Raphael Machado dismantles the conservative ideal of the Virgin-Mother, revealing through the figure of the modern "virtual prostitute" a forgotten, sacred dimension of the feminine - where Aphrodite returns as the true counterbalance to Mary in the metaphysics of woman.
In the recent fashion of quick debates, they decided to bring Martina Oliveira 1-177172611 to argue with a few dozen "conservatives." I am not sure what the purpose was. What became clear from the exchange, however, was that all the conservatives - without exception - seemed eager to prove that Martina was wrong to do what she does.
Everyone there wanted to change her view of herself and of her choices, as if hoping to "convert" her into becoming some other kind of woman. She, on the other hand, appeared quite self-aware - at least in part - though she refuses to admit that what she does is, in essence, a virtualized form of prostitution.
Even so, she clearly knows she is being objectified. And she accepts it. She understands the male gaze - naturally objectifying - embraces that objectification, and delights in it. She knows that through her activities, she becomes a mechanical object of pleasure for others, even if only in the onanistic form typical of the postmodern digitalization of eroticism.
The impression was of water striking endlessly against a rock.
The conservatives' problem seems quite obvious: for millennia we have all operated on the assumption that there is a single paradigm of femininity - a model to be imitated, a nature to be fulfilled - that of the Virgin Mary, a unity that can be divided into two expressions: the Virgin and the Mother.
The Virgin represents the starting point of the feminine path, whose fulfillment is achieved in the transformation into the Mother.
This model is taken as universal, applicable to all women, infinitely repeatable, because it refers to an innate and exclusive trait of woman: the potential for motherhood. A woman's fulfillment, according to this view, can only be found in maternity, and there can be no higher aspiration for the female sex. More than that, some conservatives firmly believe that there can be no other aspiration or function for the female sex at all.
This judgment is, of course, mistaken - distorted by a historical and theological myopia that ignores that the feminine possesses more than one nature and more than one possibility.
As Julius Evola showed in The Metaphysics of Sex, woman has a more natural and determining relationship to the Dyad - the primordial pair, the correlates and derivatives of the Heaven-Earth union - than man does. What Evola means is that the highest forms of feminine realization are defined by her two possible relations to the masculine: to be a lover or to be a mother.
If for men romantic and domestic bonds are traditionally seen as limits on virility (in some cultures, male maturity is recognized only after a break from the home and before any serious romantic attachment), femininity moves in the opposite direction: it expresses itself through domesticity (the figure of the Mother, the archetype of Demeter) and through sexuality (the figure of the Lover, the archetype of Aphrodite).
These two types of woman differ in how they relate to man. The "Mother" seeks man for the purpose of generation, of maternity - she embodies the imperative of species continuation as her particular mission. The "Lover" seeks man for what can be derived from the sexual experience itself.
Naturally, these are ideal types. In real life, few women embody one archetype exclusively (though one usually predominates). It is also important to note that both forms of femininity express themselves along a spectrum ranging from the profane to the sublime. There is a profane form of maternity and, below that, even a deviant or degraded one; and there is a sublime, spiritual maternity. Likewise, there is a profane eroticism, and also a deviant or degraded eroticism; and, at its height, a sublime, spiritual eroticism.
The "Lover" is not to be equated entirely with the "prostitute," for prostitution exists in the real world for many reasons - economic pressures, debts, addictions, personal tragedies. Many women turn to prostitution for such reasons. Yet there has always been a portion of prostitutes who engage in it out of desire and who find fulfillment in it. Conversely, many women who have never sold their bodies - or their images on platforms like OnlyFans - nonetheless share in the Aphroditic nature.
This Aphroditic nature, as Evola notes while citing Weininger and D'Annunzio, is characterized by the longing to absorb masculine virility and its seed. The "Lover" is the woman as a black hole, yearning to devour the man and finding fulfillment in the "vampiric" extraction of his seed - her victory. For this reason, in some tantric practices centered on the man, the male path relies on seminal retention.
A considerable number of women are born for this - to be mouth, to be void - and achieve their highest realization in this and no other way. This must be acknowledged. There are women of overflowing, inexhaustible sexuality, who act provocatively even without intending to. Of them, the Latin proverb says: tota mulier sexus - "the whole of woman is sex."
Ancient peoples, recognizing this aspect of the feminine, created priesthoods founded on sexuality, led by voluntary women trained as priestesses in the temples of goddesses like Inanna, Ishtar, or Aphrodite. These priestesses engaged in acts either of hierogamy (sacred marriage with a political authority to ensure fertility and cosmic renewal) or hierodulia (prostitution as a form of divine worship).
Returning to the question of "virtual prostitutes," one must accept that such women were likely born for some form of prostitution. The problems here are not individual - tied to these women or their choices - but systemic.
It must also be emphasized that the "Lover" cannot be reduced to the "prostitute" or the "harlot." She may be a faithful wife who bears children, yet feels more fulfilled through her husband than through her son. Moreover, one might consider that the Christian mysticism of certain historical nuns - some of them saints and authors of highly erotic poems sublimated toward their "bridegroom," Christ - was a Catholic expression of the "path of the Lover," and even of that hierogamic function.
Returning, however, to the problems of "cyber-prostitution": the first is that virtualization destroys any true conclusion of the erotic tension in the Heaven-Earth union. The Dyad remains divided; there is no true "marriage." Everything resolves into onanism - self-eroticism.
The second problem is that since there is no consummation through union and ecstasy, erotic tension extends into a diffuse and permanent eroticism which, for men, is devirilizing. Masculine virility finds fulfillment in climax, not in prolonged, diffuse pleasure; it is vertical, whereas feminine sexuality is innately horizontal.
The third is that prostitutes should not be allowed to become celebrities, nor to become wealthy and influential. Allowing that creates social contagion and imitation. It is a clear social inversion from which nothing good can emerge.
Many other issues could be raised, but these suffice to illustrate the point.
The essential conclusion is that there exists an entire category of women who will never truly find fulfillment through motherhood, and who were, in fact, born for sex - whose very essence is sexuality - some even to the point of desiring to pass from hand to hand, to sell their bodies to strangers. Not every woman was born to emulate the Virgin Mary.
(Translated from the Portuguese)
Editor's note: Martina Oliveira is a Brazilian cam model and digital influencer, popularly known by the nickname "Beiçola da Privacy," noted for her provocative marketing and content on adult platforms such as Privacy and OnlyFans.