My axioms are not for everyone. They make sense to me because of my distinct experiences, but I do not expect them to make sense to anyone else simply by virtue of my posting them here. One really has to experiment with life to come up with one's own axioms. Some of them may turn out to be similar to mine, but there is no guarantee that this will be so, unless your experiences also happen to be very similar to mine, by virtue of the historical time you live in, by virtue of social structure and by virtue of the attitudes directed towards you because of your particular characteristics (some known and obvious and some unknown, even to yourself).
Having said that, I do not consider my axioms to be remotely arbitrary. They are not narrowly personal even though the situations I have lived through have been personal because they are formulated in the context of an ongoing battle which has been waged since the beginning of time. The battle itself has generals and strategic systems, along with established tactics that are used by forces on each particular side. Although the tactics and strategies have changed over time, each generation that enters the battle learns from the past. Not all lessons are remembered, but some are never forgotten. Boundary lines are maintained. Tactics that have worked in the past are tried again, only with a new justification.
My axioms come from having learned some lessons in this war.
LESSONS
1. The battle is not fought for the reasons it is claimed to be fought for. Truth and justice and rationality are barely more than peripheral reasons. The gender war is fought so that those of each side can recover missing 'soul parts'.
2. In terms of the gender war, men believe they are best positioned to recover their missing soul parts if they can convince women to become masochists.
3. The "soul parts" that women most need to recover -- which men have stolen from them -- are their reason and their knowledge of the deep workings of political machinations.
4. Both men and women are biologically (and therefore in all other senses) MORE THAN their definitions according to gender would make them out to be. Both men AND women are equipped with the capacity to use reason AND experience emotion. Biologically this is true. It is only culture that says otherwise.
5. Patriarchy is a cultural system that says otherwise, in direct contradistinction to biological fact.
6. Patriarchy has advocated, throughout the ages (especially through its holy books) the direct plundering of women by turning them into masochists (and men, correspondingly, into sadists), so that males can obtain their missing soul parts, which they claim women have stolen.
7. Women, who have been plundered throughout the ages, are also often missing soul parts, particularly emotional soul parts such as aggression, along with some intellectual soul parts and knowledge of their own history -- all of which have been stolen by traditional and contemporary holy men writing spiritual precepts.
8. The patriarchal principle of plundering women has robbed both sexes of their vitality and wholeness.
9. One can only find one's missing soul parts by delving into history to see where they went missing. Such understanding of one's historical past will suffice to restore one's missing soul parts -- that, and courage.
10. One learns the truth of these axioms only by engaging in many battles.
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