Counter-Currents
“Unsex me here,” or Gender Studies with Shakespeare
Nicholas R. Jeelvy
John Singer Sargent, Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, 1889.
1,766 words
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief!
Who says that high culture has to be boring and hoighty-toighty? My own favorite Shakespeare play is his shortest and most violent. Yes, I am talking about the infamous Scottish play, whose name must not be said aloud, lest we have to go through a painful ritual to ward off the bad juju it brings. If you’ve not seen or read Macbeth (Aaaah! Hot Potato, off his drawers, pluck will make amends), stop here and go read it. This article will assume you know what goes on in the play and that you’ve got a basic high-school understanding of the normie interpretations. Just don’t, under any circumstances, watch the Roman Polanski movie adaptation. Polanski, aside from being a rapist pedophile, is also guilty of transforming the most entertaining Shakespeare work into a vulgar snoozefest.
Sadly, unlike Dirty Bill Shakespeare’s other work, Macbeth (Aaaah! Hot Potato, off his drawers, pluck will make amends) is thoroughly lacking in that second source of great entertainment and driver of human passion: sex. Yet every second of Macbeth (Aaaah! Hot Potato, off his drawers, pluck will make amends) drips with sexual tension, and we have found no way to portray Lady Macbeth in a way which is not titillating. Indeed, she is by convention a ginger, and women of that phenotype are (not without merit) believed to be more sexual than their carotene-free counterparts. Every portrayal of Lady Macbeth is (or at least should be) sex on legs — but the only mention of the venerable murderess’ sex is in the negative, an invitation extended to dark spirits to “unsex” her.
The unsexing of Lady Macbeth is usually taken to refer to mean unwomaning; Lady Macbeth exhorts the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts to make her more into a man, ruthless and remorseless. She asks of them to transform the milk in her breasts into gall, so that she may better commit her murder. Many such interpretations have been thrown about throughout the years, with the most annoying and most prevalent one being the trite feminist bullshit about Lady Macbeth having internalized the narrative of female weakness and believing in the necessity of unwomaning herself in order to commit murder, whereas if she’d been born in our enlightened time, she’d know that one isn’t born, but rather becomes a woman. By the way, a woman is just as capable of murder and treason as a man. I wish we had a superstitious chant to wash that bullshit away, but I don’t think hot potato off his drawers is gonna work here.
But allow me a bold assertion here. The feminists are right in one aspect: one doesn’t need to be a man in order to commit murder and treason. In fact, for a given definition of treason which also includes treasons against friends and family, you could claim that women are likelier to commit treason, and they’re certainly no strangers to murder, whether by manipulating men into murdering on their behalf or drowning their babies in the bathtub. And Simone de Beauvoir is right in one respect: there is a certain becoming to the Ausbildung of a woman. Now, dear old Simone would have you believe that denaturated woman is a blank slate, and that woman is a social category created by the evil patriarchy, indeed, one that all girl-children are shoehorned into when they’d rather be doctors, lawyers, accountants, and lady philosophers. To that, I can only respond that the patriarchy-induced transformation isn’t from genderless tabula rasa to meek and submissive woman, but rather from rapacious, id-driven hypergamous demon to meek and submissive woman.
If you haven’t read F. Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power, stop and go read it now. But here’s a crash course anyway: The male sexual utopia consists of owning an infinite harem of nubile young women. The female sexual utopia is belonging to an infinitely powerful man. In nature, men fight and kill each other for status and the right to monopolize female attention, whereas women jockey for the attention of the highest status man in the group. Now, while female sexual attractiveness lodes on genetic fitness and fertility and is therefore completely visible, male sexual attractiveness lodes on societal status (genetically determined, but don’t tell anyone, especially not yourself), which can be faked. The “fake it till you make it” attitude of the manosphere works, because the question “where do you get your balls” doesn’t need a truthful answer.
You Can buy F. Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power here.
However, women have evolved a powerful mechanism that defends against fake status: the shit test.
In the words of the pimp, bitches give you shit to see if you’re the shit. They’ll start drama to gauge your reactions and thereby determine your position in the status hierarchy in order to know whether to stick with you or to look for someone higher in status. PUA and manosphere lore would have you believe that shit tests are something that you have to pass to make it with a woman — and this is true — but few will tell you that women will keep on shit testing you for as long as they can trade up, or believe that they can trade up. That’s how happy marriages go down the tubes: husbands failing shit tests.
In case anyone is wondering, “you are not a man if you don’t betray and kill your king” is a shit test. It is, indeed, the second-toughest shit test on the planet, for the king is the supreme alpha of the land. The only tougher shit test would probably entail betrayal and murder of God, the supreme alpha of the universe. The only proper response to this I can think of is “shut your mouth, woman,” followed by an activity that is illegal in most developed countries. More technically, the woman should be disabused of her hypergamous ambitions by being reminded that her man may not be the supreme alpha of the land, but he is the supreme alpha of the house, and as such, to be obeyed in all circumstances. Naturally, in a healthy patriarchal society, the king, the law, and general codes of honor actually stand behind man’s dominion over women. The applicable rule in this “go kill your king” context would be some variation of “bros before hoes.”
Now we get to why Lady Macbeth is dripping with sex all over. Her husband fails a shit test, which means she’s fair game — res derelictae, in legalistic jargon — property up for grabs. It tells you, humble audience member and specifically your polygamous male hindbrain, that she’s DTF. That’s why Macbeth is sizzling with sexual tension, even though nothing explicitly sexual happens; something implicitly sexual happens, a power struggle at the highest levels of society, and you just know that some smoking hot babes are gonna change hands when everything’s said and done. The primal ape can smell blood in the water. Oh, Bill Shakespeare, you clever, dirty boy.
“But doesn’t he kill the king and become king himself, thereby becoming supreme alpha?” you ask. Well, sure he did, but in doing so, he violated the honor code that governs all gangs of men, regardless of size and formality. In doing so, he removed himself from the gang and became an outsider — and a man with no gang is always, without exception, lower in status than a man with a gang. Even if all you do is get the phone and buy the other guys cigarettes, revenge against those who wrong you is bound to their sacred honor. Tough guys who fancy themselves lone wolves often learn the hard way about strength in numbers, flanking, and surround maneuvers. And indeed, this is what happens to Macbeth. All of Scotland unites against him, the trees start moving, no man of woman born, and then he gets his head cut off.
But back to Lady Macbeth. What does “unsex me” mean? I posit that it doesn’t mean “strip my fragile and merciful femininity away,” but that it means “strip my patriarchal conditioning away.” Kill Mary and reveal Lilith, the dark, Dionysian, hypergamous, child-murderous demon underneath. Tellingly, she invokes spirits, dark forces which wait on nature’s mischief, wispy and lunar entities kept at bay by Apollonian patriarchy. The Weird Sisters aren’t the only witches of the Scottish play. Lady Macbeth seeks to cease being the Second Sex, made into a woman and subjugated to male authority, but to be what she primordially is, a status-maximizer and ruthless self-eugenicist. Consider the woman who demands the three sixes: six-figure income, six feet minimum height, and a six-pack in a potential mate (and that’s the bare minimum). And what about the “out, damned spot” thing? Well, I posit that it’s no more than the medieval Scottish version of “I done goofed.” Lady Macbeth fought the patriarchy and the patriarchy won. If only she’d kept her hypergamy in store for the 21st century, where we have full-blown gynocracy.
We are under assault not only as whites, but also as men. One of the greatest victories of the enemy has been the successful disarming of the patriarchy as an apparatus of turning Liliths into Marys, or at least Eves. Whatever structures carry on our people’s fight into the future must look to the lessons in male-female relations, woman-wrangling, and the imposition of patriarchal sexual morality we have gleaned from our struggle. An important part of it is the deconstruction of anti-patriarchal interpretations of old European art and literature, such as the work of William Shakespeare. We cannot win if we cannot reproduce, and we cannot reproduce until we once again take mastery of our womenfolk.
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32 comments
When I read this, I thank God that I married a virgin who is a good mother to my two sons and a loyal wife to me and me alone
Please stop using the word “ginger” to describe people who have red hair. It is a horrible, derogatory, anti-white epithet. BTW people with a combination of red hair and blue eyes are less then 1% of the planet’s population and predicted to be extinct within a century.
Really ? i have red hair and blue eyes
It’s ok, my mustache and beard are red, we’re allowed to call each other ginger.
If you haven’t read F. Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power, stop and go read it now.
Having no evidence to support his assertions, Jeelvy appeals to the inerrant Gospel According to Devlin.
Yes, I forgot to mention that in the future, doubting the Gospel according to St. Devlin will be punishable by burning at the stake.
Yes, I forgot to mention that in the future, doubting the Gospel according to St. Devlin will be punishable by burning at the stake.
Counter Currents really isn’t the place to go into your sadistic sexual fantasies about torturing women to death, Jeelvy.
I think you would be better sticking with Tumblr or Buzzfeed sweetheart.
but he is the supreme alpha of the house, and as such, to be obeyed in all circumstances.
Settle down, Nicky, and go make me a sammich. 🙂
Einstein’s theory of relativity, which today is considered “normality”, was for years rejected by “anti-relativists” as “scientific Dadaism”, an abstract rubber band brainchild. Today, in the age of relativism, everything is somehow stretchable. Even gender identity. If a large thirdworl family settles into your house at your expense, and you point out that your name is on the door, they say you are a “xenophobe”. After all, they are all “nice people”!
I don’t agree with this analysis. The feminists were partly right to say Lady Macbeth had internalized a patriarchal view of woman’s nature as meek and motherly. But Shakespeare, as always, has the last laugh. Lady Macbeth’s delusion was that it was possible for her to transcend her nature. She rushes to retrieve the knives from the murder scene, boasting “the dead are but as pictures”. But the sight drives her mad. It overwhelms her, and she is destroyed. Macbeth, on the other hand, it well aware the dead are not pictures but are very real. He is driven on at first by vaulting ambition, the by habit and not knowing what else to do. “I am so stepped in blood/To return were as tedious as to go o’er.” He utterly achieves all his goals, and is unstoppable except for his own belief in the destiny prophesied by the weird sisters. Macbeth was always a true man, and Lady Macbeth a true woman.
meek and motherly
My question is why anyone thinks these two qualities go together like a horse and carriage. They do not. Overly meek women (all female mammals, really) are not good mothers. They cannot protect their children.
Very based on sexual realism. There is too little talk about this in these circles. Personally I came from the manospehere, so I was already familiar with this, but most people here seem very resistant to the idea of taking women’s rights away. Comments here show just how delusional readers are about the topic.
Lets face it guys, women have no tribal loyalty on their own. They are the ones inviting invaders into our countries, as our men will not shut them up and send them to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. To draw on evolutionary psychology, when tribal warfare was happening, women waited to see who won and then just fucked the winners regardless of who they were. Those who were loyal to the tribe were just killed when their tribe lost.
Of course the idea that individual men will take their women’s rights away without the help of strong patriarchal religion is delusional, thus we need to restore religion as well.
Additionally I would like to talk about the supposedly based trad thots in our community. Laura Towler and such. Do not trust these women. They are only based due to environmental influence most likely strong husbands. As soon as their husbands fail too many shit tests these supposedly based women will divorce them just like regular women and move to their natural state which is on the left. Always remember, it is women who overwhelmingly vote for the left. If only men voted right wing parties would ALWAYS win.
Lets face it guys, women have no tribal loyalty on their own. They are the ones inviting invaders into our countries, as our men will not shut them up and send them to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
What complete nonsense. The presence of non-Whites in our countries is 100% the fault of greedy and rapacious men who have gone all over the globe in search of foreign mates and non-White slave labor.
No draw on evolutionary psychology, when tribal warfare was happening, women waited to see who won and then just fucked the winners regardless of who they were. Those who were loyal to the tribe were just killed when their tribe lost.
Nice theory, but why don’t you get up out of your armchair and find some actual evidence for it?
Here in the real world, women view alien men as a threat to themselves and their children. Why do you think the media refers to alien invaders as “women and children”?
If only men voted right wing parties would ALWAYS win.
And your excessive partisan loyalty has gotten you absolutely nothing as you continue to allow yourselves to be taken for granted and sent off to die and get your legs blown off in foreign wars.
Personally I came from the manosphere
And you should go back where you came from. This is a movement for White people.
As much as I appreciate Mr Jeelvy’s article, I too felt an unpleasant shade of misogyny in the article. No need to belittle our women with wild claims: they’re as much part of our struggle as men （if not more, given they have a womb!）
Surely you miss the whole point of Nick Jeelvy’s article: the point being that Macbeth violated the code of the patriarchy in murdering his king, whilst Lady Macbeth fought the natural order which is the patriarchy and lost. It is not a question here of “unpleasant shades of misogyny”, but Jeelvy offering us an interpretation of what happens when the natural order, the patriarchy is subverted: chaos and destruction follow. We know the story: Act 1, scene 7:
Macbeth is understandably most reluctant to commit regicide and attempts to oppose his wife’s murderous urgings , “Prithee, Peace, I dare do all that may become a man, Who dares do more is none.”
But his weak hesitations are swept aside by her notorious tongue-lashing, ” When you durst do it, then you were a man….I have given suck and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, whilst it was smiling in my face have plucked the nipple from its boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.
The moral conclusion: they fought the patriarchy, the natural order, and they lost: she commits suicide, whilst brave Macbeth goes down fighting.
.
the natural order which is the patriarchy
Setting aside McBeth and Jeelvy’s interpretation thereof (as well as your own identification of the natural with the good), how exactly do you know this? You can find patriarchy on this planet today, and it doesn’t look very natural or healthy to me. Oppression has a tendency to spiral out of control, with each crackdown necessitating the next, until women are so degraded and powerless that their own mothers and fathers see no point in raising them.
https://youtu.be/qeSYN2c8f_A
Firstly, let me state my agreement with you that, as you state above: ” This is a movement for White people.” Quite correct: a movement for White men and White women and White families.
The purpose of my reply to Martin Venator was to dispute his claim that Nick Jeelvy’s article contained “unpleasant shades of misogyny.” It does not.
The link that you provide deals with the awful manner that women are treated in the Third World. It has been the Western tradition going back to prehistoric times, as far as we know, to treat women as quasi-equals to the menfolk. For example in the very centre of London, there is a statue dedicated to the Celtic Queen Boudica, bare breasts and all: she who two thousand years ago burned Roman London to the ground slaughtering all living souls in it. And we have a statue dedicated to her. I rest my case.
I appreciate your gracious reply, but I must disagree with you about this:
The purpose of my reply to Martin Venator was to dispute his claim that Nick Jeelvy’s article contained “unpleasant shades of misogyny.” It does not.
Jeelvy is certainly a misogynist, and this is clear from the fact that he says men should have “dominion” over women. There is no way to justify the subjection of one sex to the other but by resort to claims about the inherent wickedness and/or folly of the subject sex. As an example, here Jeelvy claims, as always with no evidence whatsoever, that women’s belief that they can “trade up” causes divorce. This is patently absurd. We are well aware of the fact that we’re not going to do any better at 35 than we did at 25.
I realize that the video I posted is about atrocious treatment of women in the Third World, but there are voices in the dissident right who believe Whites should follow their example and enslave women, and they’re not particularly shy about saying so.
You write: “Jeelvy is certainly a misogynist, and this is clear from the fact that he says men should have “dominion” over women. There is no way to justify the subjection of one sex to the other but by resort to claims about the inherent wickedness and/or folly of the subject sex.”
We agree that men and women need each other, else there would be no families and no future for us. However in extremis, there needs to be “men having dominion over women”, the patriarchy. Because in extremis women need men more than men need women, and hence women need to obey men – in extremis, because their very life and the lives of their family might depend on their obedience, on accepting their being subject to the man.
The extreme example that I am thinking of is in the recent history of our White race (not talking here of the subjection of women to men in the Third World).
When in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the German Army was defeated and destroyed, and all the German soldiers either captured or killed, then the women folk were left defenceless: there were no men to defend them: and millions of German women and girls were raped by the Allies’ beasts in uniform and large numbers were murdered. The point being, had there been a man left with the power to defend these poor creatures, the women would have gone on their knees to thank him.
Jeelvy’s point regarding Shakespeare’s Macbeth is that had Macbeth not yielded to his wife’s demands that he murder their king, and in fact when she maxed out on the pressure by talking of smashing the head of her (hypothetical) suckling baby, he had ordered her to drop the hysteria, then there would have been no Macbeth play: the patriarchy would have been established and reaffirmed immediately.
Because in extremis women need men more than men need women, and hence women need to obey men – in extremis, because their very life and the lives of their family might depend on their obedience, on accepting their being subject to the man..
The point being, had there been a man left with the power to defend these poor creatures, the women would have gone on their knees to thank him.
Lol good grief! This is a non sequitur.
The myriad and novel ways chauvinists come up with to assert that men are more important than women, despite the fact that not one of them would exist but for a woman, never ceases to amaze and amuse.
My dear Lexi ( I take it that you are a woman),
you write that the fact is that no man would exist but for a woman…well. yes, that’s true, and it’s also true that no woman would exist if there were no men. I’m so glad that at last we seem to have reached an agreement.
well. yes, that’s true, and it’s also true that no woman would exist if there were no men.
My dear SOG, as manosphere creeps are fond of saying, sperm is cheap. Wr could make due with a handful of you. The more time I spend around here… nevermind.
I wish I could write like Jeevey but I am glad I don’t think like him. If WN males don
get over this reactionary disposition toward modern women our ethnostate will look like the monastery none of us want to live in. I am not arguing that gender is entirely socially constructed or that men and women are alike. I will simply say that that the modern woman’s ’ nature – genetic as well as social – has been changed by modern innovations like birth control, abortion, technologies . She is not what she used to be and she isn’t going back. If we WN’s don’t learn how to make deals with her, and forget these reactionary fantasies. we will lose access – political and otherwise – to 51% of the population. Just think of how our enemies will love that
When I read articles promoting and praising a return to “tradition” (whatever that might mean), my toes curl. Toujours, the men want only those traditions that give them advantages and allow them to run the show completely, with women having nothing to say. You want the women to be traditional? Fine. Go take up a traditional male way of life first. It might not be all that easy.
You want the women to be traditional? Fine. Go take up a traditional male way of life first. It might not be all that easy.
I’m not even sure the case has been made that the vast majority of contemporary women aren’t already more or less traditional. Working women tend to be disproportionately employed in jobs where they’re doing things women have always done in some form, such as nursing, teaching, social work, customer service, counseling, etc. Even when they pursue traditionally male-dominated professions, they wind up in pink collar specialties, or they take on part-time or contingent roles.
Much of the increase in the age at first marriage is not the result of “hypergamy” or rampant careerism, but simply a reflection of the fact that couples now live together for several years before tying the not. Half of young people are married or cohabiting by age 24. Since women are usually slightly younger than their partners, we can probably safely assume that the average young woman is in a committed coresidential relationship by ~23, or three years older than her counterpart from 50 years ago. Since marriage before 25 is associated with higher divorce risk, I see no reason why earlier norms should be considered ideal.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/109402/age-24-marriage-wins.aspx
The hysteria about women abandoning traditional roles is completely overblown, to say the least, and it is driven by people who really don’t care all that much about White survival in my opinion. The dissident right needs to go back to the drawing board and look at the data before staing out a position on gender roles.
I keep trying to confirm my subscription to CC on my email when I comment but then I get this “404 Not Found” response. Just want to let CC know in case this is the enemy at work
This is a problem with software. We will fix it when the new site is up.
This was an entertaining and lively review, so thank you for that.
I must say that resurrecting healthy relations between the sexes will have to involve the doing away with the modern tendency to pit men and women against one another as if they were fighting the sex wars. We are more than just evolved animals and physical beings. There is an important spiritual component to the necessary union between men and women. We need to get to a place where there is mutual respect. One of the reasons why the West succeeded so well was the honor accorded to women in our civilization and thus they had a large stake in raising proud sons to defend it. How can a society in which half its members are thoroughly subjugated thrive? I am not arguing for an equality that does not and cannot exist, but contempt on either side is poison.
And another thing I’ll add: people assume that the “patriarchy’s” primary goal is to control women, but I think it’s just as much a means of controlling men — by mediating their access to women and by enforcing marriage on men in order to provide for societal stability (it’s bad news having too many unattached young men roaming around). It ensures that they do the “honorable” thing by taking responsibility for their children and the women who bear them. This means making men into providers who often work dangerous jobs — limiting their freedom and thus exercising control over them in the public and private spheres Most analyses of the so-called patriarchy are wildly off-base.
August 28, 2020 at 12:37 pm , Lexi writes, ” sperm is cheap. We could make do with a handful of you…..”
Lexi, there is more to having children than a woman’s eggs being fertilised by some sperm. You know better than this. Children need a loving father as well as a loving mother; and a life-time’s commitment; not some heartless effing nor artificial insemination by (anonymous ).donor. .
This is my final word.
My dear SOG, as manosphere creeps are fond of saying, sperm is cheap. Wr could make due [sic] with a handful of you. The more time I spend around here… nevermind.
Ah, you’ll be back. The guys here look forward to your debating them. Me, I don’t have the energy or the smarts that you do. So, keep it up, as they say.
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