Author: gynocentrism

Traditionalism vs. Traditionalism

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By Peter Wright and Paul Elam

The topic of gynocentrism is a perpetual undercurrent in the realm of red pill philosophy. It came up again recently, in a critique of a largely popular, critical commentator on third-wave feminism. That touched a nerve in the MHRM, and sparked some spirited, even acrimonious debate.

That nerve, we think, is connected directly to faultline, to a zone of demarcation within the nonfeminist sector that manages to surface regularly in the new narrative.

If history is any indication, we will see this friction revisited with greater intensity in the months and years ahead. That heat will increase with the commensurate increase in the popularity of nonfeminism. It warrants a good faith attempt to identify and explain what is happening. We may even head off some problems.

Traditionalism vs. modernism

Ostensibly, it appears that we have a long-running conflict between traditionalists and those who would make a clean break from any and all social constructs that govern identity and expectation based on sex.

Yet the debate about traditionalism is clearly more complex than a disagreement between people who want traditional vs. non-traditional relationships, a fact that becomes more evident with each flare-up of controversy and dissent.

Yes, we are going to say it. NATALT (Not All Traditionalists Are Like That). Not everyone who embraces some aspects of traditional relationships embraces chivalry or male disposability.

In the small but extant groupthink of the MHRM we have tended to tow some pretty rigid lines about what we perceive to be traditional relationships. If she works in the home and he works outside, and/or she primarily tends to children and he mows grass and does the home repairs, then we tend to lump it all into the same category, often in an unflattering way.

We’ve even developed a pejorative language, e.g. “tradcon” to identify those who have decided to pursue married and family life.

This division is not insignificant and has been the source of factions and splits within the greater movement for years.

Gynocentric traditionalist vs non-gynocentric traditionalist

There, we reckon, is the clearest definitive difference. This, much more so than traditionalist vs nontraditionalist, identifies those who are legitimately following a path which supports the restoration of human worth to men and boys.

The faultline can equally be discerned between two kinds of relationship agreements. ie. between gynocentric traditionalist and the non-gynocentric traditionalist. However both of them may choose to be married and have a family. We simply argue that one of those two different kinds of families has a great chance of producing more well-rounded children, individuals with agency and accountability.

The faultline, which rightly deserves to be there, is between those who follow the tenants of chivalry and romantic love, and those who don’t.

Non-gynocentric traditionalism might still be based on a role division as long as it’s an equitable one in terms of labor exertion and associated risks to health. That means role divisions can’t be based on chivalry or any other kind of male servitude. No amount of labor division can reciprocate or compensate for a man dying on the job for less in return.

For example, this by Modesta Pozzo in 1590 speaks of an unequal labor division, thus gynocentric tradition:

“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.”1

The description of traditional gynocentric roles put forward by Pozzo is no mere theory, as proven in the words of one of her contemporaries, Lucrezia Marinella (c.1571-1653), who described the situation between men and women as follows;

“It is a marvelous sight in our city to see the wife of a shoemaker or butcher or even a porter all dressed up with gold chains round her neck, with pearls and valuable rings on her fingers, accompanied by a pair of women on either side to assist her and give her a hand, and then, by contrast, to see her husband cutting up meat all soiled with ox’s blood and down at heel, or loaded up like a beast of burden dressed in rough cloth, as porters are. At first it may seem an astonishing anomaly to see the wife dressed like a lady and the husband so basely that he often appears to be her servant or butler, but if we consider the matter properly, we find it reasonable because it is necessary for a woman, even if she is humble and low, to be ornamented in this way because of her natural dignity and excellence, and for the man to be less so, like a servant or beast born to serve her.”2

The chivalry and romantic love in this account, one that promotes a gynocentric sexual contract between men and women, is the part that can easily be dropped while still embracing traditional standards that foster family bonds and the raising of functional, adjusted children.

What remains after gynocentrism is excised are benign aspects of traditional relationships such as a balanced labor division (where men and women both cut up meat and are covered in ox’s blood) or labor balanced into different areas – she scrubs bathroom tiles while he mows grass. Women’s willingness to labor was common in times past where they regularly worked as butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers alongside their male counterparts.

In that cooperative atmosphere of mutual contribution, men and women were more attracted to marriage and belonging to a large extended family – with all members of the family looking out for the safety, and health of the family network.

Other aspects of traditionalism, too, deserve a mention, such as those of benefit to men. These include more father-son time, and an assumption of being able to enjoy male spaces such as male-only drinking saloons, sporting teams, pool halls, and fraternal organizations; Elks, Masons, Golden Fleece, and many others.3

The question today is where the hell can any man find a traditional relationship with a women who eschews chivalry and romantic love – aka gynocentrism? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, which is why going your own way, or rather away from gynocentric traditionalism, is the most sensible thing a man can do.

The low odds for success are why modern men are rejecting traditional relationships with women, even the non-gynocentric ones, in favor of novel new ideas – because they don’t believe women today are willing to reciprocate while the hand of gynocentrism keeps on giving. Usually, they are right.

Men’s Human Rights Advocates wishing to promote benign or valuable aspects of tradition need to be more active in denouncing the toxic gynocentrism of same, otherwise the baby will continue to be thrown out with the bathwater, sans ceremony, by men who are unwilling to play Russian roulette with a world of Disney Princesses.

Even so the question remains of whether the valuable aspects of traditionalism can be separated in lived life, for this baby has been drinking the bathwater for centuries.

The answer to that question is probably in the affirmative for the small number of men with the insight, intelligence and determination to create such relationships.

What remains certain, though, is that those men and others will not benefit from a veneer of men’s advocacy that peels back to reveal gynocentric obedience and male disposability.

Simply put, antifeminism is not enough. Antagonizing social justice warriors is an entertaining pastime but on its own becomes a hollow ally for men concerned with misandry and male disposability.

If you are concerned with the humanity of men, with their access to compassion and choice, you would be ill-advised to consider anyone your ally that says in one breath that feminism is harmful, and out of the next that we need men to learn how to treat women according to a chivalrous code.

It was that code that morphed into the ideologically polluted waves of feminism to begin with.

References:

[1] The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men (1590)
[2] The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men (1600)
[3] Edward Ward, The Secret History of Clubs, (published 1709). [This is one of hundreds of titles detailing traditional male clubs, guilds, and fraternities. The examples given show that the clubs were riotous places of laughter, male bonding, drinking, inventing and collaborating on various projects, and above all were places to enjoy a little self-chosen freedom. Married and bachelor men alike participated, and in the majority of clubs no women were allowed to set foot].
[4] E. Belfort Bax, ‘Chivalry Feminism’ in The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

I asked Bing AI to give me an example of gynocentric behavior. Here is the response.

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Can you give me an example of gynocentric behavior?

Searching for: examples of gynocentric behavior

Generating answers for you…

Sure, I can give you an example of gynocentric behavior. Gynocentric behavior is any action or attitude that prioritizes the interests, needs, and perspectives of women over those of men. For instance, a gynocentric behavior could be:

  • Expecting men to pay for dates, gifts, and other expenses, while not offering to reciprocate or share the costs.
  • Demanding that men perform chivalrous acts, such as opening doors, carrying bags, or giving up seats, while not showing appreciation or respect for their efforts.
  • Assuming that women are always right, innocent, or victimized, while dismissing, blaming, or vilifying men for any conflict or problem.
  • Believing that women’s opinions, feelings, and preferences are more important, valid, or relevant than those of men, and disregarding or silencing men’s voices.
  • Claiming that women are oppressed, discriminated, or marginalized by a patriarchal society, while ignoring or denying the privileges, benefits, and advantages that women enjoy.
  • Advocating for policies, laws, or programs that favor women over men, such as affirmative action, quotas, or special grants, without considering the fairness, merit, or impact on men.

These are some examples of gynocentric behavior that can be seen in various contexts, such as social, cultural, political, or interpersonal. Gynocentric behavior can have negative consequences for both men and women, as it can create resentment, hostility, inequality, and division between the genders. Therefore, it is important to challenge and overcome gynocentric behavior and promote a more balanced and respectful way of relating to each other.

I asked Bing AI what is gynocentrism? – Here’s the response

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Gynocentrism is a term that refers to the tendency to prioritize women’s interests, needs, and perspectives over those of men. It is often associated with feminism, but it can also be seen as a broader cultural phenomenon that affects both men and women in various ways. One of the possible psychological explanations for gynocentrism is that it is a form of narcissism, a personality disorder characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration and validation.

According to some researchers, gynocentrism can be seen as a gendered expression of narcissism that operates within the context of heterosexual relationships and exchanges. They argue that gynocentric women exhibit features of both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, such as entitlement, manipulation, exploitation, self-enhancement, self-victimization, and resentment. These women tend to view themselves as superior to men, expect special treatment and favors from them, use them as sources of narcissistic supply, and discard them when they are no longer useful or satisfying. They also tend to blame men for their own problems, deny their own responsibility, and seek sympathy and support from others.

Gynocentrism as a narcissistic pathology can have negative consequences for both men and women. For men, it can lead to feelings of frustration, resentment, alienation, and depression, as well as a loss of self-esteem, identity, and autonomy. For women, it can prevent them from developing healthy and fulfilling relationships with men, as well as from achieving personal growth and happiness. It can also create a backlash from men who feel oppressed, exploited, and devalued by gynocentric women, resulting in hostility, aggression, and violence.

Therefore, gynocentrism as a narcissistic pathology is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and challenged. It is not a healthy or sustainable way of relating to others, nor is it a fair or respectful way of treating others. It is a distorted and dysfunctional way of thinking and behaving that harms both men and women, as well as society as a whole.

Republicans and Democrats, both Gynocrats

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Knights

By Peter Wright and Paul Elam

 

“All parties, all sorts and conditions of politicians, from the fashionable and Conservative west-end philanthropist to the Radical working-men’s clubbite, seem (or seemed until lately) to have come to an unanimous conclusion on one point – to wit, that the female sex is grievously groaning under the weight of male oppression.”

– E. Belfort Bax, (1907)1

***

Our two party political system increasingly reveals itself to be a staged battle, inspiring about the same credibility as professional wrestling. Democrats and Republicans allegedly square off on either side of a deep philosophical divide and battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. It is family values vs progressive ideals, religious edicts vs personal autonomy, secure borders vs open inclusion and multiculturalism vs national identity.

It is actually dozens of seemingly opposing ideals, impassioned voters on either side of the fence, setting off increasing media fireworks as we get closer to completing each election cycle.

Yet, as we see right before our eyes, our political practices and policies play vastly different than campaign issues would make it appear. The servants we elect wage the same wars, maintain the same extralegal prisons, bail out the same corrupt Wall Street players, cater to the same corporate interests and infringe equally on our Constitutional protections.

What we have pre-election is the Great American Psychodrama; a Dog and Pony Show that distracts us from the post-election reality that an agenda more powerful than Dem vs Pub is actually calling the shots on our governance.

We have a one party system. Republicrats vs Republicrats; a political mafia who sends front men out to “represent” respective sides of a philosophical battle that exists only in the minds of voters.

It allows politicians to run on platforms like “hope” and “change,” with their biggest challenge being the maintaining of a straight face.

This is the perfect environment for modern sexual politics as well.

This is hardly a surprise to most men’s advocates. Many are already aware that there are two different brands of politicians in today’s world when it comes to gender issues: Knights and Troubadours. Just like Dems and Pubs, they ostensibly appear to be on opposing teams. That façade falls apart quickly, though, when you realize they answer to the same master; they are simple stage props used interchangeably by the same production company.

They are owned and operated by Gynocentrism, Inc. Their marching are women first and most often women only. They appear on the surface to be at odds but chivalry is the glue that binds them together. Everything they say and do comes back to women first every time.

Let’s take a look at their approach to perpetuating gynocentric privilege for women through different styles of chivalry.

In the chivalric tradition ‘knights’ are viewed as damsel savers. They are the protectors of womankind and the hero of ladies. We first saw them emerge all the way back to medieval politics where, for instance, Jean II Le Maingre – marshal of France and a knight renowned for his military skill – instituted The “Enterprise of the Green Shield with the White Lady,” a chivalric order of knights organized to defend women’s honor in the face of male insults. Inspired by the ideal of courtly love, the stated purpose of the order was to guard and defend the honor, estate, goods, reputation, fame and praise of all ladies.

Alternatively, the ‘troubadour’ politician has long been a permanent fixture in western politics, and has his roots in courtly love. He is the singer of sooth songs to female voters. He’s the one who proudly waxes that women can do anything men can do, and do it better, and do it in heels.

This aristocratic crooner emerged in the troubadour revolution of France and Germany. But unlike the chivalric knights who aggressively rescues damsels, the troubadour makes stock and trade of enacting directives from his female superiors.

Medieval literature is rich with stories of such men seeking direction from women, the latter having an endless list of tasks for the troubadour to fulfill before his gynocentric credentials are confirmed. A famous example is Ulrich von Liechtenstein, a German troubadour (minnesinger) who wrote the autobiographical manual “In The Service of Ladies.” Von Liechtenstein’s modus operandi, like that of all troubadours, was to put himself before a lady and ask to be directed.

And then to strut around like a banty rooster, high on his own achievements and hopeful for a pat on the head or even access to the holy of holies.

Has anything changed? Nope. We still see the smugly sacrificing heroics of the alleged right and the sycophancy of the alleged left. We see both as they posture themselves as the advocates for all womankind, throwing men and boys directly into the meat grinder of feminist governance with open abandon.

The knightly politician of today likewise offers to protect women from harm and insult, the benevolent patriarch.

The more sensitive, troubadour-like politician of today offers his to support all female issues and alleviates all female discomforts on instruction from women. He’s an archetypical feminist, SJW and sycophant.

The bottom line? What we live in today is essentially a gynarchy, defined as a political system governed by women or heavily in the interest of women. Some will protest that we don’t live in a gynarchy because most of the political leaders are male, but that would be a superficial conclusion. In her book What’s Right With Feminism Cassandra Langer gives a concise definition that accounts for the proxy role of male leaders: “Gynarchy refers to government by women, or women-centered government.”2

Gynarchy refers to any government advocating female interests, including any establishment of laws and bureaucracies that mostly benefit women, regardless of whether the advocates in question are male or female. Said differently the political system that women govern may actually be staffed by male servants called prime ministers, presidents, or politicians who work on behalf of the of women.3

We can hear the protesters already: But surely the United States has always been governed by and for the dominant patriarchal powers?

No, not according to some early observers.

One of them was cultural critic Max O’Rell who in 1903 observed;

“The government of the American people is not a Republic, it is not a monarchy: it is a gynarchy, a government by the women for the women, a sort of occult power behind the scenes that rules the country.” 4

What O’Rell saw in 1903 was that both sides of politics were serving as liegemen to the female populace – and nothing else.

The solution to this is simple and far from easy. All we need is a healthy percentage of the population, say one or two percent, to look past FOX NEWS and CNN programmed thinking; to look past their own biological impulse to save those who don’t need saving and to engage in a pragmatic, rational examination of modern sexual politics.

We need them to see that the so-called candidates they are so bitterly either defending or attacking are just the same whores wearing different clothing.

Mind you, this is not about right vs left, which is a much more tangible and credible divide.

In American elections there is no right and left, just the pandering to Americans acting like robots with emotion chips that have gone on the fritz.

Whether it is with Lilly Ledbetter, VAWA or any other legislation enjoying round bipartisan support, what Americans have is a single option two party system that gives voters the opportunity to feel warm and fuzzy as they destroy their sons while chanting “You GO Girl”

All it will take is a tenacious, indefatigable minority of people who will simply not allow the lies and the injustice to pass unchallenged.

References:

[1] E. Belfort Bax, The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907)
[2] Cassandra Langer, What’s Right With Feminism, iUniverse, (2001)
[3] Alison Tieman provides a historical example of slave leadership in her video When Slaves Ruled.
[4] The Philadelphia Record, quoting Max O’Rell’s 1903 comments on American women

A historical perspective on why men can’t say NO.

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By Paul Elam

Men are only as mentally and emotionally healthy as their ability to say no to a woman. Actually, that bears repeating.

Men are only as mentally and emotionally healthy as their ability to say no to a woman.

Obviously, this does not apply in some areas. Mental health problems won’t be solved by simply finding a woman and uttering the word “no.” Gay men may have a somewhat different perspective about this but they are raised with the same life expectations as straight men so there is no real pass for them either. Quite the contrary.

Still, I will hold to this proposition and do my best to explain it. I can tell a great deal about a man, his boundaries, his values and ultimately his integrity and character with a simple measurement of his obsequiousness with and deference to women.

Romantic Chivalry

To understand all this requires a bit of a history lesson, dating back to the twelfth century and the cultural movement driven by romantic chivalry.

At precisely that moment in history the warrior code was harnessed to the emerging culture of courtly love, an aristocratic invention that saw the military principles of honor, gallantry and service placed in the service of a new Commanders in Chief – courtly ladies.

As historian Jennifer G. Wollock summarizes, “The idea that love is ennobling and necessary for the education of a knight comes out of the lyrics of this period but also in the romances of knighthood. Here the truest lovers are now the best knights.”1

While there is arguable evidence that protection of women and children is a basic male instinct, tied to reproductive access, this is likely the first known time in history where that mandate was codified.

Over a period of a few hundred years, romantic chivalry spread to all the principle courts of Europe and found its way more broadly to lives of everyday men and women who coveted the lifestyle of the upper class. It also fostered a great deal of female privilege and the inescapable neoteny that came with it.

So went the first known institutionalization of pressuring men into a tradition of male servitude – or obsequiousness – toward women that continues unchecked today. Yet it was only the first of three foundational events that would become the prevailing model of gender relations; one that negatively impacts men’s lives and mental health.

The Industrial Revolution

IR-300x233The next developmental watershed in men’s deference to women was the Industrial Revolution. While thrusting humanity into modern civilization, it was the next giant step toward normalizing a standard of mental illness in men where it concerned their relationships with women.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, men largely worked in or near their homes. They worked as artisans, farmers, producers of livestock, tradesman or some other profession that they passed down to their sons through apprenticeship and mentoring.

While still driven by the force of romantic chivalry, they were as involved in the raising of children as mothers were. Those mothers, by the way, also had laborious duties that were a regular part of their role in the family. With the combined work of both parents and participation of the children, families operated more like business concerns than what you most commonly see today.

Both discipline and nurturing from both parents were immediately present; both male and female influence in the lives of children.

The Industrial Revolution, combined with romantic chivalry, accelerated the problem. The mass migration to cities began. Fathers were removed from the home (and the daily lives of their children) to go into factories and work. And of course one of the first products of that revolution was advanced technology in the home, making the lives of women much safer and less arduous. It also created a lot more free time for women, arguably time for them to become fixated on their emotional needs.

The impact of that on family dynamics hit like a tsunami. Women were left to the increasingly softening work of home and children alone, and left in want of adult company. Husbands returning from long, grueling days of labor returned home to be fed and to rest, without the luxury of making up time they had missed with their families.

In this familial void, women quickly turned to their children, particularly male children, to fill their emotional needs. And fathers, consumed by work and duty, largely just enforced the wishes of the mother on the children. This triggered the second wave of privilege and psychological neoteny in western women and where men, due to resentment over their absence, began to be demonized.

Oedipal Culture

All of this greatly increased the likelihood that mothers would form inappropriate bonds with their male children in order to fill the holes in their lives. In other words, we took a step toward a society of emotional incest.

This is difficult to understate. What I am defining here is a culture of emotionally incestuous bonding between mothers and sons. The implications of that are tremendous, and in fact they seem to have been verified by the following 150 years of technological advancement and cultural malaise.

Perhaps it is not coincidental that the onset of the industrial revolution also saw the first formations of what were known to be “Henpecked Husbands” clubs; groups of men who gathered to use peer pressure to induce each other into tolerating more demands and abuse from their wives.

aaaaaaaaa-300x200The Industrial Revolution gave birth to a new age in civilization. It also ultimately resulted in the breakdown of the family unit as it was once known. The late nineteenth century rang in the Tender Years Doctrine, and with it the first legal presumption that younger children were better off in the care of mothers than fathers. The steamroller did not stop from there, it accelerated. The same glut of time and resources that spawned women to create an emotionally incestuous culture also produced gender feminism, the last and final of a monumentally powerful triad of events that left the majority of men in seemingly helpless servitude to women.

Barely one and a half centuries from the first American factory being built and our culture is all but dominated by a woman-first mentality. So rote and mindless have men become that they allow single mothers to effortlessly continue the spread of emotional incest and other forms of child abuse.

Our boys enter an education system completely dominated by female teachers, all of whom are a product of the same forces that created the new paradigm.

Society, especially the female dominated realms of home and early education, produces males that are highly, often terminally dependent on female approval. By the time boys get more substantial exposure to males, the pattern is set. Not to mention the fact that the males they are exposed to are as dependent on female approval as those who might otherwise provide mentoring. They too, as beta enforcers, put pressure on boys to participate in the incestuous bond as expressed in the schools.

This puts us squarely in an age of crippled masculine identity and the consequential impotence. We have legions of men who have stood by silently while their families have been destroyed in corrupt courts, where our young men are being driven out of education and into fields of combat and where men are more likely to support and enable these travesties than to object to them.

Their silence is the mental health issue of our time and you can see it reflected most clearly in men’s interpersonal relationships with women.

When I co-wrote “Say Goodbye to Crazy,” a book aimed at women who were dealing with the devastation wrought in their relationships by mentally unstable and abusive ex-wives, a substantial part of the focus was directed at husbands who lacked the ability to stand up to their former partners.

That problem is not contained to the second marriages of a handful of men. It is a sweeping societal problem that affects all men.

If you read my last article about male space, you will know that when I gave men in a treatment setting the task of focusing on themselves vs focusing on the women in that community, the immediate reaction was fear. That fear was proven justified when the men and women, both staff and clients of that facility, reacted in anger to the men putting themselves first for a single weekend.

What was also proven was the dire need for men to overcome overwhelming programming and pressure.

With a catastrophic gender suicide gap and a plethora of other problems affecting men, at the root of it is men’s programming to sacrifice their interests, well-being and their boundaries in order to take care of and please women.

They have lost the ability to say no. Indeed they have never had it. They are terrified of the loss implied by the very thought of it. The fact that we have done away with all of our rituals to transition boys into manhood does not help but that will be a topic for a future essay.

Changing Course

Correcting this, reversing the trend, is easier said than done. In fact, it is damned hard work for most, and simply undoable for the many who lack the strength to face and walk through fear on such a primal level. It can, however, be accomplished in stages for the dedicated.

The first stage is Simple Awareness and is by far the easiest. It is just education and can be had as easily as grasping the contents of this writing. When men understand the forces that compel them to please women at any cost, they create the opportunity and motivation to imagine it can be corrected. With that, they can rewrite their future, largely by rewriting their history. More to come on that as well.

The second stage is brutal. There is no other way to put it. It requires men to face the fear of ripping the emotionally incestuous bond; the foundational fear of all men, the fear that most resembles the fear of death. It means putting themselves in the jaws of the beast from which they have to scratch and claw their way out.

Once they have emerged they reach the final and unending stage of walking in the footsteps that were determined by a newly shaped history, sans the Romantic Chivalry, sans the emotional incest and sans the gynocentrism.

I realize that the definitions of these stages are cursory and incomplete. There is much more to them. A more thorough examination is next in this series of essays intended to help men free themselves and their sons from the clutches of a path that was chosen for them in favor of a path that they carve out for themselves.

 

[1] Jennifer G. Wollock, Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love, (Published by Praeger, 2011)

This article was first published at An Ear for Men and republished with permission.

Auguste Comte’s cult of woman at the heart of the western-republic

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Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) was the founder of the doctrine of positivism, founder of sociology (coining the term), and a champion of the idea that women should be placed at the reverential centre of human affairs. The following excerpts are from Engendering the end of European history: Auguste Comte’s Cult of Woman at the Heart of The Western Republic by Professor Mike Gane. — PW

 

Introduction

Auguste Comte is not generally acknowledged to have played any major role in the development of modern historiography, and even in sociology (a word he coined in 1839) and philosophy he is today a neglected figure. Ending the neglect is timely, not least because we approach the bicentenary year of his birth (1998). There are, however, a number of obstacles to such a réévaluation. Sociology prefers to identify Marx, Durkheim and Weber as its principal modern founders, whereas as late as the 1960s Comte was still taken as the starting point in introductory courses.

In accounts of rationalism and positivism it is Hume who now dominates the picture. Comte’s own eccentricities, particularly the project of the religion of humanity with its idealisation of woman, and its Utopian restructuring of the ‘western republic’ under a new spiritual authority based in Paris, make it difficult for social scientists to read his contribution other than as an aberration. But is it adequate to treat Comte as ‘mad’ in order to move on? In this essay I want to explore what it is we miss if we do pass over his contribution. One way of examining his work is to ask questions about the nature of Comte’s strategic thought precisely as it encountered issues of space and gender.

Auguste Comte

After completing the founding study of the law of the three states in 1842, his life and thought were deeply shaken by two events. The first was personal. He separated from his wife, Caroline Massin, in 1842, the very day he completed his first major work. In 1844 he began an intense emotional affair with Clotilde de Vaux, at her insistence platonic, which lasted until her death in 1846 at the age of thirty-two.1 The second event was the marked change in the social composition of French society and the experience of the revolution of 1848-1851, particularly the emergence of the proletariat as a political factor.

Clotilde de Vaux

Clotilde de Vaux

In the 1840s Comte’s method and conceptions went through considerable transformations. He rationalised his emotional life as a salutory purification and spiritualisation, and after her death Clotilde was transfigured into a saintly figure whose image Comte began to worship.2 Reassessing his own project he argued that all attempts to solve the western crisis through reason and science alone only exacerbated it. All reason, for him essentially masculine, could be effective in the human context only if guided by the moral and emotional superiority of love and affection, essentially feminine. Comte took his own experience of the sublimation of physical love as a necessary process for all those trying to resolve the social and cultural transition of the three states. He installed the maxims of Clotilde within the new religion of humanity in imitation of the medieval cult of the virgin mother.3

When he came to work out the logic of the revised strategy, he based the new construction on a subjective method: the law of the three states was to be completed by adding a theory of the emotions to the theory of science and industry. The final, third, state became, in Comte’s last version, a combination of science and fetishistic worship… This fundamental order was to be ruled by a purifying cult of woman, regarded as the centre of love and affection. In order to reach this final state there would be a transition period in which the dictatorship of the proletariat would purify economic life and the commercial spirit.4

***

Comte’s thoughts on the new society were far from communistic. Against the revolutionary and communist visions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Comte argued that the positive doctrine would legitimate a new hierarchical social order: in the economy it would legitimate differences of wealth, and in the family it would legitimate the separation of the sexes and the spiritual ascendency of women based on the realisation of the principle of virgin motherhood. Comte aimed to appeal to all sections of political opinion, radical and conservative, since he wanted to reveal precisely how each element fitted into a broad scheme of social progression.5

***

Comte is just as radical in his proposal for a reorganisation of gender relations. Here his aim is to reverse the tendency to the debasement of love in Western culture, and to deal with the new phenomenon of feminism and the demand for equality between the sexes. Comte poses this issue again historically as a problem of the debasement of the ideals of chivalry and courtly love of the medieval period. His aim is to restore some substance to the idealization and purification which the medieval practice seem to inspire.6

He commends the principle of eternal widowhood (with certain limited exceptions which would have applied to Clotilde), and reasserts the value of the segregation of the sexes. The woman should obey the husband, but the latter should adopt the cult of women and guardian angels. Comte’s radical hypothesis, however, is that all sexual relations in society should be replaced by a utopia of the virgin mother. This utopia itself will reverse the decline in the status of women. The utopia would give women complete control over human reproduction. It is not absolutely clear just what Comte had in mind. There could be an organic development which itself would lead to a new hermaphroditic condition, or artificial insemination would become the norm.

The specific details of the cult of woman were developed and practised by Comte: the nature of the image, the prayers, the language, the gestures.7 The objective is purification and hygiene. What women will do is left an open question to be developed and solved by women themselves.8 His view is, however, that the physical act of sex so far as men are concerned is not principally to be understood in terms of reproduction but rather in terms of its sublimating function. Against the demands of feminism, for instance as exemplified by the demands of his wife Caroline Massin, he claimed that they could never form the basis of a set of stable human relationships, but produce only continuous metaphysical strife.

It is through the segregated and hierarchical structures, through idealisation and duty, that a new stability can be attained. In effect therefore, the Comtean programme for the family is intended to end the metaphysical phase within the domestic sphere. Once the final stage is achieved science itself comes to an end in a system of harmonised laws which are all conscious of their place in the totality. It seems at this point that life will be made up of rituals, ceremonials, re-enactments and reproductions of the various aspects of the three-state law. In this sense the law seems to reflect Comte’s own deep longing that the pain of the modern crisis be ended, as it predicts the certainty of a positive state in which everything will find its rightful place. Comte noted in 1852 that it is feeling which is;

the sole existing preservative of Western society from a complete and irreparable dissolution. Since the close of the Middle Ages, the influence of women has been the sole though unacknowledged check on the moral evils attaching to the mental alienation toward which the West more and more tended, especially its centre – France.

He insisted that it is only when men begin to think under ‘the inspiration of women’ can they ‘bring synthesis into constant harmony with sympathy.’9

***

The final system of Comte’s sociology, with the modifications introduced from his reconstructed masculinity, suggests that the medieval system already attempted to install a cult of woman in the worship of the virgin. In 1853, Comte returned to the great western transition and again treated it in terms of the contrapuntal movements of its main phases.10 But Comte’s reorganisation of his explanatory forms did not change: he simply added a note at the beginning of the story indicating the fundamental but passive influence of women. –women preserved society from complete dissolution.11 At the other end of the account of the transition he added a note on the effect of the decisive influence of Clotilde to the reconstruction of the positive philosophy.12

Nevertheless the social topography of Comte’s later vision was strikingly different from the earlier one: the western revolution is an interregnum between two social systems in which the feminine principle, the heart, rules the masculine principle, the intellect. More and more the systems at both ends of the historical sequence became structurally identical. the scientific elite would become the priesthood of the new religion of humanity, but a religion without theology. Paris would replace Rome as the sacred heart of Europe, and Clotilde would replace Mary at the heart of a new cult.

Notes:

[1] I have discussed Comte’s personal relations and how they related to his intellectual development in M. Gane, Harmless Lovers? Gender, Theory and Personal Relationships (London, 1993), ch 6; and in ‘Unresolved Comte’ in Economy and Society, 24 (1995), 138-49.
[2] In the crisis of the insurrection in Paris in June 1848, Comte wrote a ‘Saint Clotilde,’ an address of commemoration on the anniversary of Clotilde’s death. In the address he referred to the ‘ill-omened detonations… of bloody conflict’ going on around him. He said, ‘I am indebted to thee for finding some pure satisfaction in a dreadful crisis… Though mingled with warlike sounds, I already hear indications that the human metropolis is returning to its normal condition. The carnage on both sides may have ceased, at least until the next conflict, which will be still more terrible, unless the working men now in arms shall have discovered their real camp.’ A. Comte, Confessions and Testament: And his Correspondence with Clotilde de Vaux, edited by A. Crompton (Liverpool, 1910). pp.349-57.
[3] For a typical statement of these relations see the Preface in A. Comte, System (New York, nd) vol 1, pp.ix-xxix.
[4] See Comte, System (New York, nd).
[5] These propositions were worked out in continuous outpourings in the years of positivism after 1847.
[6] All the main details of his ideas are expounded in A. Comte, System, (New York, nd), all four volumes.
[7] Comte might well have been influenced by the revival of Catholicism which emphasised Christian love. See a discussion of this in E. Berenson, ‘A new Religion of the Left: Christianity and Social Radicalism in France, 1815-48’ in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, edited by E. Furet and M. Ozouf (Oxford, 1989), vol 3, ch 29. For details of Comte’s religious practice see for example the collection of texts in The Religion of Humanity, edited by A. Crompton (Liverpool, 1907).
[8] In effect Comte leaves women little room for choice since his sociology has already allocated women their role, function, and place in the final state.
[9] In Comte, Preface to The Catechism of Positivism, (London 1891).
[10] See A. Comte System, vol 3, pp.452-531.
[11] See Ibib. p.436.
[12] See Ibid. p.530.

A Privileged and Pampered Sex?

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The following Letter To The editor of Reynolds Newspaper in 1896 (England) provides a snapshot of gender inequity before the law, in this case a gradual softening of female prison experience compliments of a misguided male chivalry – PW

A Privileged and Pampered Sex

TO THE EDITOR OF REYNOLDS NEWSPAPER

1896- Women a priviledged and Pampered Sex - Reynolds's Newspaper - Sunday 29 November 1896SIR,–A paragraph in your issue of the week before last stated that oakum-picking as a prison task had been abolished for women and the amusement of dressing dolls substituted. This is an interesting illustration of the way we are going at present, and gives cause to some reflection as to the rate at which a sex aristocracy is being established in our midst. While the inhumanity of our English prison system, in so far as it affects men, stands out as a disgrace to the age in the eyes of all Europe, houses of correction for female convicts are being converted into agreeable boudoirs and pleasant lounges.

A case in the police court before Sir John Bridge two or three weeks ago further brings into relief the sort of privilege and pampering accorded to one sex at the expense of the other. A woman of the town forced herself upon a young man going home at night and seized hold of his arm. On his shaking her off, the report says “she fell to the ground” (a well-known dodge). Sir John Bridge, on hearing the evidence, was bound to acquit the defendant, but added a rider to his judgement, advising the unfortunate man who had been first assaulted and then had a false charge brought against him, to compensate the woman with half-a-sovereign! Had some luckless male beggar (the brother, let us suppose, of the prosecutrix in this case), after having seized hold of a gentleman’s arm and been shaken off, “fallen to the ground,” and then prosecuted the said gentleman for assault, what would Sir John Bridge or any other Magistrate have said? Would he have suggested 10s. compensation or would he have given him ten weeks? I leave the reader to judge. But the several remarks with which Sir John accompanied his decision are especially noteworthy. He said in effect that “however badly these women behaved” the man ought not to resist them. In fact, the law of self-defence is to be suspended wherever females are the aggressors. This monstrous opinion is on par with the constant iteration in the present day of the “manly” duty of non-resistance and passive obedience to female domination.

We want, sir, a little of the sturdy, healthy, good sense of our ancestors to revisit the glimpses of the moon and speak out against these maudlin, whining, sentimentalisms, and tell us that there are occasions when women, despite the blithering weakness on which they sometimes presume, deserve as severe punishment in their own and the common interest as any male human being who grossly misbehaves himself. That anything in petticoats may ride roughshod over every requirement of decency, justice, or fair-play with impunity is a new doctrine, being assiduously preached, sauced with whimpering appeals to men’s chivalry, gallantry, and the rest of it. Woman’s “weakness” is now fast becoming as oppressive an engine of tyranny and inequality as exists in this or any other country. For though the rich man can sometimes buy off his tormentor, the poor man is handed over by the law, gagged and bound, to the caprices of any vile shrew whom in an evil moment for him he may have made his wife.

I am personally in favour of the abolition of corporal punishment, as I am of existing prison inhumanities, for both sexes, but the snivelling sentiment which exempts females on the ground of sex from every disagreeable consequence of their actions, only strengthens on the one side every abuse which it touches on the other. Yet we are continuously having the din of the “women’s rights” agitation in our ears. I think it is time we gave a little attention to men’s rights, and equality between the sexes from the male point of view.–Yours, &c.,

A MANLY PROTESTOR

The Dream of Heroism and Love – by Johan Huizinga

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The following are excerpts from J. Huizinga’s 1924 book The Waning of The Middle Ages, chapter V: The Dream of Heroism and Love. – PW

The knight and his lady, that is to say, the hero who serves for love, this is the primary and invariable motif from which erotic fantasy will always start. It is sensuality transformed into the craving for self-sacrifice, into the desire of the male to show his courage, to incur danger, to be strong, to suffer and to bleed before his lady-love.

From the moment when the dream of heroism through love has intoxicated the yearning heart, fantasy grows and overflows. The first simple theme is soon left behind, the soul thirsts for new fancies, and passion colours the dream of suffering and of renunciation. The man will not be content merely to suffer, he will want to save from danger, or from suffering, the object of his desire. A more vehement stimulus is added to the primary motif: its chief feature will be that of defending imperilled virginity—in other words, that of ousting the rival. This, then, is the essential theme of chivalrous love poetry : the young hero, delivering the virgin. The sexual motif is always behind it, even when the aggressor is only an artless dragon; a glance at Burne-Jones’s famous picture suffices to prove it.

One is surprised that comparative mythology should have looked so indefatigably to meteorological phenomena for the explanation of such an immediate and perpetual motif as the deliverance of the virgin, which is the oldest of literary motifs, and one which can never grow antiquated. It may from time to time become stale from over-much repetition, and yet it will reappear, adapting itself to all times and surroundings. New romantic types will arise, just as the cowboy has succeeded the corsair.

______

Nowhere does the erotic element of the tournament appear more clearly than in the custom of the knight’s wearing the veil or the dress of his lady. In Perceforest we read how the lady spectators of the combat take off their finery, one article after another, to throw them to the knights in the lists. At the end of the fight they are bareheaded and without sleeves. A poem of the thirteenth century, the work of a Picard or a Hainault minstrel, entitled Des trois Chevaliers et del Chainse,1 has worked out this motif in all its force. The wife of a nobleman of great liberality, but not very fond of fighting, sends her shirt to three knights who serve her for love, that one of them at the tournament which her husband is going to give may wear it as a coat-armour, without any mail underneath. The first and the second knights excuse themselves. The third, who is poor, takes the shirt in his arms at night, and kisses it passionately. He appears at the tournament, dressed in the shirt and without a coat of mail; he is grievously wounded, the shirt, stained with his blood, is torn. Then his extraordinary bravery is perceived and he is awarded the prize. The lady gives him her heart. The lover asks something in his turn. He sends back the garment, all blood-stained, to the lady, that she may wear it over her gown at the meal which is to conclude the feast. She embraces it tenderly and shows herself dressed in the shirt as the knight had demanded. The majority of those present blame her, the husband is confounded, and the minstrel winds up by asking the question : Which of the two lovers sacrificed most for the sake of the other?

______

The warlike sports of the Middle Ages differ from Greek and modern athletics by being far less simple and natural. Pride, honour, love and art give additional stimulus to the competition itself. Overloaded with pomp and decoration, full of heroic fancy, they serve to express romantic needs too strong for mere literature to satisfy. The realities of court life or a military career offered too little opportunity for the fine make-belief of heroism and love, which rilled the soul. So they had to be acted. The staging of the tournament, therefore, had to be that of romance ; that is to say, the imaginary world of Arthur, where the fancy of a fairy-tale was enhanced by the sentimentality of courtly love.

Note:

[1] Of the three knights and the shirt.