Gynocentrism: definition and early mentions

August 16, 2013September 19, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

GYNOCENTRISM (derived from the Greek gyno, meaning “woman,” and kentron, meaning “center”)

short

1. [General definition] (Greek: gyno, “female” – Latin: centrum, “centred”)

• (a). n. Dominant or exclusive focus on women in theory or practice; or to the advocacy of this. Often practiced to the detriment of males.
• (b). n. A dominant focus on women’s needs and wants relative to men’s needs and wants. This can happen in the context of academic research, institutional policies, cultural conventions, and in gendered relationships.

• Gynocentric (adj). Anything can be considered gynocentric when it is concerned exclusively with a female (or specifically a feminist) point of view.

2. [Sociology]

• (a). A pervasive cultural complex geared to prioritizing women and their interests.
• (b). A reference to individual gynocentric acts or events (eg. Mother’s Day).

3. [Biology]

• (a). The biological theory that humans prioritize female reproductive capacity.

4. [Psychology]

• (a). An exclusive focus on the psychological experiences, emotions or behavior of women.

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DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS:

ALLWORDS.COM
Gynocentrism: An ideological focus on females, and issues affecting them, possibly to the detriment of non-females. Contrast with androcentrism.

MIRRIAM-WEBSTER
Gynocentrism: Dominated by or emphasizing female interests or a female point of view.

DICTIONARY.COM
Gynocentrism: Focused on women; concerned with only women.

OXFORD DICTIONARY
Gynocentrism: centred on or concerned exclusively with women; taking a female (or specifically a feminist) point of view.

FARLEX DICTIONARY
Gynocentrism: Female-oriented, -centered, -exclusiveness. Sexism , discrimination on the basis of sex.

ENCYCLOPEDIA.COM
A radical feminist discourse that champions woman-centered beliefs, identities, and social organization.

EARLIEST MENTIONS OF GYNOCENTRISM

Etymology dictionaries do not record the history and earliest usage of the term gynocentrism. My own search reveals that gynocentrism has been in use since at least as early as the 1800s. Here are a few early references to gynocentrism and gynocentric:

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The Open Court, Volume 11 (Open Court Publishing Company, 1897)

Women’s Franchise Newspaper (New Zealand, Thurs 26 November 1907)
Gynocentrism NZ Newspaper 1907 2

The Independent, Volume 67, Issues 3175-3187 (Independent Publications, incorporated, 1909)

Sheffield Daily Telegraph – (Thurs 23rd November 1911)
Gynocentrism Sheffield Daily Telegraph - Thursday 23 November 1911

From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America (George H. Doran Company, 1914)

FULL-TEXT:

________________________________________________________

Gynocentrism continued to be used throughout the nineteenth century and into the present with a stable meaning of female centered, especially to a culture so disposed wherein, “It is arranged with a view to the convenience and delight of women. Men come in where and how they can.” [1914 -see above]

The word is employed infrequently, perhaps due to the availability of simpler phrasings such as ‘woman centered’ or ‘female dominated.’ When employed it appears to be viewed by writers as a self-explanatory term not requiring further definition.
***

RELATED WORDS:

The following are a few early uses of the words Gynarchy, Gynocracy, Gynæcocracy, Gynocrat, and Gyneolatry which are employed variously to refer to female power or hegemony in political, social, family, or gender contexts. Note the mention from 1660 below in which gynarchy is used to refer to the gender context where the wife is not subject to, but rather superior to the husband. Similarly, gynocracy which is sometimes defined as “petticoat government” applies to both female dominance of the social order and to female dominance in gender relations; eg. individual men are referred to as “petticoat governed” (see petticoat government at bottom).

Gynarchy:

Gynæcocracy:

The following mention of gynæcocracy is from the volume;
An Universal Etymological English Dictionary printed in 1737
Note that gynæcocracy is defined as “Petticoat Government”

From the Dictionary of the English Language 1755

Gynocracy:

Gynocracy in ‘Letters to and from Jonathan Swift’ printed in 1741.
Note again the reference to Petticoat Government

This mention from the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences from 1763.

This one from ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ of 1838.

Newspaper article ‘A Dethroned Tyrant’ of 1902.

Gyneolatry:

Book Chat, Volumes 3-4 (Brentano Bros., 1888)

The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller (H. Holt, 1901)

The Athenæum, vol 2 (British Periodicals Limited, 1909)

Zones of the spirit: a book of thoughts (G.P. Putnam, 1913)

The Collected Works, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1924)

Oxford Dictionary entry for Gyniolatry

Petticoat Government:

Oxford Dictionary entry for Petticoat Government

Feminism: gynocentric or egalitarian?

August 9, 2013June 27, 2023 / gynocentrism / 4 Comments

Editor’s note: The following post appeared on the ‘Alas‘ blog in 2009 and is repeated here as a qualifier of the difference between gynocentric and egalitarian feminism. The definition is a good first attempt to capture the essence of something which is pervasive within feminism. It is hypothetically possible to eschew all of the gynocentric criteria, while still being a feminist recognised by other feminists, though their number, if they exist, must be very small indeed.

Feminism: gynocentric or egalitarian?
By Ballgame (2009)

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear up what I’m guessing is probably a common misconception about the terms, “gynocentric feminist” and “egalitarian feminist.” The terms are not intended as descriptions of the particular feminist’s focus of discussion or activism. A woman could be focused entirely on preserving women’s right to access abortion … and be an egalitarian feminist. A man could be focused on male bonding a la Robert Bly and yet still be a gynocentric feminist.

The terms actually get at the principles of the feminist in question. If a feminist believes that men are universally privileged by gender and women are not, or that women have inherently superior insights into questions of gender than men, or that women are entitled to define the terms of gender discussions and that men must ‘check their privilege’ before entering into those discussions (and women don’t have to check theirs), or believes that men oppressing other men is an example of men ‘oppressing themselves’ (or other similar ‘men are Borg’ type notions), or has a habit of vilifying reasonable and respectful critics of feminist misandry, then that person is a gynocentric feminist.

If, on the other hand, a feminist believes that both men and women are oppressed by gender, and believes that everyone struggling against gender oppression deserves respect (regardless of which gender’s oppression they’re working against), then that person would more likely be an egalitarian feminist. (I say “more likely” because I’m tired and I suspect my ‘egalitarian’ definition here is probably pretty incomplete.)

Gynocentrism and its Discontents

August 9, 2013June 27, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

by Hugh Ristik (2007)

Feminism and gynocentrism

Feminism focuses on women. It focuses on women’s perspectives, interests, rights, and victimization. In other words, it is gynocentric (literally, “woman-centered”). And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. That being said, there are ways in which gynocentrism can go horribly wrong.

I am starting a series of posts on gynocentrism from the premise that feminism is gynocentric, either by the definitions that feminists give, or by their works. If the gynocentric nature of feminism isn’t obvious to everyone, then I’m happy to back up.

Types of gynocentrism

Feminism didn’t invent gynocentrism. There is a heavily gynocentric tinge to some versions of paternalism and conservative attitudes that focus on protecting women. Feminism, however, took gynocentrism to a new level. Feminists not only focused on women’s victimization, they also focus on women’s perspective and experience. (One possible exception is postmodern versions of feminism that explicitly deny the meaningfulness of the category “Woman.” Aside from finding these versions of feminism to play dishonest semantic games, my intuition is that they engage in their own covert forms of gynocentrism.)

…

In What Good is Gynocentrism, I argued that feminist gynocentrism isn’t inherently unjust, and that it can have the side-effect of benefitting men. In this post, I discuss how the ways that feminists’ focus on women’s interests can be problematic. There is a short distance between focusing on women’s interests, and marginalizing men’s interests. Feminists often step over this line. As Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue, “even though misandry is not an inherent feature of gynocentrism, it is an inherent possibility.”¹

I’m not saying that all, or necessary most feminists step over the line; I make no speculation about the proportion of feminists who fall into misandric versions of gynocentrism. I’m more interested in criticizing those versions when they appear.

How could gynocentrism go wrong?

Gynocentrism, as practiced by feminism², entails a focus on women’s experiences, rights, needs, and victimization. That is because women have experienced—and currently experience—violations of their rights, denial of their human needs, and victimization at the hands of males, of each other, and of society.

Once feminist women figured out all the ways that women were getting the short end of the stick, they were justifiably pissed off. They concluded that they were oppressed, and that men were privileged. Many feminists went even further, and saw men as the “oppressor class” towards women. The ways in which men were getting the short end of the stick were typically not considered.

The odious “comparative suffering” argument

And here is where gynocentrism started going wrong. These feminist women were correct to identify victimization, denial of rights, and oppression of women. The mistake was in concluding that in general, men were “less” disadvantaged in society than women, simply because men weren’t necessarily disadvantaged in the ways that women were. This conclusion presupposes some metric or scale on which women’s disadvantages weigh heavier.

However, to weigh one thing against another, you need to know the weight of both. Yet feminists only had an idea of the weight of women’s victimization. Since, as part of gynocentrism, they examined only women’s experiences, and not men’s experiences, they had no idea of what disadvantages, harms, and violations of rights that men were experiencing. This ignorance did not stop those feminists. They placed women’s oppression on one side of the scale, watched the balance tip, and concluded that women’s oppression weighed heavier. Men’s oppression never made it onto the scale.

Nathanson and Young have called this attitude “comparative suffering,” and indepedently, Daran called it the “Odious Comparison.”

Dualism

Through their gynocentric lens, feminists figured out that women were suffering, and that the agents of that suffering were often male. Yet some of these feminists committed two fallacies. The first fallacy was to assume that if men were oppressors under the gender system, they could not be oppressed by it. The second fallacy was to paint men in general as victimizers and abusers of women. The attitude towards men became very dualistic; as Nathanson and Young argue:

The worldview of ideological feminism, like that of both Marxism and National Socialism—our analogies are between ways of thinking, not between specific ideas—is profoundly dualistic. In effect, “we” (women) are good, “they” (men) are evil. Or, to use the prevalent lingo, “we” are victims, “they” are oppressors.”³

The focus of feminism

In this way, gynocentrism slid into the tendencies for some feminists to focus on the experience, needs, and victimization of women, along with the oppressiveness, privileges, violence, and sexism of men. Simultaneously, this type of feminist discourse ignored or downplayed the experience, needs, and victimization of men, along with the oppressiveness, privileges, violence, and sexism of women.

But what is wrong with this focus? The experience of women is important. Women are victimized in society (regardless of agreement with specific feminist claims of victimization). Men do have (some) unjust privileges over women. Some men victimize women. Since all of that is true, what could be the problem with pointing it out?

The answer is that there isn’t one. The problem is not inherently with the gynocentric focus of feminism. The root of the problem is the content of feminism, which causes the gynocentric focus of feminism to become a problem.

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Nathanson, P., & Young, K. (2006). Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. 310.[?]
By “feminism,” I mean feminists who don’t identify themselves as “equity feminists,” “egalitarian feminists,” or “individualist feminists.” These dissident feminists tend to not be gynocentric, and have fundamentally different philosophical and epistemological assumptions to other feminists. Mainstream feminists tend to dispute that dissident feminists are really feminists, which only underscores how gynocentric mainstream feminism is.[?]
Nathanson, P., & Young, K. (2006). Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Cultureen. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. xii.[?]

Editor’s note: The first two sections above “Feminism and gynocentrism” and “Types of gynocentrism” are from the author’s longer piece What Good is Gynocentrism, and serve here as an abridged preamble to his article Gynocentrism and its Discontents. [I was unable to find a contact email for the author, but he is welcome to contact me if he has any concerns about the above reproduction]

Contact

August 2, 2013April 14, 2024 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

This website is owned and maintained by Peter Wright; historian and culture critic known for advocacy for men’s issues and extensive research on topics such as chivalry, courtly love, the men’s human rights movement, feminism, gynocentrism, cultural mythologies, and the psychology of human attachment.

If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to contact via https://twitter.com/Gynocentrism

Feminism: the same old gynocentric story

August 2, 2013June 27, 2023 / gynocentrism / 3 Comments

The Same Old Story
Lecture No. 2 by Adam Kostakis

“I’m not cut from the same mold. I don’t read from the same old story” – Pennywise

My readers must understand that the concerns which Gynocentrism Theory addresses are not limited to feminism. Feminism is still fairly new on the scene, while Gynocentrism has been around for as long as recorded history. The Men’s Rights Movement seeks to address problems associated with feminism, but does not limit its attention to these problems. Many of these problems existed prior to the emergence of feminism proper in the late 19th century, although they have been expanded and exacerbated since. Feminism is only the modern packaging of Gynocentrism, an ancient product, made possible in its present form by the extensive public welfare arrangements of the post-war period.

In spite of its radical rhetoric, the content of feminism, or one could say, its essence, is remarkably traditional; so traditional, in fact, that its core ideas are simply taken for granted, as unquestioned and unquestionable dogma, enjoying uniform assent across the political spectrum. Feminism is distinguishable only because it takes a certain traditional idea – the deference of men to women – to an unsustainable extreme. Political extremism, a product of modernity, shall fittingly put an end to the traditional idea itself; that is, in the aftermath of its astounding, all-singing, all-dancing final act.

Allow me to clarify. The traditional idea under discussion is male sacrifice for the benefit of women, which we term Gynocentrism. This is the historical norm, and it was the way of the world long before anything called ‘feminism’ made itself known. There is an enormous amount of continuity between the chivalric class code which arose in the Middle Ages and modern feminism, for instance. That the two are distinguishable is clear enough, but the latter is simply a progressive extension of the former over several centuries, having retained its essence over a long period of transition. One could say that they are the same entity, which now exists in a more mature form – certainly, we are not dealing with two separate creatures… It is an idea that has outlived nearly every other, and endures to this day in our American Empire. That men should sacrifice themselves utterly – their very essence, their being and their identity, to save women that they do not even know – is neatly encapsulated in that popular phrase, ‘women and children first.’ (And if you’re paying special attention, you will notice that it is never uttered as ‘children and women first.’ The very thought is absurd! This is because what is really meant by the phrase is ‘women first, children second.’)

The endurance of these social and class codes owes nothing to totalitarian control. Even when staging bloody revolts against tyrannous monarchs and landed elites, men aspiring to power left the Gynocentric code well alone. The self-sacrifice of men is a sexual constant which has survived all regime change. Gynocentrism, it seems, was not entirely without benefit to men; in peacetime, a man could be fairly assured of a stable familial structure and of his own paternity for the children he helped to raise. Regardless, what was offered to men was essentially compensatory. For most of history, men apparently considered this compensation to be reasonable enough – or perhaps, Gynocentrism was so deeply ingrained that they simply did not consider it at all. Through their actions, they affirmed (and renewed) Gynocentrism, and whether it went by the name honor, nobility, chivalry, or feminism, its essence has gone unchanged. It remains a peculiarly male duty to help the women onto the lifeboats, while the men themselves face a certain and icy death.

It is only now, with the political and social developments of the 20th century that have driven a wedge between the sexes, that the kind of thoughts found on this weblog can emerge. Late modernity provides us with new conceptual resources – new ways of thinking, which can be traced back to the Enlightenment of the 17th-18th centuries. Out of this intellectual melting-pot eventually crawled feminism, a vindictive blend of classic Gynocentrism, victim fetishization, radical utopianism and liberal presuppositions.

It would be an oversimplification to say that feminists set out to make gains. On the contrary, they made demands for both gains and losses. They wanted to gain men’s rights, but lose their traditional female responsibilities. This, it seemed, would put women in a social position equal to that of men. It was an argument rooted in the liberal tendencies of individualism, civic equality and self-definition. In rhetoric if not in reality, feminism asserted its points of concurrence with the most admirable aspects of traditional liberalism: equality before the law, the abnegation of arbitrary rule, and so on. Extending rights to all women appeared, logically enough, to be the successive phase of human liberation following the extension of rights to all men.

It was assumed – more fool us – that once granted equal rights, women would voluntarily adopt the accompanying responsibilities that men had always fulfilled. This did not come to be. Feminists were happy to gain men’s rights, and lose women’s responsibilities, but they were horrified by the suggestion that they should adopt men’s responsibilities as a corollary. Rather than men and women sharing the burdens of the world, we got the White Feather Campaign:

This campaign began in the early days of the First World War in Great Britain, where women were encouraged to pin white feathers on young men who were not in military uniform. The hope was that this mark of cowardice would shame them into ‘doing their bit’ in the war. The practice soon spread to Canada, where patriotic women, in response to declining voluntary recruitment figures, organized committees to issue white feathers to men in civilian clothes and publicly denounced the ‘slackers’ and ‘shirkers’.

It is surely worth remarking that many of these women were suffragettes; and thus, even as they campaigned for equal rights with men, they used shame as a tool for ensuring that men, and only men, fulfilled traditionally male obligations. Particularly, duty to give up their own lives, because they were men, for the sake of women. Whatever disadvantages women may have faced at the time, there is surely no greater coercion than death.

Much has changed since the First World War, and the feminist project to slack and shirk on women’s responsibilities while extending their license to act however they damn well please has met with wild success. And it is precisely this state of affairs which begs certain questions, made possible by the conceptual resources we have inherited from the Enlightenment: what if a man doesn’t want to live this way? Why should men continue to fulfill or perform their traditional obligations, when women will not live up to theirs, but neither will they adopt the responsibilities corresponding to their rights at present? The questions arise: were men wrong, all this time, to sacrifice for the sake of women? Should we, in fact, have no obligations to women whatsoever?

The reason why the Men’s Rights Movement arouses such hostility, from both the left and right, is because it is the first attempt in history for a sex to attempt to break out of its traditional role. Feminism is not this; it is the entrenchment of the power that women already held. The Men’s Rights Movement today goes far beyond simple accusations of feminist wrongdoing. Its adherents labor at historical analysis and social criticism, and with the benefit of two-and-a-half centuries of imagination and innovation stemming from the Enlightenment, can easily conceive of a world in which men, for the first time in history, are not required to self-sacrifice for women.

This is surely the future, and it is an inevitable reaction against – thus, an unintended consequence of – feminism itself. In times past, when men could claim compensation for their self-sacrifice, they accepted that this was simply the way of the world. In the absence of compensation, and with the screws being turned ever tighter on men in every sphere of life, they are provoked into questioning the new arbitrary rule, and into formulating their very own liberation project in response.

My statement above – that political extremism, the product of modernity, shall put an end to the traditional idea – should now be clear. Feminism, which is the extreme form of Gynocentrism, shall put an end to Gynocentrism altogether through the reaction which it creates. We are fifty years into the tremendous final act; a grand, orchestral performance, a theatrical display making unprecedented use of sound and light to confuse and cast illusion. But if all the world truly is a stage, then all men and women are actors – with roles of our own choosing, now free to toss aside the scripts we have been handed and create a new story in place of the old.

And when the curtain finally falls, I do believe that there shall be no encores.

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About gynocentrism

July 14, 2013February 25, 2024 / gynocentrism / 1 Comment

Gynocentrism (n.) refers to a dominant focus on women’s needs and wants relative to men’s needs and wants. This can happen in the context of cultural conventions, institutional policies, and in gendered relationships.¹

[see here for more dictionary definitions of gynocentrism]

Introduction

Cultural gynocentrism arose in Medieval Europe during a period cross-cultural influences and momentous changes in gendered customs. Beginning in the 11th century, European society birthed an intersection of Arabic poetry, aristocratic courting trends, the Marian cult, and later the imperial patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie who reimagined chivalry as a way to service ladies – a practice now referred to as courtly love.

Courtly love was enacted by minstrels, playrights, troubadours and hired romance-writers who laid down a model of romantic fiction that is still the biggest grossing genre of literature today. That confluence of factors generated the conventions that continue to drive gynocentric practices to the present.

Gynocentrism as a cultural phenomenon

The primary elements of gynocentric culture, as we experience it today, are derived from practices originating in medieval society such as feudalism, chivalry and courtly love that continue to inform contemporary society in subtle ways. Such gynocentric patters constitute a “sexual feudalism,” as attested by female writers like Lucrezia Marinella who in 1600 AD recounted that women of lower socioeconomic classes were treated as superiors by men who acted as servants or beasts born to serve them, or by Modesta Pozzo who in 1590 wrote;

“don’t we see that men’s rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us — they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service.”²

The golden casket at the head of this page depicting scenes of servile behaviour toward women were typical of courtly love culture of the Middle Ages. Such objects were given to women as gifts by men seeking to impress. Note the woman standing with hands on hips in a position of authority, and the man being led around by a neck halter, his hands clasped in a position of subservience.

It’s clear that much of what we today call gynocentrism was invented in this early period, where the feudal template was employed as the basis for a new model for love in which men would play the role of a vassal to women who assumed the role of an idealized Lord.

C.S. Lewis, in the middle of the 20th Century, referred to this historical revolution as “the feudalisation of love,” and stated that it has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched. “Compared with this revolution,” states Lewis, “the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.”³ Lewis further states;

“Everyone has heard of courtly love, and everyone knows it appeared quite suddenly at the end of the eleventh century at Languedoc. The sentiment, of course, is love, but love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, and the Religion of Love. The lover is always abject. Obedience to his lady’s lightest wish, however whimsical, and silent acquiescence in her rebukes, however unjust, are the only virtues he dares to claim. Here is a service of love closely modelled on the service which a feudal vassal owes to his lord. The lover is the lady’s ‘man’. He addresses her as midons, which etymologically represents not ‘my lady’ but ‘my lord’. The whole attitude has been rightly described as ‘a feudalisation of love’. This solemn amatory ritual is felt to be part and parcel of the courtly life.” ⁴

With the advent of (initially courtly) women being elevated to the position of ‘Lord’ in intimate relationships, and with this general sentiment diffusing to the masses and across much of the world today, we are justified in talking of a gynocentric cultural complex that affects, among other things, relationships between men and women. Further, unless evidence of widespread gynocentric culture can be found prior to the Middle Ages, then gynocentrism is approximately 1000 years old. In order to determine if this thesis is valid we need to look further at what we mean by “gynocentrism”.

The term gynocentrism has been in circulation since the 1800’s, with the general definition being “focused on women; concerned with only women.”⁵ From this definition we see that gynocentrism could refer to any female-centered practice, or to a single gynocentric act carried out by one individual. There is nothing inherently wrong with a gynocentric act (eg. celebrating Mother’s Day) , or for that matter an androcentric act (celebrating Father’s Day). However when a given act becomes instituted in the culture to the exclusion of other acts we are then dealing with a hegemonic custom — i.e. such is the relationship custom of elevating women to the position of men’s social, moral or spiritual superiors.

Author of Gynocentrism Theory Adam Kostakis has attempted to expand the definition of gynocentrism to refer to “male sacrifice for the benefit of women” and “the deference of men to women,” and he concludes; “Gynocentrism, whether it went by the name honor, nobility, chivalry, or feminism, its essence has gone unchanged. It remains a peculiarly male duty to help the women onto the lifeboats, while the men themselves face a certain and icy death.”⁶

While we can agree with Kostakis’ descriptions of assumed male duty, the phrase gynocentric culture more accurately carries his intention than gynocentrism alone. Thus when used alone in the context of this website gynocentrism refers to part or all of gynocentric culture, which is defined here as any culture instituting rules for gender relationships that benefit females at the expense of males across a broad range of measures.

At the base of gynocentric culture lies the practice of enforced male sacrifice for the benefit of women. If we accept this definition we must look back and ask whether male sacrifices throughout history were always made for the sake women, or alternatively for the sake of some other primary goal? For instance, when men went to die in vast numbers in wars, was it for women, or was it rather for Man, King, God and Country? If the latter we cannot then claim that this was a result of some intentional gynocentric culture, at least not in the way I have defined it here. If the sacrifice isn’t intended directly for the benefit women, even if women were occasional beneficiaries of male sacrifice, then we are not dealing with gynocentric culture.

Male utility and disposability strictly “for the benefit of women” comes in strongly only after the advent of the 12th century gender revolution in Europe – a revolution that delivered us terms like gallantry, chivalry, chivalric love, courtesy, damsels, romance and so on. From that period onward gynocentric practices grew exponentially, culminating in the demands of today’s feminist movement. In sum, gynocentrism (ie. gynocentric culture) was a patchy phenomenon at best before the middle ages, after which it became ubiquitous.

With this in mind it makes little sense to talk of gynocentric culture starting with the industrial revolution a mere 200 years ago (or 100 or even 30 yrs ago), or of it being two million years old as some would argue. We are not only fighting two million years of genetic programming; our culturally constructed problem of gender inequity is much simpler to pinpoint and to potentially reverse. All we need do is look at the circumstances under which gynocentric culture first began to flourish and attempt to reverse those circumstances. Specifically, that means rejecting the illusions of romantic love (feudalised love), along with the practices of misandry, male shaming and servitude that ultimately support it.

La Querelle des Femmes, and advocacy for women

The Querelle des Femmes translates as the “quarrel about women” and amounts to what we might today call a gender-war. The querelle had its beginning in twelfth century Europe and finds its culmination in the feminist-driven ideology of today (though some authors claim, unconvincingly, that the querelle came to an end in the 1700s).

The basic theme of the centuries-long quarrel revolved, and continues to revolve, around advocacy for the rights, power and status of women, and thus Querelle des Femmes serves as the originating title for gynocentric discourse.

To place the above events into a coherent timeline, chivalric servitude toward women was elaborated and given patronage first under the reign of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1137-1152) and instituted culturally throughout Europe over the subsequent 200 year period. After becoming thus entrenched on European soil there arose the Querelle des Femmes which refers to the advocacy culture that arose for protecting, perpetuating and increasing female power in relation to men that continues, in an unbroken tradition, in the efforts of contemporary feminism.⁷

Writings from the Middle Ages forward are full of testaments about men attempting to adapt to the feudalisation of love and the serving of women, along with the emotional agony, shame and sometimes physical violence they suffered in the process. Gynocentric chivalry and the associated querelle have not received much elaboration in men’s studies courses to-date, but with the emergence of new manuscripts and quality English translations it may be profitable to begin blazing this trail.⁸

References

1. Wright, P., What’s in a suffix? taking a closer look at the word gyno–centrism
2. Modesta Pozzo, The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men
3. C.S. Lewis, Friendship, chapter in The Four Loves, HarperCollins, 1960
4. C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford University Press, 1936
5. Dictionary.com – Gynocentric
6. Adam Kostakis, Gynocentrism Theory – (Published online, 2011). Although Kostakis assumes gynocentrism has been around throughout recorded history, he singles out the Middle Ages for comment: “There is an enormous amount of continuity between the chivalric class code which arose in the Middle Ages and modern feminism… One could say that they are the same entity, which now exists in a more mature form – certainly, we are not dealing with two separate creatures.”
7. Joan Kelly, Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes (1982), reprinted in Women, History and Theory, UCP (1984)
8. The New Male Studies Journal has published thoughtful articles touching on the history and influence of chivalry in the lives of males.

Infantriarchy

May 3, 2013August 3, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

By Gordon Wadsworth

If our species were observed by an alien race for any length of time, two profound defects in the human condition would rapidly become apparent to them. One is a defect in the female character, and the other is a defect in the male character. Although they weren’t always defects, they have become such because they are fundamentally at odds with both legal equality and self-actualization.

The female defect is her desire to infantilize herself; to project a facade of weakness and victimhood. The female does this because part of her identity is contingent on compelling males to act on her behalf. This is a mechanism which allows the female to feel desirable, important, and powerful. The female often mistakes this behavior as personal empowerment, when in reality it is quite the opposite. Taking personal responsibility is something she will inherently resist, because as soon as she takes personal responsibility and stops infantilizing herself, her identity can no longer command others to act on her behalf. Thus, the female defect keeps her from assuming personal responsibility, which presents a barrier to her self-actualization.

This is why the self-actualized female finds playing the victim so repugnant; she is shunning part of her old identity.

The male defect is his desire to compensate for the infantilized female. He does this because part of his identity is contingent on earning female validation. He thus demonstrates his ability to protect, provision and inform. This is a mechanism for feeling useful, powerful, knowledgeable, and important. The male defect leads him to compete with other males to demonstrate his primacy to females, and it ultimately turns him into a guardian, which keeps him from relinquishing responsibility. This becomes his own barrier to self-actualization.

This is why the self-actualized male sees competing for female validation as idiotic; he is shunning part of his old identity.

These defects mean that the female path of self-actualization is one of taking responsibility, and the male path of self-actualization is one of relinquishing responsibility.

It is vitally important to recognize that the majority of males and females in our culture enjoy their dysfunction. The female has a puerile sexual identity validated by compelling a man to act on her behalf, and the male has a similarly puerile sexual identity validated by demonstrating his ability to act on her behalf. This is a drug that our species has been addicted to for millennia, and it is one we desperately need to cast aside. Moving past this behavior is the next step humanity must make to realize equality.

We already have a name for this drug. It’s the blue pill. Those in the blue pill paradigm aren’t conscious of this behavior, they’re merely stuck engaging in it. Consciously recognizing this defective behavior is, in my opinion, the source of red pill wisdom. Once this behavior is seen for what it is, the blue pill paradigm becomes observable, and the transition to the red pill paradigm is made.

An understanding of the male defect is vital for contextualizing feminist criticism of men. Our defect, for example, is why many feminists are partially correct when they point to demonstrating power as a male motivation. We display power to demonstrate our readiness to compensate for the infantilized female. Our defect is also the source of feminist complaints about “mansplaining.” Men engaging in “mansplaining” are largely attempting to demonstrate their knowledge and value in order to demonstrate their capability to compensate for the infantilized female. Additionally, the “fatherly” guardian status that results from our defect is why the feminists are superficially correct about patriarchy, but why they are also leaving out half the picture.

Where the feminist is completely wrong is where she believes that pre-feminist Western culture was in its totality a patriarchy. Since the traditional paradigm of pre-feminist Western culture was an expression of both the male and the female defects, patriarchy was only half the picture.

Let’s clarify what patriarchy means.

For the most part, patriarchy is simply a word to describe the male defect. On its own, however, patriarchy says exactly nothing about the female defect. If we’re to have a fair and balanced discussion on sex and gender, we need a word to address both defects. Let us therefore add the word infantriarchy to describe the female defect.

Patriarchy and infantriarchy are simple concepts that reflect a relationship of codependency between the male and female defects. If the male defect is over expressed in society, female infantilization is compelled, and patriarchy results. If the female defect is over expressed in society, male compensation is compelled, and infantriarchy results.

Thus, the traditional paradigm of pre-feminist Western culture wasn’t in its totality a patriarchy, because it was built around the expression of both the male and the female defects. The fact that there exist both males and females who wish to return to traditionalism proves this. The traditionalist female was thus perfectly happy to infantilize herself, and infantriarchy was a part of traditionalism that cannot be ignored.

The feminist response to this, of course, will be to claim that patriarchy infantilizes women and that the second concept is therefore unnecessary. To clarify this response, the feminist will essentially be claiming that the male defect is wholly to blame. This line of reasoning is problematic because it denies the existence of the female defect, and in doing so it assumes women are perfect and asserts that the defect necessarily exists solely within men.

This can only be described as hate.

Because feminism doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the female defect, it denies female complicity in traditionalism, and thus distorts the male defect of compensating into one of oppressing. Thus, feminists mistakenly believe that women were uniquely oppressed because they’re using half of a theoretical model to examine traditionalism.

The notion of female oppression becomes highly dubious when one considers the female defect. The female defect, for example, becomes apparent when a woman claims that women have always been the primary victims of war, despite the countless millions of men who have died. The female defect has led a woman to cry about being victimized over a t-shirt, and it has led a journalist to claim that MHRM efforts are based on “victim envy.” So it isn’t terribly surprising that the female defect might lead certain women to claim that human history was one long story of female oppression. It is simply an expression of the female defect. It is the female projecting her victimhood.

What then, is feminism?

To be fair, I have met a handful of feminists whose goals I thought were legitimate. To a significant extent, however, feminism is merely a sociopolitical platform for these defects, an arena for them to play in, and the cultural force which is expanding infantriarchy. Feminists claim their movement is about female equality, but I disagree. Being an expression of the female defect, feminism is merely a movement to express female victimhood; more specifically, it is an expression of female victimhood to compel sociopolitical male compensation with the humorous goal of preventing female victimhood.

This results in a merry-go-round to hell, wherein feminism actively entrenches the same value it seeks to fight.

Because feminism is essentially an expression of female victimhood working to end female victimhood, most feminists are stuck in the destructive convulsions of an individual fighting against a victim identity she has chosen for herself.

The nail in the coffin for our society is that the male defect supports and encourages this female behavior. The majority of feminists are fighting an identity they’ve chosen for themselves, one that makes them feel deeply unhappy and traumatized, and the majority of males, instead of criticizing them, are simply trying to compensate for them. The male’s drive to compensate for the infantilized female knows no bounds. If the female is expressing her oppression the male will seek to compensate. If the female is ruthlessly attacking the male’s identity and stripping him of his rights, the male will still seek to compensate.

It is important to understand that both defects must disappear, or neither one will. These two defects are codependent. Females must stop infantilizing themselves, and males must stop compensating for infantilized females. If the female defect isn’t addressed, then no matter how savagely the male defect is attacked, directly or indirectly, the problems with these defects will never be solved. One behavior compels the other, since men and women are and will always be two sides of the same coin. Men and women will evolve their consciousness together, or their consciousness will not evolve.

With this in mind, “patriarchal” expression of the male defect doesn’t disappear in an infantriarchy, it merely changes forms. Remember, in infantriarchy, male compensation is compelled. “White knights” and “manginas” are the expressions of patriarchy, because they are the expressions of the compelled male defect, and often this expression is so pathetic as to beggar belief.

This patriarchal behavior goes largely unnoticed by feminists because they don’t see the male defect directly for what it is. They arbitrarily define patriarchal behavior as authoritative, but they’re mistaken in this regard. Patriarchal behavior is any expression of the male defect. White knights and manginas are thus expressing patriarchal behavior because their behavior seeks to compensate for the female, and it thus encourages the female to continue expressing her victimhood and self-infantilization.

This is the reason some feminists are beginning to recognize and reject men like Hugo Schwyzer for what they are. Men like Schwyzer will never criticize women on any level, simply because men like Schwyzer aren’t remotely interested in equality. They are merely interested in validating their own puerile sexual identities by demonstrating their compensatory capacity. They are cowards, content to ignore real world suffering as they continue taking hits off the blue pill crack pipe. And they are ironically the very agents of patriarchy feminists denounce.

The profound irony of this is that feminism claims to oppose patriarchy while fiercely upholding it, and the MHRM hates the concept of patriarchy, but is currently the only cultural force actually fighting it.

Finally, an infantriarchy will be built around male blame. This is because the female defect leads her to project all authority on to the male, and this forms the basis for blaming him for all wrongdoing. In order to project victimhood, it is necessary for the female to cast the responsibility for her problems elsewhere. Thus, the more infantriarchal a society, the more male blame can be expected.

In our society, this blame is expressed in the feminist’s belief that equality can be achieved by examining “masculinities,” and by deconstructing “patriarchy.” It is also why the feminist believes men just need to shut up and listen to women in order for equality to happen; inequality, after all, was “men’s fault,” and men should shut up and let women fix it.

In late stage infantriarchy, men even become blamed for a woman’s feelings.

If a joke offends a woman, men are blamed. If a man says hello in an elevator in a way a woman dislikes, he is blamed for making her feel victimized. If a man approaches a woman in a bar and she doesn’t like it, he is blamed for making her feel bad, and society responds by prohibiting men from talking to women in this way. If a man looks at a woman who is half naked and it makes her feel bad, he is blamed for looking.

Since the purpose of feminism is largely to express victimhood, “victim blaming” becomes one of its tools. “Victim blaming” is simply another expression of male blame. It is a tool designed to protect female victimhood by savagely casting blame at any male who ever dares to question it.

Feminism does not seek to address either defect, it seeks to criticize male behavior while upholding the male defect and openly expressing the female one. Feminism thus upholds both patriarchy and infantriarchy. Since directly deconstructing and understanding both defects is a minimum prerequisite to promote equality between the sexes, feminism will never achieve equality on its own, however viciously it attacks men.

In my opinion, the MHRM sees these two defects for what they are, and criticizes both of them directly. The MHRM opposes feminism as an unrestrained expression of the female defect, and it opposes “white knights,” “manginas,” and the forces of chivalry as expressions of the male defect and enablers of the female defect. The MHRM opposes both patriarchy and infantriarchy.

For all its claims, feminism is not a progressive movement. Whatever its stated goals, feminism binds humanity to an archaic sexual identity. The MHRM is the socially progressive movement because it is spearheading a move toward greater self actualization for both men and women.

*This article first published in 2013 at AVfM.

Cornelius Castoriadis: Infantile Narcissism Replaced by a Narcissistic Social Contract

August 1, 2012August 1, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

According to Freud, childhood omnipotence & narcissism undergo displacement via a series of clashes with the reality principle. For a special group of humans, however, culture offers to compensate them for that displacement by offering elevated status, a contract that restores the narcissistic bubble. Cornelius Castoriadis describes the situation:

‘The “narcissistic contract,” theorizes what the psyche expects from society as compensation for the abandonment of its “monadic ultranarcissism”. That’s the narcissistic contract: If you behave in this or that way, you’ll then have other people’s recognition; you will be cathected by the others, who will fill the narcissistic breach opened by the abandonment of originary omnipotence.’ [Figures Of The Thinkable, by Cornelius Castoriadis, Stanford University Press, 2007]

Gynocentrism and its Cultural Origins

Author: gynocentrism