About Beauty and the Beast

“That’s the classic female hero myth, as far as I can tell; it’s Beauty and Beast”

— says Dr. Jordan Peterson

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s interpretation of the essence of the tale Beauty and the Beast is that a woman’s noble role in a relationship is to tame a man-beast who can be civilised. He says that when a woman tames the beast she will fulfil a basic female role, and will be happy because of it. She will achieve a great purpose in life.

There’s no doubt that this interpretation was founded on his deep clinical experience. He must have had female clients who have felt much better in life after finding a man-beast whom they have “straightened up,” likely after a lot of time, effort, nerve-racking emotional and relationship battles. I may say that i know some women who fit this interpretation. But, he says it in a general manner, such that somehow it doesn’t seem completely right. There are lots of women who have met quite good men who don’t need taming, and their relationship is fitting, normal. It seems to me that most of relationships are like this, but we will wait for a scientific study to confirm or deny it.

There are women who have met a beast that has never been tamed and continue to live with him in a decades-long depressive, or even abusive relationship. Jordan Peterson’s advice is hardly good for these women, because their persistence to tame the beast is futile, even though they must think they can do it, maybe because they overestimate themselves, because they don’t fully understand the beast they are taming, a concrete materialistic or nonmaterialistic need, or some other reason.

We should keep in mind that failure after failure it will be harder to find a fitting partner, since the good ones are doing their best to find one, too, so their numbers decrease over time…

Expected understanding of JP’s taming the beast

When a normal woman listens to what Dr. Peterson says, one should not expect a deep research in his meaning of the word beast. One should expect a standard IQ of 100. So, we can expect that a normal woman’s interpretation will be that she needs to find an unreasonable, arrogant man, and transform him, guide him in the right direction, at least (if not even pressuring him to do something that she finds righteous). It’s questionable if this is acceptable about everyday things like washing dishes, but i’d like to read the results of a success rate study for it. I personally expect the success rate of transforming a non-dishwasher into a dishwasher person to be considerably less than 50%.

Maybe a woman wants to “tame” her man so that he will change his position on a key relationship issue like whether to move, to have a child, to change profession. It’s debatable if these goals are morally right, since the result is not guaranteed to be favourable for the man (maybe not even for the woman).

It is doubtful if the man-beast will start washing dishes, and never stop, of course. It is not obvious that it’s morally justified to transform his position on a more essential topic, either, while time passes by for both…

“There’s no fun in taming someone who’s already tame.”

— Jordan Peterson

The “fun” part during the taming process seems more like a lot of stressing, effort and/or money spending, than fun.

Trying to tame a man-beast doesn’t seem like a good thing to teach women to do.

When one faces a beast

Even when a dog is seen nearby when we walk, we stop and think at least for a moment, or even unconsciously, whether it is dangerous to continue moving. When a normal sized, average dog barks at us, it’s scary, let alone an aggressively looking dog.

We can expect that the encounter with an unknown beast is scary. In the story, Beast is a man-sized, scary-looking creature. When anyone gets close to such creature, a freeze is the expected reaction, then fear. Freezing and crippling fear is how a normal woman would react; it’s not expected for her to go towards, with a desire to pet it. After the initial reactions had passed, anyone would want to distance self from the creature.

Most realistic women don’t desire to tame a beast, for sure.

Vulnerability and trust

A serious topic for men who seek to find a partner is the large number of women who have determined that they don’t want one. There must be some reason here, because the natural way, the way that nature has created men and women is to seek a partner (even when the partner is of the same sex). Could one of the reasons be: the embodyment of an unsafe environment by the other partner?

A normal man is stronger than a normal woman, so the woman usually has a reason more to be mistrustful. But, this applies to men, too. A man is also naked and defenceless, especially against a weapon or because of the option of emotional damage. The man can be laughed at, get belittled, blamed, stolen from, blackmailed; he can also get a disease, has some freedoms decreased. So, men need to be able to accept to be vulnerable, too.

During sex, people are on the bed naked, far from anything that can be used to defend self, having an other person skin to skin close. This is the most vulnerable situation that there could be for both. If a partner is not trustable, or poses physical or emotional danger because of intimate relations, it will be very hard to allow his or her presence in bed.

If a person thinks that being vulnerable is always associated with emotional, material, intellectual, social or physical hurt, s/he will never allow self to be vulnerable. Acceptance of vulnerability demands trusting that not getting hurt is an option, too. So, acceptance of vulnerability is based on trust. If a person can’t accept to be vulnerable in the presence of a partner, s/he can’t accept a partner at all. If a person is unable to trust a partner, s/he will never try to get one.

Mating lionesses

The next short video is a wonderful representation of allowing to be vulnerable. The lioness who searches for a mate shows her ability to feel vulnerable beside a lion. She even showed aggression towards him, and then walked away without picking him as a partner.

It is a good question that Dr. Jordan Peterson may like, whether the ability to feel trust towards the other and to be vulnerable in front of him/her can exist only along the ability to be aggressive towards him/her, the partner, or the father/mother, but this is a separate topic that we can discuss in an other blog. For, as Dr. Jordan Peterson says, “it’s impossible to respect yourself till you grow teeth, and realise that you’re someone dangerous…”

A person who can’t feel safe beside an other person in his or her most vulnerable situation will never be able to mate.

A reasonable interpretation of the myth

A normal woman (a normal man, too) doesn’t trust any man. For women, men are closed black boxes, strange, unknowable, untrustworthy, aggressive, beast-like. A man can do different kinds of harm to a woman, who is usually physically weaker than a man.

For a woman to have a relationship with a man, she needs to feel safe beside a beast. If she cannot feel safe beside a scary, incomprehensible beast, she cannot have a relationship with him. This is true for men, too; if a man cannot feel safe besides a woman, he cannot have a relationship with a woman. A relationship is where a person gets literally naked in front of the other. If the other person is not safe, being naked only means that we expect to be hurt.

Insecurity can arise from life due to personal experience, character and frustrations, but it’s reasonable that parents can play a role, too. If the father has imprinted it into the mind of his daughter, it would be hard for her to allow herself to be vulnerable beside a man. If the mother has imprinted insecurity into the mind of her son, it would be hard for him to allow himself to be vulnerable beside a woman.

An important upbringing goal for the mother could be to show her son that he can feel secure and vulnerable beside a woman; an important upbringing goal for the father could be to show his daughter that she can feel secure and vulnerable beside a man. Controlling parents imprint insecurity, fear, stress.

So, a good interpretation of the tale Beauty and the Beast is that It takes a lot of courage for a woman to allow herself to be vulnerable. This is truly heroic.

A lot of women in real life do not seem to be beast-tamers, but they do act so heroically that that they allow themselves to be deeply vulnerable in front of a dangerous man-beast.