Month: June 2022

Transphobia vs. Manphobia

/ Peter Wright / 3 Comments

Discussion about transgender identity is all the rage, with many people railing against what they view as a Frankenstein fad, and yet others who are encouraging the trend beyond what anyone would consider reasonable limits – e.g., gender-affirming surgery for children. A third approach is that of the social phenomenologist which accounts for people (including myself) who are more interested in making sense of the phenomenon before screaming blue murder to the sky.

Most people appear eager to discover what Aristotle called the “efficient cause” that might lead men to become transwomen — with the most popular ’causes’ being those of gender dysphoria, and autogynephilia which both end up falling short of sufficient explanations, for reasons I’ll discuss below.

Autogynephilia

Autogynephilia is defined as a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. It’s a paraphilia that is theorized to underlie transvestism and some forms of male-to-female transsexualism,1 as showcased in the below tweet by a transwoman.

 

If ‘getting off’ by appearing as the opposite sex were the only motive we might reasonably assume that occasional cross-dressing and/or erotic roleplay would scratch the itch, but transgender individuals are clearly seeking a more permanent goal. Moreover, many transgender individuals experience a loss of sexual arousal after medically transitioning, indicating that the securing of permanent autogynephilic pleasure is not a sufficient explanation for making the change.2

Gender dysphoria

Gender dysphoria is the favorite go-to for advocates of traditional gender roles who pretentiously claim the body and psyche can only be exact Xerox copies of each other. As tidy as this formula sounds on its face, even people with a rudimentary understanding of human psychology will see its failings; failings demonstrated by the fact that everyone has an imaginative and psychological identity that is, at least in some ways, at odds with bodily reality:

  • A stunningly beautiful woman identifies as plain, or ugly.
  • A fat guy identifies as muscled and skinny.
  • An old man identifies himself healthy, as fit as a teenager.
  • A little girl identifies as a world-class singer.
  • A little boy identifies as the best violinist in the world.
  • A feminist identifies as more caring than others.
  • A person identifies as more intelligent than others.
  • A person born of privilege identifies as restricted.
  • An underprivileged person identifies as someone who can be and do anything.
    Etc.

The psyche tends to ramble off in fanciful ways that do not match seamlessly with physical reality, and it has done this since way back in our evolutionary history. Psychological identity is not, and never will be, a faithful replica of physical reality…. and yet human civilization has continued to thrive in spite of this propensity.

With that human capacity for imagination in mind we can set aside those who champion seamless sex-and-gender identities, and associated social roles. We can also find some fault with Matt Walsh’s recent insistence that there can be one, and only one definition of a woman.3 While Matt is 100% correct in stating that there is only one definition of a biological woman, he conveniently omits the possibility that there may be a definition of ‘woman’ applying to a person’s psychological identity, thus essentially giving us two definitions of woman corresponding to the soma/psyche split.

To reiterate, we all see the obvious XX woman of the body, and then there’s the woman of psychological/imaginal identity which can operate somewhat independently of the former (hence transgenders, intergenders, etc). To illustrate this, Matt Walsh could have a body that looks like Matt Walsh but, hypothetically speaking, in his imaginative and psychological identity he might be more like Napoleon Bonaparte; when it comes to the human psyche anything is possible.

While all this might sound like a recipe for confusion, it isn’t really. Dictionaries attest to the ability of the human mind to accept multiple definitions of a word. I can be stoned to death by literal rocks, and I can be stoned after smoking weed. I can suffer a physical pain, or alternatively I can be in psychological pain – and those ‘two pains’ might not be seamless pains going on at the same time; they might be completely unrelated.

When it comes to the public furor around this topic, the comical part is watching traditional conservatives argue there is only soma, and the progressives argue there’s only psyche. The stupidity of these two partial arguments – and the debate between them – make for the best Punch and Judy show on offer.

If I wanted to take a more strictly phenomenological approach to our topic, I might be forced to say transwomen were both male and female. For example being a woman in one’s imaginative identity will never mean that the chromosomal body has also changed, which indicates there are two identities running concurrently, one male and one female. That said, I appreciate that imagination can override the phenomenological approach to the point of absurdum.

What we can conclude from the more narrow arguments is that they are reductionist and kneejerk responses to a complex phenomenon, and so they provide insufficient explanations for the rise of transgender identity. They may be partially correct but it may help to consider more complex equations, not to mention the approaching of each trans person as possessing a unique biography that led them to become who they are. Following this line of thought I’d like to offer two more factors below that might help to complicate the picture.

Internalized misandry, and gyneolatry

I’ve observed in the rhetoric of many transwomen both an externalized and an internalized misandry. This appears in descriptions of the men they know, and in descriptions of themselves, and they also tend to rehearse feminist depictions of maleness that portray narrow and denigrating descriptions of masculinity. Conversely, transwomen tend to idealize women and femininity (i.e., gyneolatry),4 leading to a conclusion that the feminine grass is of a greener hue.

The sense of internalized misandry was reinforced by a 1991 study which found that mothers of young boys with gender dysphoria frequently suffered psychiatric disorders and that these boys exhibited chronic suffering that was often expressed directly by them as self-hate. One such boy at age three said:

“I hate myself. I don’t want to be me. I want to be somebody else. I want to be a girl.”5

When a man’s potential masculinity is felt as toxic due to the operation of internalized misandry, it’s only natural that such a person would have a dysphoric reaction to masculine selfhood. This might be understood as a pathological reaction, but it can be equally viewed as a healthy adaptation to an unhealthy, male-denigrating environment — for if I renounce maleness I protect myself from corrosive states of imposed self-hatred, along with de-personalizing those attacks directed at me from a misandric world.

Hence gender dysphoria is in some ways adaptive.

The position I have been leading to can be stated simply this way: Internalized misandry + gyneolatry + autogynephilia = transwoman. Of those three factors, I would consider autogynephilia somewhat more variable than the other two, and while often present, it is not always.

In order to render this triplicate formula more palpable, I encourage readers to watch the following Benjamin Boyce interview with former trans individual NJada6 who masterfully illustrates the operation of internalized misandry and gyneolatry in his own experiences.

In conclusion, this article claims that autogynephilia, and gender dysphoria prove insufficient as “causes” of the desire to transition but may nevertheless operate as one factor among many. As a student of gender politics I have expanded the causa efficiens to three:

Internalized misandry + gyneolatry + autogynephilia = transwoman.

Lastly, and on a more general note Kara Dansky,7 a trans-exclusionary radical feminist who is leading the charge against transgender individuals, recently tweeted, “It is, in effect, a men’s rights movement intended to objectify women’s bodies and erase us as a class. It is left-wing misogyny on steroids. I say this is as a leftist and a Democrat.”

In response I feel it important to clarify that the transgender movement is not a cause célèbre driven by men’s rights advocates, but rather the current support for transgender individuals/rights is derived from the power of government administrations and global regimes playing “freedom one-upmanship” – ie., the feigning of moral purity to position themselves at top of the global hierarchy.

Feminists were the ones who cleared this forest path for the global elites to walk on, and Dansky is right in the sense that it opens a window to become of benefit to men’s rights movement – ie. it dissolves customary culture privileges that have accumulated around the female sex, making those privileges available to all humans, including men and boys, for the first time.8

References:

[1] Ray Blanchard, Autogynephilia: an underappreciated paraphilia, (2019) ; See also: C. Moser, Autogynephilia in Women (2009), which shows that autogynephilia also exists in large numbers of natal women, negating Blanchard’s thesis that it is peculiar to transwomen.
[2] Autogynephilia | ContraPoints (2018)
[3] Matt Walsh: What Is A Woman? (2022)
[4] Gyneolotry | Gynocentrism And Its Origins
[5] Sonia Marantz and Susan Coates, Mothers of Boys with Gender Identity Disorder: A Comparison of Matched Controls (1991)
[6] Benjamin Boyce, Transition and Redemption | a Detrans Story, with NJada (2022)
[7] Kara Dansky, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls (2021)
[8] Peter Wright, Unintended Effects Of Transgender Activism On Men’s Issues (2021)

A Cultural Convention Condemned – The Men’s Review (1948 Article)

/ Peter Wright / 1 Comment

The following article appeared in the 1948 edition of the ‘Men’s Review’ – an antifeminist, pro men’s rights initiative that was active in Britain during the 1940s. This will be the first of a series of articles to be published on this website from the first editions of the Men’s Review, which will also be the first time these articles have been made available in digital form for the internet.  – PW

* * *

A Convention Condemned

by “Woman’s View”

MANY features of modern society have struck me as extremely odd. Among these, perhaps that which seems to me the oddest is the curious convention whereby a gentleman who goes to a place of entertainment, or to a place of refreshment, with a lady, is expected to pay the bill without any help from her.

After deep reflection I have decided that this convention (nine out of ten observed only when people of the opposite sex are together) annoys me intensely. I will try to summarise my main objections to this convention with utmost brevity.

First, I think the convention unfair. Unfair because it puts upon the shoulders of men the financial burden which, according to logic, should be shared by women. For generally speaking our participation in the benefits paid for is at least equal to the man’s. In modern times we women are, with a diminishing number of exceptions, as well off as our male counterparts.

Secondly, it leads to a greater extravagance than would exist under a “fifty-fifty” system, since the man is placed in the position in which he is not able to suggest economising on the expenses, while where he able to regard the woman as a share-and-share-alike partner, he could suggest economy without embarrassment at all.

Thirdly, the convention tends in many cases to put inter-sex relationships upon a commercial footing. The woman tends to prefer the man who takes her to the half-a-crown seats to the otherwise equally attractive man who takes her in the one-and-sixpenny seats. I happen to believe in equality of opportunity, and it is psychologically bad for women since it tends to make for an unnatural suppression of our real affections beneath the gold-digging smartness.

I AM REVOLTED

The man is tempted to wonder what return he is going to have for the money he has paid out and to arrive at what appears to be a reasonable explanation, mainly that his return will be in terms of kisses and caresses. Hereupon he, and for that matter the woman too, may begin to regard kisses and caresses as something for sale, and idea which, in my opinion, is revolting.

Much could be said in discussion of this convention, which, as I hope to have shown, links up with our modern social outlook in an enormous number of ways.

The success of such an attempt would mean that we have changed the course of social history, and changed it, I believe, for the better. I do not deny that the thrill of this thought is as much of an inspiration as a mere desire to profit ourselves from the more convenient and fair system which I have advocated.

To those scoffers who say “You can’t change human nature,” “Every woman has her price,” or whatever expression you may use, I have only to point out the vast changes in inter-sex relationships that have taken place in our lifetime and those changes for which the Society (for men’s rights) will most surely bring about.

Nothing Envy and the Fascration Complex – by David L. Miller

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following excerpts are from David L. Miller’s 1991 essay Why Men Are Mad: Nothing Envy and The Fascration Complex. At a time when multiple sexualities are now topical, including transgendered identities, Miller’s essay provides an imaginative springboard for contemporary audiences. In this article Miller emphasizes men’s adherence to ‘patriarchal’ fantasies while simultaneously harboring a wish to be free of same, and while ‘patriarchy theory’ was a feminist invention of 1980s-90s when the author penned these thoughts (now considered an imaginary artifact that holds questionable explanatory power), the essay itself contributes new and complimentary layers to Freud’s ‘penis envy’ theory. He does this by posing that men, too, may envy the un-membered state of womanhood. Whether this perspective aids in better understanding the dynamics of transgender and other sexualities will be left to the imagination of the reader.

________________________________________________________________________

Nothing–Envy and the Fascration Complex

By David L. Miller

One clue to the hurt men feel, to their crazy rage, can be discerned in an essay entitled “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes” (1925), where Freud describes a traumatic moment of childhood, the discovery of penis envy. The little girl “has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it” (252).

But, according to Freud, the little boy’s experience, or at least the screen-memory of the experience, is different. Only later when confronted with the threat of castration does the boy or man recall the sight of the little girl. Then he knows of the real possibility of losing a part of his body. There arises an anxiety — the so-called “castration complex” — together with two possible reactions to women: either “horror of the mutilated creature” or “triumphant contempt for her” (Freud, 1961: 252; 1959; 1964b; Du Bois: 10-11). The neurotic consequence of childhood trauma for the woman is envy and inferiority; for the man, anxiety and superiority.

There is an asymmetry in Freud’s theory. Why has he not moved to observe envy in the man as in the woman, and anxiety in the woman as in the man? Is there no complex in the woman to correspond to castration in the man? And is there no envy in the man to correspond to the envy for the penis in the woman?

A few theorists and therapists have wondered about these questions. Bruno Bettelheim thought that “penis envy in girls and castration anxiety in boys have been over-emphasized” by psychoanalysis, and that there is “a possibly much deeper psychological layer in boys that has been relatively neglected.” He called this deeper matter “vagina envy” (20). Karen Horney, also, has spoken of a “femininity complex” in men and has raised the question of “why no corresponding impulse to compensate herself for her penis envy is found in women” (61; also 21, 60). But in this theorizing, the envy noted in the male has to do with the woman’s ability to bear children, “pregnancy envy,” as Eric Fromm calls it (233). This focuses on only one aspect of woman, an aspect which a patriarchal tradition is eager to totalize.

* * *

If the little girl sees something, and then envies this thing, one could say that the little boy sees nothing and envies that nothing. The traumatic physical moment produces psychological “nothing-envy.” Nothing-envy is the desire lurking as the diabolical other-side of the castration anxiety. The fundamental ambivalence of the psyche demands that a person face the two-sidedness of fear. There is a latent wish in the symptom of anxiety. Castration is what a man wants as well as what he most fears. What does a man want? Nothing.

* * *

Similarly, men have no desire to be deprived of their penises. This is not what nothing-envy is about. The penis, besides being an efficient piece of plumbing, gives a good deal of pleasure. But the phallus is a different thing. The very patriarchy which has connected dominance, power, aggression, initiative, rational meaning, thinking and commitment to maleness, that perspective which has deprived women of a phallus, has also loaded more on men than they wish to bear. What a relief it would be to be rid of this thing, to have nothing.

Ernest Wallwork has called my attention to evidence of this nothing-envy in men. A bit of play familiar to all men from their days in school locker rooms is that of pulling the penis back and holding it between one’s legs so that one looks like a woman. The play is the symptom of a wish. The little boy looking upon the little girl in wonder experiences both fear and desire. The trauma produces not only a castration complex but also nothing-envy. Mysterium Tremendum et fascinosum: I am afraid of nothing, of losing something, and, at the same time, I am drawn to nothing. Freud noticed the former, but he missed the latter.

* * *

There is a long litany of female affirmations of women’s weavings, and they have little or nothing to do with envy of men. Rather, these testimonies and expressions have deep archetypal rooting in Athena and Arachne, in Persephone, in Philomela, and in Charlotte’s Web (see Gubar: 74, 89, 91). What is the missing female complex to which weaving points? I propose to name it “the fascration complex,” drawing upon a Mediterranean word having to do with weaving. Fasces is a bundle of twigs woven together, a bit of wicker work, the work of the wicca (who is by no means a witch). The term fasces gives us our word “basket,” as well as “fasten,” “fascination,” and “fascist.”

What the little boy sees when he gazes upon what is non-a-thing is the female “basket” and later he will come to admire the webs and tapestries a woman can weave with it. She is anxious about losing her basket, her weaving, her fasces, for this, not the penis, is her power.

* * *

An erotics of male desire discloses a projection of a wish based on lack… a lack of nothing. It is a desire for nothing because men ‘don’t got plenty of nothing.’ The irony, of course, is that that is exactly what they have plenty of — which is why they are mad. The return of the repressed is the return of something that never went away. A man never did not have nothing. If a man could withdraw his projection onto women of nothing, he could be who he is, one-in-himself, male and female, something and nothing. There is nothing of which to be envious. We are always and already nothing.

* * *

Why Men Are Mad: Nothing–Envy and the Fascration Complex, by David L Miller, Spring Journal 51, Spring: Dallas, 1991. [FULL TEXT pdf made available by permission of the author].

Is Gynocentrism Adaptive?

/ Peter Ryan / Leave a comment

What Is Good For The Genes And Society Vs Pedestalising Women

There is a common misconception that what is good for women is good for the propagation of the genome and society. That pedestalising women is interchangeable with maximising the copies of the genome a lineage leaves behind and the survival of society. The reality is far more complicated. This misunderstanding leads to incorrect and frankly bizarre assertions that women are in a biological sense more valuable than men. That a population can only survive if women are protected and prioritised above all other concerns.

The truth is that whilst women have an important reproductive role in giving birth and caring for small infants, this function is merely one activity in a vast web of activities that have to occur for genes to be successfully passed on from one generation to the next. A community can have as many women as it pleases and as many children as it likes and the reality is that it will all amount to precisely nothing in evolutionary terms if basic survival requirements are not addressed. The reality is that the reproductive role of women whilst important, is no more important than many other activities and hardly the overwhelming priority it is presented as.

Gynocentrism is by its very nature a one-dimensional fixation on female well-being. It is an absolute and unconditional pedestalisation of women. All other priorities and needs for society are secondary. The myopic fixation on prioritising female well-being above all else, is actually detrimental to the continuation of a society and passing on the genes. Society is sustained through a complex balancing of priorities. The continuation of the genome itself similarly relies on a complex balancing of priorities.

Life history theory[1] sets out in detail how life strategically allocates finite time, energy and resources towards various activities in an optimal balance. Reproduction and mating are merely two activities. There are dozens of other activities life spends more time, energy and resources on. Some organisms like insects and bacteria have a fast life history strategy, invest little in survival and development and reproduce hundreds or even thousands of offspring. Other species like humans and large vertebrates, have a slow life history strategy and invest substantially more in their own survival and development and reproduce comparatively few offspring.

Humans are a social species and require a complex social system to perpetuate themselves. This social system fundamentally requires a balancing of priorities. The survival of society and also our genetic survival, depends on achieving the correct balance. Gynocentrism destroys this balance. The plummeting fertility rate in developed countries and its connection with gynocentrism has been discussed before by Paul Elam and Peter Wright in their video Chasing The Dragon.[2]

When society puts men down to lift women up, family formation and fertility rates plummet. That is what the hard data tells us. The economic and social conditions for society also begin to decline (as we can see from the effects of fatherlessness and the boy crisis in education for example) and this in turn directly impacts the reproductive prospects of future generations and their children. That is the gynocentric death spiral for society.

I don’t expect this article to change the minds of gynocentric acolytes that insist on propagating the idea that pedestalising women is what nature intended. I expect the consequences of gynocentrism to eventually destroy the societies that produced it. This article hopefully will make it easier for some to understand why society is in decline in part as a result of gynocentrism.

Karen Straughan did an excellent video[3] a decade ago on how our gynocentric society will slowly destroy itself. It is not just the social and economic effects that she discussed we have to worry about, it is now the substantive demographic shortfall in births combined with these effects that spell death for society. A population with a lack of youth cannot sustain an aging population and ultimately replace the people it loses.

A gynocentric culture is a culture of death, not a culture of life. In the end societies that pedestalise women die out.

Gynocentrism is not an evolutionary adaptive set of behaviours. It does not increase the prospects of society or the number of copies of the genome, it reduces them. If gynocentrism were adaptive you would expect this insanely gynocentric culture to be bursting at the seams with children and record fertility rates and yet we see the opposite. If gynocentrism is so adaptive, where are all the babies?

If gynocentrism were adaptive we would see record social and economic progress completely independent of debt from empowering women and marginalising men and yet we see the opposite. We see stagnation, decline, crashes and bubbles from fake financial growth and an ever increasing reliance on debt year by year. If gynocentrism were adaptive we should see obvious indications of that in our gynocentric culture and yet we do not.

Gynocentrism by its nature is unconditional and absolute, it will always inevitably grow to the very extremes until the society that produced it collapses under the weight of it. Gynocentrism is like cancer, it is a pathological growth that disrupts the functional balance of society.

Just consider the negative net social and economic impact of modern divorce and family court on family formation and on the fertility rate of current adults and also the children coming from broken families. Consider the chilling effect of metoo# on relationship formation and the net effect of the boy crisis in education impacting the future prospects of men and women in finding suitable partners to have children, maintain stable relationships and raise children.

It may take decades or centuries, but in the end gynocentrism destroys the foundations of the societies that give rise to it. The family itself is sacrificed for gynocentrism, one of the very building blocks of civilisation. In the past civilisation collapsed faster from other destructive forces before gynocentrism itself could contribute to the implosion. Technology has prolonged the decline of civilisation to such a degree that now social factors like gynocentrism, are directly contributing to the demographic implosion and fragmentation of society.

Gynocentrism Versus Ancestral Pragmatism

Conflating gynocentrism with the protection of women in circumstances where they are objectively in greater danger and are objectively more vulnerable, demonstrates a critical misunderstanding of what gynocentrism is. When you protect women over men merely because they are women, when you prioritise their well-being merely because they are women, then that is gynocentrism.

When you prioritise women’s protection and well-being because they are objectively in greater need of that protection and concern, then it is the physical reality of the situation steering the decision and not some deluded notion women are somehow more deserving of our concern simply because they are women. This same objective reasoning can guide the reverse prioritisation of male well-being where it is warranted.

This simple distinction is what so many fail to grasp. In my article on Diagnosing Gynocentrism[4], I discussed this important distinction in detail. I gave the example of a woman seriously injured in a car accident and the man being only mildly injured. Is it gynocentrism to help the woman first? No. Would it be if the man were seriously injured and the woman only mildly injured? Yes. Note the difference. So when we go back and examine our prehistory and start projecting what we are observing in our modern gynocentric culture back onto the past, we might want to consider the blind psychological fixation on women that drives gynocentrism.

It is certainly the case that in our past there have been numerous instances where women have been objectively in greater need of protection than men given our physical sex differences and the harsh environment’s we often lived in. It is also the case though that such societies could not afford to inefficiently allocate time, energy and resources in such a way as to pedestalise women. The social concern for women in other words had to be contingent on it being for the greater good of the community and grounded in the priority to survive. Blindly pedestalising women wastes time, energy and resources that many past communities had in short supply.

Ultimately it was the greater good of the community and the drive to survive rather than a myopic concern for female well-being, that drove much of the customs and practices seen in our prehistoric past and past civilization’s. That reality is also the case in respect of many of the traditions and laws regarding the roles of men and women in past societies.

It was out of pragmatism in the face of a harsh environment before modern technology rather than blind gynocentrism, that resulted in women in certain instances garnering greater protection than men and men being assigned to more physically dangerous and demanding tasks like war. I am not suggesting such a division was ideal, I am suggesting that out of survival and what actually worked such divisions were undertaken.

Sometimes it was to women’s advantage and other times it was to men’s advantage. We can argue which sex had it worse for hours, but the reality these divisions were not made to favour one sex over the other, or pedestalise women or men, they were made to keep society going and keep people alive.

No society can last without having the greater good of the society and the survival of society in mind as the ultimate check on the misallocation of time, energy and resources. Gynocentrism is a product of a culture that has abandoned such a fundamental balance and that is why inevitably gynocentrism is in part a driver of the collapse of society itself.

Gynocentrism does not prioritise the greater good or the survival of society first, it prioritises female self-interest and well-being at all costs, absolutely and without compromise. The future of society be dammed! The slogan, “The future is female” might as well say the future is death. There are eventually no people and a collapsed society in such a future, based on the data we have and the demographic and socioeconomic trends we are observing.

Male Sacrifice Alone Is Not Evidence Of Gynocentrism

Related to the conflation of gynocentrism with the greater good, is the notion that sacrifice is the sole domain of men and that such sacrifice is somehow proof men are disposable. Disposability infers that men are of little value and are easily replaced. Disposable items are considered disposable for that very reason. Again the reality is far more complex than suggesting men are biologically disposable because they sacrifice their lives and therefore gynocentrism is adaptive.

A male that reproduces and survives will reproduce more than a male that reproduces and then dies. The male that survives to reproduce multiple times will always be at an evolutionary advantage compared to the male that reproduces once and then dies or dies and does not reproduce at all. Over time the man that survives dominates the gene pool. The simple reality is that sacrifice is incidental to men passing on their genes rather than a requirement and that men losing their lives, is a cost that the forces of natural selection select against and minimise.

Yes sexual selection on males does occur and yes that can select for men to adopt traits and behaviours that improve their reproductive fitness at the expense of their long-term survival. However even under sexual selection, males that evolve variations on traits that maintain the same reproductive fitness without incurring the cost of reduced survival, will be at an evolutionary advantage.

Males that get the same job done at a lower cost to themselves, win the evolutionary race. It is basic efficiency that is selected for even under sexual selection. It is not only just whether you reproduce or not that matters, but how efficiently you pass on your genes. Ultimately sacrifice whether it is attributed to sexual selection or not, is an evolutionary cost that selection attempts to minimise even under sexual selection pressures.

Sexual selection does not have to come at the cost of reduced survival for sexual selection to produce traits that the other sex selects for. Males and females can develop traits through sexual selection that have no effect on survival at all or even enhance survival.

Contrary to popular opinion, sexual selection does not override natural selection in the sense of eliminating it, sexual selection is present alongside natural selection. Sexually attractive traits matter little if males with them fail to survive to reproduce or males that survive longer outbreed males with such traits. Ultimately the two forces of selection are in a certain dynamic equilibrium with each other and the eventual evolutionary solution can be the development of traits that satisfy both evolutionary forces or that find the optimal balance between them.

Comparing the forces of sexual selection on human males with male insects etc is fraught with issues. There is a very big difference between the selective dynamics at work on organisms like insects with relatively short lifespans and developmental periods compared to the human male and that demonstrate much higher levels of sexual dimorphism than humans.

Drawing long bows with associating examples of male insects and peacocks with human males is emblematic of the problem of bio-gynocentrism[5] selectively framing biology through a gynocentric lens to support a preconceived narrative and omitting inconvenient facts that do not support such a narrative.

Sexual selection in humans is not just limited to males either, there are numerous examples of sexual selection acting on human females too. Some of these examples actually can reduce female survival and increase their fertility, just as sexual selection does sometimes in males. Of course that won’t be discussed by ideologues set on arguing men serving women is what nature intended, because it does not fit the narrative.

Sacrifice itself is not indicative of disposability either. Valuable people and valuable things can be sacrificed. In fact sometimes the most valuable people sacrifice the most for society and their sacrifice has an impact that lasts centuries and in some cases thousands of years.

Men and males more broadly, are often highly selective on whether and precisely when and how they risk their own lives. If men are biologically programmed to just drop what they are doing, risk their own safety and help a random female stranger, why is it that when they don’t there seems to be a need in our gynocentric culture to socially reinforce this expectation on men and speak up when they don’t throw themselves in harms way? Seems kind of odd to me!

Where was the gynocentric instinct recently on the New York subway[6] for example? Gynocentrism is not hardwired in our brains, it is socially learned and socially enforced and we have clear examples in our society of precisely where that social enforcement is coming from! Gynocentrism plays on biological drives and manipulates them, it is not itself a hardwired instinct. It is rather amusing to see the aggrieved entitlement[7] that gynocentrism produces when it is denied, as more and more men are slowly waking up to the lopsided gynocentric dynamic in society and refusing to go along with it.

Truly disposable creatures in contrast to human males, exercise little discretion when it comes self-sacrifice. They are not picky. There is no thinking involved in such self-sacrifice from creatures that are truly disposable, just reflexive biological processes from relatively simple forms of life that invest very little in their own survival, have short lifespans and quickly and easily replace themselves.

Society, families and partners lose a great deal socially and economically when men die. It also takes decades to replace them and raise the next generation of men. Losing men has a cost and marginalising men has a cost. A considerable cost. Losing too many men and marginalising men, has the effect of destroying societies primary capacity to support its own survival and long-term prosperity.

Consider the multitude of activities men have undertaken in our prehistory right up until the present day. Consider the net result of losing substantial numbers of men needlessly. Consider the net effect of our society marginalising whole generations of men. It is not a coincidence that our economies have increasingly relied on unsustainable levels of debt to keep them going at the same time men have been increasingly marginalised in society.

Societies that make the most of their men and minimise the wasteful loss of men, will outperform societies that don’t. Armies that lose less men win the wars. Sacrifice cannot always be avoided, acknowledgment of such a reality does not mean avoidably losing men needlessly is something our society can accept or sustain.

It is worth noting that sacrifice is not purely the domain of males either. Females do indeed sacrifice for their offspring and do die in the process of reproducing on occasion. Death in childbirth was significantly more frequent up until relatively recently and long-term physical complications even more so. Mothers dying in the process of looking after their children and protecting them were not uncommon either.

Not every female has to live for their offspring to survive. The offspring can be cared for by the rest of the community and by other women if they are still in infancy, if the mother dies after birth or whilst the children are young. Pregnancy does not have to be perfect either. If most women live to give birth a certain incidence of death can persist and it has despite millions of years of evolution and selection.

Not every female even has to live to reproduce for a community to replace itself, just the bare minimum number of women that is required need to survive. Women like men can sacrifice themselves for their community in ways that go beyond giving birth to children and caring for small infants. Inclusive fitness[8] applies to women as well and not just men.

Women like men can further their genetic interests by protecting and looking after related kin and genetically similar individuals in their community. Women like men can further their genetic interests by contributing to society in ways that improve its prosperity without reproducing and this can directly improve conditions for their relatives and genetically similar individuals and thereby improve women’s reproductive success indirectly. Women can contribute in these ways, die in the process and still pass on their genes without reproducing themselves, just as men can. Sacrifice is not the sole domain of men.

The Reductive Lens Of Gynocentrism

The problem with gynocentrism is that it is by its nature reductive. Everything comes down to the female and pedestalising the female. Gynocentrism can distort people’s perception and understanding of biology itself. That is bio-gynocentrism. People can look at a group of whales or primates and see males on the outside and females and their offspring on the inside and conclude that is gynocentrism. No other explanation enters their minds.

The possibility that males might be on the perimeter not because they are less valuable, but because it best serves their genetic interests to protect their territory or guard against male rivals, is not considered. Even when such explanations are considered, they are ironically further explained as proof men are guarding the more valuable female as opposed to the possibility men are doing so for their own direct genetic benefit and nothing more.

Any further discussion is a waste of time. For the acolytes of bio-gynocentrism the female and reproduction is everything and they cannot be convinced otherwise. The gynocentric brainwashing by our culture is complete. Insect analogies are applied to humans and female mate choice is spoken of with an almost religious zeal and hyped up as some omnipotent force. The plethora of evidence and biology[9],[10],[11] demonstrating human males are a bit more complicated than male insects and that male mate choice, female intrasexual competition and mutual mate choice in humans is highly significant, is either ignored or downplayed.

It has never dawned on them that there is evidence all around us on what happens to genetic success when gynocentrism pervades the culture. The population does not breed and it dies away. That is the fate of our society if trends continue.

Gynocentrism Is Maladaptive

Gynocentrism is a maladaptive expression of our biology, it reduces reproductive success and the number of copies of the genes the community leaves behind. It destroys civilisation. Look at any modern developed nation that pedestalises female interests above all else, it is the same pattern. We did not evolve for gynocentrism to be some biological norm and that evidence again is all around us.

Sadly I think it will take the collapse of society for future generations to come to this realisation and how dysfunctional gynocentrism truly is. Females are merely one component in a much broader biological system that perpetuates itself. That applies especially to humans. Female well-being is hardly everything. Time to see the forest through the trees. We can treat women fairly and respectfully without deifying them.

References:

[1] https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/life-history-evolution-68245673/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VygKQV-hEpY

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w__PJ8ymliw

[4] https://avoiceformen.com/featured/diagnosing-gynocentrism/

[5] https://avoiceformen.com/category/bio-gynocentrism/

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44-IpvZRfAw

[7] https://avoiceformen.com/featured/aggrieved-entitlement-womens-reaction-to-temporary-loss-of-chivalry/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness

[9]  https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/publications/Stewart-Williams%20&%20Thomas,%202013.pdf

[10] https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/33284/stewart-williams-thomas-2013bpi.pdf

[11] https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/publications/Stewart-Williams_2020_peacocks_or_robins.pdf