It’s no secret that women feel entitled to special treatments from men based on the European culture tradition of chivalry: i.e., allowing women to go through the door first; showering the “fairer sex” with compliments about being beautiful, caring or pure; paying for dinner and other life luxuries; and offering them costly care and protection around the clock. In the modern context chivalry boils down to the male posture of deference to women’s needs and wants, which understandably fosters a positive self-concept in women and a sense that they must be “worth it” as we are reminded by the ubiquitous advertising jingle.
The expectation of male chivalry, or benevolent sexism as some prefer to call it, is nothing new and there are countless studies confirming that women generally expect such treatment from men.1 So we will take that expectation as a given. What hasn’t been studied sufficiently in women is the reaction men’s failure to provide expected level of chivalric supplies, and this is where we run into the useful concept of ‘aggrieved entitlement.’
The phrase aggrieved entitlement was popularized by feminist Michael Kimmel who refers to it as a gendered emotion displayed by disenfranchised males, entailing “a fusion of that humiliating loss of manhood and the moral obligation and entitlement to get it back.”2 By ‘manhood’ Kimmel is referring to rights that males have supposedly enjoyed over women that are subsequently denied them by a changing world. He further clarifies that men “tend to feel their sense of aggrieved entitlement because of the past; they want to restore what they once had. Their entitlement is not aspirational; its nostalgic.”3
In a recent paper Dennis Gouws suggests that the aggrieved entitlement descriptor can be equally applied to the behavior of women. Reviewing Kimmel’s concept he concludes:
Because Kimmel’s sympathies lie with gender feminism, he is uninterested in how this concept might apply to women’s behavior. Women might express aggrieved entitlement when they experience what they perceive to be a humiliating loss of the gynocentric privilege to which gynocentric chivalry, gender feminism, and hegemonic gynarchy have entitled them. Self-righteous, angry expressions of personal offense and even violent acts might result from their perceived moral obligation to regain their sense of gynocentric privilege. A cursory internet search of gender-feminist responses to men’s-issues speakers on campus and to the establishing men’s groups or other male-positive spaces on campus will provide examples of this aggrieved entitlement.4
Gouws provides a useful example of aggrieved entitlement by women who dominate university campus culture. Men attempting to establish male support groups on female-dominated campuses, or who attempt to invite speakers sympathetic to men’s health issues, have frequently been met with fury for apparently removing the chivalric focus from women and their issues. The resultant female rage has triggered violent protests, intimidation, vindictive and false accusations, or boycotting of male initiatives through financial and other means.
Looking at the sexual-relations contract that has been operating for eons we can see that a certain degree of narcissistic pride was encouraged in order to sweeten gender roles for men and women – “He’s an awesome strong man, a man’s man and a great provider” or “She’s a magnificent mother, those children never go without love or food”. Those adhering to traditional gender roles received compliments for their service, along with some compensatory payoffs by the opposite sex.
When an individual fails to adhere to their traditional gender role the bubble of narcissistic pride bursts, giving rise to aggrieved entitlement in members of the opposite sex. In the language of psychology we would say the expectation of narcissistic supply has been cut off, and narcissistic injury and rage steps forward to address the grievance. Most readers would know that some of the worst examples of aggrieved entitlement by women are displayed by feminists, about whose behavior Ernest B. Bax concluded in the year 1909; “Weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes aggressive. Aggressive weakness deserves no quarter.”5
Bax further elaborates on aggressive weakness (i.e., aggrieved entitlement) in the following passages:
I may point out in conclusion that the existing state of public opinion on the subject registers the fact that sex-conscious women have exploited the muscular weakness of their sex and have succeeded in forging a weapon of tyranny called “chivalry” which enables them to ride rough-shod over every principle of justice and fair play. Men are cowed by it, and fail to distinguish between simple weakness per se which should command every consideration, and that of aggressive weakness which trades upon “chivalry” and deserves no quarter.6
“Even taking the matter on the conventional ground of weakness and granting, for the sake of argument, the relative muscular weakness of the female as ground for her being allowed the immunity claimed by Modern Feminists of the sentimental school, the distinction is altogether lost sight of between weakness as such and aggressive weakness. Now I submit there is a very considerable difference between what is due to weakness that is harmless and unprovocative, and weakness that is aggressive, still more when this aggressive weakness presumes on itself as weakness, and on the consideration extended to it, in order to become tyrannical and oppressive. Weakness as such assuredly deserves all consideration, but aggressive weakness deserves none save to be crushed beneath the iron heel of strength. Woman at the present day has been encouraged by a Feminist public opinion to become meanly aggressive under the protection of her weakness. She has been encouraged to forge her gift of weakness into a weapon of tyranny against man, unwitting that in so doing she has deprived her weakness of all just claim to consideration or even to toleration.”7
Bax penned the above observations over a century ago, although the behavior he described had been around for much longer than that. The phrase ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ is usually attributed to the English playwright and poet William Congreve. He wrote these lines in his play The Mourning Bride, 1697:
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.
These lines describe a temporary loss of male chivalry by women and the aggrieved entitlement that ensues – a reaction that Michael Kimmel pretentiously emphasizes as a mostly male pathology. A more honest appraisal of the changing gender roles and the accompanying sense of aggrieved entitlement would admit that women’s roles and choices have expanded exponentially, which includes the throwing off of any expected responsibilities toward men and boys, while conversely the male role of providing benevolent sexism/chivalry for women has changed little. On the basis of such disparity men appear to be coping remarkably well in comparison to women who retain many of their traditional privileges and expectations, but who display extreme rage at micro-disenfranchisements and momentary lapses in chivalric supply.
Benevolent sexism toward women remains the norm, despite women’s traditional obligations toward men being wiped out
In summary the grief-reaction over loss of traditional roles is not a predominately male issue. Women have yet to experience the loss of gendered entitlements on anywhere near the same scale as men, however they are equally proficient at raging over micro-losses of chivalry and male deference. The theory of aggrieved entitlement thus applies to no gender in particular – so lets use it to describe the ever-present rage displayed by women in both private and public settings.
References:
[1] Hammond, M. D., Sibley, C. G., & Overall, N. C. The allure of sexism: Psychological entitlement fosters women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism over time. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 422-429. (2014)
[2] Kalish, R., & Kimmel, M. Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings. Health Sociology Review, 9(4), 451–464. (2010)
[3] Kimmel, Michael. Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. Hachette UK, (2017).
[4] Dennis Gouws, Not So Romantic For Men: Using Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe to Explore Evolving Notions of Chivalry, in Voicing the Silences of Social and Cognitive Justice, 167–178. (2018)
[5] Ernest B. Bax., Women’s Privileges and “Rights”, Social Democrat, Vol.13 no.9, September (1909).
[6] Ernest B. Bax., Feminism and Female Suffrage in New Age, (1910)
[7] Ernest B. Bax., Chapter 5: The “Chivalry” Fake, in The Fraud of Feminism (1913)
Psychology clings to a universal model – that men are incorrigibly flawed and require a dismantling of their identities, habits, and preferences before being reconstructed according to a feminist model of masculinity. All modern therapies have this basic premise in common.
For example, one of the more popular models of men and masculinity to emerge in the last 20 years, promoted as A New Psychology of Men, is described in the following terms by one of its founders:
The new psychology of men has emerged over the past 15 years within the larger fields of men’s studies and gender studies. Informed by the academic breakthroughs of feminist scholarship, the new psychology of men examines masculinity not as a normative referent, but rather as a problematic construct. In so doing, it provides a framework for a psychological approach to men and masculinity that questions traditional norms of the male role and views some male problems as unfortunate byproducts of the male gender role socialization process.1
Since it’s inception this “new” psychology of men has restated traditional gender stereotypes about men; that they are flawed, violent, emotional primitives in need of reconstruction. This supposedly “new” model has also been developed into a training course teaching therapists how to effectively work with men.
The course, designed by former American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant, is based on two principles held almost universally by therapists working with men; a). that patriarchy theory represents the real world, and b). that males are stunted in their emotional processing abilities. Let’s look at these two pillars of therapy.
Patriarchy theory
As with most psychologists and therapists today, Levant is informed by feminist-inspired patriarchy theory which posits that all men have power over all women and that such power is enforced by men’s violence. The theoretical vision, trumpets Levant, provides a “new” way of looking at men:
What scholars in the area of men’s psychology have attempted is nothing less than a reconstruction of masculinity. It starts from the recognition that there is a problem, and locates the roots of that problem in the male gender role… The new psychology of men strives to address the feminist critique of patriarchy while remaining empathetic to men.2
As many readers will know there is nothing “new” in this characterization of men, which we can summarize with the phrase, ‘Women have problems, and men are the problem.’ As Levant stresses, the primary approach to therapy with men is first to problematize them; “It starts from the recognition that there is a problem.”
In this model men are viewed as being problems before they even meet the therapist, who ignores the possibility that men’s problems may lie outside themselves in a world of grief they did nothing to deserve.
In other words, whatever the presenting complaints of the client they are immediately dismissed by the practitioner in order to coerce the client into an ideological mold of manhood. The practitioner, depending on their degree of indoctrination, may actually believe this will address the client’s issues but even a cursory examination of the “masculinity as identified problem” approach reveals numerous, deep flaws. In fact, this approach proves to be abusive in any reasonable interpretation of the word.
As I explain below there are other approaches to working with men that don’t presume they are flawed and need fixing. That approach begins with asking men what they experience in life, and what they might want to achieve in therapy, and actually listening to their answers. Therapists may be interested to hear men speak of a range of experiences and goals wholly unrelated to patriarchal domination of women and children.
Men as emotionally dumb
Referring to men as dumb has the double-meaning of both lacking in intelligence and being mute. This forms the basis of Levant’s theory that men possess little emotional awareness about themselves or others, that they are lacking in emotional intelligence, and that even were they to discover some emotional awareness they would not know how to express it in words, such is the depth of male lacuna. He refers to this problem in men as alexithymia – a Greek term meaning no words for emotions, insisting that most North American males suffer from this syndrome.
Levant states that “it is so very widespread among men that I have called it normative male alexithymia,”3 a syndrome that by definition only men and boys can be labelled with. There even exists a Normative Male Alexithymia Scale used to assess the depth of men’s need for therapeutic correction. Levant states,
One of the most far-reaching consequences of male gender-role socialization is the high incidence among men of… the inability to identify and describe one’s feelings in words… men are often genuinely unaware of their emotions. Lacking this emotional awareness, when asked to identify their feelings, they tend to rely on their cognition to try to logically deduce how they should feel. They cannot do what is automatic for most women -simply sense inwardly, feel the feeling, and let the verbal description come to mind.4
This claim, that men are “unaware of their emotions,” an assumption so typical of psychology’s view of men, has been a cornerstone of the therapeutic world for the last 40 years. And it is demonstrably wrong.
According to the vast majority of studies on emotional processing, men and boys are able to identify emotional arousal in themselves and others equally to women, emotions like jealousy, love, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc. But men and boys choose to regulate that emotional arousal not by verbalizing it so much (women’s preferred method) but by taking intelligent action. A woman for example might talk with her melancholic friend about what is worrying her in order to cheer her up; the man may invite the same melancholic friend to the movies; both responses -talking, or acting- serve to intelligently modulate emotions.
What Levant has failed to discriminate are 1. recognizing emotions, and 2. verbalizing them. He, and so many psychologists who came before and after him, assume that by not verbalizing emotion males must also have failed to recognize emotions. Countless studies however show this to be a false conclusion.5 Men, like women, can sense the full range of emotions – but they may choose to respond to that knowledge in a different manner to women.
Breaking with the past – starting afresh
Repackaging patriarchy theory is a move we no longer wish to make – at least not if we wish to genuinely help men. Increasing numbers of men are tired of waiting for the psychotherapeutic industry to drag its collective ass out of gynocentrism-land to develop a genuine new model for tackling male psychology.
To attain that model there has to occur a break with patriarchy theory and assumptions that men and boys are emotional dummies. As in a court of law we begin the new therapy with an assumption that men are not only innocent until proven guilty, but that ‘men are good’ to use Tom Golden’s iconic phrase.
Nor will work with men be savvy until it admits the realities of cultural misandry, gynocentrism and their undeniably crushing effects on modern males. The daily assaults on men and boys from advertizing, mental health services, media, family courts, pharmaceutical companies, education from grade school to grad school, anti-male bigots and ideologically driven governance must be included in the picture.
These are problems which are deleterious to all aspects of men’s lives, including mental health. The mental health industry is a huge part of that problem, not a part of the solution.
A sane alternative to all this must disabuse men, women and society of the following myths:
men belong to a patriarchy and take that model as their life script;
men are emotionally inept;
men are default potential sexual predators;
men are violent and uncaring;
men are not necessary as parents;
men are unable to commit;
men are emotionally unavailable;
men are not as human or deserving as women.
.
The things we do want to include in a new mental health model are:
enhanced understanding of misandry, gynocentrism and their consequences;
recognizing and honoring men’s emotional acumen;
recognizing and combating misandry and gynocentrism in the mental health industry;
professional understanding of the ways men differ from women in how they cope with life;
a prohibition on the practice of expecting men to emulate women’s emotional processes;
an allowance of men’s legitimate anger without infecting them with ideological shame;
the steadfast belief that men’s issues, pain and needs are as important as anyone else’s.
.
These points alone are sufficient to create a revolution in the way we work with men. As a truly new approach to men’s welfare and psychological health, An Ear For Men has been launched and the coming Men’s Mental Health Network will be promoting these principles and providing a range of specialized services from professionals who have been thoroughly vetted in their knowledge of men’s issues, and in their compassion for the same.
References:
[1] Ronald F. Levant, ‘The new psychology of men,’ in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 27(3), Jun 1996, 259-265
[2] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.4, 1997
[3] Ronald F. Levant, Men and Emotions: A psychoeducational approach – course material, Newbridge Publications, p.9, 1997
[4] Ronald F. Levant, William S Pollack, A New Psychology of Men, pp.238-239, 1995
[5] For example, this Finnish study shows that while women were more proficient at verbalizing feelings, men and women were equally proficient at identifying feelings: Salminen, J. K. ‘Prevalence of alexithymia and its association with sociodemographic variables in the general population of Finland,’ Journal of psychosomatic research, vol. 46, no1, pp. 75-82, 1999
In 1835, the publication ‘Democracy in America’ by Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that the uniqueness of the American character, and its material growth, were due principally to female superiority:
And if, now that I am approaching the end of this book, in which I have shown so many considerable things done by the Americans, you asked me to what I think the singular prosperity and growing strength of this people must be principally attributed, I would answer that it is to the superiority of their women.
In 1846, the following article, describing American culture as an epicenter of exaggerated gynocentrism & chivalry, was published in The London Sun:
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 1872 a Japanese visitor expresses amazement at the gynocentric nature of American customs:
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.
In 1887 The Open Court mentions that Continental European view Americans as suffering from gynocentrism rather than male-centeredness:
M. Bois is unstinted in his praise and admiration for the inexhaustible potencies of the fair sex, and reviews their anthropology, or rather, if we may use the word in its literal sense, their gynaecology, less with the eye of the scientist than with the aim of the passionate special pleader [who] hails the advent of the femme-femme. “Woman, before being a wife, a sweetheart, or a mother, is and should be first a woman. Her full freedom must be conserved.”
We Americans have not so much need to take his admonitions to heart as need Continental Europeans, seeing that captious critics are already prone to regard us as suffering rather from gynocentrism than anthropocentrism
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.”
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 Kalgoorlie Newspaper reported the following in 1910:
“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.”
“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.
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.
The following is a journalist’s response to Constance Eaton’s 1929 claim that the sexes have been crafted into social classes – “aristocratic women, and male serfs” :
“THE AMERICAN MALE has always had a tendency to put woman on a pedestal, even if he is not so poetic about it as were the heroes of the age of chivalry. The modern ‘equality of the sexes,’ instead of doing away with this, has only changed its manner of expression. Woman may stand on the same political plane with man, but spiritually he considers her as remote as the stars. Mentally and morally she is supposed to belong to a higher sphere.” At least that it what Constance Eaton, who has been making observations a la Keyserling, Sigfreid, Tolstoi, and others, for readers of The Daily Telegraph of London, believes she has discovered in what she terms America’s sex aristocracy. It makes interesting reading to write that woman is considered mentally superior to man, in America. This may be true of the women, but in my experience I have found few men who held such a view. The burden of Miss Eaton’s thesis is that man earns the money, woman spends it, woman forms the only leisure class, and that woman has spent her life cultivating herself. Man is abject before woman’s superiority.
Article in the Kensington News and West London Times in 1930:
I think it is quite possible that women will eventually occupy a dominant position in the political, business and social life, and to anyone who says that this situation is impossible I would say that America is an excellent example that it is possible. America has been described as a “woman-ridden” country, and we have many means of proving this to be true. For instance, in America, the unofficial women’s clubs, which meet in every town, however small, spend a great deal of time passing resolutions, and doing all sorts of propaganda work which influences political activities in their own towns…. [cont.]
The following instruction video from the Fascinating Womanhood Movement teaches women how to feign neoteny to get their own way with husbands. (1.37 to 2.33):
Group facilitator: Another thing I’d like to talk about is childlikeness, and I surely would like you to tell the class about it Penny.
Penny: I was in the kitchen and he was at the dining room table and he just, y’now, really spouted off at the kids, and my inner teapot was just really bubbling, but I wasn’t really ugly angry, not yet.
So as I walked through the dining room, he’s sitting there and I just mmmmmnnnnr [gestures, pokes her tongue out like a petulant little girl] [Group bursts out laughing], and I turned around and I just beat on his chest [gestures again, moving little hammer-fists up and down like a little girl] and said “You brute. You’ve been so mean to me I just can’t stand you,” and [she smiles] he just put his arms around me and he laughed and he smiled, and everything was just beautiful – the anger was gone.
Group facilitator: In fact girls, if you’ve never tried childlikeness, after you’ve experienced this you’ll wish you had something more to complain about. You’ll really think, ‘I wish he’d do something wrong so I can use it,’ you know! [laughter in the room] It’s beautiful.4
The practice is elaborated in greater depth in the 1965 volume Fascinating Womanhood which gives instruction for women in feigning “childlikeness.” Click on the link below to read an excerpt:
In an earlier piece Chasing The Dragon, we outlined Nikolaas Tinbergen’s concept of the supernormal stimulus (or superstimulus), which he characterized as an exaggerated environmental stimulus to which there is an existing tendency in animals to respond, or a stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.
Tinbergen demonstrated the phenomenon by placing a larger artificial egg in the nest of an oystercatcher bird which lays several eggs and then chooses the largest one to incubate. The bird made fruitless attempts to retrieve the oversized egg and place it in the nest, while neglecting its own real, normal-sized egg. Even though giant eggs never occur in nature, larger eggs are usually healthier so the animal generally improves its genetic success by retrieving a larger egg first. In another experiment, Tinbergen placed a football-sized egg in the nest of a herring gull who showed preference for the grotesquely large egg, even though it was unable to move it into the nest and kept sliding off when attempting to sit on it.
Supernormal stimuli are bigger or more intense than normal in color, shape, texture, or smell; eliciting an abnormally exaggerated response from the animal or human. We referred to that exaggerated response as a superresponse; one that, applied to humans, contributes to the increasing discord, unhappiness and confusion among men and women today. Just like the herring gull we are sliding off the egg in every which way, failing to identify the mechanism behind it.
Humans are wired to respond to superstimuli, having numerous biological tendencies that can be misdirected through the deployment of an artificial stimulus. Even in the beginning, human babies will smile at an oval shape cardboard cut-out with two dark circles where eyes would be, providing one of the earliest examples of the human face as a sign stimulus and a ‘releaser’ of the innate response mechanism.
Think also of the nipple to which a human baby automatically gropes and begins sucking, and of the larger-than-normal plastic pacifier that infants will hungrily suck as an early example of the superstimulus at work. No breast, no milk, indeed no mother but it will pacify just the same. Examples of the phenomenon multiply as humans mature, acquiring as they do a habituated attraction to superstimuli that the modern world is now manufacturing on a scale unprecedented in human history. All of this, we think, forments the kind of unsustainable lunacy that now characterizes human interactions — especially those which are sexual in nature.
Attempts to deconstruct the insanity abound but almost none seem to be making a difference to our relational malaise. While offering some sharp observations, the theorizing from gender studies departments, nutty liberals, politicians, religious conservatives or evolutionary psychologists have done little to explain the root biological mechanisms for the madness, and that’s where supernormal stimuli, and their unhealthy growth in the modern world, might provide a new area of exploration and discussion.
One reason for avoiding discussion of the supernormal stimulus theory may be that people like to rest on more mechanistic, determinist and ultimately reductionist explanations for human behavior, preferring as they do a less manipulable ‘lock-and-key’ explanation. That approach eschews the ramifications of supernormal stimulus that would place more onus on a variable environment and its manipulations in regards to human behavior. Those with a reductive bent might like to fool themselves into believing that infant pacifiers, artificial intelligence, silicone breasts, cosmetics and sexbots have been with is since the Pleistocene, but of course such superstimuli are relatively new to the human species.
Evolutionary Psychologists for example, especially those cherishing a fantasy of ‘traditional gender roles’ to guide and ultimately bias their research, tend to omit the theory of superstimuli from their discourse because it indicates primal urges can and do overrun their evolutionary purpose – eg. pathological displays in even ‘traditional’ gender relations as case in point. The operation of the supernormal stimulus reveals their “normal biological response” of “traditional evolutionary sex roles” to be a pathological perversion, in which case the theory is swiftly overlooked. That move however leaves a lacuna in the theoretical base of Evolutionary Psychology, and its research results may equally suffer.
Dierdre Barrett, author of Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose remarks that many evolutionary concepts have been applied to human behavior either formally in Evolutionary Psychology or have just crossed over into popular conversation. “However the importance of superstimuli” states Barrett, “doesn’t seem to have been fully appreciated in either of those arenas.”1 She states (quote);
Evolutionary Psychology has picked up a lot of Darwin’s ideas, and some ethology ideas which is the Darwinian branch of animal behavior that Tinbergen was a part of. But somehow Evolutionary Psychology never adopted the idea of supernormal stimuli, and I really think that of all the evolutionary concepts it’s the most important and the most directly relevant to human behavior.”2
Independently of Barrett we have been applying the concept to human populations, and with her believe it to be the most important and relevant fact to human behavior today, particularly as it shows in the addict-like behaviors plaguing modern humans and relationships.
Venus of Willendorf, statue exaggerating body and breast stimuli.
While the influence of superstimuli is responsible for a range of destructive and potentially anti-species outcomes, it is not altogether new. Observe for example the Venus of Willendorf whose exaggerated body parts would have elicited a possible superresponse in those who carved and first gazed on her. Think also of the cave paintings in Lascaux with their stylized renditions of animals, or of shaman dressed in animal costumes, not to mention the ritual enactments of animal behaviors in traditional cultures who routinely adorned themselves with animal skins or feathers and engaged in theatric play that would have acted as supernormal stimuli inducing longing, wonder, fear or hunger in the audience.
Mythology itself has been suggested as a form of supernormal stimuli, a position forwarded by the late Joseph Campbell in his Masks of God series. There he states:
There is a phenomenon known to the students of animal behavior as the “supernormal sign stimulus,” which has never been considered, as far as I know, in relation either to art and poetry or to myth; yet which, in the end, may be our surest guide to the seat of their force…
Within the field of the study of animal behavior— which is the only area in which controlled experiments have made it possible to arrive at dependable conclusions in the observation of instinct—two orders of innate releasing mechanisms have been identified, namely, the stereotyped, and the open, subject to imprint. In the case of the first, a precise lock-key relationship exists between the inner readiness of the nervous system and the external sign stimulus triggering response; so that, if there exist in the human inheritance many—or even any—IRMs of this order, we may justly speak of “inherited images” in the psyche.
The mere fact that no one can yet explain how such lock-key relationships are established does not invalidate the observation of their existence: no one knows how the hawk got into the nervous system of our barnyard fowl, yet numerous tests have shown it to be, de facto, there. However, the human psyche has not yet been, to any great extent, satisfactorily tested for such stereotypes, and so, I am afraid, pending further study, we must simply admit that we do not know how far the principle of the [stereotyped] inherited image can be carried when interpreting mythological universals…
A functioning mythology can be defined as a corpus of culturally maintained sign stimuli fostering the development and activation of a specific type… of human life. Furthermore, since we now know that no images have been established unquestionably as innate — that our Innate Releasing Mechanisms are not stereotyped but open — whatever “universals” we may find in our comparative study must be assigned rather to common experience than to endowment; while, on the other hand, even where sign stimuli may differ, it need not follow that the responding Innate Releasing Mechanisms differ too. 3
As detailed in Chasing The Dragon, nascent experimentation with superstimuli by our remote ancestors slowly increased from stone carvings, shaman costumes and mythological imagery, and went into overdrive in the Middle Ages with the birth of mass-produced cosmetics, the fashion industry, romantic love tropes, and the invention of the printing press. That revolution has been furthered by the invention of plastic surgery and the harnessing of electricity with its mediums of cinema, radio, television, internet, cellphone and the gaming console; all serving the superstimuli trends of the culture in which they were born.
In Chasing The Dragon we reviewed three domains of human instinct that have been hypnotized by the creation of superstimuli. Briefly reviewed as follows these are:
1. Neoteny and the parental instinct
While there are notable exceptions, adult women are not generally endowed with neotenous features sufficient to provoke men to find them cute in the way of a small child. Artifice however makes up for it by allowing women to imitate the features of children through the application of cosmetics or cultivation of childish gestures, with the ultimate aim of shirking responsibility and being cared for by a man and society with the least amount of effort on her part. Naturally such a routine robs her of agency, parentifies the man, and becomes a drag on relationships.
The following excerpt from a Fascinating Womanhood Movement class for women provides an example of how this biological ruse, essentially a feigned neoteny, is a result of cultural learning (1.37 to 2.33):
Group facilitator: Another thing I’d like to talk about is childlikeness, and I surely would like you to tell the class about it Penny.
Penny: I was in the kitchen and he was at the dining room table and he just, y’now, really spouted off at the kids, and my inner teapot was just really bubbling, but I wasn’t really ugly angry, not yet.
So as I walked through the dining room, he’s sitting there and I just mmmmmnnnnr [gestures, pokes her tongue out like a petulant little girl] [Group bursts out laughing], and I turned around and I just beat on his chest [gestures again, moving little hammer-fists up and down like a little girl] and said “You brute. You’ve been so mean to me I just can’t stand you,” and [she smiles] he just put his arms around me and he laughed and he smiled, and everything was just beautiful – the anger was gone.
Group facilitator: In fact girls, if you’ve never tried childlikeness, after you’ve experienced this you’ll wish you had something more to complain about. You’ll really think, ‘I wish he’d do something wrong so I can use it,’ you know! [laughter in the room] It’s beautiful.4
The instruction for women to feign childlikeness is now endemic in the Western world, which may account at least partially for the tradition of ‘women and children first’ – a statement that captures not only that women look after children, but that they themselves are children in need of saving – in which sense the phrase might be more accurately rendered as ‘Children and children first.’
2. Sexual stimuli and sexual arousal
We regularly hear hand-wringing about the increase in skimpy, sexualized clothing among women and even young girls, along with the booming trend in tummy tucks, butt implants, botox injections, lip augmentation and boob jobs. We are told that women become overly reliant of these powerful methods of superstimulating men’s sexuality, and we are equally told that this makes sex like a powerful drug and leads to sex addiction. In a sense they are not completely wrong – the supersizing of sexual phenomena do result in an addiction-like intensity or what we have called the superresponse.
Many men and MGTOW have said NO to the exploitative potential that comes with female use of superstimuli, men who ironically opt out of relationships with real women in favor of more superstimuli in the form of internet porn and neotenous sexbots – superstimuli over which they secure full control. While a certain degree of superstimuli may prove healthy in catering to one’s sexual needs, it is up to each man to determine whether the stimuli are catering to a healthy expression of needs, or into an overly intense superstimulus and unhealthy superresponse.
3. Pairbonding – secure and insecure
In the pre medieval period simple courtship practices and arranged marriages ruled, leaving little room for the supernormal exaggerations of attachment security that we see in practice today. Modern rules for pairbonding are encapsulated in the notion of romantic love, which unfortunately turns out to be a cornucopia of destructive superstimuli. Romantic love is geared to fostering an extreme tension between feelings of possessing and losing a pairbond. It relies on an oscillation between secure and insecure attachment that generates a supernormal intensity of lovers’ feelings for each other, with the downside of inner turmoil and insecurity that feeds relational dysfunction and not infrequently psychological illnesses.
The poets are not lying when they say love is like a roller-coaster ride.
Frank Tallis’ book Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness elaborates on the kind of pathologies that come hand-in-hand with the romantic-love based approach to pairbonding. From the blurb on Tallis book we read;
Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate — that exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.5
Tallis traces the sickness-making version of pairbonding to its origin in the middle ages, and rightly suggests there are less tortured ways to love. Humans have loved less tortuously in the long past, and we might hope it’s possible to relate that way again in the stability and simplicity of a secure attachment. To love in that way however requires a slaying the dragon; finding alternative modes of pairbonding to those we’ve been duped into following.
_______________
Recognition of supernormal stimuli and their proliferation in the modern world answers the Why question, which leads us naturally to the question of What – what can we do to manage this biological and cultural travesty? As concluded in our previous article we can begin by recognizing we’ve been hypnotized by a stage show of sound and light, and deciding that we no longer wish to indulge it. As we suggested there it’s as simple as choosing not to chase the dragon, but to slay it. In essence we can say the dragon represents our unmoderated appetite, given freely and stupidly over to the snares of superstimili, and our thus-far untapped discernment and discipline can serve as the sword of redress.
Slaying of the dragon demands we employ our substantial neocortexes which are designed for overriding primitive impulses that lead us willy nilly into pain and injury. With that we can construct a defensive, self-protective approach toward the activities and the people we might choose to associate with, activating the traditional values of restraint, delayed gratification, conservation and self-protection against the arrival of superstimuli in our field of vision.
Think of it this way. By overriding our knee-jerk attraction to the false neoteny created by women’s makeup and sexually exaggerated dress, we build in a defense against gynocentric obedience as well as a protective measure for screening out personality disordered women from our lives. That is one application of many.
By that path we find a way forward, but also strangely a way back – back to the protective values of past cultures; to Buddhist teachings about pleasure as an illusion and potential suffering; to the Christian teachings of the Seven Deadly Sins and how to resist them; or to the messages of classical myth which invite us to hold fast to our values like Odysseus who tied himself to the ship’s mast in order to resist the Siren’s call, knowing that all the boons of Penelope await him at Ithaca as a result of his intelligent avoidance of gratification.
The article is interesting for a number of reasons, among them being that European ‘white woman feminism’ (WWF) is being called out for the farce that it is, and secondly those WoCs calling it out are reducing it to its knees.
While its true that women cry far more often and more easily than the average man – a biological fact examined by several research articles – there is no doubt that European white women have leveraged the crying game through the intricate culture of damseling that has made people hypersensitive to white women’s tears. An Arab woman cries? who cares. A black woman cries? meh. A white woman cries? – Quick call an ambulance!!
Hamad refers to this anomaly as the weaponising of white women’s tears, and adds;
As I look back over my adult life a pattern emerges. Often, when I have attempted to speak to or confront a white woman about something she has said or done that has impacted me adversely, I am met with tearful denials and indignant accusations that I am hurting her. My confidence diminished and second-guessing myself, I either flare up in frustration at not being heard (which only seems to prove her point) or I back down immediately, apologising and consoling the very person causing me harm.
It is not weakness or guilt that compels me to capitulate. Rather, as I recently wrote, it is the manufactured reputation Arabs have for being threatening and aggressive that follows us everywhere. In a society that routinely places imaginary “wide-eyed, angry and Middle Eastern” people at the scenes of violent crimes they did not commit, having a legitimate grievance is no match for the strategic tears of a white damsel in distress whose innocence is taken for granted.
Feminist women of every skin color share a belief in the existence of an oppressive patriarchy, female victimization at its hands, and the need to increase the power of women in every imaginable way. That mandate is enough to raise my resistance to each and every feminist pitch regardless of skin color – including by supposedly male-friendly feminists like Christina Hoff-Sommers and Camille Paglia who would institute a feminist utopia based on traditional male chivalry, their imagined golden era of the past that third wave feminists have supposedly undermined.
Added to those core beliefs, the cultural background of feminists often gives their behaviour a different accent or twist. I find myself agreeing with WoC feminists that white women have culture values embedded in their feminist project that render it, shall we say, different. This difference is why WWF has been accurately described as victim feminism, safe space feminism, and even fainting-couch feminism – a kind of battle between fragile maidens and those who would hurt them.
To be specific, white western feminists have their cultural roots in the European practices of damseling, chivalry and courtly love, practices that many WoC like Arabs, Asians and Africans do not. White Western feminists lean on European tropes to gain advantage over their WoC sisters, including the belief in (white) women’s moral superiority, extreme vulnerability and fragility, and the need for a protective chivalry that can be assumed or otherwise elicited with a few well-timed tears. The elements of the trope are used to foster an aristocrat-like status of white Western feminists, which is evidenced in their appeals to “dignity” “respect” “status” and “esteem” etc. – words usually reserved for dignitaries.
The cultural conventions that enable such behaviour closely resemble the sexual fetish of Subs to Doms, as seen in the European practice of a man going down on one knee to propose to a White Lady. That servile attitude has traditionally been expected of feminist WoC who have likewise been expected to go down on a metaphorical knee, so to speak, before their white women feminist betters. But WoC feminists are having none of it today – they are done with taking runner-up prize in the Oppression Olympics.
The fact that WoC want none of it is a death sentence for their own brand of feminism, for without the European customs mentioned above feminism simply cannot be; it absolutely requires damseling and a supportive culture of male chivalry in order to survive. That’s what has made WW feminism the one and only kind of feminism, ensuring its life and longevity, and without adopting elements of the European trope WoC feminism is dead in the water. At best WoC feminists could expect to get some platform for the simple act of attacking their well heeled and pedestalized sisters, but little more.
To be sure the dividing of WoC and WW feminisms is somewhat superficial, for despite their denials many WoC have already adopted some WW European practices, especially African American feminists, and wield them every bit as much as their ivory sisters.
Back to the question of crying, I believe the author has a mild case, if simply articulated, for the unique ways culture entwines itself with the tears of white Western feminists. That unique European brand has sometimes been referred to as ‘Anglosphere feminism’ – it is not something you will find in China, Iran or Sudan for example.
A feminist takes a well-earned break from being empathetic to men in pain.
White feminists have been busy drinking male tears for years, and they may find the prospect of WoC feminists drinking their tears somewhat disconcerting – and hopefully a reminder of just how badly they’ve been treating their menfolk. Judging by the current trajectory that’s exactly what will happen, or rather is happening – a callous disregard for white women and their issues by WoC. The result is that WW feminists are finding out their hands are tied in some of the same ways that men’s hands are tied based on the formula that perceived privilege = gag orders.
How do WW feminists and women feel to be in the same pit with white Western men? Will they take comfort from the usual ‘suck it up’ mantra reserved for Western males? Whatever their next moves its clear that European white women’s damseling and status-seeking has reached the teleological end of its evolution, called out by none other than women of color.
The following by Charles Mills (1825) documents interaction between men and women at the first sports tournaments, a tradition from which we derive much of the structure and symbolism of today’s sporting tournaments. Have we moderns lost some of the gynocentrism of the early sports tournaments, or have we added to it? You be the judge. – PW
Ladies were judges of the tournament
The ladies were the supreme judges of tournaments, and if any complaint was raised against a knight, they adjudged the cause without appeal. Generally, however, they deputed their power to a knight, who, on account of this distinction, was called the Knight of Honour. He bore at the end of his lance a ribbon or some other sign of woman’s favour, and with this badge of power he waved the fiercest knights into order and obedience.
The heralds read to the knights the regulations of the sport, and announced the nature of the prize they were to contend for. The dames and maidens sometimes proposed jewels of price, a diamond, a ruby, and a sapphire, as rewards of valour. But the meed of renown was often more military, and the reader of Italian history remembers that at a tournament celebrated at Florence in the year 1468, Lorenzo de’ Medici bore away the prize of a helmet of silver with a figure of Mars as the crest. It was the general wont of tournaments for a vanquished knight to forfeit his armour and horse to his victor.
Knights were led by ladies
The knights then trooped to the listed a plain, with lords, ladies, and damsels, the chivalry and beauty of the country, mounted on gaily-caparisoned steeds and palfreys, whose housings swept the ground. Sometimes a lady fair led the horse of her chosen knight, and in the song of the minstrel the bridle became a golden chain of love. At the day appointed for a merry tournament, in the reign of Richard II., there issued out of the Tower of London, first, three-score coursers, apparelled for the lists, and on every one a squire of honour riding a soft pace.
Then appeared three-score ladies of honour; mounted on fair palfreys, each lady leading by a chain of silver a knight sheathed in jousting harness. The fair and gallant troop, with the sound of clarions, trumpets, and other minstrelsy, rode along the streets of London, the fronts of the houses shining with martial glory in the rich banners and tapestries which hung from the windows. They reached Smithfield where the Queen of England and many matrons and damsels were already seated in richly adorned galleries. The ladies that led the knights joined them; the squires of honour alighted from their coursers, and the knights in good order vaulted upon them.
Knights wore ladies’ favours, who imitated the dress of knights
The tilting armour in which knights were sheathed was generally of a light fabric, and splendid. Its ornaments came under a gentler authority than that of royal constables and marshals. If the iron front of a line of cavaliers in the battle-field was frequently- gemmed with the variously coloured signs of ladies’ favors, those graceful additions to armour yet more beseemed the tournament. Damsels were wont to surmount the helmets of their knights with chaplets, or to affix streamers to their spears, and a cavalier who was thus honoured smiled with self-complacency on the highly emblazoned surcoat of his rival in chivalry.
The desire to please ladies fair formed the very soul of the tournament. Every young and gallant knight wore the device of his mistress, while, indeed, the hardier sons of chivalry carried fiercer signs of their own achievements but they were unmarked by the bright judges of the tourney, for their eyes could only follow through the press their own emblems of love. Nothing was now to be heard but the noise and clattering of horse and armour.
Knights thanked by ladies
Every preux cavalier had by his side a lady bright. The minstrels tuned their harps to the praise of courtesy and prowess, and when the merriment was most joyous, the heralds presented to the ladies the knights who had worthily demeaned themselves. She, who by the consent at her fail companions was called La Royne de la Beaulte et des Amours, delivered the prizes to the kneeling knights. This queen of beauty and love addressed each of them with a speech of courtesy, thanking him for the disport and labour which he had taken that day, presenting to him the prize as the ladies’ award for his skill, and concluding with the wish that such a valorous cavalier would have much joy and worship with his lady.
“The victory was entirely owing to the favor of my mistress, which I wore in my helmet,” was the gallant reply of the knight, for he was always solicitous to exalt the honor of his lady-love. As tournaments were scenes of pleasure, the knight who appeared in the most handsome guise was praised and, to complete the courtesies of chivalry, thanks were rendered to those who had travelled to the lists from far countries.
The following excerpt is from the 1825 classic The History of Chivalry Or Knighthood and Its Times, by Charles Mills. Like many historical articles it shows that chivalry came to be about much more than military conduct, becoming conflated as it were with deferent and servile behaviour toward women – as it does to this day. The following describes the process whereby young boys were inducted into the cult of chivalry.
* * *
The education of a knight generally commenced at the age of seven or eight years, for no true lover of chivalry wished his children to pass their time in idleness and indulgence.
At a baronial feast, a lady in the full glow of maternal pride pointed to her offspring, and demanded of her husband whether he did not bless Heaven for having given him four such fine and promising boys. “Dame,” replied her lord, thinking her observation ill timed and foolish, ” so help me God and Saint Martin, nothing gives me greater sorrow and shame than to see four great sluggards, who do nothing but eat, and drink, and waste their time in idleness and folly.” Like other children of gentlebirth, therefore, the boys of this noble Duke Guerin of Montglaive, in spite of their mother’s wishes, commenced their chivalric exercises.
In some places there were schools appointed by the nobles of the country, but most frequently their own castles served. Every feudal lord had his court, to which he drew the sons and daughters of the poorer gentry of his domains ; and his castle was also frequented by the children of men of equal rank with himself, for (such was the modesty and courtesy of chivalry) each knight had generally some brother in arms, whom he thought better fitted than himself to grace his children with noble accomplishments.
The duties of the boy for the first seven years of his service were chiefly personal. If sometimes the harsh principles of feudal subordination gave rise to such service, it oftener proceeded from the friendly relations of life; and as in the latter case it was voluntary, there was no loss of honourable consideration in performing it. The dignity of obedience, that principle which blends the various shades of social life, and which had its origin in the patriarchal manners of early Europe, was now fostered in the castles of the feudal nobility.
The light-footed youth attended the lord and his lady in the hall, and followed them in all their exercises of war and pleasure ; and it was considered unknightly for a cavalier to wound a page in battle. He also acquired the rudiments of those incongruous subjects, religion, love, and war, so strangely blended in chivalry ; and generally the intellectual and moral education of the boy was given by the ladies of the court.
“Generally the intellectual and moral education of the boy was given by the ladies of the court.”
From the lips of the ladies the gentle page learned both his catechism and the art of love, and as the religion of the day was full of symbols, and addressed to the senses, so the other feature of his devotion was not to be nourished by abstract contemplation alone. He was directed to regard some one lady of the court as the type of his heart’s future mistress ; she was the centre of all his hopes and wishes ; to her he was obedient, faithful, and courteous.
While the young Jean de Saintre was a page of honour at the court of the French king, the Dame des Belles Cousines enquired of him the name of the mistress of his heart’s affections. The simple youth replied, that he loved his lady mother, and next to her, his sister Jacqueline was dear to him. “Young man,” rejoined the lady, “I am not speaking of the affection due to your mother and sister ; but I wish to know the name of the lady to whom you are attached par amours.” The poor boy was still more confused, and he could only reply, that he loved no one par amours.
The Dame des Belles Cousines charged him with being a traitor to the laws of chivalry, and declared that his craven spirit was evinced by such an avowal. ” Whence,” she enquired, “sprang the valiancy and knightly feats of Launcelot, Gawain, Tristram, Giron the courteous, and other ornaments of the round fable of Ponthus, and of those knights and squires of this country whom I could enumerate : whence the grandeur of many whom I have. known to arise to renown, except from the noble desire of maintaining themselves in the grace and esteem of the ladies ; without which spirit-stirring sentiment they must have ever remained in the shades of obscurity? And do you, coward valet, presume to declare that you possess no sovereign lady, and desire to have none ?”
Jean underwent a long scene of persecution on account of his confession of the want of proper chivalric sentiment, but he was at length restored to favour by the intercession of the ladies of the court. He then named as his mistress Matheline de Coucy, a child only ten years old. “Matheline is indeed a pretty girl,” replied the Dame des Belles Cousines, “but what profit, what honour, what comfort, what aid, what council for advancing you in chivalrous fame can you derive from such a choice? You should elect a lady of noble blood, who has the ability to advise, and the power to assist you ; and you should serve her so truly, and love her so loyally, as to compel her to acknowledge the honourable affection which you entertain for her. For, be assured, that there is no lady, however cruel and haughty she may be, but through long service, will be induced to acknowledge and reward loyal affection with some portion of mercy.
By such a course you will gain the praise of worthy knighthood, and till then I would not give an apple for you or your achievements but he who loyally serves his lady will not only be blessed to the height of man’s felicity in this life, but will never fall into those sins which will prevent his happiness hereafter. Pride will be entirely effaced until the heart of him who endeavours by humility and courtesy to win the grace of a lady. The true faith of a lover will defend him from the other deadly sins of anger, envy, sloth, and gluttony ; and his devotion to his mistress renders the thought impossible of his conduct ever being stained with the vice of incontinence.”
When Marxist activist Rudi Dutschke looked at ways to stage a neo-Marxist revolution he hit on the plan of “a long march through the institutions of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.” His strategy was to work against the established institutions while working surreptitiously within them. Evidence of the attempt to implement his plan can be seen today through many levels of society – especially in universities.
Marxists however are not the only ones to use this strategy. In fact when we look at the numerous political forces attempting to infiltrate and influence our cultural institutions we see that another, much more influential candidate, has twisted its tendrils through every layer of society – and it existed long before Marx and Marxism were born. That force is political feminism,1 whose culture project has been in play now for several hundred years.
Protofeminists like Lucrezia Marinella, Mary Wollstoncraft, Margaret Cavendish, Modesta Pozzo, or Christine de Pizan were advocating a ‘long march’ through institutions for centuries before Marxism emerged and began its tragic experiment. Pizan’s main book for example titled A City of Ladies sketched an imaginary city whose institutions were controlled completely by women, and each of the protofeminists advanced some theory of female rule or ‘integration’ of women into governing institutions. Later feminists followed suit, such as Charlotte Perkins Gillman wrote the famed book HerLand (1915) envisioning a society run entirely by women who reproduce by parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction), resulting in an ideal (utopic) social order free from war, conflict, and male domination.
A survey of protofeminist writings reveals consistent advocacy for the superior abilities of women as functionaries: women’s greater compassion, virtue, nonviolence, intelligence, patience, superior morality and so on, combined with a concomitant descriptions of male destructiveness, insensitivity and inferiority as we see continued in the rhetoric of modern feminists.
Via that polarizing narrative feminists sought to grab not just a big slice of the governance pie; as contemporary feminists have shown they would stop at nothing but the whole pie. Nothing but complete dominance of the gendered landscape would satisfy their lust for control, and it appears they have succeeded.
We see that dominance in women’s occupation of pivotal bureaucratic positions throughout the world, from the UN and World Bank all the way down through national governments, schools and universities, and HR departments in most medium to large workplaces. Feminists not only govern the world via these roles, but as surveyed in Janet Halley’s recent book Governance Feminism: An Introduction, that governance is far from the utopia early feminist promised.
The long feminist tradition underlines the danger of viewing ‘the march through the institutions’ as a Cultural Marxism project, because it deflects us from the historically longer, more powerful, more dangerous and ultimately more successful project that is political feminism.
Moreover, the protagonists of Marxist and feminist worldviews are not one and the same; the former aims to dismantle social-class oppression, and the latter gender oppression. While there are some individuals working to amalgamate these two contrary theories into a hybrid of Frankenstein proportions, their basic theoretical aims remain distinct.
Like Marxism, feminism too can be imagined as a socio-political ideology, in this case modelling itself on a medieval feudalism which was structured with two social classes: 1. A noble class of aristocrats, priests, princes and princesses, and 2. a peasant class of serfs and slaves overseen by indentured vassals.
Stripped of its medieval context we see the purveyors of political feminism working to institute a new sex-stratified version of feudalism which serves to maximize the power of women. With this move we have seen an increased tendency to emphasize women’s “power,” “dignity,” “honor,” “esteem” and “respect” – descriptors historically reserved for dignitaries.
As in medieval times, the assets and wealth generated by the labour class – predominately men – are taxed and redistributed to the new quasi-aristocratic class via a plethora of social spending programs of governments, or alternatively via asset transfers like alimony, child support, divorce settlements and other court mandated conventions. Children themselves form part of that asset portfolio which men are often forced to relinquish to women in the event of divorce. In the face of such practices men are reminded that women’s “dignity” is very much at stake, and their acquiescence mandatory.
The push to establish a female aristocratic class has long been recognized, as mentioned by the following writer from more than a century ago (1896), who in his ‘Letter To The editor’ observed the granting of unequal social privileges to female prisoners;
“A paragraph in your issue of the week before last stated that oakum-picking as a prison task had been abolished for women and the amusement of dressing dolls substituted. This is an interesting illustration of the way we are going at present, and gives cause to some reflection as to the rate at which a sex aristocracy is being established in our midst. While the inhumanity of our English prison system, in so far as it affects men, stands out as a disgrace to the age in the eyes of all Europe, houses of correction for female convicts are being converted into agreeable boudoirs and pleasant lounges…
I am personally in favour of the abolition of corporal punishment, as I am of existing prison inhumanities, for both sexes, but the snivelling sentiment which exempts females on the ground of sex from every disagreeable consequence of their actions, only strengthens on the one side every abuse which it touches on the other. Yet we are continuously having the din of the “women’s rights” agitation in our ears. I think it is time we gave a little attention to men’s rights, and equality between the sexes from the male point of view.–YoursYours, &c.,, A MANLY PROTESTOR,”2
Another comes from a 1910 Kalgoorlie Miner which reported a push to set up a female aristocracy in America. It was entitled The New Aristocracy:
A question of deep human interest has been raised by The Independent.
“To be successful in the cultivation of culture a country must have a leisure class,” says the editor. “We Americans recognise this fact, but we are going about the getting of this leisure class in a new way.
“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.”3
Lastly a comment from Adam Kostakis who gives an eloquent summary of feminism’s preference for a neo-feudal society in his Gynocentrism Theory Lectures:
“It would not be inappropriate to call such a system sexual feudalism, and every time I read a feminist article, this is the impression that I get: that they aim to construct a new aristocracy, comprised only of women, while men stand at the gate, till in the fields, fight in their armies, and grovel at their feet for starvation wages. All feminist innovation and legislation creates new rights for women and new duties for men; thus it tends towards the creation of a male underclass.”4
By many accounts what we’ve achieved today under feminist modelling is the establishment of a neo-feudal society with women representing an aristocratic class and men the labour class of serfs, slaves and peasants who too often spend their lives looking up from the proverbial glass cellar. When men do rule, it is usually not with a life “free of drudgery” as mentioned above, but with hard-work as CEOs, executives and prime ministers in service of the ruling female class who are busy with little more than lifting their lattes.
This gendered enterprise is now several hundred years in the making, enjoying further consolidations with every passing year of feminist governance. That a widespread female aristocracy now exists is undeniable, at least in the Western world, although we remain reluctant to name it as such for fear of offending our moral betters. We can only hope that the recent petition to abolish the House of Lords becomes infectious and begins to tackle the unearned privileges of those new aristocrats who serve nobody but themselves.