Philogyny: an essay on admiring women
So, where does Emerson’s genius come from? From solitude? From being afforded a private cabin in which to write? Or is he a born genius, a man who had the graciousness and generosity of heart to pick up a pen and write with it for decades?
Where is the contemporary version of this man who saw genius in light, genius in nature, genius in friendship, and genius in geniuses? Where is the published reverence for greatness, the self, love, and nature that ought to succeed in Emerson’s tradition with fresh additions, like thought on AI, social media, young relationships, young rage, the advancement and admiration of women?
A trailblazer often acquires imitators, but I know of none beyond Thoreau who have begun with the imitation of this great man and have bloomed into their own wonderful creative self. Wherever this person might be, they have self-actualized, they have become themselves as Emerson had hoped for and I have no idea if Emerson influenced them or not. Just because his essays are like scripture to me does not mean that the collection of his essays is a bible for anyone else. He was one man, as Jesus and Gautama and Mohammed were one man. As you are one man or woman.
Where is the contemporary admiration and advocacy for women? I could spend an entire career presenting the inspiration I garner from the women in my life in the written form until the day I die. Women have not, to my knowledge, been lauded by a truly great and famous man who is committed to reserving an abundant amount of time and an open mind and patience to observe what about women and his relationship with a woman is worth writing.
Man wants from woman. But man also gets to be an acquaintance with a woman, and in this drama, this side-act of being friendly to a new woman, there is nothing casual or slight about this encounter, nothing average about a male and female coming into social proximity, not like the female stranger’s modesty and weathered awareness would indicate.
Women can be impacted by men. My mother was severely traumatized and abused by the most important man in her life, her father. He called her a “selfish bitch” as a kid. He threw her through walls.
Women can be r*ped by men. This is one of the most concerning evils sickening our culture and wrecking the balance of our fellow women’s minds. It is a danger to us all that persists cruelly and revoltingly. Women’s bodies have equal if not greater dignity than men’s bodies.
But before we start with non-consensual sex as a foundation in this essay, let us found this presentation on the comparisons drawn between men and women. Women are busy being themselves, they don’t have much time or interest in understanding an individual man with whom they are unacquainted. But the man is always seeking to understand the woman. If he does not spend any time pondering whether she is divine or not, he is a danger to women. He is hereby primarily a danger to himself, but because of his wounded perspective of the woman who denies him, who ignores him, because he has no respect for the fact that she is nature incarnate more authentically than he can ever be, he disgracefully turns to violence.
A lack of respect for women’s bodies is fundamentally inhuman. There is no typo there, it is sub-human not to grant a fellow human being the right to have authority and agency over their own body. This goes beyond the reason that body language communicates foremost in the world. This is fact because we are our bodies. From a biological perspective, a natural one, we see that we are organisms of trillions of cells who will die.
Now, more on the perspective of the man toward the woman. He can have millions of perspectives, and unfortunately, be it because he had sex at a younger age than some or because he has an innate lack of expansion in his view of the world, he resorts to only one or a few stances on women.
Is it worth arguing that women are average and not deserving of special regard? This is impossible. It is another foundational idea that women are worthy of regard. They are different from men. They could very well be the exemplary representative of humankind if thousands of years of history had not determined otherwise. But the present is not history. The present is the defiant bit of time that is infinite and all we have and all we get to have. Go forth, sister. Conquer, lover. Be, woman.
