1920s.

My life soon spun crazily out of control as I picked up a total of five additional employment commitments. I lost touch with Grandma until her funeral. But that half of year of Wednesday mornings is part of the rudder that has kept me to my own course in life. Our society seeks to extinguish the possibility of Grandma in the Room, or of eccentric Uncle George in the Basement, as they provide cultural continuity that is corrosive to the soulless state.

Habibi, my instinct tells me that I have no answers for you, and can do nothing more than post my observances. My overall observation on materialism—indeed our very use of language was dependent on hunting tools and fire—is that it did elevate us above simple animals in the quest to transcend our environment. However, having gotten free of the need to cling to a tree branch and chatter hysterically hoping we are not the ape taken by the leopard, we have developed such a massive tool kit, that it—our humungous tool kit—has become our environment, and has spawned its own predatory forces to challenge our urge to transcend our circumstances.

The only advice I feel worthy of dispensing here, is to not give up on the idea of transcending our material circumstances.