What Is the Point of Women?
Production is the essence of human existence, yet one half of the species is noticeably worse at it than the other.
Women are physically weaker than men, of course, but since wealth generation depends more on thought than manual labor, this does not explain the productive gap between the sexes.
Women’s inferior mathematical, mechanical, and navigational abilities also fail to explain it. Whatever their cognitive deficiencies, women retain the basic capacity to reason, and this can overcome any intellectual limitation.
Just as the man with the longest legs can walk no farther than anyone else—only faster—so the man with the biggest brain can reach no level of understanding beyond anyone else.
Speed is even less of an advantage in intellectual matters because those in front are constantly shortening the mental distance between themselves and those behind them by sharing what they have learned.
It is, therefore, only the willingness to think that distinguishes a genius from an ordinary mind.
Women rarely are geniuses, however, and this is not a culturally specific phenomenon.
Unlike the races, which have experienced different cultures for most of history due to geographical separation, the sexes have existed in equal numbers in every culture that has ever existed, including those most conducive to female achievement.
Ancient Greece, for example, was free enough that it would have produced some female philosophers worth studying if oppression were responsible for women’s lack of intellectual contributions to a society.
Yet, across all societies, over thousands of years, the number of noteworthy female thinkers that have existed is most reasonably rounded to zero.
The deepest reason for this—and for women’s inferior productivity generally—beyond any issue of physical strength or mental aptitude, is that women lack ambition.
This should be clear from the failure of the modern world to place any great number of women into positions of authority even as it blatantly discriminates against men.
No matter how much space is reserved for them under the false premise that they were formerly unwelcome, women are not interested in becoming elite producers.
This is not to say that women are utterly unproductive. Many do contribute to the productivity of mankind, just not as women.
In other words, wealth creation would decrease if women disappeared, but it would increase if they transformed into men (something which is not currently possible, gender ideology notwithstanding).
This fact is obvious enough that any further attempt to establish it would be pointless. As a female character written by a female author said, “the hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
Therefore, let us sharpen this edge and move on: Women are weaker, dumber, and lazier than men, so why do they exist?
For reproduction, obviously—and partly.
It is true that sexual differentiation has enabled processes of genetic mixture and selection that have allowed many species, including our own, to survive, but these do not occur at the behest of a Platonic Form of Reproduction.
If squirrels did not mate, then they would die out, but if mating did not feel good, then they would not do it. No supernatural force would inculcate within them a duty to the future of squirrel-kind.
The form that reproduction takes, therefore, is the result of an ongoing negotiation between the requirements of a species’ survival and the interests of its individual members.
These interests become more complex as an organism’s awareness and ability to take action grow. For men, sex is about reveling in one’s competence as a man, which is to say, as a rational animal, which is to say, as a producer, production being “the application of reason to the problem of survival,” as Ayn Rand put it.
Sex is an act of super-production. By manufacturing joy itself—hers and, as a result, his own—a man goes beyond the problem of how to survive to solve the problem of why to survive.
The form of joy that a man experiences during sex—specifically, during orgasm—is happiness.
Happiness is a sense of metaphysical competence rooted in the knowledge that existence obeys the law of identity and is therefore intelligible to reason.
“Metaphysical” here does not mean “godly.”
To be godly is to have the power to transgress the bounds of the universe. To be manly is to have no need to.
Even though a man’s competence is the primary issue in sex, a woman still experiences a sense of exaltation when he demonstrates it on her. Her survival depends on his ability, and therefore her ability to draw a competent man into her service is itself a profound form of competence.
It is still a derivative form, however. Women are not subhuman, but they are subman. Happiness is therefore beyond them.
This can be seen in their relative lack of interest in orgasm. Since they do not experience happiness, for them orgasm differs from the rest of the sexual experience only in degree, whereas for men it differs in kind.
Men experience happiness because it is better to give than to receive—and it is men who play the active part in sex, pay for dates, take financial responsibility in marriage, etc.
However, providing for another is not only better than being provided for—it is better than providing for oneself.
This is because there is greater pleasure in an external perspective on the enjoyment one’s work has made possible than there is in an internal one—although personal consumption is, of course, entirely proper.
The relevant principle is that of objectification: The external is the real.
Just as one enjoys seeing others well-dressed even when one is well dressed oneself, so a man enjoys seeing a woman gorge on the fruit of his labor even when he knows its sweetness.
Yet, if women merely externalized consumption, homosexuality would be no perversion. Any man can consume.
What no man can do is look as fine as a woman while doing it. As J said to K in Men in Black, “You know what the difference is between you and me? I make this look good.”
Femininity is the stylization of consumption. When a woman paints her nails, she is showing off how far removed she is from the need to work—and thereby stressing her role as a consumer—by treating a universal symbol of labor as nothing but another opportunity to decorate herself.
Women are self-painted works of art, and their theme is pleasure—not happiness, the emotion of highest abstraction, but immediate, visceral, sensory and perceptual, concrete pleasure.
As passengers in life, women can become mesmerized by the beauty of the passing scenery in a way that men, as drivers, cannot—not without endangering them both.
However, as drivers, men benefit from women’s self-indulgence by experiencing their gratification vicariously.
In this way, men and women are perfect complements.
There is an asymmetry between them, however, in that a driver cannot have a passenger until he has learned how to drive, while a passenger can be driven without knowing anything.
In other words, men cannot be romantic before being productive, since they are romantic by providing, while women do not need to be—and ideally are not—productive at all.
On the other hand, a driver does not need a passenger—even if he might benefit from one tremendously—while a passenger does need a driver.
In other words, men are independent, while women live in accordance with their nature only in the context of a romantic relationship with a man.
For men, romance cannot be primary—for women, it must be.
As evidence that women have both the freedom and need to channel all of their energy into romantic pursuits, note how they make up the large majority of the audience for both love stories and dating simulators. “Shipping”—the practice of fantasizing romantic relationships between fictional characters—is also an almost exclusively female pastime.
Now, what about her?
Ayn Rand was unhappy with her role as a female leader of men. As a “man-worshiper”—by which she meant males specifically—she desperately wanted to find men she could look up to. Her superiority made this impossible, however, and inevitably resulted in a tumultuous romantic life.
Ayn Rand’s experience as an intellectual Joan of Arc demonstrates the point of this post. She proved that it is possible for a woman to be the best—and also that it is unhealthy for her to be.
Rather than fight their nature, women should embrace the truth: A woman’s purpose is to objectify a man’s success by enjoying it.