Author: gynocentrism

A short word on love terminology

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The various kinds of love are classified by ancient Greek terms, of which the following are examples:

  • Eros: (desirous love)
  • Storge: (affectionate & pairbonding love)
  • Agape: (charitable love)
  • Pragma: (practical/pragmatic love)
  • Philia: (friendship love)
  • Narcissism: (self-love)

This list captures the more common forms of love, even though more subtypes could be added. Missing from the usual lists, however, is one of the most important forms of love for the contemporary era:

In the past romantic love has been defined by the vague and meaningless catch-all term eros, a word that has lost all specificity and become synonymous with the English word love – itself another nonspecific term. For that reason I have returned eros above to its original Greek meaning of desire, and designated romantic love by the popular European term amour.

 

Denis de Rougemont: The root cause of the destruction of marriages (1939)

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The following section from Denis de Rougemont’s book Love In The Western World discusses the breakdown of stable relationships in America and the Western world due to the influences of romantic love.

The Rise Of Transwomen — Process Philosophy in Action

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Process philosophy assumes that the universe and human systems are ‘continually becoming.’ It emphasizes the elements of change and novelty as contrasted with a belief in permanence of forms, and uniformity. In the Greek tradition Heraclitus said that no person ever steps into the same river twice, because on the second attempt it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Vaginoplasty, womb transplants, hormone blockers, hormone injections. These things represent the crowning achievement of cultural feminism, creating a kind of unforeseen gyno-dystopia resulting from the elevation of all things female. That same feminism exerts a gravitational pull that tends to filter all human events through its interpretive lens. Many women show their participation in the feminist worldview via postures of gendered narcissism, while men might show their participation in it by acts of chivalry or, more recently, by initiating changes to their sexual and gender orientation (MtF) in order to become more like women.

Gynocentric feminism is the soil from which the transgender revolution has sprouted – a revolution that represents nothing less than a dissolution of centuries of accumulated gender customs. As Simone de Beauvoir (1949) famously stated of the feminist position, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature.”

The feminist perspective paved the way for gender to be delinked from sex, which appears to have opened the floodgates for men to adopt the celebrated gender identity of woman. Before we draw some ultimate conclusions about this development, lets first look at how female gender identity came to be celebrated.

The historical rise of gynocentrism

Putting the teenage trend of FtM transitioning to one side, we can conclude that mature age MtF transitions in the European and Anglosphere contents predominate, especially in the USA which has for centuries been a champion of more extreme forms of gynocentrism, as demonstrated by the following prima facie observations:

In 1846 a London Sun article describes American culture as an epicenter of exaggerated gynocentrism & chivalry:

I am convinced that a lady, no matter what her age and attractions might be, could journey through the whole extent of the union, not only without experiencing a single annoyance, but aided in every possible way with unobtrusive civility. Indeed a great number of Saphonisbas and Almiras do travel about, protected only by the chivalry of their countrymen and their own undoubted propriety.

To them the best seats, the best of everything, are always allotted. A friend of mine told me of a little affair at New York Theatre, the other night, illustrative of my assertion. A stiff-necked Englishman had engaged a front place, and of course the best corner: when the curtain rose, he was duly seated, opera-glass in hand, to enjoy the performance. A lady and a gentleman came into the box shortly afterwards; the cavalier in escort, seeing that the place where our friend sat was the best, calling his attention, saying “The lady, sir,” and motioned that the corner should be vacated. The possessor, partly because he disliked the imperative mood, and partly because it bored him to be disturbed, refused. Some words ensued, which attracted the attention of the sovereign people in the pit, who magisterially enquired what was the matter?

The American came to the front of the box and said, “There is an Englishman here who will not give up his place to a lady.” Immediately their majesties swarmed up by dozens over the barriers, seized the offender, very gently though, and carried him to the entrance; he kicked, cursed, and fought all in vain: he excited neither the pity nor the anger of his stern executioners; they placed him carefully on his feet again at the steps, one man handing him his hat, another his opera glass, and a third the price he had paid for his ticket of admission, then quickly shut the door upon him, and returned to their places. The shade of the departed Judge Lynch must have rejoiced at such an angelic administration of his law! – England in the New World.

In 1856, author of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine published the following summary of the relations between men and women in America:

“Long before the cry of woman’s rights was openly raised, the powers and prerogatives of the American husband had been gradually undermined. Usage superseded law, and trampled it under foot. Sentiment put logical consistency at defiance, and the American husband has thus become a legal monster, a logical impossibility, required to fly without wings, and to run without feet.

“While the wife is thus rendered to a great extent independent of her husband, he, by a strange inconsistency is still held, both by law and public opinion, just as responsible for her as before. The old and reasonable maxim that ‘he who dances must pay the piper,’ does not apply to wives—they dance, and the husband pays. To such an extent is this carried, that if the wife beats her husband, and he, having no authority to punish her in kind, applies to the criminal courts for redress, she will be fined for assault and battery, which fine he must pay, even thought she has plenty of money of her own. or, in default of paying, go to jail! Such cases are by no means of unprecedented occurrence in our criminal courts.

In 1903 culture critic Max O’Rell observed the following about gynocentrism in the USA:

“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.”

Price Collier observed in 1909:

In England the establishment is, as a rule, at any rate from a man’s point of view, more comfortable than the American home. Americans staying any time in England, whether men or women, are impressed by the fact that it is the country of men. Likewise the English, both men and women, who visit America are impressed by the fact that America is the country of women.

The Independent reported the following in 1909:

“In Europe the aristocracy is largely relieved from drudgery in order that they may cultivate the graces of life. In America the attempt is being made to relieve the women of all classes from drudgery, and we are glad to see that some of them at least are making good use of the leisure thus afforded them. It is a project involving unprecedented daring and self-sacrifice on the part of American men, this making an aristocracy of half the race. That it is possible yet remains to be proved. Whether it is desirable depends upon whether this new feminine aristocracy avoids the faults of the aristocracy of the Old World, such as frivolousness and snobbishness.”

Irishman George A. Birmingham wrote in 1914:

“There are people in the world who believe that we are born again and again, rising or sinking in the scale of living things at each successive incarnation according as we behave ourselves well or badly in our present state. If this creed were true, I should try very hard to be good, because I should want, next time I am born, to be an American woman. She seems to me to have a better kind of life than the women of any other nation, or, indeed, than anybody else, man or woman… American social life seems to me — the word is one to apologize for — gynocentric. It is arranged with a view to the convenience and delight of women. Men come in where and how they can…. The American woman is certainly more her own mistress than the Englishwoman, just because America does its best for women and only its second-best for men. The tendency among American humourists is to dwell a little on the greed of the Englishman, who is represented as incapable of earning money for himself. The English jester lays more stress on the American woman’s desire to be called “my lady,” and pokes sly fun at the true Democrat’s fondness for titles. The American man is reverent toward women. It is not the homage of the strong toward the weak, but the obeisance of the inferior in the presence of a superior. This difference of spirit underlies the whole relationship of men to women in England and America. The English feminist is up against chivalry and wants equality. The American woman, though she may claim rights, has no inducement to destroy reverence.

Albert Einstein observed in 1921:

Above all things are the women who as a literal fact, dominate the entire life in America. The men take an interest in absolutely nothing at all. They work and work, the like of which I have never seen anywhere yet. For the rest they are the toy dogs of the women, who spend the money in the most unmeasurable, illimitable way and wrap themselves in a fog of extravagance. They do everything which is in the vogue, and now quite by chance they have thrown themselves on the Einstein fashion.

Summary and conclusion

Based on the above collection of artifacts, we can begin to wrap these details into a coherent conclusion, and for this we’ll turn to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) for a template.

Hegel naturally didn’t write about vaginoplasties or the transgender movement, but he did write about process philosophy and the proposition that social processes are an ever-recurring cycle which he characterized by three phases (1) an initial set of cultural beliefs called a thesis, (2) next arises dissatisfaction and a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and lastly (3) there occurs a synthesis of culture beliefs whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.

Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.

This provides a suitable template for organizing the peculiar shifts in gender ideology we’ve been witnessing over recent centuries which, following Hegel, we can now organize as follows:

    1. Thesis: Centuries of gynocentrism
    2. Antithesis: Men’s rights backlash
    3. Synthesis: Discovery of malleability of the sexual body (hormones/surgery), accompanied by belief in gender fluidity, resulting in a dissolution of clear sexual and gender boundaries, along with all traditional culture privileges that have accumulated around biological sex. [This completes the synthesis of the two conflicting ideas]

As mentioned elsewhere, the transgender movement is not a cause célèbre driven by men’s rights advocates, as is sometimes claimed. Rather, the current support for transgender rights is derived from the power of government administrations and global regimes playing “freedom one-upmanship” – ie., the feigning of moral purity to position themselves at top of the global hierarchy.

The elites however are not the ones ultimately driving this process forward, even if they are doing the job of hastening, supporting and exploiting it. Instead, it appears to be Hegel’s mysterious process philosophy that is driving the changes, and the elites and sundry grifters are riding this gender-bender horse in a rodeo of competing cultural powers.

Where does all this leave us?

We can draw the conclusion that over the last century our framing of gendered customs has become increasingly captured by a gynocentric turf war between traditional women, and progressive feminist forces, with trans activism being an emerging force that is actively working to disrupt it. Time will tell if the transgender movement continues its disintegrative influence over traditional sex roles, however the surgical and chemical technology that has allowed this to flourish does not look like disappearing anytime soon – in fact researchers are just getting started.

The chemical invention of the birth control pill for women, introduced in the 1950s, served to crown the gynocentric culture project and to cement the dominance of its centuries-long evolution. The chemical and surgical “support” for trans-people holds equally gargantuan potential; which includes the tangential possibility of leading us past the polarizing gynocentric setup of recent centuries and back to a saner place – post trans hysteria – where everyday men and women can be themselves without coercion and judgement… notably minus those inflated gender privileges and ideologies that have driven us into this absurd position to begin with.

See also:

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Image by Freepik

Japanese visitor (1872) amazed by American gynocentrism & simping

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The following quote is from “The Iwakura Embassy, 1871-1873: A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation through the United States of America and Europe by Kume Kunitake, Graham Healey, Chushichi Tsuzuki, Martin Collcutt, Andrew Cobbing, P. F. Kornicki, Eugene Soviak.”

* * *

QUOTE: “American customs seem baffling to us. Among these differing customs by far the strangest was the social relations between men and women. In conjugal and family relations in Japan a wife is dutiful to her mother and father-in-law and children show respect to their parents. In America, however, it is the custom for the husband to serve his wife! This may involve carrying her lantern or shoes, offering her delicacies, dusting off her garments, helping her when she boards or lights from a carriage, pushing her chair forward when she sits, or carrying articles for her when she is walking. If the husband senses even the slightest displeasure from his wife he demonstrates his love and respect by bowing and apologizing. If the apology is not accepted he may be sent out of the room and cannot even eat. When men and women are traveling in the same carriage, the men stand immediately to offer their seats to the women who take them without hesitation. While women are present, men are circumspect in their behavior speaking softly and avoiding cursing and argument.”

 

SEE:  11.02 – 12.04 

Romantic Chivalry Encourages (Vulnerable) Female Narcissism

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*the first part of this article was published earlier as Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology – Part 2.

The proverbial ‘pedestalisation’ of women fostered by romantic love tropes is one that encourages narcissistic self-identification in women (Wright, 2020). An unbroken line featuring noblewomen, and the men who love them, appears in each iteration of literature; from the medieval romances of Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere; the weaving and telling of European fairy tales; Shakespeare; Victorian women’s novels; up to and including modern Disney Princess movies and the ubiquitous romance novel which continues to out-gross all other genres of literature today.

As a dominant source of role modelling, studies have surveyed the impact of such imagery on women’s identity formation and their choices of romantic partners, finding for example that “women are influenced, whether consciously or unconsciously, by what they saw in Disney princess films while choosing mates, setting standards and establishing expectations for their lovers.” (Minor, 2014).

Parents may not fully appreciate the impact of exposing daughters to aristocratic role models, nor see the harms that can arise from such an identification for later adult relationships. In their book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in The Age of Entitlement (2009), Twenge and Campbell underline the dangers of princess role models which encourage daughters to become narcissistic:

Parents do not consciously think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great to raise a narcissistic child?” Instead, they want to make their children happy and raise their self-esteem but often take things too far. Good intentions and parental pride have opened the door to cultural narcissism in parenting, and many parents express their love for their children in the most modern of ways: declaring their children’s greatness. A remarkable percentage of clothing for baby girls has “Princess” or “Little Princess” written on it, which is wishful thinking unless you are the long-lost heir to a throne. And if your daughter is a princess, does this mean that you are the queen or king? No—it means you are the loyal subject, and you must do what the princess says. (Twenge & Campbell, 2009)

In fairytale models the female gender role becomes the locus of a narcissistic script, as detailed by Green and colleagues (2019) who point to an unfavourable outcome whereby, “female narcissists may assert their femininity and receive affirmation from society to attain their goals, and at the same time deflect accountability and externalise blame.” (Green, et al., 2019).

WHAT HAS BEEN MEN’S ROLE IN PROMOTING GYNOCENTRIC NARCISSISM?

Firstly we can say that men have played a principle role in aiding and abetting the growth of gynocentrism among women, motivated in large part by a desire to form relationships with them. Secondly, as Paul Elam recently pointed out in an article Daddy’s Little Nightmare, men encourage narcissism in their daughters:

It’s quite ironic, listening to a man complain about how his wife has crazy unreal expectations. He bemoans the fact that she cannot be satisfied, no matter what he does. He claims that he pulls his hair out trying to figure out how to satisfy her endless demands only to be met with more disapproval and, of course, more demands. He wonders aloud how she ever learned to be such a bottomless pit, and such a bitch about it.

Then you go watch him interact with his four-year old daughter, whom he will endlessly coddle and for whom he will go to any measure to make sure she never lacks anything, no matter how trivial.

And it doesn’t stop when she turns five. Or fifteen, or twenty-five. When it comes to turning human females into paragons of pissy entitlement, the western father has few rivals. (Elam, 2019)

Suffice to say that many men are complicit in maintaining the status quo, creating a culture of exaggerated benevolent sexism in order to gain and maintain intimate access to women. The subsequent relationship dynamic is one they usually come to find destructive to their emotional and physical wellbeing and is thus unsustainable in the long term. Some men adjust to the gynocentric dynamic by resigning their dreams and emotional needs and playing the role of what is disparagingly referred to as a ‘simp’ or overly servile partner, perhaps rationalizing that gynocentrism is encoded into our genome and is thus ‘the way of nature.’

Gynocentric narcissism is further upheld by men at the institutional level, relying for example on a chivalric compact between women and male politicians who wish to hold office (Farrell, 1996; Frasure-Yokley, 2018; Lodders & Weldon, 2019; Naurin, et al., 2019; Wright, 2017), or male court judges who are eager to demonstrate their chivalric credentials by providing lighter sentences for female offenders (Visher, 1983; Hood, 1992; Curry, et al., 2004; Embry, et al., 2012; Starr, 2015). Such displays by men in positions of power have the effect of normalizing gynocentrism, along with the gender imbalance it entails, as an acceptable standard of behavior for heterosexual exchanges.

In cultures perceived as encouraging female narcissism, an emerging male demographic is seeking female partners who eschew the gynocentric blueprint in favor of alternative relationship models; for example traditional gender roles based on division of responsibility and labor (Wright, 2022), or alternatively a ‘multi-option’ model for both male and female partners based on the libertarian principles of individual choice, self-determination, and negotiated labor-sharing arrangements (Wright, 2022). Others are seeking relationships with women from Asian countries that have been less exposed to gynocentric culture forces.

Further, increasing numbers of ‘no gynocentrism’ men are choosing to avoid long-term relationships with women, adopting instead the lifestyle of confirmed bachelors while engaging in meaningful relationships and activities that can fill the breach (Smith, 2013, Yiannopoulos, 2014). In Western societies these men are sometimes referred to as ‘Zeta Males’ who reject the gynocentrism-dependent male categories of alpha and beta (Tayo, 2017), or alternatively they are called ‘Men Going Their Own Way,’ (Wright & Elam, 2013), and in Japanese society they are given the title of sôshoku danshi or ‘herbivore men’ to denote their refusal to seek traditional ‘carnivorous’ pursuits of career and women (Smith, 2013, Morioka, 2013, Yiannopoulos, 2014).

 

References:

Wright, P. (2020). Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology. New Male Studies, 9(1).
Minor, B. D. (2014). Happily Ever After: Is Disney Setting Us Up? A Study on Disney Princesses and Their Influence on Young Women and Their Personal Love Narratives.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. Simon and Schuster.
Green, A., Charles, K., & MacLean, R. (2019). Perceptions of female narcissism in intimate partner violence: A thematic analysis. Qualitative methods in psychology bulletin, (28), 13-27.
Elam, Paul. (2019). Daddy’s Little Nightmare, published at A Voice for Men.
Farrell, W. (1996). The myth of male power. Berkeley Publishing Group.
Frasure-Yokley, L. (2018). Choosing the Velvet Glove: Women Voters, Ambivalent Sexism, and Vote Choice in 2016. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, 3(1), 3-25.
Lodders, V., & Weldon, S. (2019). Why do women vote radical right? Benevolent sexism, representation and inclusion in four countries. Representation, 55(4), 457-474.
Naurin, D., Naurin, E., and Amy A. (2019). Gender Stereotyping and Chivalry in International Negotiations: A Survey Experiment in the Council of the European Union. A Survey Experiment in the Council of the European Union. International Organization, 73(2), pp. 469-488.
Wright, P. (Ed.). (2017). Republicans and Democrats, both Gynocrats. Chapter 8. A Brief History of The Men’s Rights Movement: From 1856 to the present. Academic Century Press.
Visher, C. A. (1983). Gender, police arrest decisions, and notions of chivalry. Criminology, 21(1), 5-28.
Hood, R. G. (1992). Race and sentencing: a study in the Crown Court: a report for the Commission for Racial Equality. Oxford University Press, USA.
Embry, R., & Lyons Jr, P. M. (2012). Sex-based sentencing: Sentencing discrepancies between male and female sex offenders. Feminist Criminology, 7(2), 146-162.
Starr, S. B. (2015). Estimating gender disparities in federal criminal cases. American Law and Economics Review, 17(1), 127-159.
Curry, T. R., Lee, G., & Rodriguez, S. F. (2004). Does victim gender increase sentence severity? Further explorations of gender dynamics and sentencing outcomes. Crime & Delinquency, 50(3), 319-343.
Smith, H. (2013). Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream–and why it Matters. Encounter Books.
Yiannopoulos, M. (2014). The sexodus, part 1: The men giving up on women and checking out of society. Breitbart London.
Tayo, A. O. (2017) A new class of men who don’t care what you think – Zeta Males are the new type of men who do not play the ‘game’ but are societal rebels. Published at Pulse.ng.
Wright, P. Elam, P. (2013), Go Your Own Way: Understanding MGTOW. Zeta Press.
Morioka, M. (2013). A phenomenological study of “herbivore men”.
Wright, P. (2022). The Tradwife Revisited, Published at https://gynocentrism.com/ (retrieved on 22/03/23)

The Wildman In The Cage: Anger In Therapy (James Hillman, 1987)

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The following snippet is by James Hillman, appearing in the 1987 volume New Men, New Minds.

THE WILDMAN IN THE CAGE: A COMMENT

I want to say something about anger. The hairy man in the cage has been there a very long time. He is angry. We are all sons of Jacob, not Esau his hairy brother. Civilization looks back to Gilgamesh, the hero, not to Enkidu, his hairy companion who dies. In other words, as Bly says, the wildman is the repressed, and always threatening, and threatening in therapy as anger. What can we do with him?

First of all we have to watch out that our professional style doesn’t keep him out: the modulated voice, the quizzical gaze, the understanding manner. He does not want to be “understood,” because understanding, he feels, always tends to undermine his wants. Mirroring is not enough. To engage him, we have to raise our voices, grunt and growl. As a therapist I have to allow Esau and Enkidu into the armchair. If I repress, what the patient learns in the hour from my role-modeling is my style of repression. If I avoid the wildman, how can the patient be expected to let him in?

Anger. As a son of Mars I easily become angry and the wildman comes into my therapy sessions directly. Handling this anger in front of the patient, our handling it together, letting it walk in, walk by,  walk out — and not explaining it or apologizing for it — this is a “martial art.” It also serves to depotentiate the fear in the patient of his own wildman. It shows him that rage and outrage belong and have a place in human intercourse. And I don’t mean simply his sitting with me through an outburst of Heilige Zorn (that holy rage that fathers were proud to indulge in the German family). Nor do I mean putting him through trial by ordeal. Rather I mean recognizing anger as an impersonal factor in nature, recognizing what it brings with it–not only scorn or senseless tempestuousness, but a strength and warmth, something mineral like iron, like flint. It contributes something proud and noble, and not only mean-spirited viciousness.

Part of developing anger is extending its expression — cursing rather than bitching, sharpening the emotion’s point instead of a general hostile mood, active rather than passive aggression, holding with it (like Jacob wrestling the angel) rather than letting it all fly away.  So long as the anger stays focused only on the parents or the system or on me, the therapist, it has nothing much to do. It stays stuck, and often chained with guilt. By extending the horizon of anger outward, the patient begins to wake up to the state of the world.

Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale for men

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The following is an attractiveness rating scale based on the two factors of 1. sexual attractiveness and 2. pairbonding attractiveness, instead of the popular single rating factor of sexual attractiveness.

Preamble

Freud/psychoanalysis: “What decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle.” (sexual excitement)

Object relations psychology: “The primary motivational factors in one’s life are based on human relationships, rather than sexual or aggressive triggers.” (pairbonding)

The above quotes imply two different kinds of female attractiveness for men, and a need for two separate rating scales: 1. sexual attractiveness, and 2. pairbonding attractiveness. Sexual attractiveness is based purely on sexual provocation & attraction: body shape, boobs, hips, hair, cleavage, thighs & bedroom eyes, etc. Pairbonding attractiveness implies the girl-next-door stereotype, more attractive for company, modesty, reliability, pair bonding and if desired, family.

Rating a woman as  9/10 in sexual attractiveness is misleading as the only qualifier of a high quality partner, as she may be only 1/10 in the pairbonding attractiveness (or it may be the converse scores).

Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale

A two-factor attractiveness scale would work like this, and examples are arbitrary, e.g.

Brittany Venti:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
0/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 5|0 = total score 5

Sydney Watson:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
3/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 5|3 = total score 8

Mikhaila Peterson:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
1/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|1 = total score 6

Pearl Davis:
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
8/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|7 = total score 13

Nina-Marie Daniele:
7/10 Sexual attractiveness
5/10 Pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|5 = total score 12

Lauren Southern:
6/10 for sexual attractiveness
1/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 6|1 = total score 7

Lauren Chen:
7/10 for sexual attractiveness
6/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|6 = total score 13

Amber Heard:
9/10 Sexual attractiveness
-7/10 Pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 9|-7 = total score 2

* Highest possible score is +20… Lowest possible score is -10.
 

Comment

The two attractiveness scales are based on two different human motivations mentioned above, as also outlined by Evolutionary Psychology scholar Steve Stewart-Williams who writes, quote:

“Human males have a number of well-documented, species-typical mate preferences. These include preferences for physical traits such as a low waist-to-hip ratio, facial and bodily symmetry, neoteny, and youthfulness. They also include preferences for psychological traits such as intelligence, emotional stability, and sexual fidelity.”1

Notice in this quote the first group of physiological traits match sexual attractiveness, and the latter traits match pairbonding attractiveness. Sexual attractiveness is well understood, however pairbonding attractiveness requires a little more explanation: it is the ability of a woman to cultivate a successful, long term bond with a man, which includes traits such as emotional stability, sexual fidelity, low/no body count (signifying commitment to pairbonding), low narcissism, modesty, and ability to positively work through relationship issues.

The list of traits and attributes belonging respectively to sexual and pairbonding attractiveness could be expanded into a very long list, and I do hope that someone bothers to take up that task and have some fun with it.

Lastly, although described in terms of rating women’s attractiveness, the scale has also been adapted to rate male attractiveness/value. The scale is not copyrighted and is free to use.

November 15, 2023

Reference:

[1] The Ape That Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences?

 

SEE ALSO: TWO-FACTOR ATTRACTIVENESS SCALE FOR WOMEN

Narcissism Isn’t Self-Esteem

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By Paul Elam

Let me tell you what I’d do if I liked money more than self-respect. I’d go to the local shopper’s club and buy a hundred gross of small brown paper bags. Then I’d drive out-of-town to the nearest auction barn and pay them a fair price to let me go into the stalls and fill every bag with an even pound of cow crap.

Then I’d slap on some shiny pink labels with “Bag-O-Women’s-Self-Esteem,” printed on them in a distinctly womanish font, add a five, no, ten-dollar price tag, and tie ’em closed with couple of nice frou frou ribbons. Next, I’d set up a kick back arrangement with Oprah in exchange for an endorsement and take out an ad in Cosmo or Redbook.

Then I would head down to Belize and sit on the beach, throw back cocktails and check the bank account on my android 8 or 10 times a day. After about a week I’d buy the beach I was sitting on, and maybe that cute little senorita that was fetching my drinks. The word expatriate would start sounding pretty good.

And I’d be doing myself and you ladies a big favor. It would be perfect synergy. I like money, and you like buying disingenuous bullshit that feeds your narcissism.

You’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Fake self-esteem, like 98% of everything else that is marketed just to females, is just ego food for the insatiably hungry. It has become the psycho-porn of the western woman, with profits that would put a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eyes. How much profit exactly is anyone’s guess.

What I do know is that the narcissism racket comes in a lot of guises. I will deal with the two major ones here because that is all I have time for.

First, the plastic surgery route. With 8-year-olds getting bikini waxes and high school juniors getting fitted for an instant C cup, it is a growing industry for the grrls. Cosmetic surgeons know exactly how much narcissistic gratification results when your tits are bigger, producing more drooling mouths and hungry eyes. More adulation at first sight.

This is the narcissistic fulfillment that they pass off as self-esteem, and they use it as an advertising come on in the same way beer companies use girls in bikinis. Since you are the consumer, it sells like cheap crack in a bad neighborhood. And so now you and your sisters are lined up like schoolgirls for tickets to see Taylor Swift, to get cut and stretched, injected and inflated, and to have your fat asses suctioned down to bubbles of perfection.

But, there is one ever so slight problem. Actually, it’s a big one.

You see, narcissism isn’t self-esteem. Not even close. If you think self-esteem and the self-obsessed craving for worship are the same thing, then go buy those plastic titties. They will match your character and personality just fine, and they might go a long way toward a career as a porn star or topless dancer if the scars don’t show too much. After all, it’s common knowledge that self-esteem abounds for women who can squat down and pick up folded dollar bills off the floor with the crack of their ass while a room full of drunks howl at them.

Then you can attract more men and join the millions of other women that spend their time bitching about how those men won‘t look at them from the neck up. It’s a small price to pay for all that “self-esteem.”

Tell you what -today only- two bags of cow shit for the price of one.

Now, if you are not on an elective surgery budget, you needn’t feel left out. There is a whole world of cheaper but equally fake assistance with your problem. It’s the Stuart Smalley route of the self-esteem simpleton. And it is for sale in the wacky world of mental health. The purveyors, usually women who are every bit as narcissistic as you, are scattered across the world-wide web, thicker than Henry Kissinger’s accent. For a mere hundred or two hundred per hour, they will give you the stalwart advice to look in the mirror -each and every day- and say really affirming things like “I am unique. I am special. I am the only ‘me’ there is!” They will advise you to smile while saying it, but I dare you to simply keep a straight face.

They will tell you there are lots of reasons you don’t have self-esteem. The most common one being men that don’t see just how special you really are, or don’t tell you as much every 15 minutes. No narcissism there, eh?

Those women love to tell you that failure to saturate you with adulation is where you lose your self-esteem. They’ll tell you, with faces as straight as bourbon whiskey, that this is where your self-esteem gets lost, like the pocket you kept it in had a hole in it and a hundred hours of therapy would help you find it again.

Actually, they will make it look a little more sinister. It’s like this: You get into a relationship and at first he is all roses and chocolates and the compliments you so desperately need. After time though, he starts saying things that are not really bad, but just a little cutting, like “I’m going fishing with my friends,”

After some more time passes, it gets worse. When his fishing trips don’t stop simply because you tell him how important it is for him to give them up for you, what started as “I’m going fishing with my friends,” ends up being “Get off my back you insufferable fucking control freak.”

With that, Self-esteem, or the narcissism disguised as much, goes right into the drink.

Seriously though, ladies, disinformation about your self-esteem aside, the self-help gurus aren’t any better at it than the cutters. And they miss the most important thing about self-esteem, just like you do.

The cold truth is that if you have self-esteem, something very different from narcissism, nobody can take it from you. And if you can surrender it to someone, even an asshole who says he loves you, then you never had it to begin with.

That is partly because there is no such thing as self-esteem. It is just a made-up word; a marketing tool to get into your purse, or through you to your man’s wallet. They just call it self-esteem instead of narcissism because women won’t pay to address their narcissism.

There is, however, another asset you might consider. It’s called self-respect. And self-respect, since it must be earned, is rarely sacrificed. And if you have it, you probably don’t need a therapist or a surgeon.

When you have self-respect, respect from others is a given. But you can’t have respect from others or yourself if what you keep chasing is actually a form of worship. And if you are the average woman in today’s world, you don’t have a damned clue as to the difference. It makes selling you bags of bullshit all the easier. In fact, as long as you insist on hanging on to the idea that you’re not really a narcissist, it makes selling you anything but bullshit impossible. Narcissists don’t buy self-improvement, or, for that matter, anything truthful.

Unlike what any plastic surgeon or psychobabble spouting huckster will tell you, you have to get off your ass and earn the way people see and treat you, and the way you see and treat yourself.

You do this through the development of your character, not as a princess or little girl or the self-designated center of someone else’s universe, but as a grown human being with more focus on your responsibilities than your entitlements. Ante up like a big girl and see how quickly the world, and men, treat you like one.

But the real trick here is for you to understand that people, particularly men, failing to meet unrealistic expectations isn’t robbing you of anything. They aren’t respecting you by catering to your narcissistic childishness, they are just giving in to it, and, in the mother of all ironies, disrespecting themselves.

Now you can take this advice, which is totally free, and start applying it today. You can start by putting down the mirror and looking inward this very minute. Before you know it other people, men included, will be looking at you in a way you have likely never seen before. With genuine admiration. I know, it’s a poor substitute for adulation, but in the real world it has to do.

Or, if you just can’t wrap your mind around the idea that the onus is on you to get the job done; that self-respect is a by-product of maturity and humility, I have another form of self-esteem, right here, by the bag full.

Operators are standing by.