MGTOW

MGTOW philosophy

Perspectives on MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) – a significant post-gynocentrism subculture based on the principle of male self-determination.

How to tame men – gynocentrism style
Gynocentrism – why so hard to kill?
MGTOW – facts and fallacies
What are MGTOW against?
Early references to “Men going their own way”
Definition of MGTOW
Self-determination: phrase origins
A MGTOW Yardstick: Determination Of Self By Other (DOSBO)
On the nature of MGTOW self-determination
MGTOW: 12th century style
MGTOW movement of 1898
Bachelorhood as a fine art (1900)
The real history of MGTOW
Authoring your own life
Don’t just do something, SIT THERE
The historical role of gynocentrism in societal collapse
Chasing the Dragon: Superstimuli as a cause of extreme gynocentrism (Video)

Marriage shunning

The following collection of articles describe the post-gynocentrism phenomenon of marriage shunning by males, and the rationale behind it.
No marriage

Marriage is a gynocentric custom
Slavery 101 – dating as taught to girls
Valentine’s Day: gynocentrism’s most holy event
Women complaining about lack of available slavemasters
Evidence of why men should avoid marriage: The Henpecked Club
Courtship
Men not marrying

Men shouldn’t marry
Querelle du Mariage
Marriage is obsolete. Are women?
The real reasons to not get married
Don’t give up on marriage? Request denied
Down the aisle again on the marriage question
Men on strike: why men are boycotting marriage
A MGTOW Yardstick: Determination Of Self By Other (DOSBO)

Post-gynocentrism relationships

Post-gynocentrism relationships between men and women are possible and even desirable for many people. The following articles explore how relationships can be revisioned.

friends

Hail to the V
The other Beauty Myth
Sex and Attachment
Love and Friendship
Pleasure-seeking vs. relationships

Post-gynocentrism culture

Articles (mostly from AVfM) exploring post-gynocentrism culture. Each article presents a post-gynocentrism paradigm for individual or collective existence.

How to end gynocentrism
Gynocentrism – why so hard to kill?
Freedom from gynocentrism in 12 Steps
Breaking the pendulum: Tradcons vs. Feminists
Why anyone who values freedom should be fighting against feminism
A Voice for Choice
Gynocentrism and the hierarchy of entitlement
The Counterculture
MHRM: counterculture or subculture?
On creating a counter-culture
A little blood in the mix never hurt a revolution

Down the aisle again on the marriage question: Is it still relevant?

zombie-wedding-marriage-bride-flickr

Once again I find myself walking into the murky waters of marriage, not in real life but in print… praise angels. I recently had a conversation about marriage with August Løvenskiolds which unearthed some alternative ways of looking at it. On several points our understanding aligned, and on others they diverged. So rather than rely on August’s perspective alone, I’d like to lay down my own thoughts.

The conversation was partly stimulated by a comment I made elsewhere, which we decided to unpack – and here I hope to unpack it further in this article (quote):

Aside from those differences over origins, both sides agree that gynocentric marriage – its culture, customs, laws, taboos – must be utterly abandoned, not reformed. Notice here I refer to gynocentric marriage and not to a marriage of the minds, hearts, dreams, goals, projects, and bodies that might come with non-gynocentric relationships.

The contention of this paragraph is, hypothetically speaking, that a marriage can be based on different priorities than those of gynocentrism. But before getting further into this idea lets start with the widest definition of marriage from the Oxford Dictionary, which is:

“any intimate association or union”

This definition covers pretty much all unions in which two or more things are brought together – whether in physics, biology, linguistics, or culture. In the case of this article we are referring to human unions, and while some of the accompanying customs and behavior go well beyond this basic Oxford definition, they each conform to this minimum requirement in order to satisfy for the label marriage.

There are two main orders of human union to consider: 1. culturally prescribed marriage customs, vs. 2. the unadorned biological demand for intimate association.

During our discussion, and also in his recent article on this topic, August proposed several combinations of words (portmanteaus) to describe many different kinds of marriage. For the sake of simplicity I’m only going to tackle the two primary terms he covered which are Gynomarriage, and Biomarriage.

Gynomarriage

Gynomarriage, (portmanteau of gynocentrism + marriage) describes the typical union between men and women today. It is based on the culturally prescribed roles of female superiority served by male-chivalry, a combination otherwise referred to as romantic love. This is the modern basis for marriage.

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During the time this marriage has existed, laws have evolved to buttress and enforce the gynocentric version, laws tilted almost exclusively to favor wives both during the marriage, and especially in the case of its downfall.

As a social construct gynomarriage has not been around forever, with other periods in history generating different forms of marriage as was outlined by August. During the last 800 years however, and ongoing today, gynomarriage has ruled- so that’s what we’ll concern ourselves with in the rest of this article. To better understand it let’s contrast it with another, far more important ‘marriage’ that remains relevant today:

Biomarriage

Biomarriage (biology + marriage) is a very different idea involving not cultural constructs, but biological necessities built into our DNA. The ‘marriage’ urged by biology is based on three factors: sexual pleasure; intimate bonding/attachment; and reproduction with the concomitant parenting instinct.
Hominid couple

Each of these imperatives has operated since our remote hominid past and will continue to compel our behavior for long after gynocentric culture ceases to exist. Like gynomarriage, biomarriage takes place between two adults, but in this case has done so for literally millions of years (and not just a few hundred years as in the case of gynomarriages).

Most of what I have described here is mediated by what the Greeks called storge, which is a feeling of affection that arises during intimate associations or unions which tends to strengthen over time.

I’ll spend the remainder of this piece talking about biomarriage because gynomarriage belongs, as any men’s advocate worth the name will tell you, in the scrap bin of history. People can easily get by without it, but the same cannot be said about biomarriage because the compulsion for human bonding, affection, and sexual desires are far too powerful to ignore.

Some MGTOW refuse to consider even a biomarriage with a woman, which is a serious but otherwise understandable choice to make in an environment that exposes men to being savaged by the in-creep of gynocentric exploitation.

However, if a man refuses the possibility of a non-gynocentric relationship with a woman, then what’s required is, at bare minimum, alternative avenues for expressing his biological imperative. He can satisfy sexual needs with porn, with fantasy, prostitutes, fleshlights or fuck-buddies. Likewise, he can satisfy his needs for affection and attachment with close friends, family, or perhaps with a dog or some other pet. He can satisfy parental desires via fathering, if the urge is there, any young among us — teaching school children, working in a daycare center, caring for the disabled, mentoring a fatherless child, coaching little league, looking after orphaned animals, or again buying a puppy.

Are these replacement measures enough? Yes, they meet the minimum standard for maintaining physical and emotional stability. But it requires a strong understanding of one’s biological needs, an awareness, and a willingness to work hard on meeting those needs. Rather than satisfying our biological needs via “an intimate association or union” we can use a bricolage of band-aids to ensure our biological and psychological health remains intact.

Summary

So while you may legitimately think you can reject, nay should reject gynomarriage, it’s not wise to reject the elements I’ve detailed under the heading biomarriage unless you want to risk your health, and life.

We need to realize that while history has been full of amazing men who never married and eschewed relationships with women (and no man should be shamed for taking this course), it also pays to remind men that choosing isolation from affection and intimate bonds has a cost, and shouldn’t be viewed as something trivial to do to yourself. Loneliness can lead to depression, anxiety, paranoia, suicide and must be protected against. Most people can probably do it, but they’ll need more than video games and YouTube in the long run to pull it off. It’s going to involve things like meditation, consciously working to both acknowledge your urges, and to cater to them in creative ways.

We can employ alternatives to satisfy our biological urges, but we might also revisit the question of whether there’s a way to conduct a biomarriage with a real flesh-n-blood human being minus the gynocentrism; you could perhaps think of it as a relationship based on the biological necessities of human being. I’d like to think that’s still possible, if not now then sometime in the future when both the government and gynocentrism are no longer part of the deal.

Chimpanzees regularly kiss and groom each other as part of an instinctual process of bonding

Chimpanzees regularly kiss and groom each other as part of an instinctual process of bonding

Feature image by Phoenix Comicon

On the nature of MGTOW self-determination

Article by Andrew DiKaiomata
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I make omelets my own way. By that, I mean exactly like you’d see in any cookbook. I whisk some eggs, melt some butter in a frying pan, pour the eggs in along with some cheese and maybe some other things for filling. What, you might ask, makes it my own way? The fact that it’s me doing it.

I also go my own way to work in the morning. The highway and during rush hour with thousands of other people. Each of them also going their own way. Why do I say I’m going my own way to work? Simply because it’s me doing it. Now you’d think that’s hardly my own way. If I were to go my own way to work, you’d think it would mean in some way fundamentally different – and you’d be right.

Like men going their own way.

If you were to imagine going out on your own, on your own way, you might expect that would mean something like MGTOW, that you are free from outside control, not dependent on another’s authority.

You might envision someone shrugging off society’s yolk, refusing to self-sacrifice and being one’s own boss. That’s what MGTOW is, even though a man certainly has the right to place himself in danger, to sacrifice himself for another, and to support others, he chooses not to. He goes his own way, in his life, in his choices, he remains sovereign.

Marriage is dangerous for men, it’s sacrificial and compels the man into support for his wife or ex-wife. In marriage, a man necessarily compromises, gives up sole control over his life and his property. As with the earliest known MGTOW groups “The Anti-Bardell Bachelor Band” it was acknowledged that MGTOW and marriage could not co-exist.

Now what about this concept of MGTOW simply meaning male self-determination? This is such a gross over-simplification as to completely change the concept. MGTOW can be better thought of as a second or third order male self-determination. That is, a man who is determined to maintain and preserve his self-determination and determined to refuse anything that might infringe on his future self-determinism.

MGTOW-quoted

For example, a man has the right, and could have his own self-determination to join the military, but joining the military greatly reduces a man’s self-determination. A soldier cannot go his own way. After he is no longer under military obligation, he could be MGTOW, yet while active, he no longer has his autonomy, independence and sovereignty. In the same way, a married man cannot be MGTOW.

Hopefully, I’ve already addressed possible rebuttals. Yes, men ought to have the maximum amount of choices, autonomy, freedom and options. Yet, the movement is not simply a group of men making choices from options they have. That understanding would not be recognizable to hardly anyone professing to be MGTOW. I won’t be appealing to the dictionary to say that MGTOW are by definition unmarried, but rather re-iterate that the philosophy and reason for existing preclude marriage, since MGTOW can be better understood as a second or third order self-determinism.

MGTOW is not simply about men making their own choices. It’s about making the choices that ensure further choices and maximum freedoms.

No man is under obligation to be MGTOW, but if you choose to sell yourself into government slavery (whether martial or marital), you are not MGTOW. If a man is married, he can be a great guy, he could live a great life, he could wake up sympathetic and with a desire to be MGTOW but he is not MGTOW. That’s how the movement understands itself, that’s what its philosophy prescribes and that’s simply what MGTOW is.
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Editor’s note:

Just to be a little nitpicky here, I don’t agree with the claim that male self-determination “changes” the concept of MGTOW. It doesn’t, and the definition is correct. But I do agree that as we retain that definition it can be fleshed out in greater detail, which the above piece does by expanding it to cover both present and future self-determination. For example, the above rightly advises men not to place themselves in a legal contracted marriage accompanied by the illusion of a woman respecting of his self-determination now, but which in future can be stolen from that same man as a woman enacts the restrictive powers latent within the contract – hey presto, self-determination squashed by the State. Ditto joining the military.

Elsewhere I’ve fleshed out the definition by examination of the opposite of male self-determination, i.e., determination of self by other (DOSBO). Determination of self by others is the antonym already implied in the definition of self-determination. The antonym limits the definition of MGTOW and in one stroke negates the claim that MGTOW can mean anything a person wants it to mean. By applying the DOSBO rule, no person can qualify as a MGHOW if he hands over a significant amount of his sovereignty to another entity.

For example, on the face of it we might assume pro-feminist men are ‘self-determined’ for having made a choice to be led by the spirit and letter of feminism. It hardly needs saying that this amounts to a false claim. The only self-determined decision such men make is an initial one to give up self-determination altogether in favor of determination of self by other—which is, of course, the antithesis of self-determination and thereby disqualifies the MGTOW definition according to the DOSBO rule.

As a limiting principle, DOSBO delivers MGTOW from the meaninglessness of subjectivism, delivers it from the claim that MGTOW has no inherent meaning, or that it can mean whatever the hell a person wants it to mean. It gives a more detailed meaning (as Andrew also attempts in the article above) with real meta ideological commitments. – PW

Our Better Halves (1888)

Lester Frank Ward delivered this his first major essay on Gynæcocentrism Theory in 1888, entitled Our Better Halves. The speech was delivered at the Fourteenth Dinner of the Six O’clock Club in Washington on April 26, 1888, at Willard’s Hotel, where Sex Equality was selected as the evening’s topic. Distinguished women in Washington on that day were invited to the Club, among them being Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Croly (Jennie June), Mrs. N. P. Willis, and a number of others equally well known. – PW

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But let us now inquire what grounds there are for accepting this mental and physical inferiority of women as something inherent in the nature of things. Is it really true that the larger part taken by the female in the work of reproduction necessarily impairs her strength, dwarfs her proportions, and renders her a physically inferior and dependent being? In most human races it may be admitted that women are less stalwart than men, although all the stories of Amazonian tribes are not mere fictions. It is also true, as has been insisted upon, that the males of most mammals and birds exceed the females in size and strength, and often differ from them greatly in appearance.

But this is by no means always the case. The fable of the hedgehog that won the race with the hare by cunningly stationing Mrs. Hedgehog at the other end of the course, instructed to claim the stakes, is founded upon an exception which has many parallels. Among birds there are cases in which the rule is reversed. There are some entire families, as for example the hawks, in which the females exceed the males. If we go further down the scale, however, we find this attribute of male superiority to disappear almost entirely throughout the reptiles and amphibians, with a decided leaning toward female supremacy; and in the fishes, where male rivalry does not exist, the female, as every fisherman knows, is almost invariably the heavier game.

But it is not until we go below the vertebrate series and contemplate the invertebrate and vegetable worlds that we really begin to find the data for a philosophical study of the meaning of sex. It has been frequently remarked that the laws governing the higher forms of life can be rightly comprehended only by an acquaintance with the lower and more formative types of being. In no problem is this more true than in that of sex.

In studying this problem it is found that there is a great world of life that wholly antedates the appearance of sex—the world of asexual life—nor is the passage from the sexless to the distinctly male and female definite and abrupt. Between them occur parthenogenesis or virgin reproduction, hermaphroditism, in which the male being consists simply of an organ, and parasitic males, of which we shall presently speak, while the other devices of nature for perpetuating life are innumerable and infinitely varied. But so far as sex can be predicated of these beings, they must all be regarded as female. The asexual parent must be contemplated as, to all intents and purposes, maternal. The parthenogenetic aphis or shrimp is in all essential respects a mother. The hermaphrodite creature, whatever else it may be, is also necessarily a female. Following these states come the numberless cases in which the female form continues to constitute the type of life, the insignificant male appearing to be a mere afterthought.

The vegetable kingdom, except in its very lowest stages, affords comparatively few pointed illustrations of this truth. The strange behavior of the hemp plant, in which, as has long been known, the female plants crowd out the male plants by overshadowing them as soon as they have been fertilized by the latter, used to be frequently commented upon as a perverse anomaly in nature. Now it is correctly interpreted as an expression of the general law that the primary purpose of the male sex is to enable the female, or type form, to reproduce, after performing which function the male form is useless and a mere cumberer of the ground. But the hemp plant is by no means alone in possessing this peculiarity.

I could enumerate several pretty well known species that have a somewhat similar habit. I will mention only one, the common cud-weed, or everlasting ( Antennaria plantaginifolia ), which, unlike the hemp, has colonies of males separate from the females, and these male plants are small and short-lived. Long after their flowering stalks have disappeared the female plants continue to grow, and they become large and thrifty herbs lasting until frost.

In the animal kingdom below the vertebrates female superiority is well-nigh universal. In the few cases where it does not occur it is generally found that the males combat each other, after the manner of the higher animals, for the possession of the females. The cases that I shall name are such as all are familiar with. The only new thing in their presentation is their application to the point at issue.

The superiority of the queen bee over the drone is only a well-known illustration of a condition which, with the usual variations and exceptions, is common to a great natural order of insects. The only mosquito that the unscientific world knows is the female mosquito. The male mosquito is a frail and harmless little creature that swarms with the females in the early season and passes away when his work is done.

There are many insects of which the males possess no organs of nutrition in the imago state, their duties during their ephemeral existence being confined to what the Germans call the Minnedienst.1 Such is the life of many male moths and butterflies. But much greater inequalities are often found. I should, perhaps, apologize for citing the familiar case of spiders, in some species of which the miniature lover is often seized and devoured during his courtship by the gigantic object of his affections. Something similar, I learn, sometimes occurs with the mantis or “praying insect.”

Merely mentioning the extreme case of Sphaerularia, in which the female is several thousand times as large as the male, I may surely be permitted to introduce the barnacle, since it is one of the creatures upon which Prof. Brooks lays considerable stress in the article to which I have referred. Not being myself a zoologist, I am only too happy to quote him. He says:

Among the barnacles there are a few species the males and females of which differ remarkably. The female is an ordinary barnacle, with all the peculiarities of the group fully developed, while the male is a small parasite upon the body of the female, and is so different from the female of its own species, and from all ordinary barnacles, that no one would ever recognize in the adult male any affinity whatever to its closest allies.

The barnacle, or cirripede, is the creature which Mr. Darwin so long studied, and from which he learned so many lessons leading up to his grand generalizations. In a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, dated September 14, 1849, he recounts some of his discoveries while engaged in this study. Having learned that most cirripedes, but not all, were hermaphrodite, he remarks:

The other day I got a curious case of a unisexual instead of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the common cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had two little pockets in each of which she kept a little husband. I do not know of any other case where a female invariably has two husbands. I have one still odder fact, common to several species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they have small additional, or, as I call them, complemental males. One specimen, itself hermaphrodite, had no less than seven of these complemental males attached to it.

Prof. Brooks brings forward facts of this class to demonstrate that the male is the variable sex, while the female is comparatively stable. However much we may doubt his further conclusion that variability rather than supplementary procreative power was the primary purpose of the separate male principle, we must, it would seem, concede that variability and adaptability are the distinguishing characteristics of the male sex everywhere, as the transmitting power and permanence of type are those of the female. But this is a very different thing from saying that the female sex is incapable of progress, or that man is destined to develop indefinitely, leaving woman constantly farther and farther in the rear. Does the class of philosophers to which reference has been made look forward to a time when woman shall become as insignificant an object compared to man as the male spider is compared to the female? This would be the logical outcome of their argument if based upon the relative variability of the male sex.

We have now seen that, whether we contemplate the higher animals, among which male superiority prevails, or the lower forms, among which female superiority prevails, the argument from biology that the existing relations between the sexes in the human race are precisely what nature intended them to be, that they ought not to be disturbed and cannot be improved, leads, when carried to its logical conclusion, to a palpable absurdity. But have we, then, profited nothing by the thoughtful contemplation of the subject from these two points of view?

Those who rightly interpret the facts cannot avoid learning a most important lesson from each of these lines of inquiry. From the first the truth comes clearly forth that the relations of the sexes among the higher animals are widely abnormal, warped, and strained by a long line of curious influences, chiefly psychic, which are incident to the development of animal organisms under the competitive principle that prevails throughout nature. From the second comes now into full view the still more important truth with which we first set out, that the female sex is primary in point both of origin and of importance in the history and economy of organic life. And as life is the highest product of nature and human life the highest type of life, it follows that the grandest fact in nature is woman.

But we have learned even more than this, that which is certainly of more practical value. We have learned how to carry forward the progress of development so far advanced by the unconscious agencies of nature. Accepting evolution as we must, recognizing heredity as the distinctive attribute of the female sex, it becomes clear that it must be from the steady advance of woman rather than from the uncertain fluctuations of man that the sure and solid progress of the future is to come. The attempt to move the whole race forward by elevating only the sex that represents the principle of instability, has long enough been tried. The many cases of superior men the sons of superior mothers, coupled with the many more cases of degenerate sons of superior sires, have taught us over and over again that the way to civilize the race is to civilize woman. And now, thanks to science, we see why this is so.

Woman is the unchanging trunk of the great genealogic tree; while man, with all his vaunted superiority, is but a branch, a grafted scion, as it were, whose acquired qualities die with the individual, while those of woman are handed on to futurity. Woman is the race, and the race can be raised up only as she is raised up. There is no fixed rule by which Nature has intended that one sex should excel the other, any more than there is any fixed point beyond which either cannot further develop. Nature has no intentions, and evolution has no limits. True science teaches that the elevation of woman is the only sure road to the evolution of man.

Reference

[1] Service of love.

The gynæcocentric theory, by Lester Ward (1903)

Lester F. Ward (1841 – 1913) was among the first to champion a biological theory of gynocentrism. Ward is now considered a feminist writer by historians such as Ann Taylor Allen.1 The following is an excerpt from his longer work entitled Pure Sociology, published in 1903. – PW

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The gynæcocentric theory

The gynæcocentric theory is the view that the female sex is primary and the male secondary in the organic scheme, that originally and normally all things center, as it were, about the female, and that the male, though not necessary in carrying out the scheme, was developed under the operation of the principle of advantage to secure organic progress through the crossing of strains. The theory further claims that the apparent male superiority in the human race and in certain of the higher animals and birds is the result of specialization in extra-normal directions due to adventitious causes which have nothing to do with the general scheme, but which can be explained on biological and psychological principles; that it only applies to certain characters, and to a relatively small number of genera and families. It accounts for the prevalence of the androcentric theory by the superficial character of human knowledge of such subjects, chiefly influenced by the illusion of the near, but largely, in the case of man at least, by tradition, convention, and prejudice.

History of the Theory

As this theory is not only new but novel, and perhaps somewhat startling, it seems proper to give a brief account of its inception and history, if it can be said to have such. As the theory, so far as I have ever heard, is wholly my own, no one else having proposed or even defended it, scarcely any one accepting it, and no one certainly coveting it, it would be folly for me to pretend indifference to it. At the same time it must rest on facts that cannot be disputed, and the question of its acceptance or rejection must become one of interpreting the facts.

In the year 1888 there existed in Washington what was called the Six o’clock Club, which consisted of a dinner at a hotel followed by speeches by the members of the Club according to a programme. The Fourteenth Dinner of the Club took place on April 26, 1888, at Willard’s Hotel. It was known to the managers that certain distinguished women would be in Washington on that day, and they were invited to the Club. Among these were Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Croly (Jennie June), Mrs. N. P. Willis, and a number of others equally well known. On their account the subject of Sex Equality was selected for discussion, and I was appointed to open the debate. Although in a humorous vein, I set forth the greater part of the principles and many of the facts of what I now call the gynæcocentric theory.

Professor C. V. Riley was present and, I think, took part in the discussion. Many of my facts were drawn from insect life, and especially interested him. I mention this because a long time afterward he brought me a newspaper clipping from the Household Companion for June, 1888, containing a brief report of my remarks copied from the St. Louis Globe, but crediting them to him; and he apologized for its appearance saying that he could not explain the mistake. The reporter had fairly seized the salient points of the theory and presented them in a manner to which I could not object. This, therefore, was the first time the theory can be said to have been stated in print. The exact date at which it appeared in the Globe I have not yet learned, but presume it was shortly after the meeting of the Club. Professor Riley did not hesitate to announce himself a convert to the theory, and we often discussed it together.

I had long been reflecting along this line, and these events only heightened my interest in the subject. The editor of the Forum had solicited an article from me, and I decided to devote it to a popular but serious presentation of the idea. The result was my article entitled, “Our Better Halves.” 3 That article, therefore, constitutes the first authorized statement of the gynæcocentric theory that was published, and as a matter of fact it is almost the only one. Mr. Grant Allen answered my argument on certain points in the same magazine,4 and I was asked to put in a rejoinder, which I did,5 but these discussions related chiefly to certain differences between the mind of man and woman and did not deal with the question of origin. I alluded to it in my first presidential address before the Biological Society of Washington,6 and it came up several times in writing the “Psychic Factors” (Chapters XIV, XXVI).

Such is the exceedingly brief history of the gynæcocentric theory, and if it is entirely personal to myself, this is no fault of mine. Nothing pleases me more than to see in the writings of others any intimation, however vague and obscure, that the principle has been perceived, and I have faithfully searched for such indications and noted all I have seen. The idea has not wholly escaped the human mind, but it is never presented in any systematic way. It is only occasionally shadowed forth in connection with certain specific facts that call forth some passing reflection looking in this general direction. In introducing a few of these adumbrations I omit the facts, which will be considered under the several heads into which the subject will naturally fall, and confine myself for the most part to the reflections to which they have given rise. Many of these latter, however, are of a very general character, and not based on specific facts. In fact thus far the theory has had rather the form of a prophetic idea than of a scientific hypothesis.

We may begin as far back as Condorcet, who brushed aside the conventional error that intellect and the power of abstract reasoning are the only marks of superiority and caught a glimpse of the truth that lies below them when he said: –

If we try to compare the moral energy of women with that of men, taking into consideration the necessary effect of the inequality with which the two sexes have been treated by laws, institutions, customs, and prejudices, and fix our attention on the numerous examples that they have furnished of contempt for death and suffering, of constancy in their resolutions and their convictions, of courage and intrepidity, and of greatness of mind, we shall see that we are far from having the proof of their alleged inferiority. Only through new observations can a trite light be shed upon the question of the natural inequality of the two sexes.7

Comte, as all know, changed his attitude toward women after his experiences with Clotilde de Vaux, but even in his “Positive Philosophy,” in which he declared them to be in a state of “perpetual infancy,” and of “fundamental inferiority,” be admitted that they had a “secondary superiority considered from the social point of view.”8 In his “Positive Polity” he expressed himself much more strongly, saying that the female sex “is certainly superior to ours in the most fundamental attribute of the human species, the tendency to make sociability prevail over personality.”9 He also says that “feminine supremacy becomes evident when we consider the spontaneous disposition of the affectionate sex (sexe aimant) always to further morality, the sole end of all our conceptions.”10

Of all modern writers the one most free from the androcentric bias, so far as I am aware, is Mr. Havelock Ellis. In his excellent book “Man and Woman,” be has pointed out many of the fallacies of that Weltanschauung, and without apparent leaning toward anything but the truth has placed woman in a far more favorable light than it is customary to view her. While usually confining himself to the facts, he occasionally indicates that their deeper meaning has not escaped him. Thus he says: “The female is the mother of the new generation, and has a closer and more permanent connection with the care of the young; she is thus of greater importance than the male from Nature’s point of view” (pp. 383-384). To him is also due, the complete refutation of the “arrested development” theory, above mentioned, by showing that the child, and the young generally, represent the most advanced type of development, while the adult male represents a reversion to an inferior early type, and this in man is a more bestial type.

In the sayings quoted thus far we have little more than opinions, or general philosophical tenets, of which it would be much easier to find passages with the opposite import. In fact statements of the androcentric theory are to be met with everywhere. Not only do philosophers and popular writers never tire of repeating its main propositions, but anthropologists and biologists will go out of their way to defend it while at the same time heaping up facts that really contradict it and strongly support the gynæcocentric theory. This is due entirely to the power of a predominant world view (Weltanschauung). The androcentric theory is such a world view that is deeply stamped upon the popular mind, and the history of human thought has demonstrated many times that scarcely any number of facts opposed to such a world view can shake it. It amounts to a social structure and has the attribute of stability in common with other social structures. Only occasionally will a thinking investigator pause to consider the true import of the facts he is himself bringing to light.

Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan, and the other ethnologists who have contributed to our knowledge of the remarkable institution or historic phase called the matriarchate, all stop short of stating the full significance of these phenomena, and the facts of amazonism that are so often referred to as so many singular anomalies and reversals of the natural order of things, are never looked at philosophically as residual facts that must be explained even if they overthrow many current beliefs. Occasionally some one will take such facts seriously and dare to intimate a doubt as to the prevailing theory. Thus I find in Ratzenhofer’s work the following remark: –

It is probable that in the horde there existed a certain individual equality between man and woman; the results of our investigation leave it doubtful whether the man always had a superior position. There is much to indicate that the woman was the uniting element in the community; the mode of development of reproduction in the animal world and the latest investigations into the natural differences between man and woman give rise to the assumption that the woman of to-day is the atavistic product of the race, while the man varies more frequently and more widely. This view agrees perfectly with the nature of the social process, for in the horde, as the social form out of which the human race has developed, there existed an individual equality which has only been removed by social disturbances which chiefly concern the man.

All the secondary sexual differences in men are undoubtedly explained by the struggle for existence and the position of man in the community as conditioned thereby. Even the security of the horde from predatory animals, and still more the necessity of fighting with other men for the preservation of the group, developed individual superiority in general, both mental and physical, and especially in man. But any individual superiority disturbed the equality existing in the elements of the horde; woman from her sexual nature took only a passive part in these disturbances. The sexual life as well as the mode of subsistence no longer has its former peaceful character. Disturbances due to the demands of superior individuals thrive up to a certain point, beyond which the differentiation of the group into several takes place.11

Among biologists the philosophical significance of residual facts opposed to current beliefs is still less frequently reflected upon. I have stated that Professor Riley fully accepted the view that I set forth and admitted that the facts of entomology sustained it, yet, although somewhat of a philosopher himself, and living in the midst of the facts, the idea had not previously occurred to him. Among botanists, Professor Mechan was the only one in whose writings I have found an adumbration of the gynæcocentric theory. He several times called attention to a certain form of female superiority in plants. In describing certain peculiarities in the Early Meadow Rue and comparing the development of the male and female flowers he observed differences due to sex. After describing the female flowers he says: –

By turning to the male flowers (Fig. 2) we see a much greater number of bracts or small leaves scattered through the panicle, and find the pedicels longer than in the female; and this shows a much slighter effort – a less expenditure of force – to be required in forming male than female flowers. A male flower, as we see clearly here, is an intermediate stage between a perfect leaf and a perfect, or we may say, a female flower. It seems as if there might be as much truth as poetry in the expression of Burns, –

Her ‘prentice han’ she tried on man,
An’ then she made the lasses, O,

— at least in so far as the flowers are concerned, and in the sense of a higher effort of vital power.12

It is singular, but suggestive that he should have quoted the lines from Burns in this connection, as they are an undoubted echo of the androcentric world view, a mere variation upon the Biblical myth of the rib. Of course he could find nothing on his side in the classic literature of the world, but wishing to embellish the idea in a popular work, he tried to make these somewhat ambiguous lines do duty in this capacity. The fact cited is only one of thousands that stand out clearly before the botanist, but not according with the accepted view of the relations of the sexes they are brushed aside as worthless anomalies and “exceptions that prove the rule.” In fact in all branches of biology the progress of truth has been greatly impeded by this spirit. All modern anatomists know how the facts that are now regarded as demonstrating the horizontal position of the ancestors of man, and in general those that establish the doctrine of evolution, were treated by the older students of the human body — rejected, ignored, and disliked, as intruders that interfered with their investigations. It is exactly so now with gynaecocentric facts, and we are probably in about the same position and stage with reference to the questions of sex as were the men of the eighteenth century with reference to the question of evolution. Indeed, the androcentric theory may be profitably compared with the geocentric theory, and the gynaecocentric with the heliocentric. The advancement of truth has always been in the direction of supplanting the superficial and apparent by the fundamental and real, and the gynaecocentric truth may be classed among the “paradoxes of nature.”

***

Origin of the Male Sex. — Although reproduction and sex are two distinct things, and although a creature that reproduces without sex cannot properly be called either male or female, still, so completely have these conceptions become blended in the popular mind that a creature which actually brings forth offspring out of its own body is instinctively classed as female. The female is the fertile sex, and whatever is fertile is looked upon as female. Assuredly it would be absurd to look upon an organism propagating asexually as male. Biologists have proceeded from this popular standpoint, and regularly speak of “mother-cells” and “daughter-cells.” It therefore does no violence to language or to science to say that life begins with the female organism and is carried on a long distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms of asexual reproduction, from fission to parthenogenesis, the female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the functions of life including reproduction. In a word, life begins as female.

The further development of life serves to strengthen this gynæcocentric point of view. It consists, as we might say, exclusively in the history of the subsequent origin and development of the male sex. The female sex, which existed from the beginning, continues unchanged, but the male sex, which did not exist at the beginning, makes its appearance at a certain stage, and has a certain history and development, but never became universal, so but that, as already remarked, there are probably many more living beings without it than with it, even in the present life of the globe. The female is not only the primary and original sex but continues throughout as the main trunk, while to it a male element is afterward added for the purposes above explained. The male is therefore, as it were, a mere afterthought of nature. Moreover, the male sex was at first and for a long period, and still throughout many of the lower orders of beings, devoted exclusively to the function for which it was created, viz., that of fertilization. Among millions of humble creatures the male is simply and solely a fertilizer.

The simplest type of sexuality consists in the normal continuance of the original female form with the addition of an insignificant and inconspicuous male fertilizer, incapable of any other function. In sexual cells there is no character in which the differentiation goes so far as in that of size. The female or germ cell is always much larger than the male or sperm cell. In the human species, for example, an ovum is about 3000 times as large as a spermatozoon.  In the parasitic Sphcerularia Bombi the female is a thousand or many thousand times the size of the male. The Cirripedia present remarkable examples of female superiority, or rather of the existence of minute male fertilizers in connection with normal development in the female. Darwin was perhaps the first to call attention to this fact in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, dated Sept. 14, 1849, in which he said : —

The other day I got a curious case of a unisexual, instead of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the common cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had two little pockets, in each of which she kept a little husband ; I do not know of any other case where a female invariably has two husbands. I have one still odder fact, common to several species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they have small additional, or as I shall call them, complemental males, one specimen, itself hermaphrodite, had no less than seven of these complemental males attached to it. Truly the schemes and wonders of Nature are illimitable.

Darwin’s observations have been abundantly confirmed by later investigators. Huxley asserts the parasitic nature of the male in certain cases, the male being attached to the female and living at her expense.  Van Beneden, to practically the same effect, remarks
that “the whole family of the Abdominalia [cirripedes] have the sexes separate; and the males, comparatively very small, are attached to the body of each female.”

The phenomenon of minute parasitic males is not rare among the lower forms, and that their sole office is fertilization may be clearly seen from the following statement of Milne Edwards : ” It is to be noted that in some of these parasites [Ex. Diplozoon paradoxum, a nematode] the entire visceral cavity was occupied by the testicles, and that Mr. Darwin could not discover in it any trace of digestive organs.” Van Beneden also says that the males are reduced to the role of spermatophores : “The male of the Syngami (nematodes) is so far effaced that it is no longer anything but a testicle living on the female.” These of course are extreme cases, and the difference is less in most of the animal world, the reason for which will be shown later on. But the examples cited serve to show how sexuality began. Female superiority, however, of a more or less marked degree still prevails throughout the greater part of the invertebrates. It is perhaps greatest among the Arachnidae or spider family. The courtships of spiders are so often described in popular works that allusion to them almost calls for an apology. They are always regarded as astonishing anomalies in the animal world. While the behavior of the relatively gigantic female in seizing and devouring the tiny male fertilizer when he is only seeking to do the only duty that he exists for, may seem remarkable and even contrary to the interests of nature, the fact of the enormous difference between the female and the male, is, according to the gynaecocentric hypothesis, not anomalous at all, but perfectly natural and normal.

In the mantis or praying insect there is much less difference in size than in most spiders, but female superiority shows itself in the ferocity of the female, while the paramount importance of the act of fertilization is clear from the terrible risks that the male takes in securing it, usually resulting in his destruction. I give an example on the authority of one of the best known entomologists :—

A few days since I brought a male of Mantis Carolina to a friend who had been keeping a solitary female as a pet. Placing them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavored to escape. In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She first bit off his left front tarsus, and consumed the tibia and femur. Next she gnawed out his left eye. At this the male seemed to realize his proximity to one of the opposite sex, and began vain endeavors to mate. The female next ate up his right front leg, and then entirely decapitated him, devouring his head and gnawing into his thorax. Not until she had eaten all of his thorax except about three millimeters did she atop to rest. All this while the male had continued his vain attempts to obtain entrance at the valvules, and he now succeeded, as she voluntarily spread the parts open, and union took place. She remained quiet for four hours, and the remnant of the male gave occasional signs of life by a movement of one of his remaining tarsi for three hours. The next morning she had entirely rid herself of her spouse, and nothing but his wings remained.

The extraordinary vitality of the species which permits a fragment of the male to perform the act of impregnation is necessary on account of the rapacity of the female, and it seems to be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive from the embraces of his partner.

Riley in his first monthly report, p. 151, says: “The female being the strongest and most voracious, the male, in making his advances, has to risk his life many times, and only succeeds in grasping her by slyly and suddenly surprising her ; and even then he frequently gets remorselessly devoured.”

In insects generally the males ai-e smaller than the females, especially in the imago state. It applies to the larvae to a less extent, but it is often marked even in the cocoons, as, for example, of the silk worm. There are many species, and even genera, belonging to different orders, in which the male, usually smaller and more slender, is either not provided with any functional organs for eating, or has these so imperfectly developed that it seems improbable that it succeeds in sustaining life beyond the period that the nourishment stored up in the larval state will continue it. This clearly shows that the sole function of such males is fertilization. Some of these cases come very close home to us, for example, the mosquito. Dr. Howard says:—

It is a well-known fact that the adult male mosquito does not necessarily take nourishment and that the adult female does not necessarily rely on the blood of warm-blooded animals. The mouth parts of the male are so different from those of the female that it is probable that if it feeds at all it obtains its food in a quite different manner from the female. They are often observed sipping at drops of water, and in one instance a fondness for molasses has been recorded.

Bees constitute another familiar example, the males being what are popularly known as the drones. Fertilization, as is well known, is almost their only role, and if they become at all numerous they are killed off by the workers (neutral females), and the hive is rid of them. But great differences between the sexes, always involving some form of female superiority, occur also in the Neuroptera, Lepidoptera, Orthoptera, and Coleoptera. In the other great types of invertebrates this is also true, but only the specialists are acquainted with the facts. Even in the lower vertebrates there are cases of female superiority. The smallest known vertebrate, Heterandria formosa Agassiz, has the females about twenty-five per cent larger than the males. Male fishes are commonly smaller than female. In trout this is well known, and trout fishermen sometimes throw the little males or ” studs,” as they call them, back into the stream, as not worth taking. Even in birds, which are the mainstay of the androcentric theory, there are some large families, as, for example, the hawks, in which male superiority is rare, and the female is usually the larger and finer bird. There are even some mammals in which the sexes do not differ appreciably in size or strength, and very little, or not at all, in coloration and adornment. Such is the case with nearly all of the great family of rodents. It is also the case with the Erinaceidae, at least with its typical subfamily of hedgehogs.

All that was said of the Protozoa applies equally to the Protophyta, and indeed in those unicellular forms the distinction between plant and animal is very obscure, Haeckel making a third kingdom of nature, the Protista, which is neither plant nor animal. But the evolution of the male sex in multicellular plants is somewhat different from that of the Metazoa. In dealing with such plants much depends on what we regard as constituting an individual. If we take the growing branch or phyton as the unit of individuality, it may perhaps be truly said that sexual differentiation is universal in the vegetable kingdom. But if we make the individual include all that proceeds from the same root and coheres in one organic system—the whole plant—then we have the following grades of sexuality : 1, hermaphroditism, in which both male and female organs occur in the same flower ; 2, monoecism, in which the flowers are either male or female, but both sexes occur on the same plant ; and 3, dioecism, in which every plant is either wholly male or wholly female. In the flowerless plants—thallophytes, bryophytes, pteridophytes, formerly known as cryptogams—the sexual cells are borne in a variety of ways, usually separated some distance from each other, often on different plants, but here there occurs in most cases a compound generation, consisting of a short-lived prothallium stage— the true sexual stage—succeeded by a sporebearing stage constituting the principal life of the plant. This peculiarity has no important bearing on the theory under consideration, and being too complicated to be explained without extensive illustration, it need not be dwelt upon here. An acquaintance with it belongs to a proper understanding of botany such as the student of sociology should have.

Confining our attention, then, to the flowering plants, we have to note first that the Cycadaceae and Ginkgoaceae form two apparently different transitions from the flowerless to the flowering plants, in that they are both fertilized by means of spermatozoids—active ciliated sperm cells— as in the case of flowerless plants generally, while, all the other families of flowering plants, so far as now known, have the entire prothallium stage effaced, abridged, or theoretically condensed into the development of the ovule and pollen grain. The discovery of this important distinction, which has revolutionized the classification of the vegetable kingdom, dates back only to 1896, and was made primarily by two Japanese botanists.

We have next to remark that hermaphroditism in plants is not the anomalous and almost pathologic condition known by that name in the animal world. It seems to have been the common initial state in flowering plants, and deviations from it seem to be the result of the universal struggle of nature to prevent self or close fertilization and to secure the widest possible separation of the sexes. This is, however, nothing but the continuation of the operation of the same principle by which sex itself was introduced. But if the other more scientific and correct view is taken as to what constitutes an individual, this is not hermaphroditism at all. It is simply the bringing of the sexes together in compact and somewhat symmetrically ordered groups, which, before the advent of nectarloving winged insects, was almost the only way in which fertilization could be brought about. Still, long strides were taken in this direction among the Gymnosperms, in which no showy flowers have ever been developed, and cycads and conifers are either monoecious or dioecious. The maidenhair-tree which has the longest known geological history, is dioecious, and most of the trees whose fossil remains show them to have had a long history are diclinous. Thus the willows and poplars are dioecious and the oaks and plane trees are monoecious. All this points to the law that the longer a type has lived the wider is the separation of the sexes, and as the flowers of plants are rarely preserved in the fossil state we have no warrant for assuming that the ancestral forms that we know were the same in past ages as now in respect of their sexual relations.

We have already had occasion to refer to the fact that showy flowers with nectar glands and nectar-loving insects developed pari pasu in the history of the world (see supra, p. 234). It is now to be noted that the influence of cross fertilization through insect agency is chiefly upon plants with hermaphrodite flowers. On the scientific theory of leaf metamorphosis each stamen and pistil of a flower is a transformed leaf, and therefore a flower is only a cluster of leaves, some of which have been specialized into stamens, others into pistils, others into petals, and others into segments of the calyx. The flower may therefore be looked upon as a little colony. If the ovary is compound it is not the whole pistil but each lobe or cell of the ovary with its separate style and stigma that constitutes the individual. In such a colony the conditions become too uniform for vigorous development, and there has been an obvious struggle to escape these narrow bonds and secure a wider separation of the sexes. The mutual interaction of the law of natural selection and the fact of insect agency has wrought the most extensive changes in this direction, some of which have been pointed out.

If we regard stamens and pistils as individuals, it becomes obvious that in the higher plants generally, and to a much greater extent than in animals, the male is simply a fertilizer, while the female goes on and develops and matures the fruit. Stamens always
wither as soon as the anthers have shed their pollen. They have no other function. If we take the other and more popular view of individuality, and look upon the whole plant as the vital unit, the only comparisons between the sexes that can be instituted are those of dioecious plants. Here of course we usually find the sexes practically equal. This we should expect, since sexual differentiation has alone brought about this state from a former state of hermaphroditism. If any cases could be found of either male or female
superiority they could only be accounted for either by special overdevelopment of the superior or by degeneracy of the inferior sex. In point of fact there are such cases, but only those of female superiority. An examination of them clearly shows that they are due to a loss on the part of the male of the powers once possessed. Again, there are found to be cases in which this decline does not take place until after the function of fertilization has been performed.

The best known example is that of the hemp plant. Cannabis sativa. It has long been known that when hemp is sown in a field the sexes cannot at first be distinguished, and this condition of equality persists until the plants of both sexes reach the period of fertility. The male plants then shed their pollen and the female plants are fertilized thereby. Soon thereafter, however, the male plants cease to grow, begin to turn yellow and sere, and in a short time they droop, wither, die, and disappear. The fertilized female plants are then found not to have as yet reached their maximum development. They continue to grow taller and more robust, while at the same time the fruit is forming, swelling, and ripening, which requires the remainder of the season. It is only from these tall, healthy, robust female stalks that the hemp fiber is obtained. It is commonly supposed that this collapse of the male plant only occurs in thickly sown fields, where, after it has performed its function it is only a cumberer of the ground. Certain it is that it amounts to an effective weeding of the field. I have, however, carefully watched the sexes when growing as weeds in waste grounds, and where there were not enough plants to crowd one another in the least, and found that the male plants ceased to grow taller and thicker after shedding their pollen, as did the female plants after being pollenized, but here the males did not perish at once, but continued to live to near the end of the season.

Before I had made any observations on the hemp plant or had heard of the peculiarity above described I had been for a number of years taking notes on a somewhat similar habit in certain native plants of the United States. In my Guide to the Flora of Washington and Vicinity published in 1881, as Bulletin No. 22, U. S. National Museum, which consists chiefly of a catalogue of the plants growing in the region named, and in which I occasionally made a brief note of some special peculiarity in a plant not mentioned in any other work, I find the following note appended to Ambrosia artemisicefolia (p. 90) : “Tends to become dioecious, and the fruiting plants crowd out the staminate ones.” Subsequently I found this to be even more true of the large species, A. trifida especially farther south where it often covers large areas of abandoned land. At Antennaria plantar ginifolia (p. 89), this remark occurs : ” Female plants much larger than the male, often half a meter in height, and both varying widely.” What I regarded as one species has since been found to represent several, and all of. them possess this peculiarity. They tend to grow in little patches at a distance from one another, and all the plants in the same patch are of the same sex, either all male or all female, and in these patches the plants are densely crowded together. The male patches form a mat or carpet on the ground, the flowering stems only rising a few inches above the radical leaves. The female patches are less dense, and the flower-bearing stems after fertilization grow a foot or two high. Male inferiority was also noted in Thalictrum dioicum and many other dioecious herbs. If carefully looked for it would probably be found to be general.

All these facts from both kingdoms, and the number that might be added is unlimited, combine to show that the female constitutes the main trunk, descending unchanged from the asexual, or presexual, condition ; that the male element was added at a certain stage for the sole purpose of securing a crossing of ancestral strains, and the consequent variation and higher development ; that it began as a simple fertilizer, assuming a variety of forms; that for reasons hereafter to be considered, the male in most organisms gradually assumed more importance, and ultimately came to approach the size and general nature of the female; but that throughout nearly or quite the whole of the invertebrates, and to a considerable extent among the vertebrates, the male has remained an inferior creature, and has continued to devote its existence chiefly to the one function for which it was created. The change, or progress, as it may be called, has been wholly in the male, the female remaining unchanged. This is why it is so often said that the female represents heredity and the male variation. “The ovum is the material medium through which the law of heredity manifests itself, while the male element is the vehicle by which new variations are added. . . . The greater variability of the male is also shown by a comparison of the adult male and female with the immature birds of both sexes.”

The last fact is the one usually adduced in support of the theory that in birds and mammals where the male is superior the female is an example of ” arrested development.” Such is, however, probably not the case, and the female simply represents the normal condition, while the condition of the male is abnormal due to his great powers of variability. That the female should resemble the young is quite natural, but the statement is an inverted one, due to the androcentric bias. The least unbiased consideration would make it clear that the colors of such male birds as Professor Brooks had in mind are not the normal colors of the species, but are due to some abnormal or supra-normal causes. The normal color is that of the young and the female, and the color of the male is the result of his excessive variability. Females cannot thus vary. They represent the center of gravity of the biological system. They are that “stubborn power of permanency” of which Goethe speaks. The female not only typifies the race but, metaphor aside, she is the race.

***

All modern anatomists know how the facts that are now regarded as demonstrating the horizontal position of the ancestors of man, and in general those that establish the doctrine of evolution, were treated by the older students of the human body – rejected, ignored, and disliked, as intruders that interfered with their investigations. It is exactly so now with gynæcocentric facts, and we are probably in about the same position and stage with reference to the questions of sex as were the men of the eighteenth century with reference to the question of evolution. Indeed, the androcentric theory may be profitably compared with the geocentric theory, and the gynæcocentric with the heliocentric. The advancement of truth has always been in the direction of supplanting the superficial and apparent by the fundamental and real, and the gynæcocentric truth may be classed among the “paradoxes of nature.“13

References:

[1] Lester Frank Ward on Wikipedia
[2] Pure sociology; a treatise on the origin and spontaneous development of society (1903)
[3] The Forum, New York, Vol. VI, November, 1888, pp. 266-275.
[4] “Woman’s Place in Nature,” by Grant Allen, the Forum, Vol. VII, May, 1889, pp. 258-263.
[5] “Genius and Woman’s Intuition,” the Forum, Vol. IX, June, 1890, pp. 401-408.
[6] “The Course of Biologic Evolution,” Proc. Biol. Soc., Washington, Vol. V, pp. 23-55. See pp. 49-52.
[7] “Tableau Historique des Progrès de I’Esprit Humain,” Paris, 1900, pp. 444-445.
[8] “Philosophie Positive,” Vol. IV, Paris, 1839, pp. 405, 406.
[9] “Système de Politique Positive,” Vol. I, 1851, p. 210.
[10] Op. cit., Vol. IV, 1854, p. 63.
[11] “Die Sociologische Erkenntnis,” von Gustav Ratzenhofer, Leipzig, 1898, p. 127.
[12] “The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States,” by Thomas Meehan, Vol. I, Boston, 1878, p. 47.
[13] “Dynamic Sociology,” Vol. I, pp. 47-53.

Gynocentrism – why so hard to kill?

Many theories exist as to why we are saddled with a gynocentric culture in which men, to put it simplistically, play the role of servant to women. The explanation people choose will determine whether they believe gynocentrism is a permanent or temporary fact of human existence, and will dictate how they are likely to respond to it.

The first explanation is one of biological determinism – that men have always kowtowed to women regardless of fluctuations in cultural habits, customs, taboos and beliefs. Our genes, according to this theory, make men little more than nerve reflexes primed to obtain sex with females and reproduce – that we must position ourselves as slaves in order to meet that end.

Another version of the biology hypothesis was proposed by Lester F. Ward in his “Gynæcocentric theory”1 which frames women as the dominant sex by dint of biology. Evolutionary Psychologists and Difference Feminists, who often collaborate,2 support this view via anthropological, zoological and other scientific evidence. The basic theory holds that in the underpopulated world of the past, wombs were a precious and key resource to human survival, hence a genetic predisposition toward gynocentrism was a survival advantage. With the current overpopulation, however, wombs are now plentiful and cheap but our biological predispositions still make us overvalue them – ie. a redundant gynocentrism is built into our nervous system at a time when overpopulation could wipe out our species.

Biological determinists conclude that extreme gynocentrism is a permanent feature of human existence, and thus abandoning interactions with women is the only viable option if men want to be free of it: we must drop out of male-female interactions in order to avoid inbuilt gynocentric reflexes.

A completely different explanation is that gynocentrism is an extreme cultural exaggeration of human potential, one that hasn’t played constantly throughout human history. This explanation leaves open the option to confront and potentially change gynocentric culture in the knowledge that it is not an inevitable fate for men to suffer.

The two perspectives above, one theory placing the accent on biology and the other on culture, have serious ramifications for how men conceptualize and responded to the problem – the one abandoning it, the other rejecting it and posing an alternative approach to male-female relations.

I personally wager that extreme gynocentrism, that which is based on chivalry and romantic love, is a novelty in the long walk of human evolution. And yet it doesn’t appear to be going away, at least not quickly, despite concerted efforts to dismantle it. What could be going on?

Why is gynocentrism still alive?

With the different approaches to understanding gynocentrism touched on, I’d like to use the rest of this article to deal with one question – how to destroy the beast.

I’d like to think it will come to an end through natural processes. Human beings possess inbuilt regulating mechanisms that work to achieve homeostasis in biological, psychological and social systems, and which tend to cull extreme behaviors when they interfere with the overall psycho-biological economy.

Gynocentrism is an example of an extreme, discord-creating behavior, and yet those innate balancing mechanisms do not seem to be culling it from our repertoire. Why is that?

One explanation is that media is censoring those voices calling, nay yelling, for homeostasis.

Everyone draws information from the environment, and especially from the media, to construct internal schemas of the external world. We create internal pictures of how things work. However, if the environment is not providing adequate data, or worse, something in the environment is actively censoring the available data, it severely weakens our ability to understand the world and to create a balanced way of moving through it.

Censorship of the media by gynocentrists is not new, but historically speaking appears to be the No.1 force blocking a change in gender culture.

Go back 200 years and newspapers were the dominant media which began with some remarkable examples of free speech. But as soon as criticism of gynocentrism increased, the censor army infiltrated – free speech in newspapers was crushed. Ernest B. Bax for example wrote;

When, however, the bluff is exposed… then the apostles of feminism, male and female, being unable to make even a plausible case out in reply, resort to the boycott, and by ignoring what they cannot answer, seek to stop the spread of the unpleasant truth so dangerous to their cause. The pressure put upon publishers and editors by the influential Feminist sisterhood is well known.3

And;

All parties, all sorts and conditions of politicians, from the fashionable and Conservative west-end philanthropist to the Radical working-men’s clubbite, seem (or seemed until lately) to have come to an unanimous conclusion on one point – to wit, that the female sex is grievously groaning under the weight of male oppression. Editors of newspapers, keen to scent out every drift of public fancy with the object of regaling their “constant readers” with what is tickling to their palates, will greedily print, in prominent positions and in large type letters expressive of the view in question, whilst they will boycott or, at best, publish in obscure corners any communication that ventures to criticise the popular theory or that adduces facts that tell against it. Were I to pen an impassioned diatribe, tending to prove the villainy of man towards woman, and painting in glowing terms the poor, weak victim of his despotism, my description would be received with sympathetic approval. Not so, I fear, my simple statement of the unvarnished truth.4

Later came TV, which dethroned the old tabloid censorship. The Federal Communications Commission (USA) began handing out broadcasting licenses in the early 1950s (with the highest concentration of license grants and station sign-ons occurring between 1953 and 1956), spurring an explosion of growth in the medium. Half of all U.S. households had television sets by 1955.5 With that advent, consider the success of Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaigning which spanned from 1955 (Montgomery Bus Boycott) through to the mid 1960s. Without TV it would not have happened. Unfortunately, forces of political correctness infiltrated public broadcasting too, applying censorship and eventually dominating TV culture completely.

In the 1990’s the new medium of the internet appeared and dethroned the old TV media with its censorship. This opened the door to thousands of revolutions gaining a voice, including the MRM & MGTOW, which have gained traction as cultural forces. But as usual, the cycle of 1. New media technology 2. subsequent cultural revolutions, and 3. eventual feminist censorship, is playing out on the internet….. and we are entering the censorship phase of the cycle.

Those who say feminists will never succeed in censoring the internet are dreaming, and dare I say blind. It’s happening – Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia, etc. all being taken over by feminist sensibilities and regulations. Free speech is experiencing a decline on most social media platforms.

The only avenue left is to grab our own domains and websites from which we can enjoy free speech, and to do it NOW before government regulators ask domain providers, hosting companies, and ISPs to institute onerous application criteria for the privilege. In short, give up on Youtube (etc) and grab a domain and website while you still can – social media is dying from censorship, and MGTOW, MRA and outspoken gamers etc will be its first casualties.

Despite the doom and gloom about impending censorship it’s not all bad news, far from it. The window opened by the internet has been seized upon and used to maximum effect. We have inserted a narrative on what gynocentrism is, what men’s issues are, and they’ve enjoyed considerable reach into the culture. Witness any comments section under an MSM article to gauge the new awareness of -and support for- these same issues. And the narrative is growing…

MHRAs, MGTOW, gamers, PUAs, antifeminists, and a growing coalition of everyday Joes, are poised to drive the nail deeper. We can continue to use social media -in spite of restrictive feminist guidelines- to drive the narrative home : gynocentrism is toxic and we want to to end. And those smart enough to grab their own domains and websites can come down harder with the message knowing there is no Hall Monitor to control our private soapboxes, at least not yet.

In fact let’s grow our private websites exponentially so they overshadow PC social media outlets and continue competing with them in the battle for cultural real estate.

This article began with a description of different ways of conceptualizing the origins of gynocentric culture, and the question was posed of why does gynocentrism continue to exist. We then looked at the transformations of mainstream media through recent centuries, noting how media is a double-edged sword, at times championing free speech, and at times censoring it, with the latter being a potential cause for gynocentrism’s longevity. Lastly was underlined how the internet currently gives voice to long suppressed thoughts, and of the need to make hay while the sun still shines – i.e. hopefully to make it shine longer and brighter. As long as we are able to keep adding our story to mainstream media, and being the media, gynocentrism will atrophy and homeostasis will come.

References:

[1] Lester Frank Ward, Pure Sociology, (The gynæcocentric theory, pp. 296-376), published 1903.
[2] For examples of the growing marriage between Evopsychology and difference-feminism, see:
David Buss, Sex, Power, Conflict : Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives
M. Fisher, J. Garcia, Evolution’s Empress: Darwinian Perspectives on the Nature of Women
[3] Ernest Belfort Bax, The Fraud of Feminism, pp.1-2, published 1913
[4] Ernest Belfort Bax, Essays in Socialism New & Old, pp.108-119, published 1907
[5] History of American Television, Television in the United States