Aggrieved Entitlement – women’s reaction to temporary loss of chivalry

January 27, 2019November 15, 2023 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

It’s no secret that women feel entitled to special treatments from men based on the European culture tradition of chivalry: i.e., allowing women to go through the door first; showering the “fairer sex” with compliments about being beautiful, caring or pure; paying for dinner and other life luxuries; and offering them costly care and protection around the clock. In the modern context chivalry boils down to the male posture of deference to women’s needs and wants, which understandably fosters a positive self-concept in women and a sense that they must be “worth it” as we are reminded by the ubiquitous advertising jingle.

The expectation of male chivalry, or benevolent sexism as some prefer to call it, is nothing new and there are countless studies confirming that women generally expect such treatment from men.¹ So we will take that expectation as a given. What hasn’t been studied sufficiently in women is the reaction men’s failure to provide expected level of chivalric supplies, and this is where we run into the useful concept of ‘aggrieved entitlement.’

The phrase aggrieved entitlement was popularized by feminist Michael Kimmel who refers to it as a gendered emotion displayed by disenfranchised males, entailing “a fusion of that humiliating loss of manhood and the moral obligation and entitlement to get it back.”² By ‘manhood’ Kimmel is referring to rights that males have supposedly enjoyed over women that are subsequently denied them by a changing world. He further clarifies that men “tend to feel their sense of aggrieved entitlement because of the past; they want to restore what they once had. Their entitlement is not aspirational; its nostalgic.”³

In a recent paper Dennis Gouws suggests that the aggrieved entitlement descriptor can be equally applied to the behavior of women. Reviewing Kimmel’s concept he concludes:

Because Kimmel’s sympathies lie with gender feminism, he is uninterested in how this concept might apply to women’s behavior. Women might express aggrieved entitlement when they experience what they perceive to be a humiliating loss of the gynocentric privilege to which gynocentric chivalry, gender feminism, and hegemonic gynarchy have entitled them. Self-righteous, angry expressions of personal offense and even violent acts might result from their perceived moral obligation to regain their sense of gynocentric privilege. A cursory internet search of gender-feminist responses to men’s-issues speakers on campus and to the establishing men’s groups or other male-positive spaces on campus will provide examples of this aggrieved entitlement.⁴

Gouws provides a useful example of aggrieved entitlement by women who dominate university campus culture. Men attempting to establish male support groups on female-dominated campuses, or who attempt to invite speakers sympathetic to men’s health issues, have frequently been met with fury for apparently removing the chivalric focus from women and their issues. The resultant female rage has triggered violent protests, intimidation, vindictive and false accusations, or boycotting of male initiatives through financial and other means.

Looking at the sexual-relations contract that has been operating for eons we can see that a certain degree of narcissistic pride was encouraged in order to sweeten gender roles for men and women – “He’s an awesome strong man, a man’s man and a great provider” or “She’s a magnificent mother, those children never go without love or food”. Those adhering to traditional gender roles received compliments for their service, along with some compensatory payoffs by the opposite sex.

When an individual fails to adhere to their traditional gender role the bubble of narcissistic pride bursts, giving rise to aggrieved entitlement in members of the opposite sex. In the language of psychology we would say the expectation of narcissistic supply has been cut off, and narcissistic injury and rage steps forward to address the grievance. Most readers would know that some of the worst examples of aggrieved entitlement by women are displayed by feminists, about whose behavior Ernest B. Bax concluded in the year 1909; “Weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes aggressive. Aggressive weakness deserves no quarter.”⁵

Bax further elaborates on aggressive weakness (i.e., aggrieved entitlement) in the following passages:

I may point out in conclusion that the existing state of public opinion on the subject registers the fact that sex-conscious women have exploited the muscular weakness of their sex and have succeeded in forging a weapon of tyranny called “chivalry” which enables them to ride rough-shod over every principle of justice and fair play. Men are cowed by it, and fail to distinguish between simple weakness per se which should command every consideration, and that of aggressive weakness which trades upon “chivalry” and deserves no quarter.⁶

“Even taking the matter on the conventional ground of weakness and granting, for the sake of argument, the relative muscular weakness of the female as ground for her being allowed the immunity claimed by Modern Feminists of the sentimental school, the distinction is altogether lost sight of between weakness as such and aggressive weakness. Now I submit there is a very considerable difference between what is due to weakness that is harmless and unprovocative, and weakness that is aggressive, still more when this aggressive weakness presumes on itself as weakness, and on the consideration extended to it, in order to become tyrannical and oppressive. Weakness as such assuredly deserves all consideration, but aggressive weakness deserves none save to be crushed beneath the iron heel of strength. Woman at the present day has been encouraged by a Feminist public opinion to become meanly aggressive under the protection of her weakness. She has been encouraged to forge her gift of weakness into a weapon of tyranny against man, unwitting that in so doing she has deprived her weakness of all just claim to consideration or even to toleration.”⁷

Bax penned the above observations over a century ago, although the behavior he described had been around for much longer than that. The phrase ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ is usually attributed to the English playwright and poet William Congreve. He wrote these lines in his play The Mourning Bride, 1697:

Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.

These lines describe a temporary loss of male chivalry by women and the aggrieved entitlement that ensues – a reaction that Michael Kimmel pretentiously emphasizes as a mostly male pathology. A more honest appraisal of the changing gender roles and the accompanying sense of aggrieved entitlement would admit that women’s roles and choices have expanded exponentially, which includes the throwing off of any expected responsibilities toward men and boys, while conversely the male role of providing benevolent sexism/chivalry for women has changed little. On the basis of such disparity men appear to be coping remarkably well in comparison to women who retain many of their traditional privileges and expectations, but who display extreme rage at micro-disenfranchisements and momentary lapses in chivalric supply.

Benevolent sexism toward women remains the norm, despite women’s traditional obligations toward men being wiped out

In summary the grief-reaction over loss of traditional roles is not a predominately male issue. Women have yet to experience the loss of gendered entitlements on anywhere near the same scale as men, however they are equally proficient at raging over micro-losses of chivalry and male deference. The theory of aggrieved entitlement thus applies to no gender in particular – so lets use it to describe the ever-present rage displayed by women in both private and public settings.

References:

[1] Hammond, M. D., Sibley, C. G., & Overall, N. C. The allure of sexism: Psychological entitlement fosters women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism over time. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 422-429. (2014)
[2] Kalish, R., & Kimmel, M. Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings. Health Sociology Review, 9(4), 451–464. (2010)
[3] Kimmel, Michael. Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. Hachette UK, (2017).
[4] Dennis Gouws, Not So Romantic For Men: Using Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe to Explore Evolving Notions of Chivalry, in Voicing the Silences of Social and Cognitive Justice, 167–178. (2018)
[5] Ernest B. Bax., Women’s Privileges and “Rights”, Social Democrat, Vol.13 no.9, September (1909).
[6] Ernest B. Bax., Feminism and Female Suffrage in New Age, (1910)
[7] Ernest B. Bax., Chapter 5: The “Chivalry” Fake, in The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

Second Wave Feminism: Promoting Both Similarities & Differences Between the Sexes

January 25, 2019January 26, 2019 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

Below is an excerpt from p.3 of the introduction to The Second Wave: A Reader In Feminist Theory, edited by Linda Nicholson. Note the promotion of differences between men and women, referred to as ‘difference feminism’ or ‘gynocentric feminism.’

__________________

In the late 1960s and early 1970s two contradictory beliefs existed as part of the general culture: that the differences between women and men were deep and rooted in nature and, secondly, that women and men were basically the same. Second wave feminists initially drew heavily on this latter belief to press for changes in the status quo. While many, particularly “liberal” feminists, continued in this direction, those feminists who saw their politics as more radical began to focus on the differences between women and men. This focus can in part be explained by the political limitations radical and socialist feminists saw as associated with a “women and men are the same” perspective.

Such a politics seemed to consist in pushing society towards accepting women in the same positions as men in an otherwise unaltered social world. But as one of the popular slogans of the period claimed: “Women who strive to be equal to men lack ambition.” For radical and socialist feminists, a politics that merely strove toward placing women where men had previously been also lacked ambition. If one were to build a politics which radically altered the status quo, one needed to focus on the deep ways society differentiated the life activities and psyches of women and men. What began to emerge can be described as a “difference” feminism; because it often elaborated the meaning of differences between women and men in terms of the unique situation and characteristics of women, it has also been labelled a “gynocentric” feminism.

This new focus on the differences between women and men was elaborated, however, in a variety of ways. In my selections I have identified three distinct orientations within this general turn. One way of moving away from a “women and men are fundamentally the same” perspective was to stress the depths of women’s oppression. A focus on oppression led toward a view of women as victims, and to the move toward separatism found in large sections of the radical feminist community during the 1970s. The essay “The Woman Identified Woman” and the chapter from MacKinnon reflect this first elaboration of difference.

A second type of gynocentrism tended toward describing the differences between women and men in more neutral terms, emphasizing both their positive and negative consequences on women’s lives. The Chodorow and Gilligan essays reflect this second type of orientation. A third type, represented here in the essays by Hartsock and Collins, focused on the ways in which the distinctive positions of women—for Hartsock, women in general and for Collins, African American women in particular—provide a unique and positive standpoint for understanding society and for developing a liberatory vision.

“Difference” or “gynocentric” feminism produced an enormous amount of highly creative work. The writings of such theorists as MacKinnon, Chodorow, and Gilligan led to “aha” experiences for large numbers of people. Suddenly, patterns that many had sensed “through a glass darkly” were laid out in clear and convincing texts.

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Gynocentrism and misandry

January 22, 2019July 13, 2020 / Peter Ryan / 2 Comments

By Peter Ryan

In my previous article “Perversions of gynocentrism”¹, I discussed the void of respect for men and boys. We live in a culture that does not respect the male half of the human race. To call this truth out is to attract the ire of feminists and be labelled a whinger and a misogynist that is just angry his supposed “privilege” has been taken away. The contempt that our gynocentric society has for men and boys is a forbidden topic to discuss.

This hostile reaction to discussing men’s issues and their well-being and labelling any men that discusses them a whinger, is not just seen from feminists. It is also expressed from a substantial number of men and women in society. It is an ugly reality of human nature that people do not like to confront their own bigotry and when they are confronted, it generally elicits a hostile response. The reality is that the misandry that feminism vomits out into society, is just a symptom of a much more deeply rooted problem in our culture.

Men and boys cannot read a newspaper, watch television, go online, listen to the radio, go to work, or to college or school, or even socialise with their peers, without being regularly bombarded with hateful and bigoted messages that there is something inherently toxic about them or wrong with them because they happen to be male. There is a feminist campaign of psychological warfare directed at men and boys. Tom Golden has compared it² to the communist brainwashing of political dissidents in China and made a compelling argument feminists are using the same techniques.

In my article “Diagnosing Gynocentrism”³, I discussed how gynocentrism is associated with a belief in female superiority. This belief holds that women and girls are naturally and inherently superior to men and boys based on being female. This belief emerges from two attitudes. There is an underlying attitude that masculinity is inherently flawed and that masculinity is toxic, violent, predatory, destructive and primitive. There is also a corresponding attitude that femininity is flawless, pure, peaceful, empathetic, life-giving and civilised. Gynocentric slogans like “women civilise men”⁴ and feminist terms like “toxic masculinity”⁵, are just two expressions of this same belief system. Female superiority is a belief system that leads to the dehumanisation of men and boys and the deification of women and girls.

Within one week of me publishing “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, the American Psychological Association released their guidelines on dealing with men and boys, which pathologises traditional masculinity. Ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink, has written a brilliant article debunking this nonsense⁶ and I highly recommend people take time to read it. Numerous psychologists such as Dr. Gad Saad⁷, Dr. Shawn Smith⁸ and Dr. David Ley⁹ in Psychology Today, have strongly criticised these guidelines and the demonisation of masculinity and the feminist ideological bias within them. A few days later, Gillette releases their new ad¹⁰ on how men need to reform themselves and evolve past their primitive, violent and predatory ways (because apparently all men in general are now represented by the actions of a handful of predatory, backwards and violent men). These examples of demonising men and masculinity are nothing new. This has been going on for decades.

Where I live, we have government funded man-bashing ads on TV on a regular basis¹¹, holding men in general collectively responsible for domestic violence. If one woman is murdered by a man, the media are quick to collectively hold all men¹² as sharing responsibility for their death. There is of course no discussion of female violence toward men. This is despite the abundance of research available¹³ that shows it is hardly a tiny fraction of domestic violence, but actually a substantial portion of it.

There is of course no collective blame directed at women in society for the actions of individual women that commit child abuse and physically attack their male partners. There should not be either, because all women and all men are not responsible for the actions of individual men and individual women. Of course this is understood when we look at female violence toward men and children, but not in the case of male violence toward women and children. That is just one gynocentric double standard that helps keep reinforcing the bigoted attitudes we have about men and women, which in turn drives the belief in female superiority.

Man bashing ads are like grains of sand on the beach. Books¹⁴and research papers¹⁵ have even been written on how pervasive the negative portrayal of men and masculinity is in this culture. The institutionalisation of misandry is also widespread in our society. Misandry is present in our political system, our universities, our family courts, our legal system, our schools, our universities, our corporations, our mainstream media and our government departments. It is in our policy, in our laws, in our news, in our entertainment, in school and university syllabus and academic scholarship and it is increasingly invading our personal spaces and social interactions.

None of this is new. What is new is the level of outrage the Gillette ad has generated. 2019 will mark the ten year anniversary of A Voice For Men. Ten years ago the Gillette ad would barely have created a ripple. There would have been some criticism, but hardly to the level we are presently seeing. This change in societal attitudes is a new phenomenon and an emerging trend. People have finally had enough. People are starting to notice the impact of what disrespecting the male half of the human race has in their own lives and they are recognising the true face of feminism. We have a long, long way to go, before we unlearn centuries of gynocentric programming. We are however starting to see society question the cultural narrative that something is inherently flawed about masculinity and also feminist ideology.

I did leave a comment on the Gillette ad. I responded as follows:

“Is this ad the best a man can get? Imagine if this ad generalised all black people or all women by the actions of a few individuals. Would such bigotry even get past production and be released? So why is it suddenly ok to generalise the male half of the human race by the actions of a few men? This is wrong. It is not “some” men doing the right thing, it is actually most men. Inspiring men to do better, requires respecting men to begin with. Seeing the worst in men and using shame and guilt to inspire them to do better, just creates the understandable level of hostility we see toward this ad. Men are not toxic, this message and messages like it are toxic. Inspiring men to do better, requires portraying a positive image of masculinity to your audience and not deriding them. Such simple logic.”

Predictably feminists attempted to gaslight me. That is their predictable (all so predictable) response when they get challenged on their own double standards. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, it must be me and the million or so other people like me that expressed a problem with the ad. Not in one instance in the replies under my comment, did feminists answer my question about whether this ad would have even got past production if it had of portrayed black people or women in this way.

Gillette would have us believe “some” men but not most men, are doing the right thing by others. It is implied through omission that the majority of men need to reform themselves. The ad clearly exploits a perceptual bias called anchoring¹⁶, to set the perceptual frame in the viewers minds right from the beginning, that men in general are to be found guilty for the actions and behaviour of a handful of predatory and violent men. Then it proceeds to lecture men from a morally self-righteous position, on what men should be doing to redeem themselves. I will ask the question again, would feminists approve of this ad if an ad like this was made about women? I think we all know the answer to that and their silence to that simple question is deafening.

Feminists were predictably quite quick to obfuscate an examination of their own double standards and bigotry, by accusing people of having a problem with men acting like decent human beings, or even going as far as insinuating that I was somehow one of those toxic men portrayed in the ad. This is the predictable game feminist ideologues play- They set the bait to elicit anger from men, there is an angry reaction from men and then they frame themselves as victims of male aggression. It is all in your head, there is something wrong with you etcetera, etcetera. Gaslighting is a preferred tactic by feminists. But the central question that I asked still remains unanswered. Would these same feminist ideologues be perfectly fine with a comparable video being made about women? Indeed people have noted that double standard and have produced such videos¹⁷.

Men and women do not have a problem with the message of men acting like decent human beings. They do have a problem with an ad framing men in general as violent, primitive, predators and that only “some” men are doing the right thing. They do have a problem with an ad that takes such a pompous and morally self-righteous position to judge and shame it’s male customer base and then dare to lecture them on how they should behave. The ad like most feminist inspired ads, is dripping with condescension toward men¹⁸.

Paul Elam did an excellent response to the ad linked here¹⁹. I also left a comment on that video as follows:

“When I wrote about there been a void of respect for men, I was not saying that as a minor footnote. We live in a society that is so gynocentric it pathologises the very type of men and masculine traits it depends on to exist. They say fish rots from the head and it certainly does. This ad is nothing new, just more of the same. The misandry in ads has been going on for decades.

Feminist ideology is the religion of the corporate kleptocracy we live in. The steady progression of this toxic ideology through our public institutions and businesses, is the product of decades of general apathy from the public toward the well-being of men and boys. Society gave feminism the green light to demonise and dehumanise men and boys and marginalise them in the name of equality decades ago. Business executives and politicians go along with it because society mostly does not care and has shown zero concern for decades. Is anyone going to protest outside their HQ? Is anyone going to make a formal complaint or take legal action over this ad? Is this really going to lead to any serious and long-term boycott of their products? Is there going to be any real tangible consequences for this business and any well organised movement to pushback against this misandry?

There were many ads, articles, books and shows like this before and most people said nothing. Only now is the rotten stench of feminism starting to bother people.

You reap what you sow. This will continue to worsen until people confront and correct their own gynocentric programming. Exactly how bad the stench of feminism needs to get before that occurs, depends on how much people are willing to suffer for their own gynocentric stupidity. The moral laziness of society toward gynocentrism is really to blame, not a business that just reflects the fashionable bigotry of the day. Look in the mirror people.”

One year ago there was another video that attracted similar levels of controversy. Does anyone care to guess what it was? It was the Jordan Peterson interview with Kathy Newman on Channel 4²⁰. So you were saying? So you were saying? So you were saying? Remember? Strawman, gaslight, strawman, gaslight. Precisely the same feminist tactics of painting men as villains and portraying themselves as victims, was on full display a year ago from that interview and in its aftermath. Just like now, there were millions of people that heavily criticised that interview. The cycle of misandry repeats itself over and over again each year and it will continue to escalate.

So my question to people is what are you going to do now? This is not a new problem. I can pretty much guarantee with certainty that the bigotry and contempt that our feminist controlled society has towards men, is going to keep continuing and keep escalating. You can expect more ads like this. What we are presently facing is not something that just grew overnight. The demonisation and the marginalisation of men and masculinity, has been going on for decades. It was the apathy and the indifference of the general population to what feminists were doing then, that allowed the pervasive misandry in our society to be normalised by feminists and grow to the point we are observing today.

I want people to really think about how deeply entrenched the hatred of men would have to be in our society, for the American Psychological Association to come up with their feminist inspired guidelines toward treating men and boys. I went through multiple examples in “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, on describing the world we now live in and how they illustrate a void of respect we have for men and boys. It is not hyperbolic for me to say that if I replaced men with Jews in some of the hateful content coming from our feminist media, academics and politicians, it would not look at all out of place in Nazi Germany. Could you imagine the outrage if the Washington Post article, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”²¹ was written about Jews? Antisemitism is reprehensible and so is misandry. The fact you can write such hateful drivel about men in a major mainstream media publication, goes to show you just how depraved our society has become.

To get to this level of feminist depravity and hatred towards men in society, the general population had to be apathetic and indifferent enough to the well-being of men to permit it. That is the disgusting truth that no one wants to acknowledge. Even a substantial number of antifeminists will stop short of examining the reasons why feminists have been so successful in implementing their agenda, with next to no resistance from the population. All of these mothers and fathers with sons did nothing for generations, while feminism gradually infected and then spread through our institutions, companies, politics, media, legal system and public and private organisations. Despite the massive outcry over this one ad that goes for less than 2 minutes, the concern and outrage from the public over a multitude of far more serious examples of systemic and institutional misandry in society, is relatively little.

Men and boys are far behind girls at every level of education from kindergarten to postgraduate education. They have been struggling academically for decades in a feminist controlled education system that prioritises women and girls learning needs and avoids and silences any attempt to address this imbalance. Young men have seen their rights to due process eliminated on college campuses and their lives ruined from false allegations, thanks to biased feminist university policies and kangaroo tribunals. Husbands and fathers face severe bias in the family court and divorce process and many of them lose everything- wife, kids, house and sometimes their lives. Countless fathers are killing themselves on a regular basis from being alienated from their children. Men are now facing a social climate thanks to metoo# and changes to the legal system, where a woman can virtually point the finger at a man and based on an unproven accusation from more than 20 years ago and with no trial, the man can have his life destroyed. The list goes on and on.

Many of these problems have been around for decades and they are systemic in nature and have impacted millions of men and boys. The silence from our society to these issues has been deafening, because mostly no one cares. Like I said, the Gillette ad that went for less than 2 minutes, got more attention in one week than any of those men’s issues I just mentioned have gotten from society in twenty years! If these things were happening to women, we would be up in arms and there would be a revolution. The indifference to the suffering and marginalisation of men and boys, is a readily observable feature of society. This is the gender empathy gap²².

It is a stark and surreal claim to talk about men being privileged in a society that bends over backwards on every occasion to cater to feminist demands to prioritise female well-being (even to the point of spending money on stopping “manspreading” on public transport), while at the same time shaming and ostracising men and boys and showing such indifference to their suffering. So whilst I am glad to see the reaction to the Gillette ad, that reaction is just a blip on the radar screen. In contrast the reaction from society in general toward the systemic misandry within it, has been one of silence, indifference and in some cases encouragement. If people want to see real change, then that will have to change.

Feminism has been able to spread through the public and private sectors of our society with ease, because our leaders have correctly perceived that they will receive greater consequences from feminists for not going ahead with the feminist agenda, than from the general public if they do. Politicians will gladly parrot feminist talking points on domestic violence for example, because they know the attacks they will get from feminists in the media and elsewhere if they do not, will be orders of magnitude more detrimental to their political careers, than the consequences they will receive from the general public by doing so. I noticed Stardusk has raised this very same point in relation to his response to the Gillette ad²³ and also emphasised the importance of saying “no” to these feminist ideologues. It is the same situation in any big organisation that feminists infest.

Our society has been slowly rotting away from the inside year after year and decade after decade, from the slow and gradual feminist subversion of our institutions, academia, media, legal system, political system and corporations etc. The feminist capture of the universities has been essential to feminisms spread throughout society, ensuring that our future politicians, policy and law makers, business professionals, mental health professionals and educators, are thoroughly indoctrinated in feminist ideology and go on to work at senior levels where they can spread feminist ideology within the private and public organisations they work for.

In many ways modern society today resembles a termite infested house. The feminist infestation has gone by unimpeded for decades and now suddenly the damage is starting to appear on the surface. What people need to realise is the Gillette ad is just the tip of the iceberg of this problem. We now have a situation where the public and private sectors of our society, blatantly express the female supremacist values of feminist ideology and the general population is disgusted by what it sees. But what the general population is disgusted by, is really just a reflection of its own gynocentric double standards. All that was required for this to occur, was for people to remain indifferent to male-being for long enough to let feminism implement their agenda and entrench themselves in our institutions and corporations etc.

In “Perversions Of Gynocentrism” and “The Normalisation Of Gynocentrism”²⁴, I explained at a social and cultural level how the spread of feminism and gynocentrism has been achieved. Gynocentrism is at the heart of the pervasive misandry we are observing today and feminism is merely a political manifestation of gynocentrism. We are not going to overcome feminism by simply limiting our focus to criticising feminist ideology. We have to ask serious questions about why society has been so easily overtaken by feminism. We have to confront our own apathy toward male well-being. We have to confront our pedestalisation and deification of women and girls. We have to confront our own gynocentric programming and how that programming taps into basic sexual and emotional drives and short-circuits them. If we are not prepared to confront our own gynocentrism, then feminism will continue to degrade our society until it inevitably collapses from a fempocalypse²⁵.

Only if society cares enough about male well-being to react in a manner that leads to serious consequences for our politicians, businesses and academics etc to lead them to change their ways and resist feminism, will we see any change. Until then it will remain business as usual and feminism will keep on escalating the misandry in our society. Feminism has had several decades to infest every branch of society and has a great deal of political and financial momentum behind it. Feminism will not be defeated by a single protest or a single boycott or a single march or a single legal battle. It is going to take a sustained effort on multiple fronts to remove the decades of feminist rot in our society. It is going to take a society prepared to rise above its own gynocentrism and its one-sided concern for only female well-being, to generate a strong enough response to defeat feminism. Half measures will not be enough. If people truly have had enough of misandry like the Gillette ad, then we have to go the whole way and question our own double standards that prioritise female well-being and ignore male-being.

The gynocentric seeds of our own destruction bore the fruit of feminism. Feminism is just an extension and a reflection of our own bigotry. We have an underlying belief in female superiority embedded in our culture which we do not want to look at, because we do not like the reflection that stares back at us. We have bigoted attitudes toward men and toward women engrained in our culture. The women are wonderful effect²⁶ and the female in-group bias²⁷, are real measurable phenomena in our society and are the subject of scientific enquiry. We need to unlearn those attitudes. Men are not collectively responsible for the actions of mass murderers and serial rapists. Women and girls are not all sugar and spice and men and boys are not all primitive violent Neanderthals. The notion of women and children first and the complete disregard for male well-being, is indefensible in a modern developed society where women enjoy the same rights as men.

The underlying belief in female superiority that has gradually been embedded in our gynocentric culture and the attitudes it is based upon, need to be confronted and eradicated. Masculinity is not toxic, these gynocentric elements of our culture are toxic.

References:

A New Psychology for Men

January 11, 2019June 4, 2023 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

By Peter Wright (first published in 2015)

Psychology clings to a universal model – that men are incorrigibly flawed and require a dismantling of their identities, habits, and preferences before being reconstructed according to a feminist model of masculinity. All modern therapies have this basic premise in common.

For example, one of the more popular models of men and masculinity to emerge in the last 20 years, promoted as A New Psychology of Men, is described in the following terms by one of its founders:

The new psychology of men has emerged over the past 15 years within the larger fields of men’s studies and gender studies. Informed by the academic breakthroughs of feminist scholarship, the new psychology of men examines masculinity not as a normative referent, but rather as a problematic construct. In so doing, it provides a framework for a psychological approach to men and masculinity that questions traditional norms of the male role and views some male problems as unfortunate byproducts of the male gender role socialization process.¹

Since it’s inception this “new” psychology of men has restated traditional gender stereotypes about men; that they are flawed, violent, emotional primitives in need of reconstruction. This supposedly “new” model has also been developed into a training course teaching therapists how to effectively work with men.

The course, designed by former American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant, is based on two principles held almost universally by therapists working with men; a). that patriarchy theory represents the real world, and b). that males are stunted in their emotional processing abilities. Let’s look at these two pillars of therapy.

Patriarchy theory

As with most psychologists and therapists today, Levant is informed by feminist-inspired patriarchy theory which posits that all men have power over all women and that such power is enforced by men’s violence. The theoretical vision, trumpets Levant, provides a “new” way of looking at men:

What scholars in the area of men’s psychology have attempted is nothing less than a reconstruction of masculinity. It starts from the recognition that there is a problem, and locates the roots of that problem in the male gender role… The new psychology of men strives to address the feminist critique of patriarchy while remaining empathetic to men.²

As many readers will know there is nothing “new” in this characterization of men, which we can summarize with the phrase, ‘Women have problems, and men are the problem.’ As Levant stresses, the primary approach to therapy with men is first to problematize them; “It starts from the recognition that there is a problem.”

In this model men are viewed as being problems before they even meet the therapist, who ignores the possibility that men’s problems may lie outside themselves in a world of grief they did nothing to deserve.

In other words, whatever the presenting complaints of the client they are immediately dismissed by the practitioner in order to coerce the client into an ideological mold of manhood. The practitioner, depending on their degree of indoctrination, may actually believe this will address the client’s issues but even a cursory examination of the “masculinity as identified problem” approach reveals numerous, deep flaws. In fact, this approach proves to be abusive in any reasonable interpretation of the word.

As I explain below there are other approaches to working with men that don’t presume they are flawed and need fixing. That approach begins with asking men what they experience in life, and what they might want to achieve in therapy, and actually listening to their answers. Therapists may be interested to hear men speak of a range of experiences and goals wholly unrelated to patriarchal domination of women and children.

Men as emotionally dumb

Referring to men as dumb has the double-meaning of both lacking in intelligence and being mute. This forms the basis of Levant’s theory that men possess little emotional awareness about themselves or others, that they are lacking in emotional intelligence, and that even were they to discover some emotional awareness they would not know how to express it in words, such is the depth of male lacuna. He refers to this problem in men as alexithymia – a Greek term meaning no words for emotions, insisting that most North American males suffer from this syndrome.

Levant states that “it is so very widespread among men that I have called it normative male alexithymia,”³ a syndrome that by definition only men and boys can be labelled with. There even exists a Normative Male Alexithymia Scale used to assess the depth of men’s need for therapeutic correction. Levant states,

One of the most far-reaching consequences of male gender-role socialization is the high incidence among men of… the inability to identify and describe one’s feelings in words… men are often genuinely unaware of their emotions. Lacking this emotional awareness, when asked to identify their feelings, they tend to rely on their cognition to try to logically deduce how they should feel. They cannot do what is automatic for most women -simply sense inwardly, feel the feeling, and let the verbal description come to mind.⁴

This claim, that men are “unaware of their emotions,” an assumption so typical of psychology’s view of men, has been a cornerstone of the therapeutic world for the last 40 years. And it is demonstrably wrong.

According to the vast majority of studies on emotional processing, men and boys are able to identify emotional arousal in themselves and others equally to women, emotions like jealousy, love, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc. But men and boys choose to regulate that emotional arousal not by verbalizing it so much (women’s preferred method) but by taking intelligent action. A woman for example might talk with her melancholic friend about what is worrying her in order to cheer her up; the man may invite the same melancholic friend to the movies; both responses -talking, or acting- serve to intelligently modulate emotions.

What Levant has failed to discriminate are 1. recognizing emotions, and 2. verbalizing them. He, and so many psychologists who came before and after him, assume that by not verbalizing emotion males must also have failed to recognize emotions. Countless studies however show this to be a false conclusion.⁵ Men, like women, can sense the full range of emotions – but they may choose to respond to that knowledge in a different manner to women.

Breaking with the past – starting afresh

Repackaging patriarchy theory is a move we no longer wish to make – at least not if we wish to genuinely help men. Increasing numbers of men are tired of waiting for the psychotherapeutic industry to drag its collective ass out of gynocentrism-land to develop a genuine new model for tackling male psychology.

To attain that model there has to occur a break with patriarchy theory and assumptions that men and boys are emotional dummies. As in a court of law we begin the new therapy with an assumption that men are not only innocent until proven guilty, but that ‘men are good’ to use Tom Golden’s iconic phrase.

Nor will work with men be savvy until it admits the realities of cultural misandry, gynocentrism and their undeniably crushing effects on modern males. The daily assaults on men and boys from advertizing, mental health services, media, family courts, pharmaceutical companies, education from grade school to grad school, anti-male bigots and ideologically driven governance must be included in the picture.

These are problems which are deleterious to all aspects of men’s lives, including mental health. The mental health industry is a huge part of that problem, not a part of the solution.

A sane alternative to all this must disabuse men, women and society of the following myths:

men belong to a patriarchy and take that model as their life script;
men are emotionally inept;
men are default potential sexual predators;
men are violent and uncaring;
men are not necessary as parents;
men are unable to commit;
men are emotionally unavailable;
men are not as human or deserving as women.

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The things we do want to include in a new mental health model are:

enhanced understanding of misandry, gynocentrism and their consequences;
recognizing and honoring men’s emotional acumen;
recognizing and combating misandry and gynocentrism in the mental health industry;
professional understanding of the ways men differ from women in how they cope with life;
a prohibition on the practice of expecting men to emulate women’s emotional processes;
an allowance of men’s legitimate anger without infecting them with ideological shame;
the steadfast belief that men’s issues, pain and needs are as important as anyone else’s.

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These points alone are sufficient to create a revolution in the way we work with men. As a truly new approach to men’s welfare and psychological health, An Ear For Men has been launched and the coming Men’s Mental Health Network will be promoting these principles and providing a range of specialized services from professionals who have been thoroughly vetted in their knowledge of men’s issues, and in their compassion for the same.

References:

[1] Ronald F. Levant, ‘The new psychology of men,’ in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 27(3), Jun 1996, 259-265
[2] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.4, 1997
[3] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.9, 1997
[4] Ronald F. Levant, William S Pollack, A New Psychology of Men, pp.238-239, 1995
[5] For example, this Finnish study shows that while women were more proficient at verbalizing feelings, men and women were equally proficient at identifying feelings: Salminen, J. K. ‘Prevalence of alexithymia and its association with sociodemographic variables in the general population of Finland,’ Journal of psychosomatic research, vol. 46, no1, pp. 75-82, 1999

See also: Narrative Therapy with Men by Paul Elam and Peter Wright

Gynocentric Feminism – by Iris Young

January 10, 2019January 26, 2019 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

Below is an excerpt from a 1985 paper entitled “Humanism, Gynocentrism, and Feminist Politics” by feminist Iris M. Young – PW.

Iris M. Young

Gynocentric feminism defines the oppression of women very differently from humanist feminism. Women’s oppression consists not of being prevented from participating in full humanity, but of the denial and devaluation of specifically feminine virtues and activities by an overly instrumentalized and authoritarian masculinist culture. Unlike humanist feminism, gynocentric feminism does not focus its analysis on the impediments to women’s self-development and the exclusion of women from the spheres of power, prestige, and creativity. Instead, gynocentric feminism focuses its critique on the values expressed in the dominant social spheres themselves.

The male-dominated activities with the greatest prestige in our society — politics, science, technology, warfare, business — threaten the survival of the planet and the human race. That our society affords these activities the highest value only indicates the deep perversity of patriarchal culture. Masculine values exalt death, violence, competition, selfishness, a repression of the body, sexuality, and affectivity.

Feminism finds in women’s bodies and traditionally feminine activity the source of positive values. Women’s reproductive processes keep us linked with nature and the promotion of life to a greater degree than men’s. Female eroticism is more fluid, diffuse, and loving than violence-prone male sexuality. Our feminine socialization and traditional roles as mothers give us the capacity to nurture and a sense of social cooperation that may be the only salvation of the planet.

Gynocentric feminism thus defines the oppression of women quite differently from the way humanistic feminism defines it. Femininity is not the problem, not the source of women’s oppression, but indeed within traditional femininity lie the values that we should promote for a better society. Women’s oppression consists of the devaluation and repression of women’s nature and female activity by the patriarchal culture.

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Gynocentric feminism has received a number of expressions in the United States women’s movement in recent years. Artists and poets have been among the leaders in developing images of celebration of this more positive understanding of women’s history and contemporary self-understanding. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, for example, laboriously and beautifully recovers whole aspects of women’s history and locates them within images of female genitalia and objects that rely on traditionally female arts.

Within the sphere of political activism, gynocentric feminism perhaps is best represented in the feminist antimilitarist and ecology movements of the past five years. In the Women’s Pentagon Action or the action at the Seneca Army Depot, for example, a major aspect of the political protest has been the use of symbols and actions that invoke traditional labor, such as weaving, spinning, birthing, mothering. Feminist antimilitarist and ecological analysis has argued that the dangers to the planet that have been produced by the nuclear arms race and industrial technology are essentially tied to masculinist values. The burgeoning movement of feminist spirituality entails a similar analysis and promotes values associated with traditional femininity.

A number of prominent recent theories of contemporary feminism express a gynocentric feminism. I see Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature as one of the first written statements of gynocentric feminism in the second wave. It shows that one of the first steps of gynocentrism is to deny the nature/culture dichotomy held by humanists such as Beauvoir and to affirmatively assert the connection of women and nature. Daly’s Gyn/Ecology I see as a transition work. In it Daly asserts an analysis of the victimization of women by femininity that outdoes Beauvoir, but she also proposes a new gynocentric language.

Carol Gilligan’s critique of male theories of moral development has had a strong influence on the formation of gynocentric analysis. She questions dominant assumptions about moral valuation and affirms forms of moral reasoning associated with traditional femininity. Following Chodorow, she argues that gender socialization creates in women a relational communal orientation toward others, while it creates in men a more oppositional and competitive mode of relating to others. These gender differences produce two different forms of moral rationality: a masculine ethic of rights and justice, and a feminine ethic of responsibility and care.

Traditional moral theory has ignored and repressed the particularistic ethic of care as being pre-moral. Women’s moral oppression consists of being measured against male standards, according to Gilligan, in the silencing of women’s different voice. The dominance of those male centered values of abstract reasoning, instrumentality, and individualism, moreover, produce a cold, uncaring, competitive world. Both the liberation of women and the restructuring of social relations require tempering these values with the communally oriented values derived from women’s ethic of care. While Gilligan herself would reject the label of gynocentric feminist, her work has exerted an enormous influence on feminists in fields as diverse as mathematics and philosophy, providing the foundation for a revaluation of attributes associated with femininity.

Mary O’Brien articulates a gynocentric critique of traditional political theory starting from the bio-logical fact that the reproductive process gives women a living continuity with their offspring that it does not give men. Women thus have a temporal consciousness that is continuous, whereas male temporal consciousness is discontinuous. Arising from the alienation from the child they experience in the reproductive process, masculine thought emphasizes dualism and separation. Men establish a public realm in which they give spiritual birth to a second nature, transcending the private realm of mere physicality and reproduction to which they confine women.

Patriarchy develops an ideology of the male potency principle, which installs the father as ruler of the family and men as rulers of society, and substitutes an intellectual notion of creativity for the female principle of life generation. The contemporary women’s movement has the potential to overturn such a conception of politics that is separated from life continuity because out of female reproductive consciousness can come a politics based on women’s experience of life processes and species continuity.

Nancy Hartsock’s theory of the feminist stand-point from which she analyzes patriarchal culture is a more sweeping version of gynocentric feminism. She argues that the sexual division of labor provides men and women with differing experiences that structure different standpoints upon nature and social relations. Based on Chodorow’s theory of the development of gender personalities, Hartsock argues that men experience the relation of self and other as one of hostility and struggle.

The sexual division of labor also removes men from the needs of the body, from the vulnerability and basic demands of children and the aged, and provides men with an instrumentally calculative reltion to nature. This division of labor, she argues, produces a way of thinking about the world that Hartsock calls abstract masculinity, which organizes experience and social relations into binary oppositions in which one term carries greater value than the other.

This standpoint of abstract masculinity has determined the primary structure of Western social relations and culture. This male dominated culture’s values are both partial and perverse. It embodies sexuality where desire for fusion with the other takes the form of domination of the other. Masculine consciousness denies and fears the body and associates birth with death. The only sense of community generated by abstract masculinity, moreover, is the community of warriors in preparation for combat.

From women’s experience, Hartsock claims, we can both criticize masculinity values and conceptualization and develop a better vision of social relations. The gender personalities women develop in relation to their mothers give them a propensity to feel more connected with others than men do. The experiences of menstruation, coitus, pregnancy, and lactation, which challenge body boundaries, give women a greater experience of continuity with nature.

Women’s labor in caring for men and children and producing basic values in the home, finally, gives them a greater rootedness in nature than men’s work gives them, a more basic understanding of life processes. These attributes of women’s experience can ground, Hartsock argues, a form of conceptualization that does not depend on dichotomous thinking and that values connections among persons more than their separation, as does abstract masculinity.

While Sara Ruddick is careful to claim that any recovery and revaluation of traditionally feminine attributes must be infused with a feminist politics, her notion of maternal thinking provides another example of a gynocentric feminist analysis. She argues that the specific daily practices of mothering generate specific modes of thinking motivated by the interests in preservation, growth, and the acceptability of the child to the society. Maternal practice is not restricted to mothers, but exists wherever such nurturing and preservation interests prevail. She suggests that maternal thinking provides antimilitarist values that feminists can use in promoting a politics of peace.

Writing within a very different intellectual current from American feminists, using rather different assumptions and style, several women in France in recent years have developed distinctive versions of gynocentric feminism. I shall mention only Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Like a number of other contemporary French thinkers, Irigaray describes phallocentric culture as preoccupied by a meta-physics of identity dominated by visual metaphors. Male thinking begins by positing the One, the same, the essence, that generates binary oppositions in which the second term is defined by the first as what it is not, thus reducing it to its identity.

Phallogocentric discourse defines the opposition male/female in just this way—woman is only not a man, a lack, a deficiency. Preoccupied with the straight, the true, the proper, men establish relations of property and exchange in which accounts are balanced. Women in the phallocentric system have been silenced and separated, exchanged as goods among men. Irigaray pro-poses that women must find and speak the specificity of female desire, which has completely different values from those of phallic thinking.

Women’s eroticism is neither one nor two but plural, as women’s bodies themselves experience arousal and pleasure in a multiplicity of places that cannot all be identified. Touch, not sight, predominates, the autoeroticism of vaginal lips touching clitoris, of intimate bodies touching. A genuinely feminine language moves and twists, starts over again from different perspectives, does not go straight to the point. Such a language can displace the sterility and oppressiveness of phallogocentric categorization.

Kristeva also focuses on language and the repression of specifically female experience. Language has two moments: the symbolic, the capacity of language to represent and define, to be literal; and the semiotic, those elements of language that slip and play in ambiguities and nuance. Certain linguistic practices, such as poetry, make most explicit use of the semiotic, but for the most part the playful, the musical in language is repressed in Western culture and the symbolic, rational, legalistic discourse rules.

For Kristeva this repression concerns the repression of the body and the installation of order, hierarchy, and authority. Repression of the body and the semiotic entails repression of the pre-oedipal experience of the maternal body before the subject emerges with a self-identical ego, as well as denial by the culture of the specificity and difference that the female body exhibits. Challenge to the dominant oppressions, to capitalism, racism, sexism, must come not only from specific demands within the political arena, but also from changing the speaking subject.

Kristeva finds in the repressed feminine the potential for such change, where feminine means at least two things: first, women’s specific experience as female bodies, the daughters of mothers, and often mothers themselves, an experience of a decentered subject; second, the aspects of language and behavior Western culture has devalued and repressed: the poetic, rhythmic, musical, nurturant, and soothing, but also contradictory and shifting ways of being, that fickleness that women have been accused of. This revolution of the feminine Kristeva finds in anumber of male avant-garde writers. The women’s movement, however, also carries the possibility of displacing the rigidity of a subject that loves authority, provided that women do not fall into that humanist feminism by which they simply demand to get in on the masculinist power game.

To summarize, humanist feminism defines femininity as the source of women’s oppression and calls upon male-dominated institutions to allow women the opportunity to participate fully in public world-making activities of industry, politics, art, and science. In contrast, gynocentric feminism questions the values of these traditional public activities that have been dominated by men. Women’s oppression consists not of being prevented from participating in full humanity, but of the denial and devaluation of specifically feminine virtues and activities by an overly instrumentalized and authoritarian masculinist culture. Femininity is not the problem for gynocentric feminism, and indeed is the source of a conception of society and the subject that can not only liberate women, but also all persons.

Perversions of gynocentrism

January 8, 2019July 13, 2020 / Peter Ryan / 2 Comments

Article by Peter Ryan

Chivalry And Feminism Go Hand In Hand

Gynocentrism perverts everything it comes into contact with and the first casualty is the standard of behaviour between men and women. Sydney Watson recently did a great video ¹ on men helping women and the ridiculous feminist concept of benevolent sexism. In this article I will be discussing her video and exploring the connection between chivalry and the success of feminism. I will also be discussing benevolent sexism further and what is missing for men in our gynocentric society, as part of my series on exploring the nature of gynocentrism. Chivalry has been around in Western culture for far longer than feminism and is one of the major contributing factors to the rise of feminism in society and its successful and rapid spread through our institutions, corporations, politics, academia, media, law and policy etc.

The chivalrous deference that men in power have shown toward women and their eagerness to prioritise female well-being, often at the expense of everything else, has been absolutely critical to the rise, spread and success of feminism in Western culture. The willingness of men and boys as a group to not just tolerate, but actively support feminist measures that prioritise female well-being over their own well-being, without any reciprocity, is a product of the gynocentric tradition of chivalry that has been ingrained in our culture for centuries and passed down from generation to generation. Without men in power and men as a group deferring to the demands of feminists and women as a group and feminists deliberately exploiting the gynocentric tradition of chivalry, feminism would have never been able to gain traction.

Chivalry ² is what gynocentric traditionalists (not all traditionalists are gynocentric) do not want men and boys to unlearn. What they fail to understand, or perhaps do not want to understand, is that it is chivalry that allowed feminism to emerge, grow and quickly spread throughout society like a virus and gain a stranglehold in our institutions etc. Feminism was a power grab by a substantial fraction of the female population, to enshrine gynocentric double standards into law, policy, media, academia, businesses and our institutions and normalise those double standards in the culture.

Chivalry was what gave feminism the opportunity to successfully execute a bloodless coup of our societies. Chivalry was the accelerant that facilitated the rapid spread of the feminist firestorm through every branch of society, without any resistance from the men supposedly in power. We could eliminate feminism tomorrow, but as long as chivalry remains in our culture, it will simply re-emerge a few decades later under a different name. I would actually go further and argue that as long as chivalry remains in our culture, feminism will never be defeated.

As long as men defer to women and men in power and in men general are prepared to prioritise female well-being over male well-being, without any reciprocity for men and boys, feminism will keep succeeding on every front with their agenda until society collapses. Calls by gynocentric traditionalists for men to be more chivalrous, are nothing less than calls for more gasoline to be thrown into a burning building. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, is called insanity. It is gynocentric insanity to be promoting chivalry in the modern feminist society we live in.

Feminists are of course all too happy to keep exploiting chivalry to their advantage and like gynocentric traditionalists, they also encourage and promote chivalry when it suits them. HeForShe and White Ribbon for example, are nothing less than an attempt by feminists to blatantly exploit chivalry for their own benefit. We could go through example, after example, after example, of this same strategy being employed by feminists- Set a victim narrative or damsel in distress narrative where women and girls are in need of male assistance, instill guilt and shame in men and then engender a sense of duty in men to save the day, be the white knight and redeem themselves (of course even when men do what feminists say, they are never forgiven for their sin of being male), then ostracise any man or woman that questions your narrative and label them a misogynist. Wash, rinse, repeat. It is the same feminist strategy every time and on every occasion our male politicians fall for it and so does most of the rest of society. Exploiting chivalry from men and boys, has always been a core element of feminism’s success. It is the fuel that keeps the feminist fire burning.

The prime distinction between gynocentric traditionalists and feminists, is they exploit chivalry to fit an agenda that is different. Both exploit chivalry, just for different ends. Both are different sides of the same gynocentric coin and are in conflict over the male resources they want to exploit. It is a gynocentric tug of war between two gynocentric factions of society that want to exploit men for different goals. Neither group has an ounce of concern for male well-being, except to the extent it serves female interests.

So why is it exactly that feminism has been able to rely so heavily on chivalry to gain traction in society? Chivalry in its modern form is one-sided. There is no reciprocal set of responsibilities and duties expected from women and girls, in relation to how they treat men and boys. It is all one-way traffic, which makes chivalry the perfect fuel to drive a one-sided and bigoted agenda of female supremacy under the banner of feminism. Whilst chivalry has diminished somewhat in the culture over the last several decades, it still remains socially enforced to a substantial degree in modern society. Indeed a number of women in the media ³ have been doing their very best to promote chivalry.

This is about women wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They want the rights and opportunities of men, but not the responsibilities, obligations and sacrifices expected of men and they want to keep the traditional privileges women have enjoyed for centuries. They want to be treated as equals when it suits them, but they want special treatment like they are aristocracy when equality does not suit them. This is female entitlement mentality. The same women arguing men should act like gentlemen from the 19^th century, bristle at the very mention of women acting like ladies from the 19^th century. That right there is the problem- Lack of reciprocity. The one-sided gynocentric face of chivalry in the modern era.

To Defeat Feminism Chivalry Has Got To Go

Chivalry in its modern form is gynocentric bigotry. It is a one-sided code of socially enforced behaviour for men and boys to treat women and girls as a group with a special level of care and respect, simply because they are a female, with no equivalent efforts expected to be made by women and girls toward men and boys in return. Men and boys are expected to act like gentlemen and women and girls can act in any manner they please toward men and boys. Like other forms of bigotry, chivalry has no place in a society that claims it is against discrimination and for equality.

If we are ever going to defeat feminism, then chivalry will need to go. Men in power have to start saying “no” to the demands of feminists and putting their principles ahead of the approval of feminists, female voters and female media commentators. Men in general are going to have to learn to set boundaries with women and stand their ground and not cater to the demand’s women make that conflict with their values. Men in general need to learn to say “no”⁴ to unreasonable demands by women and feminists. This might sound simple and yet for many men they cannot bring themselves to say that simple word when it really matters. What would we call a relationship when you cannot say no to a group or individual? Slavery and dictatorships come to mind.

Society is not a patriarchy, that is feminist projection (so much of feminist ideology in general is projection). Modern Western society more accurately resembles a matriarchy by proxy, with feminists ruling from behind the throne and the men in power acting as feminist servants. These men in positions of authority, regularly and eagerly implement the feminist female supremacist agenda on feminists behalf, without a whimper of resistance and throw men and boys under the bus for approval from feminists and female voters.

All that is required for this to stop, is for men (and particularly men in positions of authority) to stop kowtowing to women, find their balls and say the word “no” to the next unreasonable demand made by a screeching feminist harpy. Men place far too much value in concerning themselves about winning and maintaining the social approval of women and far too little value in striving to be the best version of their authentic themselves and winning the approval of others on authentic grounds that are true to themselves. That is the distinction between a man with integrity and a man on a leash that follows the social whims of women and feminists. That needs to change and if we want to begin that change, then we need to stop teaching young boys a one-sided chivalrous code of behaviour. We need to stop teaching boys that deferring to women and prioritising female well-being at the expense of male well-being, without any reciprocity, makes them a “man”.

Of course men are not the only group that need to change if we want an end to chivalry and to defeat feminism. There will also have to be a big shift in the attitude of women as a group toward men. We live in a culture that fosters female entitlement mentality ⁵, as Miranda Devine termed it. Women to a significant degree are raised from childhood to expect chivalry and a one-sided set of obligations men have toward women. There is no reciprocal set of obligations given to girls on how to treat men and boys. Boys and girls learn from a young age that boys do not hit girls, but rarely if ever are girls told not to hit boys. This is despite boys and girls reporting similar levels of intimate partner violence when they date ⁶. That is just one example of many that I can give of the lopsided gynocentric messages children get as they develop into adults.

Paul Elam has recently done a video ⁷ examining the link between how we raise girls in modern society and how that then fuels the culture of female entitlement that leads to feminism. Children are not stupid. If girls are taught and see the adults around them expecting men to treat women specially simply because they are women and the reverse is not expected for women on how they treat men, then of course it will foster a sense of female entitlement and female superiority they will carry through to adulthood.

Both men and women are involved in perpetuating the cycle of gynocentrism from one generation to the next and teaching girls this sense of entitlement. The result of this cycle is an epidemic of female narcissism. Dr. Tara Palmatier spoke about this social trend of female narcissism ⁸ in her talk at the first international men’s conference in Detroit in 2014. Peter Wright has recently discussed ⁹ how gynocentrism in women is a form of situational narcissism in women’s relations with men and compares the characteristics of gynocentrism in women with narcissistic personality disorder.

Female entitlement mentality is indeed a pathology and it is narcissistic, but in this feminist culture we glorify it as a sign of female empowerment. That will also need to change if we want to see an end to chivalry and by extension, an end to feminism. Female entitlement mentality is not something to be proud of or something we should be normalising in the culture as a sign of female empowerment. All it does in the long term is foster resentment and bitterness between the sexes and drives them further apart, which in turn hastens the social breakdown and collapse of society. Neither sex benefits from female entitlement mentality in the long term.

Sex Differences And Limitations

In Sydney’s video she discusses the reality that males and females are different and each sex has their own unique set of limitations and vulnerabilities and that there is nothing necessarily wrong about men helping women in that context. I would absolutely agree. The sexes have co-evolved over millions of years of natural and sexual selection, to develop unique and complementary sets of traits to perpetuate the lineage. This has been a feature of not just human evolution, but also the evolution of our ancestors. It is certainly correct to state that men helping women based on real limitations, is not immoral and it is not gynocentrism. Where it becomes gynocentric bigotry, is when men help women based solely or partly on the fact they are female and not because of some real limitation and where no reciprocal efforts are expected or made by women in return.

There is a distinction between being kind, compassionate, respectful and generous toward your fellow human being and applying such principles selectively based on the sex of the individual. This is why I developed a diagnostic definition ¹⁰ of gynocentrism to delineate between being authentically generous and compassionate and gynocentric bigotry. If you are a man that sees a woman that clearly needs help with her shopping bags and you want to assist them, so be it. Good on you! However, if you are the sort of man that sees a man clearly needing help moving a fridge onto a truck and won’t help them simply because he is not female, don’t ask me to respect that. Imagine for a moment if this double standard was reversed or based on racial grounds. What would we call it? Make no mistake chivalry in the modern era is bigotry, gynocentric bigotry to be exact.

Feigning Female Vulnerability

Dr. Warren Farrell in the Myth of Male Power¹¹ wrote that, “Men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength, and women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.” In our gynocentric culture it is often the case that female vulnerability and limitations are exaggerated and in some instances just made up, as a means to garner special treatment for women and girls. As mentioned, the feminist victim narrative is critical to their standard strategy of getting their agenda implemented. In sharp contrast, it is often the case in our gynocentric culture that male vulnerability and limitations are dismissed. So whilst I agree with Sydney that real limitations between men and women exist and that men helping women where these limitations is exist is not automatically a bad thing, we need to look at those limitations in an honest way and without the gynocentric glasses on. We should seriously look at male vulnerabilities and limitations as well and not just glaze over them.

We also need to take an honest look at how we react to those limitations of women and men and make sure we react in fair and balanced manner. For example, if we are going to lower physical entry standards for the military, then we should be basing that decision on solid evidence that it will make our military more lethal by allowing higher quality recruits to be retained. Furthermore, we should be applying those standards across every recruit and not just female recruits. If the reasoning for lowering entry standards is to increase the number of women serving in the military to appease feminists and win female votes at the expense of national security and such standards will be selectively applied to female recruits only, then we are not reacting honestly or fairly to the physical limitations of women.

Benevolent Sexism Doublethink

I discussed benevolent sexism in my earlier article on diagnosing gynocentrism and how we need to look at the intent that is driving the behaviour before we make claims men helping women is sexist against women or conversely that it is gynocentric. Indeed that was precisely the same point Sydney raised in her video discussing benevolent sexism. Using feminist logic, it can be successfully argued that numerous feminist initiatives where men are helping women, like White Ribbon, HeForShe and others, actually hurt women and are examples of benevolent sexism. It could even be argued that feminism itself is benevolent sexism. Such claims are clearly false obviously.

To claim men helping women is sexism against women, implies that the intent driving that behaviour is malicious and that such acts are done with the intent to harm women rather than help them. If that was indeed the case, then we would expect the attitude that such men express toward women would be negative and that their stated reasons behind their actions would betray a similar negative view of women and a clear intent to do them harm. Yet we do not see this, we see the opposite. Instead we often see such men talking about women (undeservingly I might add), as if they are some superior or special class of human being. We often see such men arguing women are kinder, gentler, morally superior or should rule the world etc. The goals or reasoning behind the actions of such men is often explicitly and emphatically stated to be to benefit women and not to harm them. Only someone that has a deep-seated mistrust and hatred of men, would assign negative motives in such a context and in light of these facts.

Benevolent sexism contradicts itself and is gynocentric doublethink. If it is sexism, then by definition it is not benevolent. Such terms exist because feminism cannot tolerate men being viewed in a positive light by society, if men are to accept their own exploitation. If men are doing things to benefit women, then that clearly runs against the feminist narrative of male oppression of women and against the feminist propaganda to instill perpetual guilt in men and boys. It is hard to demonise men and boys in the eyes of society, when they are trying to help the people they are accused by feminists of oppressing!

What Is Missing For Men

Sydney points out in her video that men are in a no-win scenario, where any action they take will lead to shaming and ostracism by feminists. I addressed this in my article on normalising gynocentrism ¹², where I discussed learned helplessness in men. Feminism seeks to dehumanise men and encourage men to give up on themselves, so that gynocentric bigotry can be normalised in the culture and men will accept it. This is precisely why pleasing feminists and women in general, should not be the core priority of any man. You cannot win by kowtowing to feminists or women, you just make things worse for yourself and also worse for society by pandering to female entitlement. Living life in your own way, in an authentic manner, according to your own principles and forming your own identity and setting your own direction in life, is the only path left for men to take and that is a good thing. What I have just described is men going their own way (MGTOW)¹³. MGTOW is a good thing, because perhaps now men will finally start taking care of themselves, standing up for themselves in their relations with women and demanding fair treatment from society and from women and not just rolling over and allowing their own exploitation.

Sydney is correct that men need a purpose or something to do and I would argue this is also true for women. People need a direction in life to give it meaning. For much of human history men have been assigned their purpose by society, just as women have been. Only recently has society become technologically advanced enough and by extension prosperous and safe enough, for the sexes to have the opportunity to assign their own purpose based on individual interests (As Dr. Warren Farrell has pointed out, men were not the oppressor, the harsh environmental pressures on human survival for most of human history and prehistory was the oppressor). Everyone needs a direction in life and that is important for men in particular, because men get their primary sense of fulfillment from taking action, undertaking challenges and accomplishing things. Men need an outlet to actively express their natural masculine talents.

However men must be given the right as women have been given, to assign their own purpose and not be lectured to on what a “real man” is by women or by other men. Yes men have an innate tendency to protect and provide, but that does not translate to men having an innate tendency to be a disposable workhorse for women and society (I am not implying that is what Sydney meant, but often in this gynocentric culture those innate drives in men can be deliberately twisted to mean that).

It is not that men need to be needed either, it is deeper than that. This is about respect. Men need to be respected for what they do for themselves, for others and for society as a whole. That includes men being respected for what they do for women and reciprocal compassion, help, respect and generosity being shown toward men by the supposedly fairer female sex. The feminist message that men have been receiving for the last 50 years and in particular the last 20 years, is that there is nothing men do that is respectable and nothing that women should do for men in return for what men do for women. Masculinity is framed as toxic and as a disorder.

We live in a world where panels of women can have televised debates about whether or not the male half of the human race is obsolete and get support from the mostly female audience for the absurd claim men are obsolete. You can listen to Karen Straughan’s critique on that disgusting bigotry here ¹⁴. Women can even write books, articles and be interviewed about such bigoted opinions and have such ideas promoted and celebrated by the mainstream media. Women can write hateful articles titled, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”¹⁵ and get it published in mainstream newspapers. Boys are now being told by society that the future is female ¹⁶ and are being indoctrinated to feel inferior because they are male. The list is endless. Imagine for a moment if this was happening to women and girls. Men and boys are not suffering from a purpose void. This is a void of respect. This society has no respect for men and boys. Masculinity is continuously attacked and men and boys are constantly demonised and disrespected, despite all the amazing things they do for women and society on a daily basis.

Men and boys are internalising the message that they are not worthy of respect and nothing they do or contribute is worthy of respect. The large drops we are seeing in boy’s academic achievement and motivation in education, the claim young men are failing to launch (which is really nowhere to land) and the male suicide epidemic etc, are all symptoms of the widespread reality men and boys are being starved of respect. Men going their own way is simply that and nothing more (despite what some disingenuous people claim, it has nothing to do with hating women). MGTOW are men taking a stand to value and respect themselves, in the face of a society that encourages them to hate themselves.

MGTOW is about going your own way in life, by having the self-respect to live life according to your own principles and identity and with no regard to what this hate filled society has to say about it. Men have the right to set their own direction and find their own purpose in life, pursue their own happiness and decide for themselves how to live their own lives. Men are going their own way in increasing numbers and it is about time! If gynocentric traditonalists, feminists or men or women want to complain about MGTOW choosing to avoid marriage and to a lesser extent relationships, then they might want to look at what they can do to make marriage and relationships less toxic and healthier for men.

Marriage is no longer marriage, it is a slave contract for men. That is what feminism has done to marriage. If you think I am being hyperbolic I am not. Just ask the tens of thousands of men in US prisons that cannot make alimony and child support payments to their ex-wives, because the alimony or child support that is set by the courts exceeds their actual income. Just ask the tens of thousands of fathers that kill themselves after being alienated from their children and losing everything from divorce. Here are just two disgusting examples linked here ¹⁷ and here ¹⁸, illustrating how perverted marriage has become. There are so many other stories that can be shared and I would encourage men to leave their story in the comments section below this article if they like. The institution of marriage is rotten to the core. The bias men experience in divorce and family court and during the course of marriage itself is systemic and deeply tipped against men.

We all know roughly half of marriages will end in divorce and that most divorces are initiated by women and it is little wonder why when the scales are tipped so heavily in women’s favour. Whilst the nature of the misandry of marriage varies from country to country and from state to state, the common theme is one of male servitude to women and female entitlement. The sayings, “Happy Wife Happy Life” and “The Ball And Chain” did not emerge from nowhere. Marriage in the modern era is a gynocentric perversion of the original marital contract between the sexes, which feminists happily tore up and rewrote to unilaterally benefit women at the expense of men (no fault divorce, family courts, VAWA etc).

Relationships have gone down a similar path of gynocentric perversion of catering to female entitlement, which has been accelerated with the metoo movement. MGTOW is not the problem, the degradation of marriage and relationships is the problem. MGTOW is about choosing your own path in life and not kowtowing to what society or women demand men do with their own lives. Perhaps if marriage was reformed, relationships became more balanced and respect was shown again to men, fathers and masculinity, more MGTOW would freely choose to get married and have relationships on their own accord without social coercion and shaming.

Something tells me though that the gynocentric traditionalists and feminists will continue to double down and shame men for going their own way and daring to passively resist their own exploitation. Newsflash- These men stopped caring about what society thinks of what they should do with their own lives long ago and indeed for many of them the shaming was what drove them to discover MGTOW, or was the last straw that drove them to adopt a MGTOW pathway. MGTOW are the men that are prepared to say no to feminists and women, set boundaries with women, reject chivalry and stand up for themselves. They are the sort of men that can help bring about the end of feminism and that scares the shit out of the feminist mainstream media, because these men are not getting back in line and bowing their heads.

Society needs to get over its reluctance to honestly examine the actual reasons why MGTOW are avoiding marriage and relationships. Society needs to start making serious efforts to correct the numerous systemic imbalances and double standards that feminism has enshrined into our legal system and culture and address the pervasive culture of female entitlement. Until that happens, shaming MGTOW will just help increase the social phenomenon and contribute to its growth. MGTOW is now the only pathway for men to follow. Once men become aware there is no way to please women and society by pandering to female entitlement, they go red pill and then MGTOW in rapid succession.

Like I said, society has a void for respect for men and boys. Men walking away from a gynocentric society that hates them and disrespects them at every turn, is that predictable even a six-year-old could have told us this would be the result 20 years ago. This has nothing to do with men wanting women back in the kitchen or under the thumb of men and everything to do with respecting men and restoring fairness and reciprocity to the social contract between the sexes.

This gynocentric society will reap what it has sown until the imbalance between the sexes is corrected and society is prepared to confront the elephant in the room- its own gynocentrism.

References:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un09DRXZt2U

[2] https://gynocentrism.com/2013/07/14/the-birth-of-chivalric-love/

[3] https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/rita-panahi/equality-is-essential-but-so-is-chivalry/news-story/8bbcfae72c86ea6325818377b7ff3990

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F0kNTMSTKU

[5] https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine-women-believe-they-live-in-the-age-of-entitlement/news-story/e4a1b901c0e55baa2517887ff8bbb072

[6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6216015/New-study-finds-boys-report-physical-violence-girls-young-peoples-relationships.html

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZXLUaICH8

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSTwlOz4P4

[9] https://www.avoiceformen.com/gynocentrism/why-is-it-always-about-her-gynocentrism-as-a-narcissistic-pathology/

[10] https://www.avoiceformen.com/gynocentrism/diagnosing-gynocentrism/

[11] https://www.amazon.com.au/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell-ebook/dp/B076HVLZGH