Fractions vs Integers – a guest post by Maryh10000

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Fractions vs Integers – a guest post by Maryh10000

Lots of highly sensitive, averagely masculine boys and men believe they’re feminine. Let’s be clear: sensitive ≠ feminine. – detrans male

Men and women, girls and boys, are being alienated from their bodies. There are many aspects of this. One of them has to do with how we talk about the differences between the sexes.

There are, in fact, meaningful differences between men and women. While they vary on the individual level, in the aggregate they result in traits that we tend to assign to the categories of “masculine” and “feminine.” These aggregate traits, correctly defined, are real. [I specify “correctly defined,” because sometimes a society will define a trait as masculine or feminine that is directly contrary to actual aggregate differences.]

The idea that the body does not matter, applied to sex-based differences, is highly alienating, to both men and women. In the case of men, it leads to the male sex drive and male strength being demonized and blamed for all the evil in the world. In the case of women, it leads to the female drive to be protected (which is what hypergamy really is) being seen as a sign of inferiority and weakness, rather than the natural result of her vulnerability in pregnancy and caring for small children. The male differences make them the oppressors, the female differences make them the oppressed.

Listing out the different aggregate traits of men and women has long included assigning a hierarchical value to them. Plato could envision woman being equal to man, but only to the extent she was separated from her “inferior” body. This is feminist egalitarianism, being played out to its logical conclusion in the trans not-allowed-to-debate.

Aristotle insisted that embodiment mattered, and that this meant women were inferior to men. This is the “polarized” explanation of the aggregate traits. Men have the “positive” traits and women have the “inferior” traits.

Judeo-Christianity insisted that women and men were equally divine image bearers, agreeing with Plato that they were equal in dignity. But it also insisted, with Aristotle, that embodiment was an essential element to being human. So how do we reconcile equal dignity with meaningful difference?

Hildegard von Bingen, in the twelfth century, introduced the idea of complementarity. Men and women are both different, and at the same time still equal in dignity. But her mystical vision of the universe in not a hierarchy but an egg with interconnected, nested layers. While she still assigns traits to male and female, she imagines them as virtues, that are applicable to both. “Mercy” is a female virtue, that nevertheless should also be developed by men. “Courage” is a male virtue, that women should also seek to cultivate.

This viewpoint is probably what most western people think of when they consider “women’s rights” and “women’s equality.” Note that this is not a disembodied viewpoint, nor does it cast men and women in a necessarily oppressor / oppressed relationship, as feminism does, and has done, at least since the adoption of the term “feminism.” The oppressor / oppressed terminology of feminism, which came from Marxism, has poisoned the expansion of all human rights made possible by the incredible increase of wealth caused by the industrial revolution.

At one point, I thought this was a sufficient, non-antagonistic way to look at male and female aggregate differences. Unfortunately, rather than seeing “masculine” and “feminine” simply as ways to view the different ways that men and women can exist in the world, it has been co-opted, once again, by disembodied egalitarianism. And once again, it is the specifically female ability to bear young that must be erased, as in Plato. Once again, the female is the inferior to the male because her ability to give birth makes her vulnerable, although this time her inferiority is based on a world that sees the only real virtue as power.

So is there a way to look at complementarity that restores meaningful difference without sacrificing equal dignity, or forcing individuals to see any deviation from the aggregate as a kind of “failure” of a male or female body?

Fractional complementarity answers the problem by assigning the aggregate differences to men and women, who are not seen as “complete” in themselves, but as “completed by” the other sex. One of the problems with this is that in a society that sees all relationships solely in terms of power, this easily breaks down into a polarized value hierarchy. And it still defines whatever aggregate traits an individual has of the other sex as being, at least theoretically, at odds with his or her body.

Integral complementarity answers the problem by not assigning the aggregate differences to “masculine” and “feminine” at all, but rather by using them to describe what it means to be embodied as a male or female image of God. In this view, “mercy” is not an aggregate “feminine” trait, and a woman who displays “courage” is not being “masculine.”

Sensitive does not equal feminine.

Fractional complementarity sees men and women as incomplete, and through their complementarity, they become complete.

½ + ½ = 1.

Integral complementarity sees each man and each woman as a whole person, not fractional parts. Their difference is not just complementary but fruitful. Their collaboration can create a child, but it can also foster new life in any number of areas: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, and so on.

1 + 1 = 3.

So what are the “meaningful differences”, if they are not defined by a list of aggregate traits?

The “meaningful differences” are defined by the “male genius” and the “female genius” which derive directly from the biological reality that male and female bodies are oriented to creating and raising children. This can then be expanded to the care and protection of the weak and vulnerable wherever they exist, not just to children.

First, let’s look at the male genius, since the male sex drive and male strength have been so demonized.  Abigail Favale summarizes John Paul like this:

“The male body carries the potential to engender life without; like St. Joseph, he must make a willful act to accept and protect the mother and the child, even at cost to himself; he must choose to cross the distance that lies between himself and the vulnerable other, to reach out in love.”

This is what the male sex drive is for. This is what male strength is for. It helps the man to choose to “cross the distance … between himself and the vulnerable other … in love”

This particular requirement leads to various aggregate traits that are seen more often in men than in women. But it is not those aggregate traits that make him masculine. Living out the male genius in his male body is what makes him masculine.

Now let’s look at the female genius. Favale summarizes John Paul on the female genius in a familiar way:

“The female body is designed with an inherent potential to engender new life within; the human person has been entrusted to woman in a uniquely intimate and immediate way. Her genius is to be particularly attentive to the human person in whatever her realm of influence.”

I will relate this directly to hypergamy, or the search for a protector. Because she creates the child from her own flesh and blood, she becomes less able to provide for and protect herself. Creating and caring for the vulnerable child makes her vulnerable herself. To attend to it, she must choose to put her life under the protection of the other.

Again, this necessarily leads to various aggregate traits which are seen more often in women than men. But it is not those traits that make her feminine. Living out the female genius in her female body is what makes her feminine.

It is most clear to see the masculine and feminine genius played out in the creation and raising of children. The man, by virtue of the very way his body is built, must look outward, to the other, to create and then protect the vulnerable child. The woman, who literally creates the vulnerable child out of her own flesh and blood, must choose to make herself vulnerable to attend to the child.

It is clear that the vast majority of occupations and traits in the modern world can be conducive to both the masculine and the feminine genius, even where they are not generally preferred by one sex or the other. While aggregate traits may be more common in men or women, they are only incidentally present in any particular embodied man and woman.

Quotes are from:

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/hildegard-of-bingens-vital-contribution-to-the-concept-of-woman/#_ftn14

Note: Unfortunately, the term “feminist” is used today both by people who advocate for human rights, including women’s rights, and those who take the Marxist view that pits male oppressors against the female oppressed. So while I’m not a feminist, I don’t automatically discount those who do call themselves feminists. I would like to point out, however, that most of the TERFs fighting against trans’ing children are still feminists in the Marxist sense, although they would not be likely to recognize that. They still present the essential “trans” problem as “men attacking women” and have not recognized the impact of feminism in alienating both boys and girls from their bodies.

23 thoughts on “Fractions vs Integers – a guest post by Maryh10000”

  1. This trans madness is the battle of our age. The left will yield nothing to reality. They demand a world of deluded belief and the deniers will be killed.

    But reality is a bitch, an we will fight them to be able to continue a world of reality.

    We’re going to have a brutal brutal war to decide this issue, and all because the left is too evil to say, “hey maybe we’re wrong”. It’s depressing how much power they wield for satan in this world.

    Worst of all are the old democrats that vote for this garbage because “they always have”. They’re the good Germans putting the evil in power. Woe unto them when they realize what they’ve truly done.

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    1. Pretty much a requirement for the major communist regimes. I’ve no idea about Vietnam, but the other notable ones have all at one time or another had a big lie that you had to at least pretend to pay lip service to if you didn’t want to get in trouble.

      China appears to have sort of relaxed its big lies back for a while, but might be about to push them forward again. Ironically, this is while under the rule of a man who (according to a biography of Shinzo Abe that was published early this year, based on a conversation that Abe reported having with Xi) has admitted that if he had been born in the US, he would have been a Republican or Democrat instead of a Communist.

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  2. I can’t take credit for it, but the No Agenda podcast has uncovered some interesting tidbits of info while talking about what they call TransMaoism that shed some light on trannyism too. A lot of the guys who want to be trans see themselves as failed men, often fat or ugly, and when they get addicted to some particular kinds of weird porn get convinced that the only way anyone will ever love them is if they cosplay as a woman. For the women who want to play pretend as men, they either have autistic traits (either naturally or artificially induced from excessive screen time), or they get spooked by the hyper sexualized women in media and porn. Additionally, therapists (or TheRapists) push the idea on depressed, anxious, and awkward teens because there’s a lot of money to be made on them.

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    1. Yes. I saw that. And I also saw where some of them see being male, itself, as meaning they are bad human beings. Even if they weren’t themselves “failed.” They’re afraid they are going to turn into rapists and violent men. Because that’s what the narrative tells them that men ARE. These are not all gay or effeminate boys and young men, although those shouldn’t be trans’ed either, of course. Some of them are young men who really, truly believe being male means they’re evil, so they want to be female.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Facts.
    Men are men, women are women. Yep 1+1=3, or 4, or more.
    Men are men, women are women. Yep 1/2+1/2, or 1/3+2/3, or …. = 1

    ​Dichotomy homogamy , heterogamy, whatever, the self evident truth is men are men, women are women.

    There will always be problems, exceptions, deceptions but keeping in mind, lauding, celebrating that men are men, women are women, holds such to an acceptable level.

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  4. Yes modern day feminism is Marxoid ideology, masquerading as women issues>actual legitimate wants and needs of women. After displaying some of the most brutally misogynistic behavior I have ever seen towards Sarah Plain when she became a big enough threat to them I asked myself “could they get any more hypocritical?” Then Trump’s “pussy” tape came out, oh boy 🙄

    My favorite encapsulation of that hypocrisy was a screenshot of two different Vox articles side-by-side, one saying Clinton was just more used to more “sophisticated” notions of marriage and sex like the Europeans, and the stupid rube Americans couldn’t understand that, next to a headline that was all horrified pearl-clutching about Trump’s vulgar language.

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    1. Trump’s “pussy” tape illustrated the dangers of trash talking any time there’s a microphone in the vicinity, regardless of whether you think it’s dead or not.

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    2. Critically, the pearl-clutching was an act – not that they believed it, but they thought it would work on us. It was always about driving whatever narrative justified their power, self-consistency, even congruence with reality, are secondary considerations, at best.

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      1. Yes and it was so obviously a self-righteous hypocritical act that it was infuriating and so insulting to our intelligence.

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  5. The male trait-vs.-female trait mistakes people are making look to me like the ecological fallacy at work. A trait/behavior may be observable as male in the billions-of-humans aggregate population, but that does NOT mean every male human must therefore have it, let alone in equal measure. By the same token, assuming that the characteristics of a few individuals are the same throughout the population will lead to wildly inaccurate assumptions about the general traits/behavior of the species.

    The first time I came across a good description of the of the ecological fallacy, it was kind of an “aha!” moment. Yes, individuals share group characteristics, and groups take on the characteristics of a majority of individuals; but no, they are not the same thing. Treat individuals like individuals and groups like groups (ymmv, etc). It’s a very useful tool to apply.

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    1. Ecological fallacy? I’ve never heard that term before, but it does sound like a very useful way to put it. What you say about assuming the characteristics of a few individuals are the same throughout the population, reminds me of something another substacker called Benjamin Boyce has said: “In our rush to destigmatize the exception, we’ve stigmatized the rule.”

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  6. This is pretty funny. Even mentioning that there is such a thing as Human Nature to a Leftist will have them frothing at the mouth. Marxism does not admit to such a thing being real. Marx decided that Humans were infinitely variable and infinitely malleable, therefore allowing him to blame everything on Capitalism. (Dear Marxists out there frothing right now, do us all a favor and blow a valve or something, eh?)

    The Marxists believe in the Tabula Rasa, the “clean slate” upon which all that is human is written by upbringing and schooling. That’s why they’re so gung-ho to take over the educatiuonal institutionss, they really, really think they can create the Perfect Communist Man by getting them at three years old and filling their heads with Marxism into adulthood.

    To suggest to a Marxist/Leftist/Feminist that there is not only such a thing as Human Nature, Capital H Capital N, but to further suggest that there are also male and female versions, each one complimenting the other and completing the whole, is to invite a paroxism. They will literally lose their minds.

    This is why I posted that thing about why I hate Metric the other day. Human Nature, in caps, shows up very strongly in how we make things and what we make them out of. The dearth of academic interest in how all the cultures of the world measure things and how they build things is (in my humble opinion) down to Marxists HATING the idea that unrelated, isolated communities on opposite sides of the world measure things and make things in exactly the same way. Primitive furniture was THE SAME in Rome, Carthage, Egypt… and South America.

    Because humans -always- do things the easiest way, if they can. And the easiest way is always the same in the jungles of Africa or the frozen wastelands of Northern Canada. If you start looking at spears, arrows, bows, knives, houses, you find that they are -amazingly- similar.

    Marxists hate that. ~:D That’s why I do it.

    You can do the same thing with male vs. female across cultures and across time. The archaeological record is vastly inconvenient to Marxists and Feminists alike.

    As to the lunacy currently gripping psychological medicine and the Canadian government with the transexual thing, I do believe that the lawsuits and legal fallout generally will be historic. People will be going to jail, and by people I mean from psychologists to “researchers” to surgeons. With any luck a few judges and legislators as well.

    To pretend, on a national scale, that a man can be made into a woman or a woman into a man, BY DECLARATION ALONE, and then to enforce that pretense the way they have been, forcing one and all to go along with the cosplay no matter the cost, is like winding up an enormous spring. Sooner or later it is going to recoil, and the longer it goes on the bigger the bang at the end.

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    1. “therefore allowing him to blame everything on Capitalism. ”
      The things Marx and his children on Capitalism is mind-boggling. My favorite is some guy on X claiming he can’t get pregnant because of Capitalism.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Tell you what, I -never- try to read or listen to those people speak about all their issues. I’m concerned that I might get some on me, you know?

        I don’t think fruitbat crazy is contagious, but you can’t be too careful.

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      2. Everything they hate about humanity is “capitalist” or “conservative”. And at this point, they hate humans right down to our chromosomes.

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