The Enlightenment Killed Cupid

Heterosexuality in its Death Throes

and

Keturah Hickman and Mitochondrial Eve

May 26, 2026

Note: This is a guest post written by Mitochondrial Eve.

She recently posted the following on twitter:

Longer spacing between babies is trad. Lactation amenorrhea is a legitimate form of birth control and more effective when women are low body fat percentage.

I was particularly interested in the line “Imagine not needing to worry about your kid’s education.”

For better or worse, it’s an interesting thought experiment. I asked her to write that thought out into an essay, and this is the result.

Mystery stands at the core of attraction between the sexes. Our highly dimorphic nature puts distance between us, drawing up a curtain of separation through which the rare stolen glimpse into the world of the opposite sex was wrapped in weighty consequences.

Attraction between the sexes is an escalating force. A glimpse leads to a touch. A touch leads to joining. Joining leads to procreation.

The separation between the sexes had the important function of keeping procreation within the bonds of marriage, but to this end, mystery and eroticism was engendered.

Our dimorphic clothing is the most visible illustration of this. In the western world until the last century, men historically wore trousers and pants while women wore skirts and dresses.

Our modern gnosticism does not understand the psychological and spiritual impact of our bodies’ interaction with the physical world. We are spiritually transgender—believing our maleness or femaleness is defined by how we internally classify ourselves, instead of how our bodies appear and how we are perceived.

Our respective uniforms told a story. Feminine fragility and masculine virility was tactile, an ever-present, obvious signal to everyone around us and to our own nerve endings.

The polarity between the sexes was highly charged and our dimorphic life force was potent. You could call this polar energy eroticism, as it is the hetero—the force between opposites—that is the root of heterosexual desire.

Compare the erotic energy of the English Victorian Era—one that is slandered as “prudish” when a visible female stockinged ankle was cause for controversy— to today when spandexed camel toe, sports bras and butt cracks are a common sight.

Like the animal in captivity that self-pleasures but refuses to reproduce, our modern clothing is not a symptom of hyper-sexualization but rather a weak sexuality drained of all polarity.

One by one, the roots of our dimorphism have been cut off. The marriage contract was made egalitarian. Sex segregated spaces eliminated. Our clothing androgenized. Female fertility sterilized.

The convergence of the sexes has been at a slow simmer since the Enlightenment, but the effects have hit a breaking point in the past few decades. Marriage and fertility rates are at a steep decline. Sexlessness is at an all time high. It seems something has fundamentally broken between us.

And in the past century, the modern liberal order has reigned supreme. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the English marriage contract which has been transformed through incremental changes over the past 150 years.

The Gay-ing of Marriage in the English Common Law

Conservatives fundamentally misunderstand the gay marriage debate. The institution of marriage was not opened to homosexuals.

If the trads deserve any criticism, it’s that they don’t go hard enough. There are far too many who have co-opted traditional aesthetics without committing to the underlying premise.

What is necessary will be incredibly painful. But the pains of this rebirth are essential to the survival of our species.