Toxic Femininity and Hell on Earth

I had an acute case of Baader-Meinhof a couple days ago. First there was a tweet that said:

Much of what we call leftism is simply femaleism.

As evolutionary biology would predict. 

(https://twitter.com/HappyHectares/status/1334122286190759936) 

Which immediately provoked the idea for this post, or at least proposed a hypothetical equation in my head:

Leftism = Toxic femininity

Later in the day I switched channels to American Digest, where I read the following:

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.

(http://americandigest.org/the-emphasis-added-aristotle-on-tyranny/#comments) 

To top it off,  later that same day I peeked over at Instapundit, where there was a link to an essay asking if our boyfriend is effeminate. The essay isn't worth reading, as it essentially lumps together every negative trait the author can think of under the heading "effeminate." 

(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/417740/) 

She claims this term is "not to be confused with 'femininity,'" but rather, "is the opposite of masculinity." But according to Mr. Webster, it means precisely that, i.e., "having feminine qualities untypical of a man: not manly in appearance or manner." 

The author instead equates effeminacy with "attachment to pleasure," but there's already a word for that: hedonism.  

So, where does this leave us? It leaves us with this post, which I felt more enthusiastic about yesterday, when I started it, than I do today, when I'm dutifully finishing it. Nevertheless, I feel like I owe it to the cosmos to take seriously such a synchronicitous trifecta of internet references. 

In other words, if the cosmic slot machine goes to all the trouble of coming up triple cherries for me, the least I can do is inquire as to why. Perhaps there's a big payoff in store. Or maybe it's just God making a silly pun, as usual.   

So: is there something about leftism that revolves around toxic femininity? Well, I suppose it depends upon what we mean by "toxic." And "femininity. "

Regarding the latter, there is masculinity and there is femininity, each being archetypal and therefore teleological. Precisely because they are teleological and not simply given all at once, they can veer off course, i.e., they can become pathological.  In other words, pathology itself is a failure to achieve what the system or organ or archetype is designed to do. 

Much as I'd like to descend immediately into insultainment, this is a complex subject. Nor do I want to mirror the author above and lump everything I don't like into a bitch's brew of Toxic Leftism. 

Let's cut to the chase, or to my conclusion, and then perhaps try to back it up, even though my cerebrated angelic intelligence informs me this isn't strictly necessary, i.e., that seeing is believing.

There is masculinity and there is femininity, each an essential human quality. However, these do not constitute a dualism, but rather, a complementarity. Neither is reducible to the other, nor is it possible to understand one without reference to the other. 

Moreover, we cannot describe, say, a "healthy masculinity" in the absence of the femininity which partly defines it.  If there were no women -- no feminine -- there could be no healthy or unhealthy masculinity. And vice versa: if there is no healthy masculinity, then there can be no crazy ex-wives from hell -- Nancy Pelosi, Sandy Cortez, Hillary Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Ruth Ginsburg, Maxine Waters, et al, would all be considered perfectly normal. 

Now, Petey informs me that the masculine-feminine pole isn't just horizontal but vertical; it manifests at every level of being -- some say as being itself, being that being must always be placed in the context of beyond-being, however one wishes to conceptualize the latter.  

The point I am making is a subtle or possibly just cranky one, but there is the cataphatic God we can know about and the apophatic God about whom we can know nothing (i.e., know nothing, not know nothing). Speaking only for myself and for Petey, it looks to us like Being is masculine in relation to the ultimate feminine womb-matrix of Beyond-Being.  

This no doubt smells a bit heterodox, but there are precedents, and not just Meister Eckhart, who wrote that "From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth. The essence of God is birthing."

However, there is also the sempiternal birth of existence from being, which has always been understood conversely, i.e., the masculine God and the feminine creation (e..g., "mother nature," or "Maya," or "Prakriti").  

Here again, these views are not contradictory but complementary -- much like the two stories of creation in Genesis. The first is more like Being from Beyond-Being, the second more like Existence from Being.

Bob, could you get any further afield?  

I don't know, but I'll try. Elsewhere Eckhart adverts to what we are calling Beyond-Being:

--The divine one is a negation of negations and a denial of denials.

--God is nothing. No thing. God is nothingness; and yet God is something.

--God is being beyond all being; God is a beingless being.

--The final goal of being is the darkness and the unknowability of the hidden divinity, which is that light which shines 'but the darkness cannot comprehend it.'

--God acts but the Godhead does not act. The mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead is unknown and never was known and never will be known.

I know: just like a woman.  

But there's more. If ultimate reality is a kind of eternal birthing, then I believe it helps us to comprehend what it means for the the Son to be eternally begotten and not made (the latter implying a creation in time). 

It also goes to the very nub of the gist of the whole point of the Incarnation, which, for Eckhart, is to facilitate this same eternal birth in ourselves:

Pay attention now to exactly where this birth takes place: this eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the manner in which it takes place in eternity....

There is only one birth -- and this birth takes place in the being and in the ground and core of the soul.

Now, you may not agree with the Meistero, which is fine. Different storks for different dorks. Still, this is how I see it:  

And the Creator extends the same power to you out of the divine maternity bed located in the Godhead to eternally give birth.   

In other words, this is the ultimate explanation of our own inexhaustible creativity.  Or, let's say a more majestic explanation -- one that honors the extraordinary privilege of being cosmic co-creators:

Let me express myself in even a clearer way. The fruitful person gives birth out of the very same foundation from which the Creator begets the eternal Word... and it is from this core that one becomes fruitfully pregnant.

I guess we're almost done, and it would be bad form at this point to throw in some cheap shots about the toxic femininity of the left. Still, Eckhart wonders,

Why is it that some people do not bear fruit?

He suggests that it is due to a lack of faith in God. Which is not an issue for the left, since they posit no God in whom we owe our faith, only a State to whom we owe our obedience. 

Now, is this State a bad mother -- shut your mouth! -- or a bad father?

Trick question!

For it is both, the discordant marriage of a shrieking, hyperemotional femininity and an obnoxiously bullying masculinity, each equally toxic.  Also known as hell.