Author: Peter Wright

‘Biological Gynocentrism’ : A Beloved Feminist Fiction

/ Peter Wright / Leave a comment

Lester F. Ward (1841-1913), a scholar of biological and sociological disciplines, was a passionate advocate for first wave feminism and “women’s liberation.” Just like today’s difference feminists he spoke about biological differences between the sexes, and theorized that women were the more superior sex due to evolutionary and reproductive value.

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s the same gynocentrism theory is promoted in the manosphere.

Ward is celebrated as a pioneering male feminist by historian Ann Taylor Allen,1 and Michael Kimmel classifies him as a feminist sociologist.2 And its not only today’s feminists who celebrate his theory: All three waves championed his, or similar gynocentric theories as a triumph of scientific truth and of women’s deserved special treatment.

Protestors may say that feminists have never believed in biology, that they’ve always championed the blank slate theory. Feminists, however, have consistently proven to be opportunists who sometimes deny biology, and then very often appeal to it. For example feminists love to bring attention to biological facts like women’s vulnerability due to smaller size, pregnancy, lactation, menstruation, etc. – not to mention many of the first feminists championed biological gynocentrism (actually using that word) as an appeal for men to pedestalize them.

Lester Ward delivered his famous “Gynæcocentrism Theory” speech to an enthusiastic group of 1st wave feminists in the year 1888  – including Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Phoebe Couzins, and many others well known.3 The title of the speech was Our Better Halves, and consisted of an elaborate claim that women were biologically superior to males due to their evolutionary and reproductive roles, and thus women were more important than males who were described as mere helpers in the evolutionary scheme.

Ward’s feminist audience rejoiced in his deductions because they seemed to prove the claim of women’s preeminence at a time when the proposal was doubted. According to historian Cynthia Davis, the lending of scientific theory to claims of female superiority “led conservatives to identify Darwin as modern feminism’s ‘originator,’ and Ward as its ‘prophet.”4

First wave feminist Charlotte Perkins-Gilman (1860 – 1935) claimed that Ward’s theory of gynocentrism was the most important contribution to ‘the woman question’ ever made.4,5 Commenting on Ward’s theory to doubters, Gilman wrote “You’ll have to swallow it. The female is the race type; the male is her assistant. It is established beyond peradventure.”6  While continuing to laud Ward’s gynocentrism theory as a brilliant contribution, she expanded on it by suggesting that women were more evolutionarily advanced than men, and that women were continuing to advance at a faster rate than men.4

In his 1903 book Pure Sociology,7 Ward published a more lengthy chapter explaining his gynæcocentric theory. His theory travelled around the world and fomented feverish debates, as can be seen from this sample of articles published at the time:

Furthermore, Ward’s gynæcocentrism theory was championed by Marxists as a scientific basis for elevation of women’s rights, as shown in the following article published in Justice, 1909, which reads “Why the statement of these theories is of such immense importance to Socialists is that the gynæcocentric theory is a striking corroboration of the correctness of the Marxian interpretation that the economic independence of women will be one of the most important phases of the Social Revolution.”

After pinning down the origin of this theory, a question arises; Do we really want to keep promoting these feminist-inspired theories today? Whatever the merits of Ward’s biological basis for gynocentrism (well there’s no merit, actually), it has since flourished both in feminist circles and, sometimes, in men’s activist conceptions of the way human evolution works: i.e., we are a hopelessly gynocentric species and we need to get used to it.

Feminists probably like this 135 year old narrative, and they of course have led the way to its institutionalization in the canon of modern ideas. From my observations, those most invested in a gynocentric lifestyle, whether they be men or women, are likely to be the strongest champions of this pseudo-theory today.

For anyone wanting to check the scientific veracity of biological-gynocentrism theories, I can think of no better corpus than that of Peter Ryan; a researcher educated in molecular biology who has debunked all of the usual “scientific” appeals to gynocentrism as amounting to pseudoscience. You can read his article on Ward’s gynocentrism theory here, and his entire series of articles here.

While human relationships and the wider culture can indeed be tilted in a gynocentric direction, this need not be understood as a necessary evolutionary norm. The gynocentrism we witness today can be understood as a maladaptive behaviour resulting from novel cultural forces playing on our biological potentials. Those novel forces act in a similar way to a cellphone in a plane which is why we switch phones to flight mode – nobody wants a corrupted flight program nor any of the novel reactions that would come with it. The plane is definitely not programmed to do spinning cartwheels due to someone’s cellphone interfering, but the existing program has potential to be corrupted to produce that outcome. So likewise, the claim that gynocentrism is hardwired in us as a “natural instinct” may be better understood as a corrupting set of forces playing on our biological mechanisms to generate pathological, maladaptive reactions.

This problem has been succinctly summarized by Hannah Wallen’s concept of the ‘Natural Gynocentrism Fallacy,‘ which refers to the belief that sexually mature women are the most important unit within the human species due to the role they play in reproduction – ie. it is a belief in which women are assumed to be more valuable to human society, and to human relationships, than are men, children and even the perpetuation of one’s genes. A corollary assumption is that women’s lives and wants should be prioritized over those of men and children.

The natural gynocentrism fallacy, according to Wallen, involves a denial of the fact that all adult humans, including women, are child-centric, gene-centric, and utilitarian toward that end. Thus the hypothesis that humans are a ‘gynocentric species’ amounts to a denial of women’s evolutionary value as an instrument of the child’s creation and protection, i.e., not because her gender is valued per se outside this utilitarian function. Wallen summarizes that gynocentrism is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, is not inevitable, and is something that can be corrected. She states that historical gynocentric attitudes that have been treated as “natural,” and thus as the reason why gynocentrism could never be eliminated, are false.

With the knowledge that biological theories of gynocentrism began with first wave feminists, this should at least prompt us to review the assumptions we’ve picked up regarding humans being a gynocentric species. We can at least question the validity of this longstanding feminist dogma, no matter which side of the equation we ultimately fall.

References:

[1] Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914

[2] Kimmel, M. S., & Mahler, M. (2007). Classical sociological theory. New York:: Oxford University Press

[3] Ward, L. F. Our Better Halves.

[4] Davis, C. (2010). Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Biography. Stanford University Press.

[5] Gilman, C. P. (1911). The Man-Made World; or. Our Androcentric Culture.

[6] Gilman, C. P. (1911). Moving the Mountain. Charlton Company.

[7] Ward, L. F. (1903). Pure sociology: A treatise on the origin and spontaneous development of society. Macmillan Company.

SEE ALSO:  “Humans are a gynocentric species” is pure myth

Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology – Part 2

/ Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following paper was first published in July 2023 in New Male Studies Journal and is republished with permission.

_____________________________

NEW MALE STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ~ ISSN 1839-7816 ~ Vol 12, Issue 1, 2023, Pp. 29–44 © 2023
AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MALE HEALTH AND STUDIES

Narcissism Exaggerates Baseline Hypergamy

/ Peter Wright / 7 Comments

Many commentators have described pronounced hypergamous behaviors among modern women.  While some observers pose reasonable evolutionary hypotheses for such behavior, there may be another cause at work – narcissism.

Society’s encouragement of men as the chivalric sex in service to women as a pedestalized sex, has generated a degree of narcissism among women in recent times. Acquired Situational Narcissism is a psychological mindset arising with any acquired social status, e.g., academic experts, politicians, pop singers, actors – or in this case women who, in modern society, are taught that they possess high worth, dignity, value, purity, status, reputation and esteem in the context of their relationships with men. This psychological disposition in women promotes exaggerated self-enhancement behaviours beyond what evolutionary models of hypergamy would require.

Among high narcissistic individuals, studies have found higher incidence of hypergamous behavior, indicating that hypergamy is not unleashed by a culture of sexual liberation alone; it may also be the result of an acquired social class narcissism that says “I deserve.”

Excerpts from narcissism studies:

A third strand of evidence concerns narcissists’ relationship choices. Because humans are a social species, relationship choices are an important feature of situation selection. Narcissists are more likely to choose relationships that elevate their status over relationships that cultivate affiliation. For example, narcissists are keener on gaining new partners than on establishing close relationships with existing ones (Wurst et al., 2017). They often demonstrate an increased preference for high-status friends (Jonason & Schmitt, 2012) and trophy partners (Campbell, 1999), perhaps because they can bask in the reflected glory of these people. In sum, narcissists are more likely to select social environments that allow them to display their performances publicly, ideally in competition with others. These settings are potentially more accepting and reinforcing of narcissistic status strivings.

Source: The “Why” and “How” of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit1

Consistent with the self-orientation model, Study 5 provided an empirical demonstration of the mediational role of self enhancement in narcissists’ preference for perfect rather than caring romantic partners. Furthermore, these potential romantic partners were more likely to be seen as a source of self-esteem to the extent that they provided the narcissist with a sense of popularity and importance (i.e., social status). Narcissists’ preference for romantic partners reflects a strategy for interpersonal self-esteem regulation. Narcissists also were attracted to self-oriented romantic partners to the extent that these others were viewed as similar. The mediational roles of self-enhancement and similarity were independent. That is, narcissists’ romantic preferences were driven both by a desire to gain self-esteem and a desire to associate with similar others.

Source: Narcissism and romantic attraction2

Narcissism has been linked with the materialistic pursuit of wealth and symbols that convey high status (Kasser, 2002; Rose, 2007). This quest for status extends to relationship partners. Narcissists seek romantic partners who offer self- enhancement value either as sources of fawning admiration, or as human trophies (e.g., by possessing impressive wealth or exceptional physical beauty) (Campbell, 1999; Tanchotsrinon, Maneesri, & Campbell, 2007)

Source: The Handbook of Narcissism And Narcissistic Personality Disorders3

Dozens more quotations could be added, however the point is obvious: self-enhancement strategies of both narcissism and hypergamy share overlapping features.

The rise of narcissistic behavior among women is receiving increased attention from academia, particularly with the addition of new variants to the lexicon such as communal narcissism, and vulnerable narcissism, which are considered female dominated modes of expressing narcissism. A more in-depth survey of narcissism variants among women, and their implications can be read here.

Hypergamy, as an innate motivation, doesn’t require a woman to overestimate her own attractiveness and desirability as she seeks to secure high resource/status males. Narcissism, on the contrary, does entail an overestimation by women of their own attractiveness & desirability as they seek to secure high resource/status males.

To discover which of hypergamy/narcissism is at play, one might simply ask a woman to rate her own attractiveness. If she strongly overrates herself, then her mating-up is likely driven by narcissism and is maladaptive. If she rates herself honestly, then her desire to mate up is more likely driven by an adaptive hypergamy. Mating-up today appears largely driven by maladaptive narcissism; and excusing it as “natural” and “adaptive” serves to compound and increase that same culturally-driven narcissism.

A note on terminology:

Sigmund Freud introduced narcissism as a developmental trait that ranged from healthy to unhealthy.4,5 Some evolutionary psychologists posit that a degree of narcissism might be adaptive in the wider evolutionary sense, though this hypothesis (which has zero genetic evidence to confirm it) can only be applied to a limited subset of behaviours before tipping into maladaptive expressions of narcissism as measured by the usual psychometric instruments.6,7,8 Moreover, no one has satisfactorily demonstrated that a mild, non-pathological narcissism is adaptive and belongs to a construct continuum with more pathological narcissism; therefore it is conjecture to claim that narcissism is natural but that it simply “gets out of hand” at the more extreme end of a hypothesised spectrum.

With these points in mind it’s necessary to differentiate between female self-enhancement as an evolutionary survival strategy, versus female self-enhancement as a maladaptive, narcissistic pathology. The narcissistic self-enhancement we see increasingly demonstrated among women today is not a contributor to evolutionary success; on the contrary it works to undermine family ties, corrode intimate relationships, and is also associated with lowering the birth rate – the exact opposites of conditions required for evolutionary success. Lastly, by differentiating hypergamous self-enhancement from narcissistic self-enhancement we avoid the error of encouraging or excusing narcissism under the banner of it being “natural.”

Maladaptive vs. adaptive versions of self-enhancement

 

REFERENCES:

[1] Grapsas, S., Brummelman, E., Back, M. D., & Denissen, J. J. (2020). The “why” and “how” of narcissism: A process model of narcissistic status pursuit. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 150-172.
[2] Campbell, W. K. (1999). Narcissism and romantic attraction. Journal of Personality and social Psychology, 77(6), 1254.
[3] Wallace, H. M. (2011). Narcissistic self-enhancement. The handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder: Theoretical approaches, empirical findings, and treatments, 309-318.
[4] Freud, S. (2014). On narcissism: An introduction. Read Books Ltd.
[5] Segal, H., & Bell, D. (2018). The theory of narcissism in the work of Freud and Klein. In Freud’s On Narcissism (pp. 149-174). Routledge.
[6] Holtzman, N. S., & Donnellan, M. B. (2015). The roots of Narcissus: Old and new models of the evolution of narcissism. Evolutionary perspectives on social psychology, 479-489.
[7] Holtzman, N. S. (2018). Did narcissism evolve?. Handbook of Trait Narcissism: Key Advances, Research Methods, and Controversies, 173-181.
[8] Czarna, AZ, Wróbel, M., Folger, LF, Holtzman, NS, Raley, JR, & Foster, JD (2022). Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Evolutionary roots and emotional profiles. In TK Shackelford & L. Al-Shawaf (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions. Oxford University Press.

Red Pill Grandparenting

/ Peter Wright / 1 Comment

Casualties of the family court, AKA fathers and children, are so great in number I wouldn’t be surprised if they outnumbered the collective casualties of all wars over the last century. Each of them were made casualties by a family court culture that sides with mothers bent on establishing ownership of children, a goal achieved via character assassination of fathers, and a performance of damseling.

If women are reduced to proverbial chattel within the English law system, which of course they never were, we can only conclude that children have always been the chattel of the chattel. Ernest B. Bax elaborates this point in the following comment penned in the year 1896:

CUSTODY OF CHILDREN

It has always in England been laid down as a fundamental law based on public policy, that the custody of children and their education is a duty incumbent on the father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not permitted to waive his exercise of the right by pre-nuptial contract. (See the Agar v. Ellis Case.)

This rule of the Common Law of England is of course in harmony with the policy of all Europe and Christendom, as well as with the historic conditions of the European social organisation, if not with the primal instincts of the race.

Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that the custody of infants of tender years remains with the mother until the child attains the age of seven. But they go much further than that. As a matter of course, and without considering in the least the interests of the child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody and education of all the children to the litigant wife, whenever she establishes –an easy thing to do– a flimsy and often farcical case of technical “cruelty.”

The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining the children as well as herself out of his property or earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing that they will brought up to detest him.

Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes with her the children of the marriage, there is practically no redress for the husband if in narrow circumstances. The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court, as already stated, is expensive to the point of prohibition. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the attendant scandal of a process will probably have no other result than to injure his children and their future prospects in life.

– Ernest B. Bax, The Legal Subjection of Men (1896 p.16)

Most people reading this will know the story described by Bax all too well. The situation remains unchanged to this very day. What is slightly less well known is the impact on grandparents, especially paternal grandparents who tend to become collateral damage along with the alienated father. Mothers instinctively know that grandparents will side with their son in the face of such brutality, so they make the callous and cynical decision to alienate the paternal grandparents and thereby obliterate all potential for opposition.

Callous is hardly a strong enough word for it, but whatever the appropriate adjectives, here we remain thanks to a gynocentric feminism that has eaten away at family cohesion over the last two centuries.

The chances of this happening to grandparents are extremely high, except on the basis that they demonstrate a sycophantic compliance with, and longsuffering utilitarianism towards the mother and her inflated wants – babysitting on demand, transport to and from school, regularly complimenting the mother on her great single parent skills, and the often clear expectation to ‘pay up’ financially by buying items for the grandchildren or offering large money gifts for Christmas & birthdays – which of course the mother will decide the best use of.

This is the level of extortion that so many alienating mothers resort to – a kind of pay-to-play that grandparents are subjected to. For any self-respecting grandparent the juice may not be worth the squeeze, especially if faced with continued disapproval and grifting.

When it comes to mothers displaying pronounced control issues within the intact young family, it raises the serious question of whether grandparents should form a relationship with grandchildren at the outset, and if so, how deep (or superficial) and how frequent. Such control issues are usually bankable indications that everything will eventually turn to shit, and grand parents need to wise up and decide how best they will deal with the broken relationships issue in advance.

Like the MGTOW response toward an excess in women’s relational and legal power, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an equivalent boycott trend among grandparents emerge – in this case jettisoning a portion of the increasingly vulnerable grandparent role. Grandparents Going Their Own Way (GGTOW). That is not to say that such grandparents would be disowning their son or his progeny – on the contrary – the aim would be to protect both he and his children from a greater heartache in the case of deeply attached bonds being destroyed by the mother.

The cultivation of some distance serves the goal of mitigating the likely heartache were it to happen. The less abiding and less intense the grandparent-grandchild relationship, the less drama there will be with the inevitable fallout. There would be some clear heads prevailing among the casualties, which may be all the better to help pick up the pieces for the ones you love.

Keeping a greater distance, but continuing to demonstrate a believable measure of love and support may be the most practical way for grandparents to maintain stability in the extended family, especially in the event of its collapse.

The Many Boons of Transmaxxing

/ Peter Wright / 4 Comments

Transmaxxing is a relatively new term referring to men who transition gender (MtF) in order to obtain personal, social and legal benefits associated with being female. Said differently, the transmaxxer transitions to female status, and not to recognizing a sense of female selfhood as is the case with transwomen.

The phenomenon appeared many years before the term was coined, and while it has recently gained some interest in the incel community, its application is far broader than that. It involves a decision to identify as a female regardless of this being contrary to one’s usual sense-of-self.

The Urban Dictionary defines transmaxxing simply as, “Transitioning from male to female for personal gain.”

 

Based on this broad Urban Dictionary definition we will conclude the following: 1. that transmaxxing cannot be reduced to an incel activity, nor to a proclivity of gay men as some have proposed, nor to any other single demographic. 2. It never or rarely applies to cases of female-to-male transition which are considered to involve minimal gain. 3. Transmaxxing isn’t based on the clichéd explanation that the individual is “a female trapped inside a man’s body,” nor that he “has always felt like a woman.” 4. The only premise of transmaxxing is the undergoing of a MtF transition for the sake of securing a range of benefits associated with female identification.

So lets look at some of those benefits.

Some recent online discussions have cited the following benefits belonging exclusively to the female sex, and also by legal extension to transmaxxers:

SAMPLE OF BENEFITS

LIVING EXAMPLES

Equador

René Salinas Ramos is an Equadorian “transmaxxer-woman.” Ramos, who works as a journalist, was born male. Ramos experienced discrimination against men in the Ecuadorian family court system and legally changed her gender to female in late 2022. Ramos hopes now that the courts will treat her more fairly and that she can gain custody of her children.[1]

Switzerland

In Switzerland a man has exploited an administrative loophole and formally transmaxxed his gender to female in order to retire a year earlier. Swiss rules enable any Swiss resident with the “intimate conviction” that they do not belong to the sex they are registered as in the civil status register can apply to change their gender, in addition to their first name, for just 75 Swiss francs (€72). The unnamed man from Lucerne successfully applied to transmax his gender so that he could receive his state pension at the Swiss retirement age for women of 64, a year earlier than men.[2][3]

Germany

In Germany a self-identified transmaxxer named Tina has undergone medical transition to reap various sexual and social advantages over her former existence as an ‘incel,’ and claims to be treated better as a female under the social systems in which she lives. Such advantages included being successfully admitted to attend a female-only university class, with Tina adding that “there’s a government quota that needs to be met in Germany regarding women’s employment, and obviously I count as a woman legally, so I will have a easier time finding a job.”[4]

Tina was interviewed by Robert Brockway and Vernon Meigs on the The Goal Post.

Norway

In Norway, 2023, a male student changed gender to gain admission to the esteemed NTNU program which prioritized female applicants. The student took advantage of the nation’s lenient gender self-identification laws to gain admission to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and said that changing his gender for the purposes of gaining extra admission points was “about as easy as switching mobile plans.” According to Finansavisen,[5] the unnamed male student took advantage of the policy after failing to meet merit-based standards. Seeking to gain extra admission points, the student changed his gender marker, allowing him to collect just enough points to be admitted into the Industrial Economics and Technology Management (Indøk) program. The program had a bonus two “gender points” for “female” applicants.[6][7][8]

PRAXIS

Transmaxxers don’t need to use hormone replacement therapy, wear lipstick, put on a dress or engage in other performative gestures we might typically associate with transwomen (although some may choose to take these extra steps). Further, transmaxxer identification doesnt even require a renunciation of traits referred to as masculine. At minimum, all it requires is a technical change of gender either on a legal paper, or in some countries by verbal statement, and numerous aspects of female privilege become available for the transmaxxer’s enjoyment.

While the change of gender may appear cynical or inauthentic, we can say that transmaxxers may genuinely identify with an internal sense of privilege, esteem, status, deservingness, dignity, worth, purity, beauty and social value that we euphemistically call “feminine.” The degree to which a transmaxxer genuinely identifies with these “feminine” things, such femininity is integral to his sense of self.

______________________________

Addendum:  The primary difference between a transwoman and transmaxxer needs to be differentiated, as there seems to be some confusion on this point. Transwomen organically feel & desire female identification, with negligeable desire to identify as male. Whereas MtF transmaxxers tend to identify as male or gender dysphoric, without an organic desire to identify as a woman. This can be summarized as follows:

  • Transwoman is an autonomous desire and identification of the self as female
  • Transmaxxing is a decision, rather than an autonomous desire, to identify as female gender contrary to one’s usual sense-of-self. The transmaxxer can be said to legitimately “transition” to female status, rather than female selfhood.

References:

  1.  Father legally changes gender to female in attempt to gain custody of his kids: ‘I’m also a mom’
  2. A man changes his gender to retire earlier – The European Times
  3. Swiss man changes gender to retire and receive his pension a year earlier
  4. Tina’s Guide To Transmaxxing quote from video ‘A bunch of Incels debating a transmaxxer’
  5. Changing Gender To Get A Place On A Prestigious Course
  6. NORWAY: Male Student Changes “Gender”To Gain Admission To Esteemed NTNU Program Which Prioritized Female Applicants, Feminist News And Opinion
  7. Student gender change sparks debate on admission policies
  8. Changing Gender To Get A Place On A Prestigious Course

Misogamy and marriage avoidance

/ Peter Wright / Leave a comment

 

While it may seem like a modern topic, the burning question of whether men should marry or more to the point not marry, is centuries old. That men are rejecting marriage in increasing numbers is well documented, however cynicism about the virtues of marriage is nothing new.

Numerous scholarly books such as Howard Chudacoff’s Age Of The Bachelor, or J. McCurdy’s Citizen Bachelors have traced the historical rise of bachelor movements, which tend to occur when a given society sufficiently devalues men while saddling them with unreasonable demands of service to wives and the State. When societies treat males more favourably, then bachelor movements organically decline.

I recently chanced upon another book outlining the deeper history of ‘marriage avoidance’ under the heading the querelle du mariage (quarrel about marriage). The following excerpt provides some interesting detail:

The early manifestations of the quarrel often focus on marriage, one of the pressing problems of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period: An uxor sit ducenda (Should One Take a Wife) was a question much discussed by Italian men, and in Germany it could appear as Ob einem manne sey zu nemen ein eelichs weyb oder nit (Should a Man Take a Wife or Not? – Albrecht von Eyb, 1472). In answer to this question, male misogamy (hatred of marriage) is expressed as misogyny (hatred of women) and philogyny (love of women) is expressed as philogamy (love of marriage).
 
Christine de Pizan’s praise of women was directed against the misogamists and misogynists of her time, the anonymous text Les quinze joies de mariage (The Fifteen Joys of Marriage) deplored the loss of male liberty in marriage, and a century later Erasmus of Rotterdam presented the misogamist virgin in his Virgo misogamos (The Misogamist Virgin – 1523), who desperately wants to enter a convent but inspired by love she thinks better of it at the last moment. Philogynous texts questioned why women were punished more strictly for adultery than men or why a husband had to be brought (by a dowry); misogamists and misogynists, eg. In England, answered the question by stating that women tend to squeeze money out of their husbands.
 
In Germany this aspect of the querelle has been largely ignored (interest has focused on voices which argued in favor of women’s intelligence and reason), although the querelle du mariage played an important role here: the wide-ranging marriage debate during the Reformation, in particular in its sensational and scandalous early phases – public betrothals of monks and nuns, closures of monasteries and convents, an epidemic of marriages in Germany to which even French reformers travelled who wished to marry – must be read as an integral part of the European querelle des sexes and the same goes for the marriage debates of the Counter-Reformation. Martin Luther’s Von chelichen Leben (The Estate of Married Life – 1522) speaks quite in the manner of a querelle text by turning against the traditional misogamist attitude:

“What we would speak most of is the fact that the estate of marriage has universally fallen into such awful disrepute. There are many pagan books which treat of nothing but the depravity of womankind and the unhappiness of the estate of marriage […]. So they [young men listening to the advice of a Roman official] concluded that woman is a necessary evil, and that no household can be without such an evil. […] For this reason young men should be on their guard when they read pagan books and hear the common complaints about marriage, lest they inhale poison . For the estate of marriage does not sell well with the devil, because it is God’s good will and work. This is why the devil has contrived to have so much shouted and written in the world against the institution of marriage […]. The world says of marriage, ‘Brief is the joy, lasting the bitterness.”2

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I’ve long wondered what form male activism might have taken in response to the excesses of traditional European and Anglosphere gynocentrism. From the above description, and from the many anti-marriage texts abounding through old Europe, it’s clear that a historical form of men’s rights advocacy concerned itself with the dangers of entrapment within marriage, and avoidance of same by choosing bachelorhood. 

Reference:

[1]  The European Querelle des femmes, in Medieval Forms of Argument (2002). 

A comment on Don Monson’s ‘Why is la Belle Dame sans Merci? Evolutionary Psychology and the Troubadours’

/ Peter Wright / Leave a comment

Below is a brief comment on Don A. Monson’s study Why is la Belle Dame sans Merci? Evolutionary Psychology and the Troubadours. Monson is a Professor of French and Francophone Studies Emeritus, B.A., University of Utah; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Chicago, with a special interest in Evolutionary Psychology.

* * *

In Don Monson’s paper we read:

 

While I reject Monson’s presumption that psycho-sexual power of women was given natural expression in courtly-love language (actually the complete reverse is the case), he nevertheless outlines features of a psychological trope that still guides sexual relations in many countries today, as embedded in the European-derived tradition of chivalry and romantic love.

Monson’s belief arises from a blue-pill habit among evolutionary psychologists that places exaggerated emphasis on the Males Compete/Female Choose (MCFC) model of evolution. Steve Stewart-Williams’ challenged that Evopsych fixation and introduced the more human concept of Mutual Mate Choice (MMC) – a concept that supports my contention that the courtly love trope was responsible for exaggerating women’s sexual status.

Its almost as if Monson is asking us to amend C.S. Lewis’ famous characterization ‘The feudalisation of love’ to a reductionist evolutionary formula of ‘A love of feudalisation’ – ie. a formula assuming that males are simply designed to compete for women’s ultimate sexual choices. I reject this narrow explanation and hope that Monson doesn’t repeating it in his forthcoming book Eros and Noesis: A Cognitive Approach to the Courtly Love Literature of Medieval France.

Footnote – [Feb 2024]: Having just now read Don A. Monson’s new book Eros and Noesis: A Cognitive Approach to the Courtly Love Literature of Medieval France, a brief comment is in order. As predicted, he claims that the invention of courtly/romantic love during the Middle Ages is fallacious conjecture made by scholars who believe in a “blank slate” of the human brain (a completely false, hyperbolic and unsupported assertion), and that he, as an advocate of evolutionary psychology, can show that romantic love is a cultural universal of long-term pair bonding that is endemic to the human species. His primary bombshell evidence? – the completely debunked Jankowiak & Fischer paper (1992) which claimed to find evidence of romantic in 146 out of the 166 cultures. That said I would still recommend a read of his book, if you can partition-out this error, as it has other valuable insights that go some way to redeeming the volume. 

See also:

– Is Romantic Love a Timeless Evolutionary Universal, Or a Creation of The Middle Ages? (Peter Wright, 2022)
– A brief commentary on Jankowiak & Fischer’s misuse of the term ‘romantic love’ (Peter Wright, 2022)
– Challenging The Claim That Romantic Love is Universal: Excerpt from William Reddy’s The Making Of Romantic Love

A brief commentary on Jankowiak & Fischer’s misuse of the term ‘romantic love’

/ Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following elaborates on a common misrepresentation of what romantic love is. – PW

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It’s amazing to observe how many academics have adopted a flawed idea of what romantic love is – all because Jankowiak & Fischer1 claimed to both define, and then find evidence of romantic love in 147 out of 166 cultures. However their definition does not match the romantic love construct from Europe which rested squarely on a feudal template of men serving elevated ladies – a template that is missing from Jankowiak & Fischer’s definition. As the most popular kind of love in the world today, this is no small oversight.

Romantic love is, in fact, different from the more generic form of love they describe.

Even the great Steve Stewart-Williams uncritically accepts Jankowiak & Fischer’s romantic love construct which omits the feudal template (ie. man as vassal, woman as lord), an omission that results in their construct not being romantic love at all because it is lacking its most definitive element.

Jankowiak & Fischer defined romantic love as based on intimacy, passion, commitment, idealization, limerence, and so on, and omitted the central relevance of the feudal template. But no feudal metaphor = no romantic love. Academics relying on such misinformation overlook the novelty of romantic love as does Stewart-Williams in his otherwise wonderful book on evolutionary psychology titled ‘The Ape Who Understood The Universe.‘ There he writes:

The question all these findings raise is a straightforward one: If romantic love is an invention of Western culture, why is it found in every geographical region, historical period, and ethnic group? The simplest and most plausible answer is that romantic love is not an invention of Western culture. Instead, the idea that romantic love is an invention of Western culture is itself an invention of Western culture, and a rather implausible one at that. Human beings were falling in and out of love for hundreds of thousands of years before we ever had Hollywood blockbusters or knights in shining armor. We’re just that kind of animal – the kind that falls in love from time to time.

Its clear that some academics are attempting to universalize a medieval phenomenon that is not, in fact, universal. And many subsequent academics are simply quoting, without checking, the robustness of the earlier study by Jankowiak & Fischer. Have they never read pre-medieval European literature, or perhaps Chinese history for alternative descriptions of love?

For example, the following quote is from the book Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction By Daniel Hsieh (2009),2 which describes an absence of the European template in China:

The idea of a purely romantic hero, a man as both an amorous and exemplar figure, is almost unknown. Most modern readers would react to the Chinese romances with sentiments akin to E. D. Edwards who declared, “Of all characteristics of Chinese fiction which are foreign to European ideas none is more striking than the inadequacy of the hero of love stories. The nominal hero is generally a quite unheroic person….”. Given the norms of the culture this was inevitable. Romance ordinarily had little place in the life of a wenren, and any attempt to raise its position is problematic. A “real” man was not a lover. Earlier we saw an example from the Shishou xinyu where an individual was laughed at  for his excessive devotion to his wife. In “Diao Wei Wudi wen”, Lu Ji (261–303) writes, “As for entangling one’s emotions on extraneous objects or setting one’s thoughts on women (gui fang), these are things that a wise and outstanding man had best avoid.” In a Confucian world, feelings for the opposite sex were sublimated. It is not that women were necessarily seen as “evil.” Rather, having little place in moral and philosophical realms, they threatened to hinder a person from higher pursuits. One’s “passion” should be for ruler and state, and very early there evolved the model of the wenren official assuming the role of lover with the ruler being the object of his devotion. Some of the most passionate poetry in the tradition – Qu Yuan’s verse in Chu ci – is based on this idea. As Arthur Waley noted when discussing the “Li sao” (Encountering Sorrow), “In this poem, sex and politics are curiously interwoven, as we need not doubt they were in Chu Yuan’s own mind. He affords a striking example of the way in which abnormal mentality imposes itself.” In the West there occurred an interesting reversal of this notion. The rise of courtly love involved a kind of “feudalisation of love” in which man devoted himself to a lady in the way a vassal devoted himself to his lord.

It’s revealing to contrast the Chinese position that, quote “a real man was not a lover” with the opposite convention coming out of 12th century Europe where, “Here the truest lovers are now the best knights.”3 

This error of claiming romantic love as universal is akin to saying all four-legged animals are horses because horses have four legs. This kind of logic is relevant to hippophiles, but it isn’t science……. even if horses do, in fact, have four legs. Same with romantic love – it needs to be differentiated from more generic love constructs and not blurred together.

C.S. Lewis rightly defined courtly & romantic love as “a feudalisation of love.” Again, if there’s no feudal template (eg. is absent in many other cultures’ version of love), there’s no romantic love. So-called research that omits this point is an attempt to universalise a novel social construct. The feudal factor permeates the phenomenon of romantic love, and must be included as a guiding factor in any attempts at a cross-cultural study on romantic love. However, because this factor was omitted by Jankowiak & Fischer it renders their study misleading if we consider that the Europe-derived model has become the dominant format in many cultures today; if we are going to use the exact phrase romantic love it deserves a more detailed description.  

The kind of love that Jankowiak & Fischer do end up describing and then sampling in 166 cultures is more accurately phrased as pairbonding love, which does indeed exist in all cultures. To (mis)use the European phrase romantic love leads to confusion; so I would recommend they, and all researchers who have followed them, consider making this terminology change. 

The feudal metaphor is symbolised in this image of a man going down on one knee in a pledge of lifelong service to a woman considered elevated. This is a continuation of the commendation ceremony of the Middle Ages.

Addendum: Since writing the above commentary, I have communicated with both Jankowiak and Fischer who inform me that the above terminology problem has been recognized and addressed by them some time ago, leading to the dropping of the phrase romantic love and replacing it with the more suitable designation passionate love in subsequent publications. 

References:

[1] Jankowiak, W. R., & Fischer, E. F. (1992). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31(2), 149-155.

[2] Hsieh, D. (2009). Love and women in early Chinese fiction. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.

[3] Wollock, J. G. (2011). Rethinking chivalry and courtly love. ABC-CLIO.

 

FOOTNOTE

The following excerpt from William Reddy’s The Making of Romantic Love, elaborates on the conflation of romantic love with more universal forms of love. – PW

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The English word love can mean so many different things that, by convention, one adds the word “romantic” to distinguish those types of love that include a sexual component from all other types of love. This is the sense of “romantic love” deployed by William Jankowiak and Edward Fischer in a widely cited study published in 1992.1 The authors presented evidence that romantic love was present in 147 out of 166 cultures, or 88.5 percent. Their definition of romantic love was very broad. Evidence of any one of five criteria was regarded as sufficient: (1) accounts of personal anguish and longing, (2) love songs or folklore “that highlight the motivations behind romantic involvement,” (3) elopements due to mutual affection, (4) native accounts of passionate love, and (5) ethnographers’ affirmations. The authors believed their findings disproved a view expressed by a number of scholars that romantic love was found only in modern individualistic societies. The evidence, they concluded, strongly supported the universal occurrence of romantic love. Jankowiak subsequently edited an anthology of essays by ethnographers presenting evidence for the existence of romantic love in a variety of cultural settings from West Africa to Polynesia.2

In a 1998 essay, Charles Lindholm rejected Jankowiak and Fischer’s conclusion, however, on the grounds that their definition of romantic love lacked sociological and cultural specificity.3 […]  Lindholm’s observations strongly indicate the need for a more nuanced vocabulary. After all, his objection to Jankowiak and Fischer’s conclusions may be the result of a terminological confusion. Jankowiak and Fischer cast the widest possible net that the term “romantic love” permits.

In this study, the term “longing for association” will be used to refer to that wide net that Jankowiak and Fischer cast, and the term “romantic love” will be reserved to refer to those forms of the longing for association that have emerged in Western and Western-influenced cultural settings where one or another of the historical versions of desire-as-appetite is accepted as common sense.

To illustrate the importance of this distinction, consider a case mentioned by Leonard Plotinicov in the 1995 anthology edited by William Jankowiak. Plotinicov reports on a Nigerian informant who became fascinated, even obsessed with his third wife the moment he saw her. Although he already had two wives, he said, “I told her I wanted to marry her. She said she had nothing to say about that, and directed me to her parents.” He immediately went to negotiate with the parents and soon married her.4 Whatever this man’s emotion was, to equate it with “romantic love” as practiced in certain Western settings is to ignore the centrality of reciprocal feeling and of exclusivity in Western norms for love partnerships.

References:

[1]. William R. Jankowiak and Edward F. Fischer, “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love,” Ethnology 31 (1992): 149–55.
[2]. William R. Jankowiak, ed., Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
[3]. Charles Lindholm, “Love and Structure,” Theory, Culture & Society 15 (1998): 243–63.
[4]. Leonard Plotinicov, “Love, Lust and Found in Nigeria,” in Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? ed. William Jankowiak (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 128–40, quote from p. 134.



See Also:
– Is Romantic Love a Timeless Evolutionary Universal, or a Frankenstein Creation of The Middle Ages?
– A comment on Don Monson’s ‘Why is la Belle Dame sans Merci? Evolutionary Psychology and the Troubadours’