28

Relations between the Sexes

I have taken care to distinguish the social problem of the family and marriage from the personal problem of sex. Once again, it is a matter of a separation that, neither normal nor legitimate in a normal world, except in special cases, imposes itself when the world is dissolving. So we come to consider the relationship between man and woman in itself.

Here too, I will first consider the positive aspects that, at least potentially, are offered by certain processes of dissolution, to the extent that what is dissolved belongs to the bourgeois world and, moreover, suffers from distortions and obscurities in sexual matters, due to the predominant religion of the West.

I turn first to that characteristic complex caused by the interference between morality and sexuality, as well as that between spirituality and sexuality. The importance that has been attributed to sexual matters in the field of ethical and spiritual values, often to the point of making them the sole criterion, is nothing less than aberrant.

Vilfredo Pareto¹ spoke of a “sexual religion” that in the nineteenth century, with its taboos, dogmas, and intolerance, accompanied religion as usually understood. It was particularly virulent in Anglo-Saxon countries, where it had, and in part still has as its worthy companions, two other brand-new, dogmatic, secular religions: humanitarian progressivism and the religion of democracy. But, apart from this, there are distortions concerning a much wider field. For example, one of them concerns the very meaning of the term “virtue.”² It is known that virtus in antiquity and even during the Renaissance had the meaning of a force of the soul, of virile quality, of power, while later its prevalent meaning became sexual, so much that Pareto could coin the term “virtuism” itself to characterize the said puritanical religion. Another typical case of the interference between sexuality and ethics and of the distortion of them is the notion of honor. It is true that this primarily concerned the female sex, but the matter was no less significant for that. For a long time it was held, and still is in certain social strata and regions, that a girl loses her “honor” not only when she has free sexual experiences outside of marriage, but even when she is a victim of rape. A similar absurdity even inspired the theme of some “great art,” the grotesque extreme of this perhaps being reached by Lope de Vega’s drama The Best Judge Is the King, in which a girl, having been kidnapped and violated by a feudal lord, loses her “honor”; but she quickly regains it when the king has the rapist executed and has the girl marry her fiancé. A parallel absurdity is the idea that a man loses his own “honor” if his wife betrays him, whereas, if anything, the opposite would be true; in adultery, it is the woman, and not the man who loses “honor”: not by the sexual fact itself, but from a superior point of view, because where marriage is something serious and profound, the woman in marrying freely binds herself to a man, and through her adultery she, first disgracing herself, breaks this ethical tie. So, incidentally, one can see how foolish it was of the bourgeois world to let the blow land on the betrayed husband. It would be equivalent to ridiculing one who suddenly discovers a thief, or a leader when one of his followers breaks his oath of fidelity and betrays him—unless one wants the defense of “honor” to engender in the husband the quality of a jailer or a despot, which is certainly not compatible with a higher ideal of virile dignity.

Even from such banal examples we can clearly see the contamination suffered by ethical values through sexual prejudices. I have already indicated the principles of a “greater morality” that, being dependent on a kind of interior race, cannot be damaged by nihilistic dissolutions: these include truth, justice, loyalty, inner courage, the authentic, socially unconditioned sentiment of honor and shame, control over oneself. These are what are meant by “virtue”; sexual acts have no part in it except indirectly, and only when they lead to a behavior that deviates from these values.

The value that was attributed to virginity by Western religion, even on a theological plane, relates to the complex mentioned earlier. It is already evident on this plane through the importance and the emphasis on the virginity of Mary, the “Mother of God,” which is altogether incomprehensible except on the purely symbolic level. But it was also attested on the moral and normative plane by many opinions recognized as “probable” by Catholic moral theology (that is, recommended because prevalent and defended by thinkers of a particular doctrine, although not unequivocally binding). For example, it would be preferable for a girl to kill herself rather than allow herself to be violated (an idea that even led to the recent “sanctification” of a certain Maria Goretti), or that it would be permissible for her to kill the assailant, if she could save her own anatomical integrity thereby. A similar sentiment is defended in the same terms by the casuistry of moral theology that, when for the salvation of a city the enemy had required the sacrifice of an innocent, she could be sacrificed and the city could consent to surrender her—not, however, if a girl were demanded in order to be raped. So we can see that the sexual taboo was given a greater emphasis than life itself, and many more examples of this could easily be provided. But when, with a regime of interdictions and anathemas, one is so preoccupied with sexual matters, it is evident that one depends on them, no less than if one made a crude exhibition of them. On the whole, this is the case in Christianized Europe—and all the more so since positive religion lacks both the contemplative potential and the orientation toward transcendence, high asceticism, and true sacrality. The realm of morality has become contaminated by the idea of sex, to the extent of the complexes mentioned earlier.

Although all this abnormal order of things is not of recent date, the characteristic fact of the bourgeois period is that it assumed the principal, dissociated, and autonomous characteristics of a “social morality”—precisely with the “virtuism” of which Pareto accuses it, which to a certain extent was no longer subject to religious morality. Now, it is exactly this morality with a sexual basis that is the principal object of the processes of dissolution in recent times. We hear of a “sexual revolution” supposed to remove both inner inhibitions and repressive social taboos. In fact, in today’s world “sexual freedom” is being affirmed ever more, as a current practice. But we have to consider this in more detail.

I must emphasize above all that the direction of the processes at work is toward a freeing of sex, but in no way a freeing from sex.³ Sex and women are instead becoming dominant forces in present society, an evident fact that is also part of the general phenomenology of every terminal phase of a civilization’s cycle. One might speak of a chronic sexual intoxication that is profusely manifested in public life, conduct, and art. Its counterpart is a gynocratic tendency, a sexually oriented preeminence of the woman that relates to the materialistic and practical involvement of the masculine sex: a phenomenon that is clearest in those countries, like the United States, where that involvement is more excessive.

Since I have dealt with it on other occasions,⁴ I shall not dwell on this subject here, limiting myself to the collective and, in a certain way, abstract character of eroticism and the fascination centered on the latest female idols, in an atmosphere fed by countless means: cinema, magazines, television, musicals, beauty contests, and so on. Here the real persona of the woman is often a quasi-soulless prop, center of crystallization of that atmosphere of diffuse and chronic sexuality, so that the majority of “stars” with their fascinating features have as persons quite poor sexual qualities, their existential basis being close to that of common, misguided, and rather neurotic girls. To describe them someone has aptly used the image of jellyfish with magnificent iridescent colors that are reduced to a gelatinous mass and evaporate if brought out of the water into sunlight—the water corresponding to the atmosphere of diffuse and collective sexuality.⁵

As for our concerns, my principle is not simply to deplore the fact that all the mores of the past based on sexual prejudices are ever more losing their force; and it should not surprise us that what seemed corruption yesterday is now becoming normal in much of contemporary society. The important thing would be to take advantage of the changed situation in order to affirm a healthier conception of life than that of bourgeois morality, by freeing ethical values from their sexual connections. What was said of the contamination suffered by that morality’s interference with the concepts of virtue, honor, and fidelity, can already indicate the right direction. We must recognize that continence and chastity have their proper place only in the framework of a certain type of ascesis and in the uncommon vocations corresponding to it, as was always thought in the traditional world. Contrary to puritanical opinion, a free sexual life in the case of persons of a certain stature can tell us nothing about their intrinsic value—history is rich in examples of that. What they allow themselves should be measured solely by what they are, by the power that they have over themselves.

Relationships between men and women, with regard to living together, should be clearer, more important, and interesting than those defined by bourgeois mores and sexual exclusivism, which understands the significance of female integrity in mere anatomical terms. In principle, the processes of dissolution at work could favor many similar rectifications, if one has a particular human type in sight. However, if one refers to the majority, those possibilities remain entirely hypothetical, because here too, the necessary existential premises are lacking. Today’s situation is such that increased freedom in the realm of sex is not connected to a conscious reacquisition of values that accord little importance to “important” sexual matters and oppose the “fetishization” of intersexual human relations, but is caused by the general weakening of any value, of any restraint. The positive advantages that might be drawn from the processes at work are then only virtual, and should not delude us about the actual—and future—tendencies of modern life. Aside from the atmosphere of a diffuse, pandemic, erotic intoxication, “sexual freedom” can lead to banal relationships between men and women, to a materialism, a petty immoralism, and an insipid promiscuity where the most elementary conditions for sexual experiences of any interest or intensity do not exist. It is easy to see that this is the effective outcome of the proclaimed “sexual revolution”: sex “free of complexes” that becomes a general current of mass consumption.

The aspects of the crisis of female modesty are another part of this.⁶ Beside the cases in which almost full female nudity feeds the atmosphere of abstract, collective sexuality, we should consider those cases in which nudity has lost every serious “functional” character—cases which by their habitual, public character almost engender an involuntarily chaste glance that is capable of considering a fully undressed girl with the same aesthetic disinterest as observing a fish or a cat. Furthermore, by adding the products of commercialized mass pornography, the polarity between the sexes is diluted, as seen in the conduct of “modern” life where the youth of both sexes are everywhere intermingled, promiscuously and “unaffectedly,” with almost no tension, as if they were turnips and cabbages in a vegetable garden. We can see how this particular result of the processes of dissolution relates to what I have said of the “animal ideal,” as well as the correspondence between the East and the West. The primitive, erotic life so typical among American youth is not at all far from the promiscuity of male and female “comrades” in the communist realm, free from the “individualistic accidents of bourgeois decadence,” who in the end reflect little on sexual matters, their prevalent interests being channeled elsewhere into collective life and class.⁷

We can consider separately the cases in which the climate of diffuse and constant eroticism leads one to seek in pure sexuality, more or less along the same lines as drugs, frantic sensations that mask the emptiness of modern existence. The testimonies of certain beatniks and similar groups reveal that their pursuit of the sexual orgasm causes an anguish aroused by the idea that they and their partner might not reach it, even to the point of exhaustion.

This use of sex deals with negative forms and quasi-caricatures that may, however, refer to something more serious, because the pure sexual experience also has its metaphysical value, the intensity of intercourse being able to produce an existential rupture of planes and an opening beyond ordinary consciousness. Along with the sacralization of sex, these possibilities were recognized in the traditional world. Having dealt with this in Eros and the Mysteries of Love, I shall only include here a brief reference as it concerns the differentiated man.

As I have said, the present situation excludes the possibility of integrating sex in a life full of meaning within institutional frameworks. So we can only think of certain cases in which, despite everything, favorable conditions exceptionally and sporadically converge. Certainly, the romantic bourgeois idea of love as a union of “souls” can no longer have any place for the man in question. The significance of human relationships can only be relative to him, and he can no more seek the meaning of existence in a woman than in family and children. In particular, he must put aside the idea, or ambition, of human possession, of completely “having” the other being as a person. Here too, a sense of distance would be natural, and could indicate a mutual respect. The positive use of the greater freedom of modern conduct and of the modern transformation of the woman can be seen in relationships that, without being superficial or “naturalistic,” have an evident character, grounded on the social and ethical side in loyalty, camaraderie, independence, and courage. The man and woman always remain conscious as two beings with distinct paths, who, in the world in dissolution, can overcome their fundamental, existential isolation only through the effect of pure sexual polarity. If there is no need to “possess” another human being, the woman will not be a mere object of “pleasure,” a source of sensations that are sought as means to assert oneself. The integrated being has no need of such assurances; at most he requires “nourishment.” That which can be gained from the polarity just mentioned, if adequately used, can provide one of the principal materials to feed that special active and living intoxication of which I have repeatedly spoken, above all when discussing the Dionysian experience.

This brings us to the other possibility, that offered by the regime of sexuality that renders it in a certain way autonomous, and detached. As we have seen, the first possibility is “naturalistic” degeneracy. This contrasts with the second possibility, which is that of the “elementary”: the assumption of the sexual experience in its elementarity. One of the themes of Eros and the Mysteries of Love was shown in the words: “Since psychoanalysis has emphasized the subpersonal primordialism of sex by applying a degrading inversion, it is necessary to oppose it with a metaphysical perspective.”⁸ On the one hand, I have examined to this end certain dimensions of transcendence that exist in latent or hidden forms in profane love itself, while on the other hand I have gathered from the world of Tradition many testimonies about the use of sex in the sense indicated, when I spoke of how higher influences could transform the general rule of union between men and women. If, however, we do not want to deal with mere concepts, but with their practical application, today I can only refer to sporadic, unusual experiences open only to the differentiated human type, because they presuppose a special interior constitution that survives in him alone.

Another presupposition regards the woman: it is that the erotic, fascinating quality widespread in today’s environment is concentrated and almost “precipitated” (in a chemical sense) in certain female types precisely in terms of an “elementary” quality. Therefore, in a sexual relationship with a woman, the situation I have often considered would reappear—that is, a dangerous situation that requires a self-mastery, the surpassing of an inner limit by anyone who intends actively to attempt it. Despite a certain exasperation or crudeness due to the different environment, the meanings originally connected to the polarity of the sexes could reappear in this context, if not yet suffocated by the puritan religion of the “spirit,” and if they were not enfeebled, sentimentalized, and made bourgeois, but also not primitivized or simply corrupted. These significances are found in many legends, myths, and sagas of very different traditions. In the true, typical, absolute woman, they recognized a spiritually dangerous presence, a fascinating and even dissolutive force; this explains the attitude and the precepts of that particular line of ascesis averse to sex and woman, as if to cut off their danger. The man who has not chosen either to renounce the world or to be impassively detached from it can face the danger and even derive nourishment from the poison, if he uses sex without becoming a slave to it, and if he is able to evoke the profound, elemental dimensions in a certain transbiological sense.

As I have said, in the present world these possibilities are the exception and can only offer themselves by happy chance, given their presuppositions, and also under the unfavorable circumstances of the dullness often presented by the woman as current civilization has made her. An “absolute woman” cannot in fact easily imagine herself in the guise of an “up-to-date” and “modern” girl. More generally, she cannot easily imagine the necessary feminine qualities mentioned earlier as compatible with those required for relationships that, as we have said, should also have a character of freedom, clarity, and independence. As a result, an entirely unique form of woman would be necessary, a seemingly paradoxical form, because in a certain sense she should reproduce that “duality” (inner duality) of the differentiated male type; which, despite certain appearances, is far from the typical orientation of modern woman’s life.

In reality, the entrance of the woman with equal rights into practical modern life, her new freedom, her finding herself side by side with men in the streets, offices, professions, factories, sports, and now even in political and military life, is one of those dissolutive phenomena in which, in most cases, it is difficult to perceive anything positive. In essence, all this is simply the renunciation of the woman’s right to be a woman. The promiscuity of the sexes in modern existence can only “relieve” the woman to a greater or lesser degree of the energy with which she is endowed; she enters freer relationships only by regressing, because they are primitivized, prejudiced by all the factors and the practical, predominating interests of modern life. So the processes at work in present society, with woman’s new status, can satisfy only one of the two requirements, that of clearer, freer, and more essential relationships, beyond both moralism and the erosive quality of bourgeois sentimentalism and “idealism,” but certainly cannot satisfy the second—the activation of the most profound forces that define the absolute woman.

It lies outside of the scope of this book to consider the meaning of existence not only from the man’s point of view, but also from the woman’s. It is certain that in an epoch of dissolution the solution for the woman is more difficult than that for the man. One should bear in mind the already irreversible consequences of the error through which the woman believed herself to win a “personality” of her own using the man as a model: the “man,” in a manner of speaking, because today’s typical forms of activity are almost all anodyne, they engage “neuter” faculties of a predominantly intellectual and practical order that have no specific relation to either sex, or even to any particular race or nationality, and are exercised under the sign of the absurdity that characterizes all the systems of contemporary society. It is a world of existence without quality and of mere masks, in which the modern woman in most cases simply takes care of the cosmetic aspect, being so inwardly diminished and displaced, and lacking any basis for that active and essentializing depersonalization of which I have spoken, regarding the relations between person and mask.

In an inauthentic existence, the regime of diversions, surrogates, and tranquilizers that pass for today’s “distractions” and “amusements” does not yet allow the modern woman to foresee the crisis that awaits her when she recognizes how meaningless are those male occupations for which she has fought, when the illusions and the euphoria of her conquests vanish, and when she realizes that, given the climate of dissolution, family and children can no longer give her a sense of satisfaction in life. Meanwhile, as a result of diminished tension even man and sex can no longer mean a great deal to her; they cannot be her natural center of existence as they were for the traditional absolute woman, but can only be of value as one ingredient of a diffused and externalized existence, no more important than fashion, sport, a narcissistic cult of the body, practical interests, and so on. The destructive effects so often produced in modern women by a mistaken vocation or warped ambitions, and also the force of circumstances, enter into the equation. Thus, when the race of true men is also nearly extinct, and modern man has little left of virility in a higher sense, there is little point in the saying about the true man’s capacity to “redeem,” to “save the woman within woman.” There is more of a danger that a true man today, in many cases, might find appropriate another maxim, that spoken by the old woman to Zarathustra: “Are you going to women? Don’t forget your whip!”⁹ —if it could be applied with impunity and fruitfully in these progressive times. The possibility of restoring to sex, even sporadically, its elementarity, its transcendence, and perhaps even its danger in the context mentioned, appears very much prejudiced by all these factors.

In summary, the general picture that today’s society presents in the field of sex reflects in a particular way the negative aspects of a period of transition. The regime of residues, influenced in Latin countries by Catholic and bourgeois conformism, and by Puritanism in Protestant countries, still possesses a certain force. Where only the outer inhibitions have been removed, sexual life frequently assumes neurotic forms. In the opposite case of the younger generation’s completely emancipated behavior, without complexes, the tendency is toward an insipid naturalism and primitivism in sexual relations. At the same time the general climate prevails of a fascination with sex and the predominance of woman as its object, without any effective differentiation, often to the point of regression, of the absolute types of femininity and virility. In particular, the emancipated feminine element becomes dimmed when involved in the social mechanism. Finally, there are the marginal cases of an exasperated use of sex, often associated with drugs, by a youth that is existentially traumatized and at risk, in the context of a chaotic search for surrogates for a firm sense of existence.

Thus in the current situation, for the type that concerns us, the prospect of the use of more profound sexual possibilities in freer and clearer relationships between men and women can only occur in rare, unexpected cases. Apart from this, considering the current processes and their effects, the only ones of value to him are those disintegrating ones that may help to separate the realms, and which articulate the principles belonging to a higher law of life than the preceding sexual morality. Lacking anything better, he takes stock of the free space that is opened when important sexual and erotic matters are rendered less important, though not discounting what they can offer on their own level.