Month: July 2019

Men With A Kierkegaardian Stance on Labels.

July 16, 2019 — 1 Comment

Revered as one of the “great” philosophers, Danish or otherwise, Søren Kierkegaard may not have been the best “man” for a woman to tie her wagon to when taking into account his Houdini-like stance on not being defined by any label. For, as he put it, “If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all the other things I could possibly be.” However, like Andy Warhol’s constantly mangled “fifteen minutes of fame” quote, Kierkegaard’s, too, is often repurposed as, “Once you label me, you negate me.” In whichever fashion he chose to phrase it, it was fairly clear that he was developing an ironclad “philosophical” excuse for never being deemed anyone’s boyfriend or husband. And certainly not Regine Olsen’s. A girl he was in love with (or at least, in love with what the poetic idea of l’amour once meant). He spouted in his goddamn journal toward the end of their engagement, “O, can I really believe the poets when they say that the first time one sees the beloved object he thinks he has seen her long before, that love like all knowledge is recollection, that love in the single individual also has its prophecies, its types, its myths, its Old Testament. Everywhere, in the face of every girl, I see features of your beauty…”

But it is better to keep an idealized image of one’s “true love” vacuum sealed in the mind as opposed to actually taking her on as the ball and chain of wife. For that would utterly shatter the idealized image. And nobody wants that, in the end, so he comes up with: “If you name me, you negate me.” Well all right then, that’s Regine to the curb. Now how to handle the matter of being a “man” who never took a wife: why not become labeled as a rebel of the nineteenth century. Because one can’t really avoid labels and if he’s got to have one it might as well be rebel. As in: “Kierkegaard does not marry in defiance of the whole nineteenth century” (Martin Buber’s words, not anyone else’s). Yes, defiance, that’s what makes a real “man,” isn’t it? Then again, how can anything be real if it can’t be labeled? One isn’t “man” or woman (much to the delight of the proponents of the pronoun “they”). One is not in general.

This delicate dodging of classifications also helped Kierkegaard avoid the critique of being a petulant rich boy living on Daddy’s dime, profiting from it even more once his wealthy wool merchant father, Michael, kicked the bucket and he used the 31,000 rigsdaler inheritance to bankroll himself through the rest of his “studies.” A.k.a. writing in his little notebook and publishing whatever he wanted from it. That’s just the luxury of being rich (and even now, publishing is most certainly a rich man’s game when one wants the marketing blitzkrieg required to actually move units). But oh, no. Do not label him or any “man” as that. Not privileged, not fuck”boy,” not “boy”friend, not husband. Not anything, in short, that carries any weight of responsibility in its implications. Ah yes, that Kierkegaard. He really foreshadowed so much “male” behavior of the twenty-first century.

 

 

 

Men Who Make Gaslighting Their Religion.

July 8, 2019 — Leave a comment

Just as religion with its devout followers that cannot be convinced that their beliefs are in any way wrong, subjective or otherwise completely coked out, so, too, does the Church of Gaslighting have its unswayable acolytes. The lackeys known as “men” who will, until their last dying breath, insist that it is the woman who is the “psycho”–the one with the perception of reality that is either “blown out of proportion” or deemed utterly “cuckoo” because, I don’t know, she has “blood coming out of her wherever.” Her perception–nay, “opinion”–is not to be trusted. No, you should trust the word that’s been bowed to for ages, that confabulation ejaculated from the penis that serves as the “male” control center. Or rather, the gash or stub where a penis is supposed to be on most “men” today who can only seem to get aroused when a woman is powerless.

And, no matter how much evidence a woman has to back up her case (not that there can usually be very much when it’s simply “her word against his”–a perennial statement on women versus the patriarchy), it will never register in the “male” mind, comprised of a collective Charles Boyer as “Gregory Anton” (a false name, if you couldn’t tell) mentality of “rightness.” That to manipulate a woman into thinking her feelings are somehow invalid or entirely imagined altogether is better than to simply admit to the truth, or at least a version of the truth that is closer to objective reality. That would be far too dangerous to the overarching “male” need to assure himself of his dominance, which can only come with the conviction that his perspective on the retelling of events is the accurate one. After all, women get their emotions too involved when it comes to memory, ergo how could they rehash things with any sense of “clarity” or “rationality”? As though displaying emotions is the furthest possible thing from being rational or having a normal response.

But just as you cannot talk a zealot out of their “crusade” for “God,” nor can you convince a follower of the Church of Gaslighting that listening to women– believing them without making them have to perform some sort of dance in order to actually be heard–is worth their time or effort (football and porn, on the other hand–the one that’s not holding a dick–totally worth it).

Then again, it’s easy to gaslight, one supposes, when there is so much gas contained inside the gasbag that is “man.”

Men Who Gloss Over Their Wrongdoings After They Feel Enough Time Has Passed.

July 3, 2019 — Leave a comment

While “men” will never and can never admit to having committed any wrongdoings toward another person, least of all one packing a vagine, he must somewhere know deep down in the recesses of his soul (which, in a “man,” is called his loins) that he has done something to affront. Otherwise, what would be the point of waiting months, years, sometimes even decades to at last come out of the woodwork feigning nothing trauma-inducing ever happened? Delivering a missive as though believing he is a messenger of God himself to say, “Hey.” Just like that, very la-di-da. Oh, nothing fucked up ever happened between us because time heals all wounds. Well, no actually, it’s more as Groucho Marx stated: “Time wounds all heels.” Except, alas “men” who are heels feign total ignorance of their heeldom, arbitrarily dropping cunt-ish information into their out-of-the-blue communication about how he happened to give a t-shirt you custom-made for him to his friend who now works out in it at the gym and isn’t that so funny? As though that’s the way to reenter into someone’s life after years of silence.

Of course, because “men” have such a fucking phobia of female rage, perhaps it is only to be expected that they would be too goddamn callow to acknowledge the elephant in the room: their shithead behavior. The behavior that caused a lifelong need for therapy that they probably owe you a Mariah Carey-inspired inconvenience fee for because you sure as hell can’t afford that kind of extra expense on the shoestring budget called “being a free spirit.” A “freedom” that, in part, was crafted from a self-protective need to never grow attached again.

There are other ways “men” like to attempt re-ingratiation as well, those methods deemed more “harmless” than direct communication, such as a bullshit like on [insert name of social media outlet here]. But the truth is, the only way to succeed in one’s endeavor at reconciliation with a woman scorned is to, at the bare minimum, address the fact that you are a fucking asshole with no real emotions for anyone other than yourself and anyone who serves your agenda in the moment. By opening with this admission, a “man” might catch more flies (for we all know “men” see women in just as annoying of a light as this insect) with honesty as opposed to gloss.