[On the Greek myth of the Amazonomachy]

Greek artists and thinkers understood that there was, and always has been, a power struggle between the sexes. Men and women complement each other, of course, but doesn’t the deer complement the mountain lion, and doesn’t the sheep complement the wolf? Biology is not a simple matter of cooperation, even within species. It would be stupid to think of it as such, and the Greeks made a conscious decision to prioritize civilization over the barbarism of matriarchy. Nothing better illustrated that concept at the time than the Amazonomachies.

The ancient Greeks were strugging against societies that saw them as fanatics. The supine potentates of surrounding states must have asked: “Who are these men to demand rights and a voice over their rulers? Surely, they should bow down to kings and queens, and relinquish this odd concept of manhood.” But they stood their ground, defining their struggle according to what appeared before their eyes.

...

Despite the misappropriation of the term “progressive” in contemporary America resulting in a warped concept of human progress, surely an irony befitting ancient Babylon, progress was at one time a desperate effort, and the Greeks fought against great odds to leave us with the blueprint upon which we built modern civilization.

If, like today’s simpering politicians, Greek men had bowed down before their wives and sisters, debasing themselves and squandering their efforts in order to appease the mother goddess, we would have been left with none of the marble pillars of civilization, but rather the misshapen mud huts of matriarchy.

In this spirit, we should celebrate the victories over the wanton Amazon women. Each stroke of sword and thrust of spear into the defiant, struggling Amazon warriors was another step in the construction of a better way of life. As Theseus plucked Hippolyta from the midst of a frenzied horde of howling women, carrying her off as a reluctant trophy, it was as though he were a fisherman hauling an ignorant mass of savages ashore. Thus was Athens, the seed of Western civilization, planted in victory in the heaving womb of barbary.

...

Today, as rockets burst forth from a speechless earth, as marvels of medicine save the lives of otherwise lost victims, and as we unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, we still resort to the language and thought of the few brave men of ancient Greece, reaching back to that indomitable spirit that subjugated even the Amazons, those women who still clamor and press up against us in spirit in an effort to shove us back into the abyss of darkness. If we give in and relinquish our patrimony, we have failed our forefathers, and don’t deserve to be called men.