"Perhaps one of the chief charms of woman lies precisely in the fact that they are dishonorable, i.e., that they are relatively uncivilized. In the midst of all the puerile repressions and inhibitions that hedge them round, they continue to show a gipsy spirit. No genuine woman ever gives a hoot for law if law happens to stand in the way of her private interest. She is essentially an outlaw, a rebel, what H. G. Wells calls a nomad. The boons of civilization are so noisily cried up by sentimentalists that we are all apt to overlook its disadvantages. Intrinsically, it is a mere device for regimenting men. Its perfect symbol is the goose-step. The most civilized man is simply that man who has been most successful in caging and harnessing his honest and natural instincts-that is, the man who has done most cruel violence to his own ego in the interest of the commonweal. The value of this commonweal is always overestimated. What is it at bottom? Simply the greatest good to the greatest number—of petty rogues, ignoramuses and poltroons."I find it fascinating to see that prior to the feminist era, Mencken correctly identified the intrinsically anti-civilizational nature of female behavior, which stems from female solipcisim. This is particularly striking because most men believe, due to the effects of female demands on, and expectations of, them, that women are a civilizing force. I, too, once assumed and believed this; not until I began to consider the situation from a macro perspective rather than an individual one did I begin to understand the difference between the "domesticizing" and "civilizing" impulses.
Here is the great dichotomy: women are needed to domesticize men. Men, on the other hand, are needed to civilize women. Both are good and necessary pursuits, but it is extremely important to not conflate the two very different concepts.
Of course, we who are instinctive and emotional rebels, who find ourselves choked up when Les Miserables breaks into "Do You Hear the People Sing" or Zack de la Rocha repeats his defiant litany in "Killing in the Name Of", can't help but admire the female spirit, even as we lament its unleashing and its contribution to the ongoing decline of Western civilization.
