Legal Ambience
Into the gooey caramel center of justice.
A reader of my discourses on forging the post-male society was pleased to send me a note. It started off well. “You inspire me so much,” it went. “You inspire all of us. Pure Barres, Panera Breads, and !ndigo self-care alcoves all over the country surrender their space to reading circles of sisters intent on turning your words into actions.” But what followed shook me to my core. “If only we could be able to know what the Gynopocene Age will look like once we have arrived there.”
If writers are humiliated by being alerted to their textual typos, imagine what it feels like to have the same done to their conceptual typos, those inadvertent paradoxes that grow from even the most ironclad reasoning! They don’t know? Of course they don’t know. I’ve spent so much time trying to direct them along the road to the gynopocene that I’ve forgotten to tell them about the destination, and the much more arduous labor that attends with its building. Here then is my response.
If all societies are basically like bodies, there is little to suggest that the post-male gynopocene society will be easily detectable next to others, at least on the surface. Its hair, its skin, its secretions and excretions will be instantly recognizable and suggest that no real revolution has taken place. Only in truth it will indicate that the revolution will have been all too successful. For things get interesting under the skin. That’s because the necessary work is focused entirely on removing the bones and the nerves; those being the male-dominated framework and rationale. In goes an entirely new structure and an entirely new sensory circuitry. As a result, perceptions we’ve long held as immovable are set aside, and meanings to words and concepts we were taught to be unchangeable are mutated.
I made sure to start this right away when I emphasized the need for balance rather than equality when it came to ending gender conflict. Though this led to a conclusion that equality is impossible and undesirable. Not so! Equality as we have understood it was never as it seemed. When it existed at all it was fragile and dependent upon circumstances that allowed for the advancement of one gender without stepping on the toes of the already advanced gender. But that could not avert their respective destinies where men were always bound to sink and women were always bound to soar. Those that soared were responsible for weighing the scales, and for providing those that sunk with the softest possible seabed. That did not end equality, it simply disassembled it in order to be rebuilt in a new image at our new destination. And that new equality will be the crux for the concepts that follow.
What equality will look like in the gynopocene is best understood by how it is brought about. Naturally we want avoid replacing a patriarchy with a matriarchy. This anti-hierarchical impulse has more sympathy among us than may be admitted, but it seems neither fully known nor honestly confronted as to what entails that avoidance. It is not enough to preface everything with “We sisters” or “We sisters and you kid sisters,” but to get at the root of all strata-enabling habits.
The first law of the gynopocene will be the banning of individualized ritual. That means no medallions, no diplomas, no tiaras, no dream vacations, and no ceremonial roles with the purpose of upholding individual prestige or accomplishments. Nothing, that is, that puts one person above others, regardless of how meritorious the honor is. And that will be the only law of the gynopecene, as its substance will inform the collective intuition of the sisterhood on which the new habits and conventions will be forged and on which their society will be ordered and protected. As such, the meanings behind “laws,” behind the “makers” of laws, and behind the “qualities” of the makers of those laws will undergo considerable conceptual disruption.
The gynopocene must be built on trust. Trust means dispatching with the written word. The male fixation on explicit instructions dies with the happily instructed. The reassurance a Constitution emits on the surface belies a vast minefield. Its arithmetically prolix syntax will entangle you in razor wire of adverse consequences; some are even intentional. While the silently subtle implications of its carefully chosen words will paralyze you with anxiety. Whether precise or vague, awkward or elegant, your entire life could hang by a single sentence. It was an awesome and awful power; but if the gynopocene is to survive, its credo must be that there are “Literally no words.”
Vigilant readers may detect new conceptual typos. You might ask, “So, like, who makes the first law?” Or, “What if a habit is a bad one, or comes into conflict with another? How does that get adjudicated?” I’m so glad you asked! We’ve come to the gooey caramel center of gynopocene jurisprudence.
Equality needs guardians just as Burger King needs managers. Many small matters can be left to the consensus of collective action. But wider-scale problems should be entrusted to a corp of consultants. These sisters will be appointed to assess behavior found inconsistent with our store of habits. Depending upon the nature of the case, the consultant will rule that the behavior of one of the disputants was justly cited or that a habit must be reformed to suit the context created by the behavior. The gynopocene will be guided by what I like to call ambient justice, wherein trial, appeal, and inquiry are coalesced under the blanket process of “reading the room.”
When I said there would be no prestige in this society I meant it, and this includes that of consultants. An eminence hangs over the Legislator that has been consistent through all of its subsequent manifestations, even when this senator or that judge was manifestly stupid. The gynopocene prevents this error with a new criteria of service. As the law-giver’s skills derive more from mindset than from learning, psychological evaluations will determine who gets appointed to the consultancy. The consultant mindset, to quote someone or other, is “nothing if not critical.” It is guided by a realism so arctic in its coldness that it verges on the supernatural. The consultant is the one sister in the society above the constraints of empathy. Everyone she encounters in the conducting of her office is virtually faceless. She is bound only by the rigors of the case and aims only for the fairest result. She does not flinch at having to split the baby when required. Under the male’s clinical gaze this would have been called “depression.” Whatever we will call it now, it is the adhesive ooze of our order. And you may cast this out further to the host of conditions and personality disorders that are sure to be the “superpowers” of our enforcement wing, whether in the bureaucratic or police context.
Policing for that matter will also undergo reconceptualization. Or more accurately, minimization. The decrease of an habitually criminal gender means also a decrease in frequency and types of crime. And with a change of crime comes a change of penalty. I refer back to the law against individual accomplishment, which goes both ways. The guilt of one person will matter less compared to the web of complicity her crime weaves. One crime by one person necessarily radiates outward toward as many beneficiaries as victims. Such crimes, I’m confident, will be rare and will require a tribunal of consultants to assess the severity of the punishment for the criminal and the number of sisters to be punished with her.
This vision of justice probably only goes part of the way to correcting my negligence. I think that it at least marks the beginning of new and more substantial conversations. And I hope it shows that work, however difficult, can also be joyous.