How a book written in 1928 still speaks about the repressed men, today
'As a matter of fact,' said the lean and freckled Tommy Dukes, (...) 'As a matter of fact, Hammond, you have a strong property instinct, and a strong will to self-assertion, and you want success. Since I've been in the army definetely, I've got out of the way of the world, and now I see how inordinately strong the craving for self-assertion and sucess is in men. It is enormously overdeveloped. All our individuality has run that way. And of course, men like you think you'll get through better with a woman's backing. That's why you're so jealous. That's what sex is to you... A vital dynamo between you and Julia, to bring sucess. (...) The life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent cooking. You're quite right. It even needs posterity. But it all hinges on the instinct of sucess. That is the pivot in which it all turns.'
Tommy Dukes, character in D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
You would think that in 2023 the idea of another human being viewed as property would be appaling, but the increasing number of men joining movements like Red Pill and Incel indicates that not only a subservient role is what some of these men want for women, but also that the property sense still hovers relationships today, and have hovered, in a more blatant way, since the dawn of class society. I won't even speak about how they also exclude minorities in general, which they most certainly do.
In the past, and maybe not in the exact way, but also today, to guarantee property of one's land and wealth, one (man) would have to produce heirs. Since he is not capable of doing so himself, he needed means (woman) to do so for him. But to guarantee lineage and rights of ownership, this woman needed to belong to such man, in a legal way, and the heirs produced needed to be traced back to this man through this legal union, and nothing else. Have you ever wondered why 'Bastard' is a curse we use so lightly today? The bastard man child could not inherit his father's lands, and therefore, was a pariah, alongside his mother.
So women throughout the centuries, in different cultures, were a little more than prize property for men, distant from herd animals only because of religious and social obligation that required reverence to her, not for being able to produce new life, but children that would keep wealth within specific families, for centuries.
But my oh my, why would women accept to be put in such positions, to be socially considered as less, or to have a secondary, subservient role in western society in general? Organized religion played a crucial role in keeping women in that place. Always a reliable partner of the status quo, with its own agenda, most of the religious organizations, especially Cristian ones, have actively mantained that a women's social part is that of obedience, to God and her man, and that any other wantings or cravings outside of the household were unlady like. All of that under the threat of eternal damnation, which let's face it, was, and still somewhat is, a pretty big deal.
However, when we dissect Lady Chatterley's Lover, the novel by D. H. Lawrence, published for the first time in 1928, a story which is by no means a romantic one in its core, we see that the shift in view from the upper classes, the super rich, had changed from the simple God fearing ideals to justify the exploration of others to more modern ideas that had intelect at the center of it. And here I will not analyze the exploration itself, but the relationship between this pseudo intelectual view of the world, how it has and keeps repressing male sexuality and has created entire hoards of men who regurgitate these ideas today, and the reasons underneath them.
"The ideology based on the property instinct was impressed in men for centuries, and in it all feelings of love must be based under the principle of property." (freely translated)."
Alexandra Kolontai
In 2016 the Red Pill movement, founded by who we now know was the Republican party representative for the State of New Hampshire, Robert Fisher, emerged from the rectum of the internet with this very interesting, yet disturbed idea, that women (and let's understand here that their understanding of women is limited to cis, heterosexual women, nothing more) were the actual 'gender' that retained social power and influence in society, and men were the victims of their mercies.
Not that they would ever believe themselves as victims, no, not in the slightest. What they did was gather, as heroes, on these little pathetic forums in dark corners of the web, to discuss and combat whatever form of female dominance they thought they had encountered, together. Much like a support group for abusers (which I'm still shocked is an actual thing). And why 'Red Pill' you might ask. Remember the movie Matrix when Neo takes the little red thing and gets flushed from the system into reality? That's the reference. Yeah... Very mature.
But in what way, you could ask, do these two things connect?
The work of D. H. Lawrence was viewed as a scandalous novel where a Lady (capital letter) forfeited her status, her husband's wealth and property to persue a romance with her estate's game keeper, a man well beneath her social and economical position. In 1928 that was polemic enough, but underneath that story, we have chapter after chapter describing very interesting dynamics between the super wealthy men of that time.
The men are clearly repressed. Maybe not socially, for they were member of the high class who were very well connected and pushed into all sorts of interactions with others, but when they were intimate with each other, amongst friends, the truth in their feelings came out. They viewed women as beings with which they had little to nothing in common and that could be devided into two categories: those to speak to, and those to sleep with. Oddily enough, none could be both.
And the protagonist who in the novel was welcomed to be amongst those men during their conversations was in an even lower category, she was a comfort piece in a living room, who had to be present in these gatherings in a way to offer piece of mind to gentlemen with obvious issues, but she also had to remain quiet, as not to distract the men from their wonderings.
The sexual repression is obvious. Much like Alexandra Kolontai wrote, they viewed interaction between men and women as business transactions, not partnerships. They were about appropriation not social sharing. The cherry on top is that the repressed (in the novel) were not only aware of their condition, but actually welcomed it, as described in the book, those men were men of the mind, and anything bodily was to be set aside. And the author is very specific about the 'kind' of people that viewed men and women relationships as an exchange and not ownership: the poor working classes.
Cut to today and we have those ideals trickle down from the super wealthy into the ordinary masses. These ideals have permeated every social cast, and in the age of globalization and in the internet, you can listen to a Red Pill podcast (or Redcast as they like to call it) everywhere. The core of the ideals discussed in them is property, just the same. But it is dressed in morals and values. These men gather to speak about what a women's role in society is and should be, how they should look and behave and their own experiences with them.
It is clear in their speech they see women much like the men depicted by Lawrence did. They speak of the mind, of cultivating their bodies, not for use, but for admiration, they praise their peers while bashing women. It is clear that their wish is for women to go back into a position of subservience, a much more predictable role.
And why predictable? Because it is very clear that these men have very little to no real interaction with women. Their stories are so dislocated from reality that you wonder if they even happened at all or if they are fabricated to exemplify their beliefs. And why are these stories invented? Well, these men are obviously uninteresting, their eloquence is extremely poor and their interests are limited, to say the least. After all it is very difficult to cultivate a kind personality and vast cultural baggage when your idea of culture is based on consumerism, and nothing more. I mean, who the fuck wants to discuss cars?
And the answer is: Other men like them! Instead of wishing to become more interesting, or even understanding what being interesting means, these men gather together and feed on each other, excluding women alltogether, or even other more diverse groups, which makes their relationships extremely homo affective. Men who fuck women (on the rare occasion that they can) and love men, generally.
"But there it is! I like women and talk to them, and therefore I don't love them and desire them. The two things don't happen the same time in me."
Tommy Dukes, character in D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover"
I don't mean these men don't have any women to talk to. Some even have mothers, you see, but much like in Tommy Dukes above, which I picked from the novel, these men see a distinction in people to have intellectual and physical intimacy with. Women that they can be themselves with are not viewed in the same category as the women they should have relationships with, date or even marry. A woman friend to them would fall under the same category as a man friend, which is a very prosaic view of the world that they wished they could reinstate, but are finding very difficult to do.
The status quo from class society is finding it hard to adapt to modern days, so the necessity of bringing back an idea of "the good old days" and "Golden Ages" of men and women are part of the red pill speech. And what good old days are they speaking of? The ones D. H. Lawrence wrote so beautifully about. And believe me, men are not the only ones advocating for this.
The women who are allies in these movements I caringly call them Serenas. They are women who work and speak on behalf of the status quo, advocating for the come back of the days when a woman's role was that of the house, the children and carrying out religious values within the family unit.
The name comes from the Handmaid's Tale, Mr. Waterford's wife, Serena, once a brilliant religious writer who fought for the reforms that would later create Gilead and who foolishly believed once her husband was empowered, he would have her as a partner and not as the subservient being she helped advocate women should be. In sum, real gender traitors.
And what about the sexual repression? Today, in the digital age, where relationships are established in apps and virtual connection, this repressing comes from social inability to speak with others, because there is a sense of pattern that must be followed, which obviously will exclude loads of people. Not only that, but the increasing lack of emotional intelligence and a sense of entitlement brought on by misogyny, especially with white males, has led these hoards of men to have a very hard time dealing with the frustration of being denied, not only when it comes to sexual relationships but social relationships in general.
And what happens when we live in a sexist world, where the reality is that men still do have power over women, being the super rich who are mostly white, heterosexual males or the ordinary men who is still entitled because he was taught the world 'owed' him something? What happens when this man is so socially inadequate and repressed, with such bullshit from others like him shoved down his throat and into his brain daily? Well, the answer is usually violence.
The rise of the Incels, a much more radical group of boys and men who claim to abstain from sexual relationships voluntarily, when the reality is that most of them are unable to actually have those relationships in the first place, or even mass shooting culture in the United States, those boys who are so broken inside and bullied for being socially awckward that they burst. I mean, obviously gun culture is a problem, but no one ever wonders why they usually have a manifesto tucked away somewhere? I mean, really?
And at the heart of it all, the ways of today and its connection to D. H. Lawrence's past is always the same thing: Some people are owners, some are owned to be exploited, generating profit or bearing heirs, always keeping the riches at the hand of the few who always had them. And in the stage of late capitalism in which we find ourselves in, they truly want us to believe that if we want a chance to be like them, to achieve what they have, that we should emulate their moral, virtuous behaviour. What is hard to see is that these people are usually wrapped in depravity, and these ideals are not what would make the mass of us like them, but that they only serve the perpetuation of the system in place.
And to break it, to break this ideals and to break free of 'masters', that would be to truly take the red pill. But these men are nowhere near ready for that conversation
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