Frigidity Revisited - The Saga Of A Sexually Hibernating Woman

Tally Barstow had nothing against men, although as a good feminist she thought she should.  The cant never seemed right somehow.  Men never seemed like the predatory Neanderthals portrayed by her sisters.  Her father was a good man and so was her brother who went into the priesthood, and she acknowledged men's contributions to history.  Where would France be without Louis XIV or Russia without Alexander I, Egypt without Tutankhamun? 

 

Not only that, women were not all they were cracked up to be.  There were plenty of bitches around, Leslie Banneker for example, a real harridan who made life difficult for her in middle school, always ragging her for her hair or imitating the way she climbed the school stairs.  A real cunt better disappeared down the oubliette.  What was this feminist cant all about in the first place? 

Be that as it may - and Tessa paid her dues to The Movement and hewed the party line in each and every case except this one - she had a niggling problem with men.  The whole idea of penetration was off-putting.  Just think of it, she said...or better yet, don't think about it, some grunting, groaning man on top of you.  At this moment she always thought of Mr. Barker, the wheezy, hairy math teacher pushing his way into her, salivating and drooling, eyes rolled back into his head like some epileptic. 

That was the problem.  When she tried to shake the thought of gross Mr. Barker and replace it with, say, Bobby Benson the handsome football captain, the simian Barker took over and once again she was struggling for breath as he grabbed and pulled, shifted his bulk up and down until she felt like being loaded with bags of cement or corn meal. 

What did this mean, she wondered?  She liked men well enough so why this revulsion at the thought of the act?  Why couldn't she imagine being taken by Prince Charming, reduced to tears of joy, release, and sheer happiness?  Was she frigid?  

Where she got that idea, she couldn't remember.  Female frigidity was a discredited Freudian concept - a male, patriarchal one that modern psychiatry had totally dismissed and replaced it with the gender spectrum.  If a woman felt some reluctance when it came to sex with men, it was more likely a case of lesbianism or even in the most extreme cases, gender dysphoria.  Every woman was capable of orgasm and it was only a question of finding out how and with whom. 

Tally did not want to spend her life searching for the Holy Grail - sex was not the be-all and end-all of existence despite the blandishments of her friends.  Sadie Birnbaum was insatiable when it came to sex.  In the same vein as Freudian frigidity she would have been called a nymphomaniac or at least a loose woman, but she was nothing of the kind.  'I like to be ravished', she said over cocktails at the Mayflower. 

Sadie was not exactly indiscriminate - she had the good fortune of being blessed with good looks, and her sultry Jewishness was irresistible to some men with a Cleopatra complex (again Tally found herself dredging up these old Freudian ideas). She could pick and choose at will, was often disappointed ('I must readjust my algorithm', she said), but never stopped looking or 'being taken'.  

'Doesn't it get boring?', Tally asked her one day. 

'Boring? Oh, God no. You just haven't been fucked properly', and with that she bounced off to work at Fitch, Chambers & Locke, LLB where she kept her hands off the partners, never a good idea, despite their keen interest. 

Now, when it came to modern men, there really was a variety. There was everything in the stable from Nancys to pile drivers, each encouraged to come out of whatever closet they had been locked in, but warned against excess virility; so when approached, she felt less of desirable woman that some gaudy experiment.  'Real' men, the kind that loved women, wanted to be with them, and were comfortable with them were few and far between.  

'Now if I could find Mr. Right', she said, 'maybe I wouldn't mind him on top of me'. 

But like anything else, choosing a mate was subject to advertising, promotion, and trial and error.  You had to expect a few duds along the way, but there was no way to get the gold without trying; and she was determined to do her best. 

Yet that goddamn Mr. Barker kept showing up despite everything.  It was a Jekyll & Hyde scenario she couldn't lose.  The closer a prospective lover came to real intimacy, the more he became the image of the snorting, grunting, grueling Barker.  The very idea of him on top of her bellowing like an elephant was sickening, so no matter how charming, delightful, and considerate a man might be, he devilishly turned into a pumping ogre. 

'Maybe you need a shrink', said Sadie Birnbaum. 

Finding an appropriate one was not as easy as the cavalier Sadie suggested.  There was everything from radical feminists to old Viennese-style Jews, and choosing one was just as tricky as choosing a lover. 

She decided on middle of the road - an older doctor with a family practice, a kindly man who was considerate, non-judgmental, and without prejudice.  He listened patiently while Tally told him of Mr. Barker, Sadie Birnbaum, Prince Charming and her seeming inability to rid herself of the awful thought of some pile-driving boor bullying his way inside her. 

'Have you tried women?', Dr. Pease asked; but that was no out-of-the-box thinking but a reflexive, wokism surprising for a man of his reputation.  'You mean Bernal Heights bull daggers?'

The doctor was a bit nonplussed.  He wasn't used to such spontaneous irony and dismissal of his intentions; but after one hour of his nonsensical probing into her past, she paid the bill, thanked him, and never returned. 

'Bad luck', said Sadie. 'Bad luck of the draw', so Tally went back to the drawing board but came up empty each time.  Each doctor had an agenda even though they denied it.  Either they were old unreconstructed Freudians out to probe her ego, id, and superego; feminists who assumed sexual dysfunction and liberation sexuality; or New Age 'whatever' sexual counselors who had no advice except to let nature take its course. 

'You wouldn't buy a car without test driving', Sadie said, but as hard as she tried it was simply impossible to lie down and take it. She grimaced, gritted her teeth, clenched her jaw, and snarled until the man rolled off, pulled up his trousers, and went home. 

Disgusted by the idea of fingering, sucking, and cunt-to-cunt sex, she refused the overtures of women and was left with only two choices - dildoes or forget the whole fucking thing, not worth the time or the effort.  Lady Chatterley was a tart, Tolstoy way off the mark, sex an overrated, overblown commodity, a promotional item, a troublesome irritation. 

She was a relatively young woman when she closed up shop, so she had many more years to try the sex thing out again; but as of this writing she was not unhappy with her 'spinsterhood' (again, she seemed always to fall into antiquated Freudian scenes). Still an attractive woman but uniquely attentive to her nieces, nephews, and colleagues, she lived well. 

The New England Slave Trade, A Going Concern Of Early America - Northern Wealth From Southern Slavery

A few years ago a Northerner was about to take a journey through the South.  'Unless you understand Southern history', he said, 'you cannot understand American history'; and of course he was right.  The Civil War was the defining moment of American history never more relevant than today.  The slums of Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, and St. Louis are Reconstruction's legacy - that post-war period designed to punish and humiliate the South. 

During that period state legislatures under federal jurisdiction devolved into tribal chaos as uneducated former slaves were given electoral responsibility, former landowners were deprived of their rights and property, the Freedman's Bureau, a federal agency authorized to oversee reparations, the promotion of the black man, and the rebuilding of the South turned into a Northern carpetbaggers' advocacy agency. 

The former plantation owners, now part of a reunited Union, refused these draconian measures, and vowed to return the South to its former ways.  In short time, tenant farming replaced slavery under virtually the same conditions, Southern grandees banded together in a resolute hatred of the federal government ushering in decades of Jim Crow and segregation.  Had Lincoln lived, the story would have been quite different, but under Jackson and the radical Congress the South became hardened, angry, and resolute. 

The Northerner was roundly criticized.  Visiting the South was giving succor to the enemy.  Every dollar spent in Mississippi and Alabama was a vote for racism, separatism, and hatred.  

According to those who warned him and Northern progressives in general slavery was a Southern institution, and the South should be forever reviled and marginalized for its participation in an immoral if not inhuman activity.  The South in this view was retrograde, fundamentalist, and ignorant – all due to the legacy of slavery.  The mark of Cain had been indelibly branded on to the South’s collective forehead, and Northern idealists were determined that the South should never, ever rise again.

Abolitionists took a principled but inflexible moral position – that slavery was against the laws of God and man – and significantly set back Lincoln’s efforts at reconciliation and reunification. In league with Johnson and the Radical Republicans they did their best to destroy the South once and for all and to complete the job that Sherman’s march had begun.

Out of the War and Reconstruction to follow, Northern opinion hardened. Not only had Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy, but a superior moral system had prevailed. Free labor – the right and duty of every man to reap rewards from his own toil – won out over indentured and forced servitude.  Enlightenment principles, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in the Bill of Rights, were never endorsed or embraced by the South, and its defeat in the Civil War was a vindication of the righteousness of the North.

The ascendency of the industrial North after the War assured the muscular application of these ideals, and despite the reestablishment of many of the traditions and policies of the Confederacy, it was for a century the backward, country cousin of the North.  Not only had the North prevailed in the War, and become a world economic power after it, the South had never learned its lesson.  It is quite understandable, then, that Northern liberals continue to disparage the South as a region, consider Southerners an inferior social and intellectual class, and keep them far more isolated and marginalized than Lincoln ever intended.

However, out of this moral certainty has come arrogance, sanctimony, and self-righteousness and a continued censure of everything Southern.  An American pop singer had chosen the Nottoway Plantation, an elegant antebellum home in Louisiana, to hold an artistic retreat organized to bring together artists and musicians to discuss creative production.  She was forced to cancel the event because of the loud hue and cry from the progressive community.  How could she even think of holding an event in the home of a Confederate slaver?

It is hardly worth mentioning that if one is to boycott Southern antebellum homes because of their link to slavery, then one should certainly boycott the Pyramids of Egypt, built with thousands of slaves who died by the hundreds in brutal conditions.  Or the Taj Mahal built by the cruel and heartless Emperor Shah Jahan.

One should avoid the Capitol Building in Washington, built in part with slave labor; and never walk on the C&O Canal, its towpath and locks built with slave and indentured labor, or visit the Smithsonian Castle. These and many other buildings and public works in the Nation’s Capital were built with slave labor.

One should certainly not visit Angola, Gambia, or Sierra Leone where African slavers provided human capital to Arab middlemen who then traded with European businessmen.  The Great Wall of China was not built by well-paid, well-treated in the First Dynasty of  Qin Shi Huang but by slaves, so visits there should be off-limits. The great cathedrals of Europe were built by serfs, another name for European slaves.

All of which brings us to the North and its role in the slave trade – a history which Northern liberals conveniently overlook.  First, while slaveholding in the North was minor compared to the South, it was common and widely accepted 

Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. William Henry Seward, Lincoln's anti-slavery Secretary of State during the Civil War, born in 1801, grew up in Orange County, New York, in a slave-owning family and amid neighbors who owned slaves if they could afford them. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves (Slavery in the North, Andrew Harper)

Second, while slaveholding in the North might have been relatively small compared to the South, huge wealth was generated by its participation in the slave trade. In 2006 a team of Hartford Courant journalists wrote a series called Complicity in which they chronicled the North’s role in slavery.

New York slowly and reluctantly abolished slavery; federal census figures showed slaves in the state until 1850. But the death of slavery in New York scarcely impeded the city’s business in the slave trade. In the peak years of 1859 and 1860, two slave ships bound for Africa left New York harbor every month. Although the trade was technically illegal, no one cared: A slave bought for $50 in Africa could be sold for $1,000 in Cuba, a profit margin so high that loss of slave life was easily absorbed. For every hundred slaves purchased in Africa, perhaps 48 survived the trip to the New World. By the end of the voyage, the ships that held the packed, shackled and naked human cargo were so filthy that it was cheaper to burn some vessels than decontaminate them (Reported in The Northern Slave Trade, Phyllis Eckhaus, In These Times)

                              New England Slave Ship ca. 1825

The slave trade in particular was dominated by the northern maritime industry. Rhode Island alone was responsible for half of all U.S. slave voyages. The DeWolfs may have been the biggest slavers in U.S. history, but there were many others involved. For example, members of the Brown family of Providence, some of whom were prominent in the slave trade, gave substantial gifts to Rhode Island College, which was later renamed Brown University (Traces of the Trade – A Story from the Deep North)

Money was certainly made by the transatlantic shipping of slaves; but the greatest Northern wealth was generated from the cotton trade.  Northern textile mills flourished in the antebellum period largely because of Southern, slave-picked cotton.  Industrialists in the booming New England and Mid-Atlantic states thrived, and the basis for a vigorous American capitalism was established.

“King Cotton” was to antebellum America what oil is to the Middle East. Whole New England textile cities sprang up to manufacture cloth from cotton picked and processed by millions of slaves. In 1861, the United States produced more than 2 billion pounds of cotton, exporting much of it to Great Britain via New York (Eckhaus).

Those Northern traders, industrialists, and shippers invested the money realized from the slave and cotton trade back into America.  Wall Street made millions thanks to the investment of New England and New York capitalists, and lent that money out to thousands of large and small entrepreneurs throughout the rapidly growing country.  In other words, slave money infiltrated everywhere in the new United States. Looked at from the modern PC perspective of disinvestment, we should boycott everything.

The network of slavery extends throughout the world; and those who refuse to stay in an antebellum Southern home or even visit one should stay away from Portugal and the Netherlands, the countries responsible for the trading and shipping of at least 10 million African slaves.  Without them, the transatlantic slave trade would not have been possible.

The point is not to demonize the South and characterize it as the devil within, but to understand its history, to learn how and why it developed as it did, and to derive lessons from its past.  The history of the North is intimately linked with that of the South; and it is certain that without the harsh, punitive policies of the Radical (Northern) Republicans during Reconstruction, the South might not have been so determined to re-establish its old ways.  Without Northern shipping and textile mills, cotton and its slave economy would never have flourished as it did. 

History is neither good nor bad.  Every event or period has antecedents, some hundreds of years in the past. Moral principles, scientific inquiry, and political philosophy all change with the times. The great civilizations of Egypt, Rome, Persia, and China were built on the backs of slaves; but is this enough to condemn them?  Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths, but should we never set foot in Mongolia, Russia, or China?

The study of history encourages understanding.  The point is not to keep blaming the South for its past, but to address the present.  If we can forget the horrors of the Portuguese slave trade and eat well in Lisbon; forget the thousands of Nubian slaves who died at Giza building the Pyramids and enjoy Ancient History; or pretend that Mao never killed millions of his own people while we marvel at the vibrant, modern, forward-looking cities of China, then we can fast-forward our Southern movie reel to the present.

Why Government And Religion Are So Popular - Promises, Hope, And No Accountability Whatsoever

'If only Aunt Tilly had spilled the beans before she died', said her sister Margaret, hoping that the old lady might have had a glimpse of the hereafter - something, anything to suggest that there was life after death.  But nothing.  She spluttered something about peppers, sighed, and died just like that 

'She is at peace now', said Father Brophy, making the sign of the cross.  'She is with Jesus'.  Extreme Unction at least secured her place in the queue.  She had been too ga-ga to make a good act of contrition, so whether absolution was given by the Almighty or not, only Tilly would know. 

For those who knew her, ascension was doubtful.  The had been a thorough bitch her whole life, a nasty, backbiting old crone who never left well enough alone, never married, and took revenge for her spinsterhood on all men.  'Better off dead', thought Father Murphy who had known her since she had graduated from St. Aloysius of Loyola, the Catholic high school affiliated with his church, St. Maurice's, had to put with nuns complaining about the hostility and godlessness of the girl, threatening to go to the Archbishop is something were not done, and going off in a huff, rosary beads clacking away as they strode out of the sacristy and back to the convent. 

'What would a heaven with her in it be like?', thought Father Brophy in a moment of secular irony.  There certainly would be no peace unless God had a special place for the likes of Tilly Briganti. 

He shook his head, blessed himself, and asked for forgiveness.  God forbid that a man of the cloth should have such uncharitable thoughts. 

Meanwhile, Aunt Tilly's sister, Margaret, looked at the now lifeless body sharing the same diffidence as Father. Tilly had not been an easy woman, and perhaps she had indeed gone to a better place; but still Margaret had hoped for some sign of recognition of what the future held for her sister and all of us - an empty void, a smiling, welcoming Jesus, or some other unimaginable place. 

The Muslims believe that martyrs will find a paradise of vestal virgins, babbling brooks, gardens, flowering meadows, and cool breezes - enough of an incentive to kill the infidel and make way for the coming Caliphate.  Catholics were told that heaven is but the sight of God - that celestial vision more than enough for eternal happiness.  Not much to hold on to after a life of Sunday mass, confession, communion and right behavior; but at least it would not be nothingness. 

Margaret shivered at the thought of taking her dying breath and seeing nothing but a black emptiness ahead; but unless Tilly said something different, she would have to live with that possibility. 

All of which is a long preamble to the point of the story - the popularity of religion.  How is it that a belief system with no proof whatsoever, an institution built only on presumption, promise, and providence could have such staying power?  Billions and billions of dollars have been made by countless priests, pastors, ministers, and preachers over the centuries since St. Paul went on his evangelizing mission and set up churches from Palestine to Rome.  

He offered nothing but promises, repeating Jesus' own words, 'Man cannot live by bread alone' opening the door to the establishment of the Vatican, the Holy Roman Catholic Church with billions in gold bullion stored beneath St. Peter's square and countless billions more secured in offshore accounts in the Caribbean. 

 

The Church, knowing how fragile unproven faith can be, concocted both Visions and Miracles to satisfy the longing of the faithful for some sign.  The Virgin Mary was said to have appeared in Portugal and France (Fatima and Lourdes), and thousands of pilgrims go there every year in the hopes that she will appear once again, this time to them. 

The desire for immortality - or at least the certainty that a spiritual afterlife exists - is viral.  Everyone has it, no one wants his short, nasty, and brutish life to end with only an eternity of nothingness thereafter.  Schizophrenics, natural visionaries and seers, so unhinged are they from the here and now, are often looked to for spiritual guidance.  Forensic psychologists have long contended that religious prophets saw nothing but the twisted, fantastical djinns of their own minds, and that religion has been confected from nothing but febrile dreams. 

 

Every Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Aberdeen, a congregation near the Alabama border of Mississippi, someone finds Jesus, stands up, points to the rafters, raises her arms and shouts, 'He has come'. 

'Hallelujah', respond the hundred or more souls in the church all with their eyes skyward hoping to see Him. 

This episode is repeated every Sunday morning throughout the South and in store-front churches in Northern inner cities.  Belief in the impossible has become standard issue.  He must be real, congregants say, otherwise there is no hope. 

'But hope is what there is, Brother', said Pastor Isaiah Jones from the pulpit of his own church, filled to the gills with families who have come from far-away cotton fields to hear him preach.  'There is no cause for despair', and the families go back to their tarpaper shacks feeling anointed and blessed.  Maybe next Sunday He will be revealed. 

 

Not one scintilla of evidence.  Not one proof, not one vetted, peer-reviewed incident of divine intervention in the world; and yet billions of people get down on their knees every Sunday or Friday and shed tears for the mystery and magic of God. 

Brilliant, ingenious, a fabulous idea!  To build a multi-trillion dollar industry on nothing but promise? Credit must be given. Religion is the most successful scam the world has ever seen.  Every Sunday the basket is passed, every year checks are written to the Annual Fund, every one of the millions of viewers tuning in to tearful, beseeching televangelists give from their little widow's mite to support God's work and make their elision to heaven easier. 

Thomas Sowell, conservative economist and political observer has noted that religion and government are the only two institutions built on nothing but promise.  Accountability is unnecessary and non-existent.  When a government announces the allocation of billions of dollars for the poor, that, ipso facto, is enough.  The idea is so resonant, so unmistakably right and good, so reflective of Christian, moral principles, it has to be right - checking up to see if it is, is irrelevant, supernumerary. Of course it is right, good, and proper. 

Trillions have gone out the door for welfare programs which have been miserable failures, entitlement programs which do little more than train people for dependence.  Treasuries have been emptied for pre-school programs which teach how to color within the lines but which have no lasting impact on future academic performance. Countless more programs designed to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion have managed just the opposite and created division, suspicion, accusation, and false promises across the board. 

  

The government interventionist agenda is based on faith and presumed authority. If something sounds good - compassion, inclusion, sharing, confidence - it must be good.  There is no need to set objectifiable indicators of success, quantifiable measures which indicate cost-benefit.  Only government, says economist Sowell, has no accountability, no bottom-line, no feet held to the fire.  If private sector investments turn no profit, they are cancelled.  If a new design, new logo, new operating procedures does not increase sales, they are scrapped. 

In the unlikely event that a government program is called out for non-performance, all that is necessary is to say, 'We have learned from our mistakes', followed up by a new tranche of money just as airily conceived and and unlikely of impact as its predecessor. 

The World Bank under the leadership of former Vietnam War-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a man desperate to make amends to the world's poor after the murderous debacle under his watch, instituted a program of Poverty Reduction and thanks to it billions of dollars in soft loans and grants went out the door with nothing more than assumption.  The idea was moral, right, and good, so success would follow. 

 

When it didn't, McNamara and his minions said, 'We have learned our lesson', and millions more of airy unaccountable millions went down the rathole. 

Government whether directly or indirectly, whether nationally or internationally has been the most marvelous, most creative, most impressively vaporous invention since the first human settlements.  It follows in the footsteps of religion, step by step. 

'A sucker is born every minute', said circus impresario P.T. Barnum, or it takes two to tango; and religion and government would not be so influential and universal if it weren't for credulous patrons. 

So, sign up for the Greatest Shows On Earth and make millions.