The Feminine Mystique

Perhaps the single most useful tool women have possessed for centuries is their unknowablity. I made that word up, but it’s applicable; women of all generations for hundreds of years have cultivated this sense of being unknowable, random or in worse case fickle or ambiguous. This is the feminine mystique and it goes hand in hand with the feminine prerogative – a woman always reserves the right to change her mind – and the (mythical) feminine intuition – “a woman just knows.” While a Man can never be respected for anything less than being forthright and resolute – say what you mean, mean what you say – women are rewarded and reinforced by society for being elusive and, dare I say, seemingly irrational. In fact, if done with the right art, it’s exactly this elusiveness that makes her both desirable and intolerably frustrating. However, to pull this off she must be (or seem to be) unknowable, and encourage all of male society to believe so.

The feminine mystique appeals to the feminine psyche for the same reasons ‘chick crack’ works so well in PUA technique. It appeals to the same ‘secret power’ dynamic that makes meta-physical associations so attractive (religion, superstition, intuition, etc.) One need look no further than women’s innate love of gossip to understand; There’s power in secrets for women. It’s hardly a surprise that connections with witchcraft have been associated with the feminine for so long. In an historically male dominated culture it follows that the power of secrecy and mysticism would need to be cultivated into the feminine as a resource for influencing the men in control of it. Sometimes that may have ended with a woman burned at the stake, but more often it was a means to becoming the ‘power behind the throne’ by degrees, and depending upon the status of the man she could enchant.

Combine that mysticism with sexuality, and you’ve got the feminine mystique – the most useful tool the feminine imperative possesses in it’s quest for optimal hypergamy.

The feminine mystique permeates inter-gender communication. On every forum response, on every blog comment, on every facebook post and in any article ever written by women with a personal, feminine investment in the subject, there is a residue of recognizing the feminine mystique. When a woman retorts to an observation of  female behavior that betrays female intent, the standard misdirection is ALWAYS saturated in the unknowable, unpredictably capricious, feminine mystique. The first (and second) rule of Fight Club for the feminine imperative is to protect the mystery of the female – and the sisterhood has no mercy for those who would betray that. To quote Roissy, the closer you get to truth the louder women screech.

For years I’ve striven to breakdown confusion and common problems by observing behavior. Women are human beings with the same basic motivations that men are subject to with some greater or lesser variation in their reasoning and methodologies. The point being is that women are every bit as subject to being as mundane or as extraordinary as men are, but the difference is that men don’t enjoy a masculine mystique. With rare exceptions, we don’t generally cultivate this sense of mystery because we’re not rewarded for it to the degree women are – and honestly, we haven’t needed to. But for a woman, if she can cultivate this mystique, her attentions become a reward unto themselves for the guy who is ‘lucky’ enough to tame her. Rest assured, when you think a woman is crazy, she’s crazy like a fox; she’s crazy with a reason. Women are every bit as calculating as men, in fact more so I’d argue because they have the mystique to hide a multitude of sins behind. They’re not irrational, they’re calculated – you just have to develop an ability to read a woman’s actions and behaviors and see the latent purpose behind them.

In contemporary times, men are far too ready to write off women as irrational agents. Even Freud was fooled by the hysterics of women’s responses and wrote them off as largely incapable, random and duplicitous to their own interests. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is to hear an elderly man say “women, I guess we’ll never really understand them, huh?” How many times have you been asked by a friend, “so, did ya get lucky with Kristy last night?” We don’t think much of this passing question, but it’s framed in such a way that men autonomously perpetuate the myth of this mystique. It’s not luck that gets you laid. I understand that circumstance and being the right guy at the right time most certainly plays a part, but that’s not the operative here. However, if we feel as though we got lucky, we won the lottery, or walked away with a rare and valuable PRIZE, it doesn’t help us to understand what it is we did correctly in a given instance. Not only that, it perpetuates women as the mysterious prize-givers and ensures they maintain an indirectly primary power role in embodying the prize that is feared to be lost. You were lucky to have gotten sex with this mysterious woman so it must be something rare and valuable indeed.

The feminine mystique discourages questioning the process or the motives involved in inter-gender relations; men are just happy to have had the chance of experiencing the unkowable woman they scarcely understand. When mixed with sexual deprivation, the lucky fate element makes the sex that much more absorbing. It’s this luck precognition for men and fostered by women that leads to the scarcity mentality and often (but not exclusively) ONEitis in men. It serve the feminine if men willingly adopt the feminine mystique mindset with regards to their intimacy. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and any social mechanism that contributes to the value of it will always be encouraged.