We human beings, especially those of us from the Anglosphere, grow up with strange notions of what it is to be a man. Americans bow to a pompous git wearing a black robe and address him as “Sir” for fear of going to debtor’s prison for being unable to pay child support. In Australia, draconian laws exist not to protect but to control – voting is compulsory, anti-association laws [1] (defining whom you are allowed to associate with) are periodically entertained and taken seriously, and we are fined hundreds of dollars for failing to wear bicycle helmets or failing to buckle up our seatbelts.

These are examples where we are penalized not for hurting anyone or stealing anything, but for minding our own business and taking responsibility for our own choices. In America and throughout the Anglosphere, we surrender our livelihoods and our dignity to provided-for women in their petty indulgences with Affirmative Action, while they grasp for alimony and government handouts. Men are having their children taken away from them in the interests of their primary abusers, placing their children at the mercy of their primary abusers. We must be the most gutless, spineless, dumbest manifestations of the male condition that the world has ever seen. Human dignity? What a joke.

It therefore pays to ask, what have we lost? What is the essence of male knowing? What does it mean to be a man? I reckon that this dude in the gorilla suit [2] might have a better idea than we do. What does he know? No one taught him to “man up”. What he knows seems to go beyond the petty “should” and “should-nots” of human society. What’s with his confidence, his calm temperament, and his sense of responsibility? He hangs back behind the group and looks around to check for stragglers, before rejoining them. He places a firm but gentle hand on one of the youngsters, guiding them to move aside, lest the over-enthusiastic youngster spook the oddly-behaving creature with the funny plumage. He encourages everyone in his tribe to check out the fragile creature at centre stage, making sure that no one hurts it, and it does not hurt them. His presence is a source of safety to both the fragile creature as well as the females and the youngsters of his tribe mesmerized by it.

Without his presence, who knows what impulses the females or the youngsters might heed, or what liberties they might be inclined to take? He sits back, observing proceedings, without feeling the need to also indulge. He is a natural leader, he turns to leave and everyone follows. He is the formidable male, and it is clear that he has earned the respect of his troop. If you look into his eyes, his face, and observe his demeanor, you cannot help but wonder what he knows that the females of his tribe never can. And he did not learn any of this from a human being. He is no chivalrous white knight, fawning over undeserving, grasping females regardless of their conduct. His is primal knowledge emerging from the jungle.

What is the nature of masculine knowing, without all the bullshit that we humans have to contend with? What do men, properly developed, know that women never can? Women have sexual power, but they can never know what men know. It’s as if nature has deliberately established a divide that can never be traversed. There is no crossing this Rubicon. You cannot have both knowledge and sexual power.

What, on the other hand, is the nature of female knowing? For this, the best clues lie in matriarchal collectives, like bees, ants, meerkats, bonobos and hyenas. They too are impressive, but not in the same way that our video-clip shows the silverback male to be. Now I don’t claim to be an authority who knows enough about gorillas in the wild or otherwise to provide a definitive, referable source accounting for their biology and behavior. But I do know that this singular video-clip has impressed me in an unexpected way.

Feminists, both male and female, despise the fact that at some primal level, the masculine ideal elicits their respect. They cannot stand it. Deep down inside they realize that the same kind of respect can never ever be earned by the provided-for sex. That is why feminists are trying to drive men down to their own level. That is why they are trying to turn men into [their impressions of] pleasure-seeking, group-thinking bonobos [3]. They cannot stand that they cannot know as men can. For all of women’s sexual power, they find women’s position of enslavement and inherent ignorance utterly unbearable.

REFERENCES

[1] Anti-biker legislation proposed – http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-02/bikie-laws-an-overreaction/1639508

[2] Wild mountain gorilla – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eXS0o6r-Wk

[3] Wikipedia on bonobos – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo