GENDER DIVISIONS

1. The meditating man is a subman, for his ego is subhuman, and thus metaphysical. He is deeper than man. For man is human-all-too-human in his vegetative sinfulness, his physical knowledge (whether carnally or intellectually), whereas the subman is a God, is 'God the Son' in his airy gracefulness, his metaphysical truth (whether aurally or respiratorily).

2. There is nought deeper and higher than the subman, especially the meditating subman, who meditates - transcendentally.

3. Imagine the term 'superman' being applied to such a person - would it not be implausible to equate that most calm and profound of states, centred in being, with anything 'super'?

4. For the prefix 'super' generally connotes with something dynamic, imposing, quick, strong, proud, even brash and slick. There is a suggestion, moreover, of something if not exactly superficial then, at any rate, artificial and ... large.

5. No, I can no longer conceive of the ne plus ultra of human - and particularly male - maturation in terms of the 'super', much less superman, à la Nietzsche. Only in terms of the subman, who is as much beyond man, in his metaphysical subhumanism, as the superman is behind him - that is to say, anterior as opposed to posterior to man. And then as a creature who is kind of at cross-purposes or loggerheads with his gender.

6. Now if it is more natural to be a man than a superman, it is more supernatural to be a superwoman than a superman, to be superfeminine than supermasculine, and thus properly of strength in the chemical phenomenality of watery punishment.

7. If men are more usually masculine (and knowledgeable) than supermasculine (and strong), then women, by contrast, are more usually superfeminine (and strong) than feminine (and knowledgeable).

8. For whereas the supermasculine approximates, in vegetative paradox, to the supernatural (of which the superfeminine is per se), the feminine approximates, in watery paradox, to the natural (of which the masculine is per se). The strong man is as much the male exception as ... the knowledgeable woman the female exception. Generally men are knowledgeable and women strong.

9. But not a few women, more fiery than watery, are what may be called unfeminine, and hence beautiful - the gender antithesis of that which, being submasculine, is true, like the subman.

10. For if supernature and nature constitute a phenomenal, or worldly, antithesis, as between water and vegetation, strength and knowledge, woman and man, then unnature and subnature constitute a noumenal, or supra-worldly, antithesis, as between fire and air, beauty and truth, the Devil and God.

11. Now if the masculine is more genuinely natural (and vegetative) than the feminine, and the superfeminine more genuinely supernatural (and watery) than the supermasculine, it can be argued that, where the noumenal options are concerned, the unfeminine is more genuinely unnatural than the unmasculine, while, conversely, the submasculine is more genuinely subnatural than the subfeminine, conceiving of the latter as the female antithesis to the unmasculine.

12. In fact, so much more so would this be the case ... that one might be forgiven for disposing, on all but an academic basis, with notions of unmasculine and subfeminine, so that only the unfeminine and the submasculine were countenanced ... the better to do proper justice to the absolutism (comparatively speaking) of the noumenal planes of space and time, in contradistinction to the relativity, or greater relativity, of the phenomenal planes of volume and mass, wherein man and woman, the masculine and the superfeminine (in general terms), have their worldly places.