Dwell a moment on a drama that played itself out more than a century ago within a head-hunting tribe of the Philippines? An anthropologist lived with the tribe during the time in its history when several pressures combined to eventually stamp out its practice of head-hunting.
Has it been established by now that there is never one (single) reason for any behaviour. Head-hunting was never a ceremonial matter alone. It was that mixed up with a large handful of other matters. One of which was the demands a tribe girl put upon a tribe boy before she might open her legs to him. And this is where the 'three head rule' came in. No boy was even noticed until he had taken at least three human heads. At the time of the study, that meant three murders, for although previously (I'm guessing) battles with neighbouring war-parties and hunting-parties had supplied trophy heads, now the neighbouring tribes were peaceful. The boys were taking the heads of isolated individuals, often of elderly farmers.
When questioned on how they felt about the taking of heads, from an initial show of bravado, the boys soon became uncomfortable and said that they didn't like doing it but that they had to. And the girls - what did they have to say about their demands? Silence but for a nervous giggling? The book is silent on it. Within only a few years of the study, the practice of head-taking had all but died out and the women were forced to adapt.
Somewhere here, is there a faint Filipino warning for you? What do women in your world want of you? Is there a type of them sifting through you, and choosing those with wealth, status, power? These are not Women; they are Vagina Owners. Women are something far greater than they. These achievements of yours may be dressed up in a fine word such as 'ambition'. Your vagina owners are going to choose only a man who is 'ambitious'. But isn't the revealing question just this - ambitious for what? Ambitious to study Albanian medieval churches in your spare time? That might not be quite enough mightn't it? Don't self-elevating words expressed by some of your vagina owners mask a real craving for resources? Acquiring wealth through hard work is what you do well isn't it? You are judged by many of your vagina owners on it. At the moment what your vagina owners want of you ties in with what you want to do anyway doesn't it? But haven't there always been problems with this obsession with making money, with devoting so very much to making money? Even if some of you often don't quite see it, surely to cram this amount of work into a life is going to be largely dull, and largely routine, and stressful? Before choosing to do it, don't you need to seriously weigh up the likely benefits against the inevitable costs?
And it rarely 'works' does it. Your long hours of labour actually militate against addressing a deeper problem. Your vagina owner will tire of your voice. She craves entertaining or interesting words. Or she finds that she craves variety. And mightn't she be one of the ones you'd like to stay. Once she's left the arrangement, of course the wealth, the main point of all those years spent toiling, is often taken away from you.
At the moment what vagina owners want coincides with what you want for yourselves. But if you come to decide that to devote so much of your life and so much of your energy to 'work' is not in your interests, or (as likely) if there is no more work to maintain your obsession anyway, then your vagina owner's wants become dangerous to you don't they? Taking heads has become harmful again. And is it at this very moment that vagina owners will be forced to wise-up (again) and adapt?
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