The ritual

It takes a bit of becoming inured to them, but one finds that every culture has its patterns and its repetitive rituals — especially Western culture.  As I have often been invited to partake of these rituals, I know what they are.   For instance, there is the one that proves to you that you are of a different gender.   It’s quite simple overall.   You are invited to take part in something, but then you are told to reappraise your worth.   Apparently it’s suddenly become clear that you have different attributes from those everyone had expected.  Women are not authoritative.  Or you are too authoritative.  In any case, this will not do.   We thought we could hire you as a man, but your turned out to be a woman.  Or, we thought you would act in a non-authoritative way, but it turns out you do act like you mean business, which is off-putting.   In either, case, only a man will do.

Then commences the attempted disrobing: the insinuation of having caught an imposter.   We see the glib nature of this methodology in such diverse areas of specialty as New Atheism andfundamentalist Christianity.  ”We had high expectations, but we found much to our dismay that you have notions of your own.  We call these thoughts ‘objectively stupid’ — as one troll recently remarked about Luce Irigaray.  Let me explain why:   men being men are ‘objective’, whilst women, by virtue of speaking on their own terms, are  stupid.  But this way of casting people according to their gender is as stupid as can be, as is the predictable sadomasochistic ritual:

You have to be stripped down.  And only then, possibly built up again.  But only under stern autocratic guidance.
You’re too fluid — but not fluid enough to bend to our will …. not yet.

The ritual of showing you do not make the grade, that you fail expectations when it comes to the tautology of metaphysical operations, reaffirms the masses in their emotional adherence to a central dogma about gender.   In this sense, New Atheism and Christianity share the same metaphysical origins and methodologies.

Needless to say this motion of sado-masochism gets old after a while.    One sees it before it gets here.  One knows how it will end:  the stupid casting around; the stupid setting of the trap.   “Oh, we’ve suddenly decided you don’t have male virtues.  We can’t put a finger on it, but there’s something kind of ‘other’ about you.   We’ll break you down and see what we can do for you!”

This is as unphilosophical as it is mentally retarded.   But it is a pattern coming to a town near you.