When I was small my mother, brother and I would gather at family reunions. My father was one of eleven children, eight of which were still living at that time. These people were very close and cared a lot for each other, so that even though my father had passed on several years before, we, his immediate family, were always welcome at these family affairs. Often, there were as many as twenty relatives who attended (my mother, my grand parents, uncles, aunts and cousins.)
Mealtime for so many people presented quite a challenge, which a lot of people solve by serving buffet style, letting each person serve himself and sit where he can. However, my relatives seemed to think that meals had to be a formal sit-down-at-the-table affair, which was usually accomplished by serving the meal in shifts. The table, often being large enough to seat eight or even ten diners, was then filled with one group after the other until all had been fed.
However, there was one definite and fixed seating protocol in force at all of these family dinners; the men and boys were always served at the first table setting and the women, girls and smaller children were served at the second table setting. I used to wonder about this arrangement, and I will admit that I resented having to wait until the "second table" to eat my lunch or dinner. It seemed to me, that serving the men and boys first was glorifying them, and that being born a boy somehow gave him the "edge" over being born a girl.
When I asked my mother why the women always had to eat last, she simply replied, "Because Daddies work very hard and need to eat right away." That didn't make any sense to me, because I could clearly see that the womenfolk in the family worked just as hard as the men did, and quite often they were still washing dishes and putting youngsters to bed long after the men were sitting on the porch smoking their "hand-rolled" cigarettes and discussing the challenges of their day.
Along with serving the men at "first table" those ladies did something else that puzzled me. During the summer with its longer daytime hours, the women (after everyone had been fed and the kids were off playing somewhere--except me, who seemed to always be sitting in a corner with my head buried in a book) would share secrets with each other. In hushed tones, they would giggle and talk about what little boys their husbands were when they were sick or got physically hurt in some way. Occasionally, their voices would drop even lower (my ears would perk up then) and they would whisper bedroom secrets to each other, which were also less than complimentary to the husbands.
I sat listening to the women talk and wondered why, when being face to face with their husbands, they would set the men up to think and feel as though they were kings but would show contempt for them behind their backs. My grandfather and uncles were hardworking, muscular, masculine looking males on the outside (who seemed to be perfectly capable of "wearing the pants" in the family), so why did their wives feel they needed to keep catering to and building up their husband's ego so that he appeared to be dominant and manly when he was already that way?
After hearing the women talk in such derogatory tones about their husbands, I concluded that those men were not nearly as manly on the inside as they appeared to be on the outside, nor did they actually have the dominant role in the family. That meant the man's prestige over the woman was, for the most part, an illusion created by the woman, who, by willfully being submissive and catering to him, set him up to feel like a king. But what the man failed to realize was: the KINGMAKER is always greater than the king he or she creates.
After watching that fiasco of the women manipulating their husbands to feel kingly, authoritative and in charge of their families, I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not cater to men that way and create an illusion of manliness for them.. For that reason I could never master the skill of flirting with the boys my own age so as to make them feel comfortable in being around me. Older, more mature men had no problem "coming on" to me, but then, I was afraid of them; so, for the most part, I spent my teen aged years sitting on the sidelines, being a "wallflower."
Then, my husband (who was six years older than I, but still young enough not to frighten me) came along, full of compliments and gifts. I was not only flattered that he wanted me, I was also led to believe that his manly confidence and actions were genuine and that our marriage would be different than that of my grandmother and aunts ( Because of my father's early death I knew little about what went on in my own parents' marriage.) However, I soon found out that my new husband's seeming manliness was also an illusion that had been created by his mother and sister catering to him. What was even more disconcerting to me, was that he fully expected me (as the new woman in his life) to also cater to him and maintain that manly façade his mother and sister had created for him.
When I loudly objected to being his personal temptress and Kingmaker, his illusion began to disintegrate and the bullying, fault-finding, spoiled child that he really was began to express itself when he was around me (the moment his sister or mother came on the scene, his old Macho, "Sure of himself" demeanor would be restored). My first inclination was to run away from him as fast as I could, but having been brought up in a culture where all the womenfolk were required to be submissive to the male dominance, I knew I would not get any emotional support from my mother. She would just tell me to go back to my husband and serve him--as she and all the other women in our family had done, and were still doing.
So, for the first five years of my marriage, I stood my ground against my husband and fought him over who would become the dominant factor in our home. Evidently, I was winning, because the more we fought the more manipulative and effeminate he became; throwing temper tantrums; slamming doors as he irately walked out of the room; getting in his car and driving like a maniac through the streets (with a lot of tire-squealing noise to let me know how angry I had made him), along with subtly hinting that he would commit suicide, and embellishing it with a lot of verbal faultfinding towards me for causing it. Finally, I became so resentful, upset and fearful that he would lose total control and possibly kill himself or me, that I gave in to keep the peace.
In total surrender and submission to him, I then became my husband's KINGMAKER, setting him up to think feel and act as a King over me. By doing that, I kept the peace in my marriage relationship but lost much of my individuality. In order to keep on serving him in that way, I had to accept that the correct way of relating to one's husband was simply to appease him and let him think he was King relative to you. I then taught my daughter to also appease and cater to her future husband, as though he were a King over her; and when my son was born, I coddled and spoiled him to feel special and Kingly.
My teenage vow that I would not be like my mother and all the other King-making womenfolk was forgotten, and instead, I hypnotically and compulsively replicated them by spoiling both my husband and my son. At that time, if someone had told me that I was being unfair to my daughter and spoiling my son, I would have (parrot-like) repeated the same old "Old wives tale" that had been passed down through the ages from mother to daughter to me, which was: "Mothers need to be much more careful in how they raise their sons, because boy babies are so much weaker than girl babies."
So it was, that mothers of my ilk raised our sons to feel they are more special than the girls in the family (like the princes in the countries that still cling to having a male Monarchy), and in doing so, we, unknowingly, created an emotional need in the male child for his mother (or the mother in his wife or girlfriend) to continue catering to and maintaining that false sense of manliness and superiority that she has created in him.
Then, by the time the hormones of puberty begin to create changes in the young man's voice and hair to grow on his chest, his dependency on the female for a sense of manliness and superiority begins to express itself as an urge to have sex with her--often beginning with what the Psychologists call a sexual "Oedipus attraction" to his mother, which then transfers to other females as he grows older. (By injecting his semen into the female's uterus, so that fertilization and the creation of new life can begin, the male--possibly on the subconscious level--symbolically feels God-like at the moment of ejaculation; a thrill that is repeated every time he has sex with a real female, or when masturbating and having sex with an imaginary female, or with those he watches in a pornographic video.
Although many men use their brawn to feel manly and exploit it by being the best athlete or biggest bully, some use their intellect and seek to win fame and fortune to impress not only other men but especially the female; however, I would say that nothing makes the average male feel more manly than having a sexual relationship with the female. After a time, he is so conditioned to need that sexual experience as a way of bolstering his sense of being manly, that the female can easily topple him off his kingly perch. All she has to do is to play up to his sexual need and infer that she is willing to have that relationship with him, and thenn coyly withhold her charms from him until he is willing to do her bidding. He will then physically and emotionally burn with desire for her, court her and work two jobs to buy her whatever she wants, just so he can have the privilege of giving to her sexually.
However, many males do not take the seductive, King-making efforts of the female lying down and maintain their dominant position over her by using their Hierarchical place in society to keep her submissive and beneath them--both emotionally and economically. My husband, for instance, knowing I had no marketable skills to financially support myself, kept threatening to divorce me and put me out on the streets, if I didn't do as he wanted me to do. He was so forceful that I, in my country girl naivety failed to realize that there are civil laws that would require him to continue supporting me even if we were divorced, particularly after we had a child. Out of fear, I then backed down into submissiveness to him, and endured his bullying and degradation of me for the sixty-three-year duration of our marriage.
That reflects the efforts of just one individual husband asserting his dominant authority over his wife to keep her submissive to him, but there are also religious groups and cultures that go to much greater extents to keep females submissive to the dominant superiority of the male. Some groups, for instance, hide their women behind heavy, dark veils and deprive them of education to keep them emotionally and financially dependent on the male. Some cultures make their young women wear "chastity belts" to keep them from having sex with anyone other than the husband that her father may have chosen for her. Some cultures mutilate (castrate) a young girls' genitalia so as to prevent her from enjoying sex and therefore to be less inclined to cheat on her husband.
In all of those situations, the female is more or less viewed as a household slave and sexual receptacle for the male's sperm, and even if he uses a condom to contain that sperm, he still gets the elevation to his ego by imagining that he, like God, is creating new life by impregnating her. (I have no clue as to how Homosexuals get their egocentric elevation over having sex with someone of the same gender, other than the one with the more masculine personality possibly feeling King-like by having his partner be submissive to him, or the submissive one feeling superior to the King by knowing he or she is the Kingmaker.)
Therefore, the proverbial battle of the sexes goes on and on, in varying degrees, from high to low, with both males and females seeking control over the one of the opposite sex, and neither one actually being aware that the battle between them comes from a prideful foundation in each of their consciousness. With either gender, it is all done because the prideful ego in each needs to feel superior relative to the other one. Pride, in this particular context means an inordinate, exaggerated concept of self-worth, whether it be an inflated self-image (superiority complex) or a deflated self-image (inferiority complex).
When the prideful ego in each person is involved, each one wants to be superior and to be served at "First Table." Life then becomes an egocentric "dog-eat-dog" existence as children in the family grow up trying to outdo each other, as well as anyone else that threatens to undermine their pride-created need to be in the superior, dominant role relative to someone else. Masters and slaves are thereby created; empires are built and countries go to war with each other as the larger, stronger countries prey on and gobble up the assets of the smaller countries. Sickness and disease and ultimate death are the end result of the traumatic stresses that each person, sooner or later, is forced to face; with little spiritual grace in evidence to help them cope with their stresses, and only medical science and chemical medication to stave off their ultimate descent into darkness and death.
What more can I say? We are all aware of the current deteriorating state of our existence. Drug pushers keep pushing their drugs; Distilleries keep on producing the alcoholic drinks that depressed, guilty, inferior-feeling souls use so as to try to drown their guilts; Smoke from tobacco cripples and kills thousands daily, and people are eating themselves into becoming fat monstrosities.
Women are beginning to "thumb their noses" at the beastly hulks or effeminate "excuses" that pose as being real men, and are growing more masculine every day with their emotional need to be dominant and superior to the men. (One day they will possibly learn how to clone their offspring, and won't even need the male for fertilizing their egg cells.)
Men are losing more and more of their dominance over the women and are becoming more angry by the minute, with rape happening more often, as they take out their vengeance and hatred of the female on any helpless female who can not defend herself, carrying it to the extent of molesting and raping little girls.
Gangs of thugs and misfits group together and vent their anger on each other, or they kill anyone else that gets in their way just to feel strong and manly; and Homosexuality is becoming more and more prominent as both male and females abdicate his or her physical gender in favor of anyone who will cater to his ego and provide the superiority each person needs to survive in a predatory pride-dominated environment.
It boils down to the reality that present day humanity has inherited the same prideful ego weakness that was seen in the biblical history of Adam and Eve, which caused them to defy God's admonition to refrain from "eating" a specific "fruit" or they would die. Eve, feeling inferior relative to both God and Adam, was the first one to disobey and to eat the forbidden fruit. Then, when she did not die, she tempted Adam to also disobey God. By giving into Eve's temptation, Adam showed that he also felt inferior to God, and so, like Eve, he pride-fully disobeyed God. Because of that, they were then separated from God and fell to the lower level of existence that humanity lives in today.
Human beings can be reunited with God though, but only when both modern day Adam and Eve are willing to give up their prideful need to feel equal to or superior relative to God, with Adam being the first. Why must Adam be first? Why not Eve? The answer is: Even if Eve were to stop seducing Adam to feel Kingly relative to her, he would still have the same ego need in him to feel superior to her, because he is using that superior feeling to counteract his guilt and inferior feeling relative to God.
Without that need to feel superior to God, Adam, can then humble himself before God and, like the prodigal son in the biblical scriptures, he can be forgiven and reunited with God. When that happens, he will express true manliness as a "Son of God," and because of that, he no longer will have any prideful need in him to be glorified, that will tempt Eve to be a KINGMAKER to him.
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