Will a man demonstrating romantic chivalry get mercy, or savageness from his Lady Overlord? Joseph Campbell:
Author: gynocentrism
‘The Henpecked Male’ by Hendrick de Leeuw (1957)
The following quotes are from the chapter ‘The Henpecked Male,’ in Woman: The Dominant Sex — by Hendrick de Leeuw (1957). In this volume deLeeuw joins the legions of early observers who rate America as the most gynocentric nation on earth, and in all of history, resulting in the proverbial henpecked man – PW
‘Shield of Parade’ representing chivalrous love (15th century)
The ‘Shield of Parade‘ is a 15th century artifact depicting a scene of chivalric love, which is currently housed in the medieval gallery of the British Museum.
The shield’s front panel portrays a youthful knight clad in battle armor. Genuflecting in a gesture of servitude toward the woman he loves, he grips a pole axe in one hand, while a sheathed sword rests at his side. Nearby, his helmet and gauntlets lie discarded. The figure of Death emerges from behind and gazes malevolently while reaching out to take the knight.
On the left side of the shield a noble lady stands projecting an air of arrogance. She is adorned in opulent attire, her gilded finery catching the light. A long hennin hat graces her head, its trailing silk veil draped own her back. Curiously, her facial expression conveys detachment, making her seem somewhat cold or dismissive to the dramatic scene unfolding before her.
A scroll of text floats above the knights head with the words “vous ou la mort,” which translates as “you or death” in French. These words reveal that this scene is one of chivalric love, in which the knight would happily die proving his love than to dishonor his lady and lose her love by his poor performances in battle.
A Values-Centered Approach to Gynocentrism
By Paul Elam
Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with saying ‘Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.’ It is a fantastic quote and I’d like to borrow from it and offer my own red pill spin: Great minds discuss gynocentrism. Average minds discuss feminism. Small minds discuss women.
When discussing a values-centered model in the context of gynocentric culture, I assume three states of being most typical to modern western men. Those are:
- Gynocentric
- Gynocentric Reactive
- Gynocentric Proactive
Gynocentric refers to the average man. He usually, but not always, operates with women unconsciously, just following whatever scripts he has adopted from early life. He seeks women’s acceptance without an intact set of values that are designed to protect him. In fact, it is his values that put him at risk. Many men value only being accepted sexually and romantically, by any woman they are attracted to, regardless of her moral character and any possible risk she represents.
The gynocentric man is the one with a piece of paper that says kick me taped to his back. We can mock him if we want, but we are well to remember that we have all been this man at one point or another in our lives.
Gynocentric Reactive is a much more complicated affair. Here we see men who are infinitely more conscious than gynocentric men. They are aware of relationship pitfalls, may even be quite familiar with concepts like gynocentrism, hypergamy and male disposability.
It is their reaction to that information that may foment troubles. These men can be perpetually fulminating and overtly hostile to anything female. It’s the “all women are bitches and hoes” crowd, and the ever present resentments they carry can cause emotional and psychological atrophy. They may have a diminished capacity for reason and defensively take refuge in an ideology that shields them from examining their anger productively.
Another manifestation of the gynocentric reactive man is one who hides inside emotional armor, simply reducing women to their sexual utility, doing their best to get sex then get out. Unfortunately, it is a form of self-protection that may well heighten risk with repeated sexual contact with women who have not been assessed for anything other than physical attraction.
Finally, there are still other gynocentric reactive men who are just frustrated by the realities of lived experience with women. They find themselves caught in a web of confusion and consternation. They tend to be understandably mistrustful of women, and sometimes vacillate between being indifferent to them and being attracted. They feel stuck and outgunned. Chronic loneliness is often part of their lot. For this reason, many of them may be attracted to the other forms of reaction-based mindsets that don’t leave them feeling so vulnerable.
Gynocentric Reactive men get call misogynists a lot. They’re not. Setting aside judgements about the efficacy of their state of being, they are just men rationally demonstrating the will to self-protect. Regardless of how tiring the perpetual anger may be, they are much more functional and conscious than the gynocentrist.
The Gynocentric Proactive man routinely operates consciously with women. He has a clearly identified, personally chosen set of values that trump his sexual instincts and significantly temper his need for female approval.
Whether he includes women in his life or not, he is not burdened by fear of, or resentment toward, them.
He does not tolerate abuse, doesn’t take unnecessary financial risks or commit thoughtlessly. He can be available for a relationship if he chooses. He is also willing and able to let a relationship go that threatens his well-being. And he can do it without undue emotional distress.
Importantly, he is willing, indeed insistent, on evaluating any woman on his radar for risk and maintenance concerns.
It is important to reiterate here that none of these states of being can be called wrong. They are simply ways of coping in the modern sexual milieu. Even the gynocentric male is trying to cope in his way.
I will point out, however, that when I see men belittling and shaming other men for not walking in lockstep with them, it usually comes from gynocentric and gynocentric reactive men. Those are also the two states of being where, exceptions notwithstanding, I have observed the least happiness and the least reasonable points of view.
So, obviously, the intent here is to suggest that there is much more benefit to men in a Gynocentric Proactive state of being. The benefits are certainly there for emotional health.
Courtly Love as Religious Dissent – by Jeffrey B. Russell (1965)
The following are excerpts from Courtly Love as Religious Dissent – by Jeffrey B. Russell (1965).
Love in the Song of Songs
In the lead up to Valentine’s Day when Christian (and other) women look forward to receiving romantic love overtures from men. So I thought I would ask AI to clarify what is the nature of love as portrayed in the most famous lovers book in the Bible.
Question: “What is the Hebrew word used for the kind of love portrayed in the Song Of Solomon?”
ANSWER: The primary Hebrew word for love in the context of the Song of Solomon is ‘ahabah’. Although it does not explicitly refer to romantic love or sexual desire, within the context of this love song, it conveys deep affection, longing, and desire.
Even in the Septuagint, which includes a Greek translation of the Song of Songs, the word used is agape, though clearly the term eros is also applicable to the descriptions of longing and desire that take place between the two lovers.
Ahabah, agape and eros described in Songs are examples of reciprocal love, unlike the unidirectional, medieval practice of romantic love which requires sycophantic male love service toward pedestalised women. With these distinctions in mind, we can say that Christians who wish to celebrate romantic love, whether on Valentine’s or any other day, can be justifiably be charged with practicing heretical versions of love.
As a second note of clarification, St. Valentine had nothing to do with the concept of romantic love during his life, nor did romantic love play a part in the early legends that surrounded him. His namesake only later became associated with courtly & romantic love through a fanciful revisionism in the Middle Ages via poets like Chaucer who fabricated a link between the saint and romantic love. That conflation was continued by William Shakespeare, John Donne and many other poets, leading to the popular conception of romantic chivalry we inherit in today’s Valentine’s celebration.
Romantic love (as symbolised in this image) is a heresy that does not match Biblical descriptions of love
Romantic love (as symbolised in this image) is a heresy that does not match Biblical descriptions of love
Romantic love & cuckoldry of husbands
The invention of romantic chivalry/love in the Middle Ages taught women to view extra-marital love as more rewarding than their marriages, giving the first signs of attack on husbands and marriage that would culminate in cuckolding, frivolous marriages and the removal of fault-based divorce.
The cuckolding is showcased in famous tales of romantic chivalry: Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, and in the lives of real men and women from that period forward: ie. Romantic interests trump marriage.
Enter OnlyFans wives.
Note (below) the appalling situation that husbands were originally placed in, leading modern husbands to accede to women’s romantic interests. Tradcons today continue to make noise about the importance of romantic “date nights” which are attempts to make their marriages romantically titillating in the assessment of wives.
Below is an excerpt from Valency’s In Praise of Love: An Introduction to the Love-Poetry of the Renaissance (1958):
Source: Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love: An Introduction to the Love-Poetry of the Renaissance (1958)
Female sexual desire as described in the Middle Ages
The following is from Maurice Valency’s In Praise Of Love, on the topic of female sexuality as it was observed in the Middle Ages. Note how different is this conception from contemporary fantasies on the nature of male and female sexuality.
I want a man who will “spoil” me
We often hear women say they want a man “to spoil” them on Valentine’s Day, or on other occasions, and after the event they say they “feel spoiled.” Some women want the spoiling experience so badly that they complain with an air of aggrieved entitlement when it doesn’t eventuate.
What exactly does this term mean, and where did it originate?
The word spoiled was derived from the Latin and Old French verb “spoil”, which meant “to strip, rob, plunder, pillage.” The term was also used to describe something that was “destroyed, ruined, damaged so as to render useless.” It was first applied as a metaphor to children or women in the sense of “over-indulged, injured in character by excessive lenience” in 1640, and carried the additional meaning of “to become tainted or unsavory, go bad, and lose freshness” – in other words a reference to something going rotten, like a piece of stinking fish or old fruit.
Spoiling became synonymous with pampering women in the context of romantic relationships, where a man would treat his woman like a queen or a princess and indulge her with chivalric deference and love service. The implication here is that spoiling is synonymous with the spoiler going too far on behalf of spoilee, to the degree that it creates damage.
A Google search for spoiling someone on Valentine’s Day, by gender, returned the following results:
“Spoiled her” – 409, 000 results
“Spoiled him” – 24, 000 results
That’s a differential of 17:1 in favor of women being recipients of the spoiling experience, and if we take spoiling a partner on Valentine’s Day or on any other occasion as a measure of gendered status, it appears women are doing very well.
The only question remaining is whether society understands the root meaning of this little phrase to spoil, and its social consequences.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) predicted collapse of America due to gyneolatry
Ashes Of The Beacon is a prose work by Ambrose Bierce, an American writer known for his satirical and cynical style. The work is divided into four volumes and was published between 1907 and 1912. Ashes Of The Beacon is a futuristic and dystopian vision of the history and decline of the United States of America, written from the perspective of a historian who is looking back from the year 4930. The work criticizes the failures of democracy, capitalism, religion, and especially gynocentric culture in America. It is considered one of Bierce’s most controversial and provocative works, and has been compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The following is an excerpt from the work. – PW
* * * *
‘ASHES OF THE BEACON’
An Historical Monograph Written in 4930
Of the many causes that conspired to bring about the lamentable failure of “self-government” in ancient America the most general and comprehensive was, of course, the impracticable nature of the system itself.
The ancient Americans were a composite people; their blood was a blend of all the strains known in their time. Their government, while they had one, being merely a loose and mutable expression of the desires and caprices of the majority—that is to say, of the ignorant, restless and reckless—gave the freest rein and play to all the primal instincts and elemental passions of the race. In so far and for so long as it had any restraining force, it was only the restraint of the present over the power of the past—that of a new habit over an old and insistent tendency ever seeking expression in large liberties and indulgences impatient of control. In the history of that unhappy people, therefore, we see unveiled the workings of the human will in its most lawless state, without fear of authority or care of consequence. Nothing could be more instructive. […]
A singular phenomenon of the time was the immunity of criminal women. Among the Americans woman held a place unique in the history of nations. If not actually worshiped as a deity, as some historians, among them the great Sagab-Joffoy, have affirmed, she was at least regarded with feelings of veneration which the modern mind has a difficulty in comprehending. Some degree of compassion for her mental inferiority, some degree of forbearance toward her infirmities of temper, some degree of immunity for the offenses which these peculiarities entail—these are common to all peoples above the grade of barbarians. In ancient America these chivalrous sentiments found open and lawful expression only in relieving woman of the burden of participation in political and military service; the laws gave her no express exemption from responsibility for crime. When she murdered, she was arrested; when arrested, brought to trial—though the origin and meaning of those observances are not now known.
Gunkux, whose researches into the jurisprudence of antiquity enable him to speak with commanding authority of many things, gives us here nothing better than the conjecture that the trial of women for murder, in the nineteenth century and a part of the twentieth, was the survival of an earlier custom of actually convicting and punishing them, but it seems extremely improbable that a people that once put its female assassins to death would ever have relinquished the obvious advantages of the practice while retaining with purposeless tenacity some of its costly preliminary forms.
Whatever may have been the reason, the custom was observed with all the gravity of a serious intention. Gunkux professes knowledge of one or two instances (he does not name his authorities) where matters went so far as conviction and sentence, and adds that the mischievous sentimentalists who had always lent themselves to the solemn jest by protestations of great vraisemblance against “the judicial killing of women,” became really alarmed and filled the land with their lamentations.
Among the phenomena of brazen effrontery he classes the fact that some of these loud protagonists of the right of women to assassinate unpunished were themselves women! Howbeit, the sentences, if ever pronounced, were never executed, and during the first quarter of the twentieth century the meaningless custom of bringing female assassins to trial was abandoned. What the effect was of their exemption from this considerable inconvenience we have not the data to conjecture, unless we understand as an allusion to it some otherwise obscure words of the famous Edward Bok, the only writer of the period whose work has survived. In his monumental essay on barbarous penology, entitled “Slapping the Wrist,” he couples “woman’s emancipation from the trammels of law” and “man’s better prospect of death” in a way that some have construed as meaning that he regarded them as cause and effect. It must be said, however, that this interpretation finds no support in the general character of his writing, which is exceedingly humane, refined and womanly.
It has been said that the writings of this great man are the only surviving work of his period, but of that we are not altogether sure. There exists a fragment of an anonymous essay on woman’s legal responsibility which many Americologists think belongs to the beginning of the twentieth century. Certainly it could not have been written later than the middle of it, for at that time woman had been definitely released from any responsibility to any law but that of her own will. The essay is an argument against even such imperfect exemption as she had in its author’s time.
“It has been urged,” the writer says, “that women, being less rational and more emotional than men, should not be held accountable in the same degree. To this it may be answered that punishment for crime is not intended to be retaliatory, but admonitory and deterrent. It is, therefore, peculiarly necessary to those not easily reached by other forms of warning and dissuasion. Control of the wayward is not to be sought in reduction of restraints, but in their multiplication. One who cannot be curbed by reason may be curbed by fear, a familiar truth which lies at the foundation of all penological systems.
The argument for exemption of women is equally cogent for exemption of habitual criminals, for they too are abnormally inaccessible to reason, abnormally disposed to obedience to the suasion of their unregulated impulses and passions. To free them from the restraints of the fear of punishment would be a bold innovation which has as yet found no respectable proponent outside their own class.
“Very recently this dangerous enlargement of the meaning of the phrase ‘emancipation of woman’ has been fortified with a strange advocacy by the female ‘champions of their sex.’ Their argument runs this way: ‘We are denied a voice in the making of the laws relating to infliction of the death penalty; it is unjust to hold us to an accountability to which we have not assented.’ Of course this argument is as broad as the entire body of law; it amounts to nothing less than a demand for general immunity from all laws, for to none of them has woman’s assent been asked or given. But let us consider this amazing claim with reference only to the proposal in the service and promotion of which it is now urged: exemption of women from the death penalty for murder. In the last analysis it is seen to be a simple demand for compensation. It says: ‘You owe us a solatium. Since you deny us the right to vote, you should give us the right to assassinate. We do not appraise it at so high a valuation as the other franchise, but we do value it.’
“Apparently they do: without legal, but with virtual, immunity from punishment, the women of this country take an average of one thousand lives annually, nine in ten being the lives of men. Juries of men, incited and sustained by public opinion, have actually deprived every adult male American of the right to live. If the death of any man is desired by any woman for any reason he is without protection. She has only to kill him and say that he wronged or insulted her. Certain almost incredible recent instances prove that no woman is too base for immunity, no crime against life sufficiently rich in all the elements of depravity to compel a conviction of the assassin, or, if she is convicted and sentenced, her punishment by the public executioner.” […]
A remarkable feature of the crude and primitive civilization of the Americans was their religion. This was polytheistic, as is that of all backward peoples, and among their minor deities were their own women. This has been disputed by respectable authorities, among them Gunkux and the younger Kekler, but the weight of archæological testimony is against them, for, as Sagab-Joffy ingeniously points out, none of less than divine rank would by even the lowest tribes be given unrestricted license to kill.
Among the American’s woman, as already pointed out, indubitably had that freedom, and exercised it with terrible effect, a fact which makes the matter of their religion pertinent to the purpose of this monograph. If ever an American woman was punished by law for murder of a man no record of the fact is found; whereas, such American literature as we possess is full of the most enthusiastic adulation of the impossible virtues and imaginary graces of the human female. One writer even goes to the length of affirming that respect for the sex is the foundation of political stability, the cornerstone of civil and religious liberty! After the break-up of the republic and the savage intertribal wars that followed, Gyneolatry was an exhausted cult and woman was relegated to her old state of benign subjection.
Source: The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1 (1909)