by Chinweizu
When he has been lured to her, and smitten with love for her, the courtship starts in earnest. She puts him through an obstacle course where he must prove to her satisfaction that he will be a competent and loyal nest-slave. If he should pass her eligibility tests for economic ability, nest defence capability, emotional loyalty, sexual loyalty, etc.; and if she has no better candidate within reach, she accepts his application for the job of her nest-slave. She then stages a public display of his enslavement to her, packs into his home, turns it into her nest, and becomes its queen and his boss. In accomplishing all this, the woman is like a judo artist who uses the aggressiveness of the man to bring him down. That is why the perceptive say that a man always chases a woman till she catches him.
However decorous it may all seem, courtship is not bliss but battle - a battle to break the free male into a loyal slave. Courtship is a nest-making rite whose ground rules are dictated by the female interest. Its length, complexity and general structure are determined by her need to hunt a virile male, catch him, break his free spirit, and attach him to {46} herself as provider for, and protector of her nest. If courtship were organized in the male interest, it would be a quick game of kidnap, rape and escape; but because it is organized in the female interest, it is an elaborate game of slave-breaking, with the woman as bronco-buster.
To see these matters clearly, we must look at courtship in its most revealing contexts: In a society where marriages are arranged, much of the eligibility testing is done by parents, or guardians, or other go-betweens, who have studied the families and the persons they intend to bring together. Furthermore, things like emotional loyalty and economic commitment do not have to be established before the wedding. There is a social structure which will hold the marriage together while these are slowly established after the wedding; and there are mediators to ensure that the expected duties are, in the meantime, carried out. Such supporting structures can hinder insight into the core of the courtship process.
In a society where marriages are not arranged (such as urban, middleclass America), it is easier to see the central dynamic of courtship. With minimum support from social structures, the woman endeavours, on her own, to find and hunt down the man, break his spirit, and train him for his nest-slave duties before the wedding day. This is why modern American courtship offers what may well be the best opportunities for grasping the basics of courtship.
Before the sexual and feminist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, the lone ranger American' huntress was helped by the fact that her intended victim had been brought up to believe that the marriageable woman should be approached like a goddess perched on a lofty pedestal of chastity. She was to be seen, swooned over, worshipped, craved and laboriously wooed before she could be touched sexually.
While wooing her, the man submitted to an exhausting, frustrating, heart-aching obstacle course. He had to pace his effort, and win her consent in stages marked by gifts: so many roses for a peck on the cheek; many dates (outings, picnics, dinners and movies) for a first hug; so many more for a lip kiss; then a pin to secure for him the privilege of light petting; then an engagement ring to bar her from being wooed by other men; and, at last, a wedding to publicly confer on him the privilege to make use of her womb.
To make the obstacle course seem worthwhile to the poor man, a rainbow of happiness-ever-after was painted at the end of it all. He {47} would enter this paradise of eternal bliss at their honeymoon, from the moment he received the gift of her priceless virginity. He was made to believe that, as she wandered through a forest of marauding pricks, she valiantly preserved for him her vaunted virginity: she would, on their wedding night, present it to him as a unique gift to his victorious manliness.
The cunning of it all is stunning! Imagine a hunt in which the huntress takes on the appearance of the prey; in which the true prey enjoys the illusion that he is the hunter; in which he is made to exert himself, alternately suffering pangs of disappointment and spells of exhilaration, while the huntress leads him, step by wily step, into her well-laid trap. And even after she has closed the trap over him, tied him up, and led him off to slave for her; she does not neglect to confirm him in his illusion that he has been the hunter. Still exploiting his hunter psychology, she lays herself out on his wedding bed, and acts the prey surrendering her irreplaceable hymen to his body spear. After plunging it into the prostrate "victim", he glories in his bloodied spear, like a hunter would after slaying a mighty beast. Well, has a more exquisite game of cunning ever been invented?
The structure and dynamic of courtship is dictated by the fact that it is a selection, bargaining and taming process all rolled into one. As a selection process, the cardinal question that must be answered to the nesting woman's satisfaction is this: Can this candidate husband my nest the way I want? That is why a courtship is conducted as a job interview in which he must demonstrate his suitability for the job she is offering.
The bargain she wants to strike with the selected candidate is this: he agrees to build, maintain and protect her nest, and to supply it with victuals; she, in return, permits him to contribute his sperm to the making of babies in her womb. Once it is understood that he is to pay with nest duties for the great privilege of inseminating her, the power position in courtship becomes clear: she, who holds the priceless womb, is the boss, and he is merely a suitor for a great favour.
In taming her suitor she aims to turn him into her loyal nest-slave. As women and all slave holders know, if a slave has just been capture from his original state of liberty, his free spirit has to be broken, and his loyalty has to be attached to his owner, otherwise he will not wear the yoke easily.
Courtship, therefore, is a combat zone where a woman seeks to establish power over her prospective husband. The point is not to {48} decide whether the woman shall rule the man, but simply how; for if the woman should lose out in the power play, the courtship will be aborted, and fail to reach marriage.
The length of a courtship depends on how long it takes the boss to make up her mind about the candidate's suitability, on how long it takes to tame and habituate him to her domination, and on how long it takes to conclude the bargain.
Let us first examine the job interview aspect of courtship. The principal job she needs done by her husband will be economic. He must supply the income to run her nest, especially if she herself is not wealthy; and even if she is wealthy, he will have to manage her wealth. Therefore, her first concern is to administer an economic eligibility test on the suitor.
If the man's social standing is obvious, the test is not difficult to conduct. Where his social standing is not obvious, and she has to find things out for herself, she does so with professional thoroughness.
In urban, middle class America, the preliminary economic interview is the stuff of cocktail encounters. The man is asked: "What do you do?" If he gives an easily interpreted answer (for example, if he says he is a doctor, lawyer, banker, stockbroker, or high executive in a major corporation) then that part of the interview is quickly concluded. If he says he is a welder, bus driver, factory foreman or something like that, that also settles the matter. Either way, the woman has a fair estimate of what she is really after: How much does he earn, and what assurance is there that he will continue to earn at least that much? Sparks may, however, fly if the woman cannot interpret the man's economic standing from his answer, as in this true life exchange:
'What's your name?'
'Jerry.'
'Mine's Sybil. What do you do?'
'I talk, I drink, I dance, I ogle girls. I have fun'.
'How do you support yourself?'
'Very well, thank you.'
'I mean, on what?' {49}
'On my two feet, thank you.'
'How do you pay your rent?'
'That takes care of itself, thank you.'
'Where do you get your money?'
'From the bank, thank you.'
'Are you independently wealthy?'
'As opposed to dependently poor?'
'Really, are you independently wealthy?'
'Wait a minute! What's this? When did you earn the right to ask these questions? Look! I hardly know you. We've just met!'
'Forget I asked.'
'I will, thank you.'
'Where did you go to school?'
'Here, there and everywhere.'
'Why are you so damn secretive? What do you have to hide?'
'Why all these personal questions? Weren't you ever taught the art of conversation? This is a party, for heaven's sake, not an interrogation centre.'
'I like you. I'd like to get to know you. You don't see me taking an interest in others here, do you?'
'Gee thanks! Thanks a million! 1 suppose I'm supposed to feel flattered.'
'You make it sound like there's something wrong for a woman to take an interest in a man.' {50}
'No! There's nothing wrong in that. But I wish you didn't take that kind of interest in me. It is like all you want is my financial report, my social pedigree! You might be better off, actually, talking to my accountant, or to my trust fund manager. Look, I came here to dance, to have a good time, to maybe get laid. I certainly didn't come here to have my wallet sized up. You haven't asked me what I like to do right here and now. There's good music going, good food on the table, good wine flowing. But you haven't asked me if I'm a good dancer, or a good fuck. You haven't suggested anything one might do at a party to have fun. All you seem to be interested in is whether I'd make a good catch or something like that.'
'Boy oh boy! All you men have a one track mind! All men ever want is to fuck, fuck, fuck! Screw every skirt you can lift up, and then scram! Wham, bam, thank you maam! That's if you wait long enough to say that!'
'Hey! Men have a one track mind? And women don't? All you women ever seem to want is a catch. If you've got one already, you're looking for a better catch. If you don't have one, you're hunting for one. If men have a one track mind, so do women: it is just that their minds are on different tracks. Anyway, I won't allow you even a peek into my wallet. So there!'
'Why are you so selfish?'
'Selfish? Any more selfish than you? Tell me: if some stranger came up to you and, first thing, said: "Hi! Are you a good fuck?,” how would you feel?'
'I'd say he was being rude. Extremely fresh. I'd say that was none of his business.'
'Exactly. I'm saying to you that you are being extremely rude. My finances are none of your business. You haven't earned the right to poke your nose into my wallet or checkbook.'
'Excuse me! I was only trying to be friendly.'
‘Really? With friendliness like that, who would not cuddle a shark?' {51}
Encounters like that, in which the man spurns her test, are most rare. Usually, the man is so flattered by her attention, so keen to slip in between the thighs of an interested woman, that he eagerly submits to her "friendly" interrogation. He is even likely to boastfully exaggerate his economic condition. But in the above encounter, the woman probably stumbled against a man who was tired of being hunted. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, "Every young man with a large income leads the life of a hunted partridge".42 One can understand how such a partridge might eventually rebel and refuse to cooperate with even the preliminary phase of being hunted.
Where a man passes the woman's economic eligibility test (by his answers, or through such items of male status display as his clothes, car, house, etc.), she might then test his abilities as a nest-protector. Does he have military or paramilitary experience? Is he followed about by a retinue of musclebound bodyguards? If not, she may provoke a brawl and incite him to show whether, and how well, he would defend her nest (and her good self) from attack.
Women who go for brawlers, bouncers, soldiers, policemen, high officials of state, or tycoons are reflecting their need for a nest-protector. In unsettled times, this need may become paramount. For instance during the unsettled 1960s and 1970s in the USA, quite a few high place women married their bodyguards. Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of President Johnson, married Charles S. Robb, a US Marine Corp Captain, who had served as a White House aide. Susan Ford, daughter of President Ford, married Charles F. Vance, a secret service agent assigned to the unit protecting the Ford family. Perhaps the most prominent example from that era was the media heiress Patty Hearst who ditched her fiancé, Steve Weed, after he had, like a weed, failed to protect her from being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She went on to marry Bernard Shaw, a bodyguard hired to protect her following her traumatic experiences.
If the man's abilities as economic provider and nest-protector satisfy the woman, she may start to tame him by securing three essential commitments from him: sexual commitment, emotional commitment and economic commitment. Of these, economic commitment is central. The applicant must be taught to habitually devote his earnings to maintaining her nest and herself. All other feeders at his trough must be banished; those not banishable (like his parents, siblings, relative and close friends), will have their access to his income minimized. If he {52} is the generous type, his impulse must be curbed, and he must be trained, if need be, to hand his pay packet directly to her each payday. As part of his economic training, a not-so-rich man might be required to give up smoking, drinking and gambling, and any other "vice" through which he might "fritter away" his income. But where the man is suitably rich, she may be content simply to train him to spend most of his income on her good and lovely self.
She also makes a point of training him to be sexually loyal to herself. This is partly to minimize the risk of losing his economic commitment to her. As she well knows, male-female attachments are notoriously vulnerable to better sex. Should she fail to fix his roving eye on herself, or fail to tie down his wandering lust, he might become sexually addicted to another woman after some chance encounter. A woman who grabs his balls away from her could then grab his purse away too.
For securing a man's sexual loyalty, a woman's main ruse is to get him sexually addicted to herself, whether by heavy petting that doesn't go all the way, or by full and abundant sex. Once hooked, he is never let out of her sight, except when he goes off to work, lest some chance encounter with another woman should break her spell on him. The man-minder part of this ruse has been perfected by American women under the guise of an insistent and loving "togetherness". In the name of "togetherness", she encourages him to come directly home from work, to stop going out with "the boys", and to go with her wherever he has to go outside working hours. In effect, she makes herself his chaperone, ostensibly because of her great love which could not bear any separation! In fact, of course, it is so that, arm in arm together everywhere, she can keep a jailer's eye on his genitalia. Ah, togetherness, lovely togetherness!
To secure his emotional commitment, a woman will train a man to attach his feelings inseverably to herself. His jealousy and her cantankerousness are great instruments for this task. The more jealous she makes him, the more strongly the heat of his own jealousy bonds his heart to her. In inciting his jealousy to incandescence, a woman's ways can be quite bizarre. She might deliberately encourage the attentions of rival suitors. If he gets jealous enough to fight them off, all is well; if he doesn't, his emotional attachment to her is judged insufficiently strong, and further inciting is required. But should he, in a fit of high jealousy, beat her up after chasing off the rivals she encouraged, she has excellent proof that he could not bear to lose her. {53}
Similarly, by her cantankerousness, she aims to test if he will stomach anything rather than leave her. She will play hard to get; she will insult and humiliate him; she will require him to flatter her to the point of irrationality. If he abandons his courtship in frustration or annoyance, she might tell herself that "faint heart never won fair lady". Translation: his passion is not strong enough to weather the harassments and disappointments of nest-service; therefore, good riddance!
A fine demonstration of this situation occurs in Jorge Amado's novel
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands:
The trifler's interest must have been very slight to grow discouraged at the first stumbling block. Dona Flor had done much worse things to Pedro Borges when she was single. The student from Para had savoured the bitterness of letters returned, gifts rejected, real insults, and he with an engagement ring in his pocket. That was a true passion, not this one which evaporated with the mere slamming of a window.43
Thus it is that, if a woman's behaviour during courtship seems mad, seems arbitrary to the point of tyranny, there is a simple purpose to it all: to establish and test her power over him. The suitor must be reduced to unquestioning obedience to her, otherwise her hold on him, on which the security of his nest services will depend, might prove tenuous. After all, a slave master must break his slave thoroughly if he is to expect loyal and unquestioning service during the slave's lifetime.
If the suitor's commitment to her has been found satisfactory in the vital areas, she then has to get him to propose, thereby signalling his eagerness to begin slaving for her. If he is not already on his knees, blabbering with impatience, he must be reduced to that position, and then hauled off to the altar where he shall publicly accept the standard contract between nest-queen and nest-slave.
For getting him to propose, a woman has many weapons at her disposal - lust, love, romance and motherly care. She can addict the suitor to her body (lust); or afflict his heart with deep tenderness toward her (love); or make him lose his head over her (romance); or accustom him to the comforts of a well-ordered home (motherly care). Each weapon is aimed at some suitably vulnerable part of his being. Romance aims at his head, to befuddle it and disarm his common sense lust aims at his nerves, to train them to rush to her body for calming dips love aims at his feelings, to make her the preferred object over which to {54} discharge his tender feelings; motherly care aims at his enjoyment of physical comforts, such as he once enjoyed in his mother's nest. For each of these weapons, a book of tactics could be written by observing the behaviour of women. However, let us consider here only some of the tactics of lust and motherly care.
