What if it Were a Woman

Nietzsche once wrote something about truth being a woman and how the dogma of men have failed to understand women.

Use woman as a metaphor and suddenly, everyone gets it. Men understand how unfathomable the metaphor is and start to accept their ignorance. Women understand just how much they themselves have been misunderstood, by men especially. 

We always seem to be what everyone around us want us to be.

As a woman, I've been pursued. I've been analyzed and idolized. I've certainly been misinterpreted, often because to truly understand me would mean to destroy the fantasy that one may have already imagined of me.

Deep inside, I often laugh at what others think, often a projection of themselves; and its funny how my points are often misinterpreted to suit the beliefs of those who witness them.

What if fortune was a woman? How often do men think they can control her, fortune that is. When things are good, they take it for granted. They think they are blessed and don't realize when disaster is lurking around the corner. Men pursue their plans with vigor, so certain of the outcome, as if you really can control your plans? Can you really control your woman? Is she really yours?

What if ideas were women? How we cling to our ideas and our methods, long after they've stopped working for us, as a man clings to a woman who has completely gotten over her infatuation of him. Then they wonder why those ideas no longer serve them.

A man once completely disregarded something I said because it wasn't in line with his view of what a woman should be. Then he said that we are all crazy and we shouldn't even listen to ourselves; making me realize that there really was no point in speaking intelligently to him, since I obviously have no credibility. In this sense, women are denied a voice. This man had already decided what he knew about me and what I had to say wasn't going to change that. This brings me back to Nietzsche when he said, 

"Supposing that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not grounds for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?"

Nietzsche also said that sometimes people don't want to hear their truth because they don't want to destroy their illusions. In this case, who needs truth anyway? If that fantasy woman is what keeps you going, then so be it. You don't need to know that your perfect little playboy heartthrob is flesh and blood with scars and shadows and demons of her own. See her however you want to see her, a figment of your imagination.

So is our truth. Often its just a belief, our own mind imagining what we think the universe is all about. As humans, we like to simplify things and even if we are proven wrong, we cling to our ideas because they give us our identity and a sense of structure.

So think what you will of women, just don't be shocked when all of those beliefs blow up in your face one day, and you wonder if you ever really knew this creature you once adored so much. Perhaps you never did, nor did you ever want to.