Denigration of Beauty and Abuse

[Ilya Shambat]

We have some feminists claiming that coercion toward beauty leads to misogyny and abuse. Denigration of beauty leads to both much more reliably.

A man comes across a beautiful woman. He is attracted to her, but his values are against her and everything that she is about. His likes and his values are in discord. What he wants, and what he values, are incompatible with each other. He can either get what he wants but doesn’t value, or he can get what he values but does not want. In either case he is unhappy.

So he gets what he wants, but he is against what he wants. He becomes the woman’s enemy. He turns violent and abusive. He makes her miserable; he makes himself miserable. Eventually the woman gets up the courage to leave him. At which point he becomes vindictive and does everything in his power to mess up her life.

The biggest victims of anti-beauty attitudes are therefore beautiful women. As feminist-influenced men and women reject them, they have nowhere to go except men who are actual misogynists and actual abusers. The man knows that the woman is not going to get support from society, so he feels like he can do to her whatever he likes.

Now it may very well be that it is wrong to discriminate in favour of beauty; but it most certainly is wrong to discriminate against it. And that is what we see here. The beautiful women are being treated as less than human and end up living shit lives. And that is not only bad for them. It is bad for the civilization. The best things in it get destroyed, and their benefit is denied to other people.

Saying such things is not only not misogyny; it is the opposite of misogyny. It is a labour of love. It is loving whom one loves enough to go to bat for them and put vast intellectual effort into addressing their concerns while confronting bullying and nastiness by any number of people.

As for myself, my likes and values are in accord. I both like and value beauty – in women yes, but also in such things as nature and art. I do not have to choose between what I like and what I value; I like and value the same things. I both like and value the women I love. And it is a stance that can be beneficial to many, many people.

Beauty should be valued and respected. Denigration of beauty has to stop, and abuse against beautiful women must be brought to a halt. Beautiful women should be treated at least as well as other women.

Making that possible, becomes the labour of love.