From Metaphysical Misogyny to Algorithmic Porn: The Western Philosophical Fathers of Contemporary Porn Culture
Here we trace the genealogy of contemporary pornographic archetypes and their mainstream social media avatars back to the misogynist constructs of five canonical European thinkers: Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), Sigmund Freud (d. 1939), Carl Jung (d. 1961), and Søren Kierkegaard (d. 1855). These men fixed “woman” in a structural role as seductress, adversary, hysteric, anima-shadow, or aesthetic idol — archetypes that the porn industry later codified into repeatable fantasy categories. In the digital era, social media has amplified these categories into synthetic egregores within a goetia of the profane, projecting them as the “essence” of womanhood while fragmenting solidarity and deepening gender antagonism. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, and Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine of tajallī, we diagnose these archetypes as false theophanies and propose counter-egregore strategies for their dismantling.
The algorithmic age has not birthed its archetypes ex nihilo. The dominant forms of “woman” in pornography and mainstream digital culture have deep philosophical roots. They are not merely products of media industries but the heirs of a metaphysical misogyny articulated in the long 19th and early 20th centuries. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and Kierkegaard each cast the feminine as ontological foil—irrational, manipulative, distracting, unstable, or dangerous to male transcendence (Schopenhauer 1851; Nietzsche 1883–1885; Freud 1905; Jung 1959; Kierkegaard 1843). We argue that these philosophical archetypes are the unacknowledged fathers of contemporary Western porn culture. The porn industry has operationalized them as profitable fantasy templates, and social media has normalized them as everyday influencer aesthetics. This is not simply a cultural phenomenon; it is a political-theological process—a ritual enthronement of a counterfeit feminine as a self-sustaining egregore in what we call the goetia of the profane.
Philosophical Fathers of Porn Culture
Arthur Schopenhauer cast women as cunning yet intellectually shallow, driven by the species’ reproductive will. In On Women, he describes them as “childlike” manipulators (Schopenhauer 1851). This maps directly onto the porn categories of teen, schoolgirl, and barely legal — infantilized sexuality paired with calculated seduction. Friedrich Nietzsche depicted woman as a siren of ressentiment, a destabilizing force against male self-overcoming in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1883–1885). Porn genres like cheating wife, revenge sex, and cuckold eroticize this adversarial feminine, turning Nietzsche’s warning into a consumable script. Sigmund Freud pathologized the feminine as hysterical, ambivalent, and neurotic (Freud 1905). Porn’s hot mess, crying during sex, and emo/goth niches commodify instability, making erotic spectacle of dysfunction—the viewer cast as both voyeur and analyst. Carl Jung located woman in the anima/shadow—a psychic projection and potential femme fatale (Jung 1959). The mystic domme, witch fetish, and cosplay categories are commodified instantiations of Jung’s archetype, selling roleplay as intimacy. Søren Kierkegaard placed woman on the aesthetic side of his ethical/aesthetic divide, a sensuous distraction from higher calling (Kierkegaard 1843). The luxury escort, high-class call girl, and sugar baby genres monetize sensual indulgence as telos. Taken together, these figures produce an archetype grid that pornography inherits wholesale: seductress, adversary, hysteric, anima-shadow, aesthetic idol.
Porn as Archetype Engine; Social Media as Amplifier
Pornography transforms textual misogyny into visual-industrial product. It creates repeatable fantasy protocols:
- Seductress/Childlike Manipulator → Teen, Schoolgirl, Barely Legal
- Siren of Ressentiment → Cheating Wife, Revenge Sex, Cuckold
- Hysteric/Unstable Sexuality → Hot Mess, Crying During Sex, Emo/Goth Girl
- Anima/Shadow Femme Fatale → Mystic Domme, Witch Fetish, Cosplay
- Sensuous Distraction → Luxury Escort, High-Class Call Girl, Sugar Baby
These templates are honed for affective intensity, recognizability, and ease of replication. They behave as summoned forms in a profane ritual: conjured, repeated, optimized, and exported into adjacent media.
The porn–social media interface collapses the line between “adult entertainment” and mainstream content:
- Teen/Schoolgirl → “Coquette” TikTok, college vloggers
- Cheating Wife → drama-driven influencer arcs
- Hot Mess → chaotic livestreamers, trauma-as-content
- Mystic Domme/Witch → astrology TikTok, witchy thirst-traps
- Luxury Escort/Sugar Baby → “soft life” luxury influencers
Algorithms reward these cues because they maximize watch time, trigger strong emotions, and are endlessly reproducible. The result is the synthetic egregore of ‘woman’—an algorithmically enthroned caricature mistaken for essence. This fulfills the misogynist prophecy: men distrust the feminine they see, women adopt it to gain visibility, and the cycle of gender antagonism becomes self-reinforcing.
The Goetia of the Profane: Pornographic Circuit of Control
Circuit Flow:
1. Archetype Invocation – Philosophy births the form; porn incarnates it.
2. Amplification – Social media normalizes it in “softcore” variants.
3. Internalization – Users mimic it for status and survival.
4. Consensus Manufacture – Archetype = “essence” in popular perception.
5. Self-Sustaining Egregore – The form disciplines and mutates autonomously.
6. Algorithmic Refinement – Data feedback optimizes it for deeper capture.
This is a true goetia: a spirit (synthetic egregore) conjured into a bounded form (porn trope) and compelled into service—profit extraction, social division, erotic enclosure.
False Tajallī and the Inversion of the Sacred Feminine
In Ibn ʿArabī’s cosmology, the feminine is a locus of Divine Self-Disclosure (tajallī)—beauty (al-jamīl), mercy (al-raḥmān), and wisdom (al-ḥakīma) as living forms (Ibn ʿArabī 1980). The porn–social media circuit inverts this, creating:
- Form without Origin – Severed from the Names.
- Idolatrous Fixation – Image mistaken for essence.
- Energetic Parasitism – Desire harvested without reciprocity.
- Fragmentation – The feminine reduced to marketable parts.
This is not beauty revealing God, but beauty as idol—a counterfeit theophany.
Counter-Egregore Interventions
Visible Front:
- Name the porn templates openly.
- Produce alternative glamour rooted in reciprocity.
- Hijack platforms with counter-tajallī content.
Oblique Front:
- Host salons, festivals, and workshops uniting eros and craft.
- Develop artisan economies for theophanic beauty.
Subterranean Front:
- Teach porn/media literacy to spot false tajalliyyāt.
- Embed intimacy pedagogy into communities.
- Anchor eros in mercy, wisdom, and purpose.
Dethroning the Fathers, Restoring the Face
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Kierkegaard are not merely “thinkers of the feminine” —they are the patriarchs of the pornographic archetype grid. Their constructs have been industrialized by pornography, normalized by social media, and enthroned as the hegemonic feminine in the digital age. This enthronement is a ritual: a goetia of the profane that fixes a false feminine as an idol, siphoning desire into profit and sowing division between genders. Dismantling it is both political and spiritual:
- Politically, it breaks the Archons’ control of the erotic field.
- Spiritually, it restores the Name to the form, returning beauty to its origin and purpose.
The task is counter-conjuration—seeding counter-tajalliyyāt, protecting them from capture, and multiplying their forms until the counterfeit fades.
Dethrone the false fathers. Break the circle. Restore the Face.
