William Of Aquitaine: The First Simp

By Paul Elam

If you’ve been an attentive follower of my work, particularly the collaborative efforts with Peter Wright, you know that we’ve explored the historical roots of gynocentrism and, just as importantly, the origins of the romantic model of pair bonding and marriage. We’ve written about Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie, who instituted a sex-relation model based on men idealizing women and being shamed into serving them. That model, once referred to as courtly love, was spread with the help of commissioned troubadours, reinforced with their love stories, romantic songs, and poetry. And as we can plainly see in modern times, electronic media continues that tradition in full force on a worldwide platform. Now operating under the heading of romantic love, we can describe it with a more modern and accurate turn of phrase; Romantic love is the practice of males simping to narcissistic women.

Eleanor and her daughter were the first to popularize this practice, however the original impetus came from Eleanor’s grandfather William IX Duke of Aquitaine (l. 1071-1127 CE), who is considered the world’s first troubadour – a man who wrote effusive, gushing poetry, expressing love for women in worshipful stanzas. He took delight in performing music and song, serenading women, and feeding their narcissistic hunger. William’s gynocentrism was so exaggerated, in fact, that he had a picture of his naked mistress painted on his shield, claiming that he was glad to bear her image in battle as she had borne him in bed.

Dangereuse Bouchard Dangerosa Shield mistress William IX

So, it is clear. William IX was patient zero in the romantic chivalry virus that has since infected the world. We find no historical example of this kind unbridled gynocentrism in a man of prominence that predates him. All of this is understood in academic circles, but little known outside of them. William M. Reddy, Professor of History and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, describes William’s role in the tradition as follows:

The genre of the troubadour song, and with it the basic elements of courtly love, seems to have arisen full-blown in his mind, ready to be imitated and elaborated by his many enthusiastic followers.

The lyrics of ten songs by William IX have survived. They form a curious series. Four are recognizably troubadour love songs, offering, in Reto Bezzola’s words, “an entirely new conception of woman and of love, new not only for the count of Poitou, but for the entire world.”1

While understandable that women would have embraced such a model in order to obtain material and narcissistic gratifications from men, it’s more perplexing that a powerful man did so when he could have had any woman at any time, by simply wiggling his finger. How strange that his chosen path instilled a brand of pathetic sycophancy in contemporary and future men, effectively rendering him a traitor to his own sex.

And indeed, do we not see this on full display in modern times? How many powerful men with high sexual market value have you seen engaging in sappy public fawning over women, gratuitously feeding their egos as a kind of twisted performance art?

And how many men lend silent complicity to this game, following William’s traitorous ways? Recently, there was a televised debate of Republican presidential hopefuls. Nikki Haley, the only woman on the stage alongside six very powerful, influential men, interrupted the entire field at one point and blurted out, “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.” The remark, a reference to her book of the same title, was met with applause by the audience and sheepish silence by the allegedly powerful men on stage. Now, even the most cursory look at modern civilization, where literally nothing is built or maintained by women, informs you that what Haley said is complete bullshit. That, however, didn’t motivate a single man onstage to say a single corrective word. It was a telling microcosm of what society has become under the romantic model, and proof that William the Simp’s infectious ideas took root and flourished.

The court of William IX at Poitou, considered the center of culture at that time, was filled with song, a culture of courtly love, and affluence. Aquitaine was the richest duchy in the south of France.2 Eleanor was raised in this court where she would watch the spectacle of courtly love and its requisite worship of women play out every day of her childhood. Apparently, Eleanor warmed very quickly to the sight of obsequious men shamelessly competing for the approval of women. She would later elaborate and bring that vision to the entire world when she became Queen of both France and England.

Has there ever a greater traitor to the collective male sex than William? He’s brought simping to the world and set the bar high on its practice.  His little fetish has now spread to become more popular than the gospel of Jesus. More romantic love novels are sold each year than are copies of the Bible. In fact, just one Texan author alone sold 3 million more copies of her romance novel in 2022 than copies of the Bible in the same year. Let that sink in.3

William’s story is instructive for how badly men can screw up, and that brings us to similar behaviours we see in men in the here and now. Should we really blame women for the rise of romantic chivalry? Is female narcissism the real culprit? Perhaps feminism? Certainly there’s cause to point at those things, though diligence compels us to also look askance at men who swallowed the romantic narrative with little to no resistance. Fathers, husbands, male lovers all share in the blame.

And of course, blaming the source only gets you so far. Ultimately, we settled on the idea that William the Simp is the red pill man’s greatest object lesson. In a way he’s our best friend. The guy you learn what not to do from. After all, to William he was striking out into new territory: women had never been so elevated, so overblown before in any of recorded history. He was a powerful guy with a masochistic submission fantasy. Women jumped on that and rode it like a sybian sex aid.

But that’s the good part. If you’re a red pill guy here for your dose of content, you are also striking out into new territory. You’re doing something unheard of to most men until recent times. The path you’ve chosen won’t please women, and it won’t sell near as well as kissing women’s asses, but there’s a major silver lining to that. The past thousand years of simping stops with you.

 

References:

[1] The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE.
[2] Eleanor of Aquitaine, in New World Encyclopedia.
[3] Author Colleen Hoover went from tending cows to writing bestsellers.

 

 

The Two Faces of Feminism: Grandiose and vulnerable

Narcissism among self-identified feminists has been studied by Imogen Tyler in her paper ‘Who put the “Me” in feminism?’ The sexual politics of narcissism (2005), which surveyed the connection between feminism and narcissism that has long been a subject of public discourse, and a more recent study has confirmed that feminist women have significantly higher levels of narcissism than non-feminist women, and are less tolerant of disagreement than non-feminist women (Taneja & Goyal, 2019).

Narcissism may be expressed in grandiose or vulnerable ways, and empirical studies confirm that these two modalities work as “two sides of the same coin” (Sar & Türk-Kurtça, 2021) with narcissistic individuals typically oscillating, Janus faced, between these subtypes. Likewise, feminist behaviour displays features of both vulnerable or grandiose narcissism, along with oscillations between these two modes of expression.

As detailed by Naomi Wolf, feminism tends to bifurcate along grandiose and vulnerable lines, or what she refers to as “power” and “victim feminism” (Wolf, 2013). Wolf explains that victim feminism is when a woman seeks power through an identity of disenfranchisement and powerlessness, and adds that this amounts to a kind of “chauvinism” that is not confined to the women’s movement alone, stating; “It is what all of us do whenever we retreat into appealing for status on the basis of feminine specialness instead of human worth, and fight underhandedly rather than honourably.” (Wolf, p147. 2013).

Wolf adds that the deluded rhetoric of the victim-feminist creates, “a dualism in which good, post-patriarchal, gynocentric power is ‘personal power,’ to be distinguished from ‘the many forms of power over others.’” (Wolf, p160. 2013). Other feminist writers have independently concurred with Wolf’s categorisation of ‘agentic’ and ‘victim’ modes of performing feminism (Wolf, 2013; Denfeld, 2009; Sommers, 1995; Roiphe, 1993).

A century prior to observations made by Wolf, English philosopher E. Belfort Bax observed the same bifurcation within first wave feminism, describing a grandiose form of activism he referred to as ‘political feminism’ which concerned itself with claiming equal rights and privileges for women without demonstrating commensurate achievements, capabilities, responsibilities or sacrifices with men, and secondly a vulnerable kind he called ‘sentimental feminism’ which concerned itself with securing sympathies toward women while at the same time fostering antipathy toward men. Bax made the observation that these two forms of activism often occurred in individual feminists who would oscillate between these modes of expression depending on which one was momentarily efficacious for securing power. (Bax, 1913).

References:

Bax, E. B. (1913). The Fraud of Feminism. Grant Richards.

Denfeld, R. (2009). The new Victorians: A young woman’s challenge to the old feminist order. Hachette UK.

Roiphe, K. (1993). The morning after: Fear, sex, and feminism on college campuses. Boston, Mass.

Sar, V., & Türk-Kurtça, T. (2021). The vicious cycle of traumatic narcissism and dissociative depression among young adults: A trans-diagnostic approach. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22(5), 502-521.

Sommers, C. H. (1995). Who stole feminism?: How women have betrayed women. Simon and Schuster

Taneja, S., & Goyal, P. (2019). Impact of Feminism on Narcissism and Tolerance for Disagreement among Females. Indian Journal of Mental Health, 6(1).

Tyler, I. (2005). ‘Who put the “Me” in feminism?’ The sexual politics of narcissism. Feminist Theory, 6(1), 25-44.

Wolf, N. (2013). Fire with fire: New female power and how it will change the twenty-first century. Random House.

* A version of this extract was first printed in the New Male Studies article ‘Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology – Part 2.

Romance Is Not About The Romans

Lets dispel this belief once and for all: the notion of romantic love and romance (i.e. love) was not invented by the Romans; it appears to be an error borne from semantic confusion over the root term roman. That root term actually applies to several words that were not invented in Rome or by Romans, and which don’t apply to Roman behaviour whatsoever.

Romance as originally meaning “a story, written or recited, in verse, telling of the adventures of a knight, hero, etc.,” derived from the old Old French romanz meaning “verse narrative.” This reference of romance was applicable to narratives of adventurous heroes, but it was not applied specifically to the notion of love until much later; an application that would have nothing whatsoever to do with Rome or the Romans.

The literary sense of romance was extended by 1660s to individual love stories, and to the entire class of literature consisting of love stories and romantic fiction. Hence the phrase “Romantic Love” was invented, and later shortened to romance and romantic which had different meanings to the much older meaning of romance as a heroic adventure: it now meant a different kind of adventure whose motive was strictly aimed at love.

The New World Encyclopedia clarifies the matter as follows:

The English word “romance” developed from a vernacular dialect within the French language, meaning “verse narrative,” referring to the style of speech and writing, and artistic talents within elite classes. The word derives from the European medieval vernacular tales were usually about chivalric adventure, not combining with the theme of love (romantic love) until late into the seventeenth century.

Here are a few of the first English uses of the phrase:

1700:
“Many men being still of the opinion that the wonderful declaration of Spanish bravery and greatness in this lost century may be attributed very much to his carrying the jest too far, by not only ridiculing romantic love and errantry, but by laughing them also out of their honour and courage.” [The History of the Renown’d Don Quixote de la Mancha, 1700]

1720:
“And do you think, said his father changing his tone, I shall have the complacence to approve this romantic love of yours…” [A Select Collection of Novels: Don Carlos]

1737:
“Farewell, farewell forever. She left me, with how much concern upon my heart, as it was beyond what I ever felt, it is beyond what I can ever express. Tho’ I was assur’d her reproach was unjust, yet from the principles of affection that gave occasion to it, it affected me. I struggled long between romantic love and prudent conduct: one day I resolv’d to fling myself at her feet the next, and give a proof of my love by ruining myself in marriage ; but the next I thought it better to see her Father again, and strive if…” [The London Magazine; Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, 1737]

1741:
“But I think the tragedy may receive a wonderful force, should its authors, without minding that giddy Romantic Love which makes such havoc in their plays, follow only the true philosophic Ideas of antiquity.” [An historical and critical account of the theatres in Europe, Luigi Riccoboni – Printed for T. Waller, 1741]

1742:
“And where’s the diff’rence twixt old age,
and youth worn out in its first stage,
No longer to apologize,
ye husband’s aged, rich and wise,
Dread twice to court the nuptial state,
and from the sequel mark your fate,
Ye Quixotes in romantic love,
Platonic cuckoldom improve.”
[A Wife and No Wife: the Mad Gallant, an Humorous Tale of Lunacy, Love and Cuckoldom]

1749:
“This novel is altered from one published in the year 1762 The Author, perceiving many material defects in the original work, particularly that the story was too simple to be very interesting, too concise to admit of much exemplification of character, and too much in the usual strain of romantic love.” [The Monthly Review, Volume 53, Ralph GriffithsGeorge Edward Griffiths, 1749]

1761:
“There is no resisting the impetuosity of romantic love. Like enthusiasm it breaks through all the restraints of nature and custom and enables, as well as animates its votaries, to execute all its extravagant suggestions ” [The World – by Adam Fitz-Adam, by Edward Moore, publishe by R. and J Dodsley 1761]

1773:
“The adventures of the Spanish knight [Don Quixote] were written to expose the absurdities of romantic chivalry, so those of the English heroine were designed to ridicule romantic love, and to show the tendency that books of knight-errantry have to turn the heads of their female readers.” [The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature, Volume 35, W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1773]

1776:
Reading books of extravagant poetry raises corresponding doubt’s in the mind as they paint all the passions immoderate. Tragedies, such as they frequently are; books of romantic love, and which is fifty times worse, books of romantic intrigues, all tend to disturb the breast of the tender fair one.” [The Lady’s Magazine; Or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, Volume 7, G. Robinson, 1776]

1777:
“Romantic love seems to be almost peculiar to the latter ages. This passion may perhaps be traced up to that spirit of courtesy and adventure which arose from circumstances peculiar to feudal government, distinguished all the institutions of chivalry, gave birth and form to the old romance, and consequently to the new, and to this day influences in a perceptible degree the customs and matters of Europe.” [Essays on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, 1777]

1777:
“In this correspondence the two friends encourage each other in the [……] notions imaginable. They represent romantic love as the great important business of human life, and describe all the other concerns of it as too low and paltry to merit the attention of such elevated beings, and fit only to employ the daughter of the plodding vulgar.” [The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, Pub. for J. Hinton, 1777]

1787:
“The romantic love, peculiar to the ages of chivalry, was readily united with the high sentiments of military honour, and seem to have promoted each other.” [An Historical View of the English Government From the Settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Accession of the House of Stewart]

1787:
“The customs of duelling, and the peculiar notions of honour,  which have so long prevailed in the modern nations of Europe, appear to have arisen from the same circumstances that produced feudal institutions: That same institution produced the romantic love and gallantry, by which the age of chivalry was no less distinguished…” [The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature, Volume 63, 1787]

1798:
“I readily grant that in former times this veneration for personal purity was carried to an extravagant height, and that several very ridiculous fancies and customs arose from this. Romantic love and chivalry are strong instances of the strange vagaries of our imagination, when carried along by this enthusiastic admiration for female purity; and so unnatural and forced, that they could only be temporary fashions. But I believe that, for all their ridicule, it would be a happy nation where this was the general creed and practice.” [Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, by John Robison, Philadelphia, 1798]

Romantic love was a continuation of courtly love conventions invented in the Middle Ages (as indicated in the above quotes), and which eventually became represented by an English phrase for behaviours that had long been been practiced among European peoples.

So with the above history in mind, let’s avoid the false associations with Rome and with Ovidian love which have no real connection with romantic love.

* * *

Note: Romantic love (romance) also needs to be differentiated from unrelated social events such as romanticism and the Romantic period which arose in the 18th-19th centuries.

Interview with Esther Vilar in Die Weltwoche (2007)

The following is an English translation of an interview with Esther Vilar in Die Weltwoche, issue 51/2007.

_______________________________________

“Love makes you unfree”

In 1971, Esther Vilar wrote a pamphlet against the women’s movement, which was at its height at the time. “The Manipulated Man” sold millions of copies. The author was beaten up by women and had to flee Germany.

By Peer Teuwsen

Ms. Vilar, “The Manipulated Man” was published in 1971.

Vilar: It’s been ages, my God.

A book in which you wrote that there is no patriarchy, but a matriarchy in the West, that women exploit men, not the other way around. A book that has sold millions of copies, written “in great anger,” as you once said. Is the anger still there?

Vilar: No.

Where has she gone?

Vilar: It has shifted to other topics.

But when it comes to gender issues, you can still get angry today?

Vilar: The “manipulated man” has become so popular that all my other topics are smothered by it. That’s why I don’t want to comment on it anymore.

But do you still like the book?

Vilar: Absolutely. I last listened to it as an audio book. Yes, it wasn’t bad to have written it.

For example, you wrote: “At the age of twelve, a woman stops developing her mind.”

Vilar: If she can afford it, yes. This is of course polemic and I cannot defend it in appropriate language.

When you were writing, were you aware of what you were going to achieve with the book?

Vilar: I thought I just had to write a book like that and people flocked to me because I explained everything much more logically. But it came completely different. A small part came to me, but the larger part turned even more violently into the opposite, into the militant women’s movement. No, I couldn’t imagine a polemic of this magnitude when I wrote it. No one can imagine that.

How was it?

Vilar: At first the manuscript was rejected by all publishers. Then I had galley proofs made myself and sent it away again, so Bertelsmann-Verlag grabbed it. Not much happened at first, the first edition was 8000 copies. There was a fantastic review in Stern. And then I was invited to make a wish, a Eurovision show. Then it started overnight. I had obviously said something revolutionary. My life had completely changed in one fell swoop.

When did you first realize you had written something dangerous?
Vilar: When threats came, and when I was beaten up.

Beaten up?

Vilar: Yes, four young women beat me up in the toilet of the Munich State Library. That was no laughing matter. I was spat on, I constantly received death threats, my house in Munich was painted with skulls and the like. I left Germany from one day to the next, I had a little son, I couldn’t stay any longer. I’m in Switzerland. That was the beginning.

Would you also have written the book if you had known about the consequences?

Vilar: I wouldn’t have dared, no. In Spain, in France, in the USA it was the same as in Germany, in England there were public demonstrations.

Against them?

Vilar: Yes, always against me.

Alice Schwarzer called you a “sexist” and “fascist”.

Vilar: Yes. Always just attacks. No, nobody ever defended me.

How do you explain that?

Vilar: My book was leftist, but not leftist in the way leftists had known it. It was a book for a minority. Because compared to us women, men are in the minority. Until then, they had no voice at all, let alone a woman.

But a lot of men didn’t want your vote.

Vilar: A few did, it was very divided. But the approval came only in private. Nobody dared to do it in public.

Did you sometimes feel like you were being treated like a murderess?

Vilar: Yes, I was more of the opinion, I would have done a good deed.

You wrote a book about women’s secret weapons against men.

Vilar: And what secret weapons we women have. But my book was so unwelcome, it went against everything that was fashionable to believe at the time. What I wrote was something no woman had ever said publicly before, although most of us probably knew it very well. I think it was a necessary book.

Would the book still be necessary today?

Vilar: Not that much has changed. Men still have no right to their children, which is, for me, the cruelest thing of all. Anyone who is a man has to reckon with the fact that their children will be taken away from them every day and that, if things go well, they will perhaps be allowed to see them once a month on the weekend. And the fact that men are still sent to war and to kill is so serious that I don’t see any disadvantage of a woman that could somehow outweigh it. And men who have started a family can usually never stop working. You cannot change your life because otherwise you would risk the economic basis of your people. The man has a responsibility that cannot be compared to that of the woman. Those are the main things.

Today women also take on economic responsibility.

Vilar: I don’t know any real househusbands. And the few that exist are not erotic – in the eyes of women. The woman’s gaze determines our world. The look and the language: A man who doesn’t bring home any money is called a failure. The woman, on the other hand, is a housewife. It’s not called the mother tongue for nothing.

You are so terribly rational in your books. Woman is very calculating in your books. It’s all so cold.

Vilar: We are all very calculating, yes. You don’t have to be particularly rational to recognize this. But I don’t think my books are cold. I once sat on a plane behind a man who was reading “The Manipulated Man” on the way from Argentina to Germany. The man laughed out loud all night long, I didn’t sleep a wink. I thought that was nice.

Have you ever loved?

Vilar: Oh yeah.

And for what purpose?

Vilar: Only for the purpose of loving.

In your books, however, love is always earmarked.

Vilar: Yes, but I’ve never done business like that myself.

Seriously?

Vilar: Yes, I can exempt myself from that, to a large extent. I could not have written the book if I was involved myself.

You’ve never let a man feed you?

Vilar: Not a day, no.

You’ve never trained a man by depriving him of sex?

Vilar: No. You couldn’t write a book against bank robbers and be one yourself.

Then you are a good person.

Vilar: I wouldn’t go that far now. But I could afford not to be fed because I had jobs, I was a doctor and then a writer.

But today many women have jobs.

Vilar: A lot has changed there, yes. But I don’t know any woman who works in order to feed the children and the husband for the rest of their lives. That’s why I later wrote a book to outline a way out of this situation.

You proposed the 25-hour week, which would give both women and men more time for themselves and their children, but at the same time would force both to work.

Vilar: I was too early there too. Today things are slowly moving in this direction – unfortunately not because of ideal insight, but because of economic necessity. If there is less and less work, and that will become acute, then you have to reduce working hours. A society with too many unemployed people cannot survive because this leads to unrest.

Do you think you were always too early?

Vilar: I was always early, earlier than the others. This also applies to my essays on aging, religion, intelligence.

I didn’t see your books about men and women as primarily a defense of men.

Vilar: They aren’t either, it’s an appeal to women’s fairness. You can also call them feminist books.

Even. You are the true feminist, you do not see women primarily as victims, but as people who assert their interests.

Vilar: I like that, I’m the real feminist. But, oh well.

But your big topic is different. That people do not take away the freedom they could have.

Vilar: Nice, you noticed that, a topic that you don’t want to acknowledge.

Why?

Vilar: On the one hand, out of cowardice, on the other hand, those who live freedom are not necessarily happy. You are happier when you submit and follow a system and dedicate yourself to a “task”. Anyone who is free always has to make their own rules.

They talk about themselves.

Vilar: Yes, I wanted to live like a free person, but I didn’t always succeed.

What made you unfree?

Vilar: Love, for example. Love always makes you unfree. This is a religion with the smallest possible congregation. God and worshippers in a one-to-one ratio.

Children?

Vilar: Of course children make you unfree. But making a new person is the greatest adventure of all. Freedom is the maddening problem of all of us. You become religious because you can’t stand freedom.

How do you define freedom?

Vilar: That I can do whatever doesn’t harm others.

I would say: Freedom is when you can choose your own dependencies.

Vilar: Much better

You could do that?

Vilar: Yes, and I still can.

What fascinates you about writing?

Vilar: The discovery of new worlds. But I often write just for fun, plays, short stories, novels, these are not polemics. But that’s also the reason why I don’t have as many readers as I used to. They first read a pamphlet, then a novel, see a play – and then they no longer know what to think of me. I still have about 30,000 readers.

Do you regret that?

Vilar: I can’t regret that, that’s the way I am. You can’t get angry on order.

What makes you angry today?

Vilar: At the moment I only write peaceful things. I’m currently working on an erotic thriller called “Speech and Silence in Palermo” and will be released next summer.

What price did you pay for the freedom you took?

Vilar: A lot of loneliness at times – I don’t belong to any club.

Are you good at being alone?

Vilar: Pretty good, but not perfect. And I travel so much that I can’t fit in anywhere.

You could stop doing that.

Vilar: But I don’t want to belong.

But you wanted to love, you wanted to belong to a human being.

Vilar: Yes, and hopefully that will happen to me again and again. The only sacrifice of freedom I value is love. But sooner or later you will be thrown back into freedom.

Doesn’t eternal love exist?

Vilar: Yes, but I haven’t experienced it, and I hardly know anyone who has ever experienced it.

What was your greatest love?

Vilar: I don’t talk about my private life. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Did you enjoy living in Switzerland?

Vilar: Yes. I met so many interesting people through my friend Jürg Federspiel. The Swiss are somehow more cosmopolitan than other nations, they travel a lot. But the problem is that I can never stay anywhere forever.

Why is that so?

Vilar: I’m too curious. Even in Zurich, if I heard an Italian hit on the radio in the morning, I could get on the train and go to Milan. I grew up in Argentina, a child of German parents, I never really felt at home anywhere.

But there is also the opposite: that you really want to find a place.

Vilar: My son is the kind of person who is determined to settle down. Probably because of all the traveling with me. He has become a real Englishman.

What was the best thing in your life?

Vilar: Basically everything was good. I could choose everything, the language, the partners, the countries. And when it wasn’t exciting anymore, I just went somewhere else.

Are you someone who believes you can start over again somewhere else?

Vilar: I start new every day.

That doesn’t work. You always bring your past with you.

Vilar: Of course, but there is always something new coming along. I want to keep building, like a house where you keep adding a room. It will be interesting to see how long it takes and how I cope with the end.

How do you imagine the ending?

Vilar: I’m terrified of dying because I love living so much. I find it a terrible idea that this all goes on without anyone noticing. I like the ending as Luis Buñuel imagined it: that you lie in the coffin, get up every ten years, buy a newspaper, read it – and then climb back into the coffin.

Was the “dressed man” your misfortune?

Vilar: No, but it did a lot of damage to my later works. I was in a corner, things are slowly getting better. I’m being played a lot now in the East, where people don’t hear the “Dressed Man”. But in the West I’m still branded, maybe it’ll never end.

What else do you want?

Vilar: “Want” isn’t a word at all. If I want something, I do it. So what else am I going to do? Always move.

Esther Vilar, 72, wrote the polemic “The Manipulated Man” in 1971. She had to move away from Germany with her child because of the hostility. She now lives in London and still writes.

The Influence of Gynaecocentric Theory On Feminist Thought – by Correa Moylan Walsh (1917)

The following chapter is from the 1917 book Feminism And Socialism by Correa Moylan Walsh. In it he extensively examines the influence of Lester Ward and other Gynaecocentrism theorists on the feminist movement.

The Natural Gynocentrism Fallacy

The natural gynocentrism fallacy, otherwise known as bio-gynocentrism, is a centuries old mythology first promoted in feminist circles, and subsequently to mass culture under the guise of science. Below is a selection of writings elaborating on this fallacy.

The ‘Natural Gynocentrism Fallacy’ (Hanna Wallen)
What’s in a suffix? taking a look at the meaning of gyno–centrism (Peter Wright)
Is Gynocentrism Adaptive? (Peter Ryan)
Maladaptive Gynocentrism Is Not “Natural” (Peter Wright)
Robert Briffault’s Law Doesn’t Apply to Humans (Peter Wright)
Has the MRM Adopted a Gynocentric Ideology? (Peter Wright)
– ‘Biological Gynocentrism’: Falling Into The Feminist Trap? (Peter Wright)
– Lester Ward’s Gynocentrism & The Deification of Women (Peter Ryan)
– Eight Traits of the Bio-Gynocentrist (Vernon Meigs)
– Bio-gynocentrism: Turning Science Into Goddess Worship (Peter Ryan)
Humans as a “Gynocentric Species” is Pure Myth (Peter Wright)

Has the MRM adopted a gynocentric ideology?

In 2013 I introduced the terms Men’s Human Rights Movement (MHRM) and Men’s Human Rights Advocacy (MHRA) to an audience devoted to men’s issues, and since that time the phrase has come to enjoy a small place in the lexicon.

MHRA  was partly introduced to indicate a different accent to that of many Men’s Rights Activists, of which the following are a few points (note, these are generalisations which don’t apply to all MRAs):

 

Another advantage of adding the word human in Men’s Human Rights Advocacy is it better qualifies that the rights being sought are human rights as differentiated from “patriarchal” or other rights, as imputed to the movement by feminists and other bad actors who wish to malign the movement.

The MRM is characterized by feminist critics as a regressive misogynist enterprise aiming for the revocation of women’s liberties and wanting women to be “essentially barefoot, pregnant and back in the kitchen.” This caricature has been generated by individuals who feel threatened by the idea of men seeking to improve their lives.

Over the last decade the ‘MRM’ label has become increasingly identified with belief in natural gynocentrism. Therefore the differences between MHRA and MRA can be summarized as non-gynocentrism, vs. advocacy for natural gynocentrism respectively: i.e., many MRAs see themselves as working within a natural gynocentric system to help men get a reasonable deal within its woman-centering parameters, whereas the MHRA position abandons the belief that humans must function within a bio-gynocentric system of relationships.

I’ve checked the science used by gynocentrism advocates and it’s thoroughly flawed; eg. Pretentious appeals to Robert Briffault and his non-existent ‘law’; the claim that humans are returning to hypothesised older layers of our genome shared with gynocentric gorillas and lions (pre Mutual Mate Choice models); or the claim that an increase in infanticide at the hands of women indicates they are evolutionarily more important than children or genes to successful reproduction. All of these arguments and more, including the examples of men going down on one knee to propose, or women’s hypergamy, can be better explained by a culturally driven rise of gynocentric narcissism.

Even the argument about women’s ova and wombs being sufficient for propagating the human species, with just a few men required as seed banks, is an unscientific fantasy of the narcissistic mind. Progeny of wombs stand little chance of survival without the infrastructure built by legions of men, even incel and bachelor men whose contributions to building infrastructure are equally vital for infant survival. We could say that men, collectively, are one giant paternal investment that cannot provide the necessary survival infrastructure if they were significantly reduced in numbers. What do we think would happen to world survival infrastructure today if the male population were reduced to 10% of the current number? I would hope the answer to this is obvious.

The high numbers of people invested in these fallacies include mindless meme-followers, narcissistically inclined women, male sycophants, and grifting institutions. To check whether these believers are promoting the theory due to memetic and psychological investment, ask yourself if a woman promoting natural gynocentrism theory is showing signs of narcissism? Equally, if a man promotes natural gynocentrism, ask yourself if he is also showing signs of trained sycophancy?

Perhaps we could put it this way: does “gynocentric MRA” sound like an oxymoron to you? It should. Because it is. And on that basis that I find myself more reluctant to use the label, though I should underline that I speak for no one but myself. Put simply, I cannot in good conscience support gynocentrism as a cornerstone of a men’s movement – that would be like accepting the married state is essential to living the MGTOW life. I will add that not all MRAs “believe” in the natural gynocentrism theory, even if many do, but a sufficient majority has influenced the understanding of how far we should take Men’s Rights Advocacy without infringing on supposedly sacrosanct models of bio-gynocentrism.

Lastly, I like many MRAs who care about and/or have pity for men and boys – this is not an attempt to dismiss their positive contributions nor an attempt to create needless division. The above thoughts are long percolated, and I share them only on the offchance that it makes some small difference in the narrative – perhaps being of assistance to a few men and women who are seeking a way out of the maze of Victorian era myths.

See also:

Ward’s Gynæcocentrism Theory & Marxism

The following are a few items showing Marxist interest in Ward’s Gynæcocentrism Theory.

1. The following article was published in Justice, 1909. Note the reference to Lester F. Ward’s ‘Gynocentric theory’.

2.  Li Da (1890–1966) was a Chinese Marxist philosopher who had a great influence on Mao Zedong. He began his career translating Lester F. Ward’s “Gynæcocentric Theory,” which appeared in Ward’s book Pure Sociology (1903).  The following quote is from Howard Chiang’s book The Making of the Human Sciences in China.