Author: rtbavfm

Pig Latin

/ rtbavfm / 1 Comment

Lecture No. 4

“It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code” – William Stafford

To recap on last week’s lecture: Men’s Rights Advocates should not be afraid to play around with words; to reframe debate; to recast conventional linguistic usages however we see fit. Don’t be afraid to make a game out of it. Use words – and the meanings you choose to ascribe to them – to mock, humiliate, and confuse your enemies. Here’s a good example – it makes use of typical feminist phraseology, but with one major difference:

 

Not all patriarchs are like that. I am a patriarch – and proud of it – but that doesn’t mean that I, personally, am responsible for what other patriarchs do, particularly not those radical patriarchs. But patriarchy isn’t a monolithic entity. There isn’t only one kind of patriarchy. There are lots of different types of patriarchs who have different views.

Note that defining yourself as a patriarch need not imply that you define yourself as feminists think that patriarchs should be. Feminists are not linguistic arbiters; you are absolutely free to call yourself a patriarch using your own definition of the term, which may or may not coincide to some extent with their definition. Whatever the case, though, you certainly don’t need to explain which qualities you possess that, in your mind, make you patriarchal. However, upon announcing that you are a patriarch, you may find feminists attempting to trick you into giving some definite shape to your patriarchy; the shape having already taken form in her mind, her task now is to get you to acknowledge it. She will say something emotive like, “oh, so you think men should just be able to rape women with impunity?”

Your initial response, of course, will be a furrowed brow. Then you will say, “of course I don’t think that. And yet I am still, most certainly, a patriarch.”

In this example, you could define patriarchy any way you please; having decided in advance that feminism is non-credible, you have dismissed altogether any feministic notion of what patriarchy is. You could even, if you like, define yourself as a patriarch on the grounds that you support equality between men and women. Yes, that kind of wordplay will wind them up no end, because feminism depends upon a peculiar configuration of words and meanings, which may not be circumnavigated without signaling a threat to the ideology’s power base.

Does the suggestion above sound preposterous? Well, I can but refer you to a real example of a social movement, the success of which has depended, for the most part, on its adroitness at linguistic manipulation. I am speaking, of course, of feminism, the proponents of which have made it their business to recast perceptions of reality through the redefinition of words. But this weapon is available to all those who are marginalized; it is the establishment which must defend its orthodoxy, not the outcasts! And while feminists once made great use of this strategy on the linguistic battlefield, it has become a point of vulnerability for them now that they control the machine, rather than rage against it. Now, you see, they must consolidate their gains; they must conserve what they have created; and thus, they are placed on the defensive, guarding their etymological orthodoxies from those who beg to differ. As I noted in the first lecture, their capacity for controlling perceptions of reality is faltering. The iron is hot. It is time to strike!

 

 

terror

 

But, have I been too quick to dismiss the definition of feminism as offered up by feminists? I think I may have been. Even essentially contested concepts, as W. B. Gallie referred to them, must have meanings which are greater than normative, else communication about them would be rendered impossible. That is – there must be some amount of general consensus over what feminism is, between feminists and anti-feminists, or we would not be able to argue about it! Even despite the differences between a feminist’s view of feminism and of our own, some shared content must exist at some level, or we would be talking about entirely different things. They might be talking about the feminist movement, while I am talking about horse-rearing, although we both refer to our respective subjects as ‘feminism’ – but we wouldn’t have much to say to each other, would we, if this were the case?

So, I shall posit the following as a universally applicable definition of feminism; that is to say, it must fit everyone’s criteria for what feminism is, in spite of the different perspectives that different people hold on its nature. It is a suitably limited definition, since it can encompass only those parts of feminism which all definitions hold in common. So, here it is: feminism is the project for increasing the power of women.

That, then, is what everybody who discusses feminism holds in common regarding the concept, whether they are supportive, skeptical, or nihilistically indifferent. No feminist, I think, would deny that this is, at the very least, the ‘bare bones’ of feminism, even if she would prefer to flesh it out in a lot more detail. But that will not do, for beyond this narrow inference, we disagree with each other. To be as objective as possible, then, we must take only that which everybody agrees upon, and that is our universally applicable definition.

Note that there is no mention of equality. This is because, as I uncovered last week with the help of one Nick Levinson, there are a number of feminists who explicitly did not pursue equality, but supremacy. So, equality cannot fit into the universal definition of feminism, since certain feminists themselves – who were very famously, unequivocally feminist – disavowed it. To say that feminism is ‘about equality’, then, would be to place oneself in diametrical opposition to several extremely influential feminists! And why, that would be … misogynistic!

Nor can feminism be said to be the project for increasing the power of women relative to men, since, in this counter-feminist’s view, feminists are often quite content to increase the power of women in an absolute sense. That is, they endeavor to grab all they can for women, without reference to the status of men. The phrase ‘relative to men,’ then, only serves to imply that women are power-less relative to men at present, thus casting feminism in an unfairly favorable light. In reality, once women do achieve power which is at an equal or equivalent level to that of men, the demands of feminists do not stop. What we find is that female power becomes entrenched, and extended, and when it surpasses male power, this is simply referred to as ‘parity’ and ignored by feminists – at least, when they are not gloating over men’s newfound powerlessness.

Nor are we able to list, in our universal definition, the specific areas of life, or spheres, in which the feminist project applies. This is because feminism is inherently universalizing; it seeks to colonize and dominate every single facet of life where men and women meet. It aims for domination in every sphere of life, actual and potential.

You may disagree with some of the points above, particularly if you are supportive of feminism. But this does nothing to change our universal definition, because all we can say about those points is that they are contentious. That is, feminists and non-feminists, who are educated about feminism, disagree about these aspects of feminism, and it would simply be biased to take one or the other view for granted. That would be like consulting only Jacobins on the historical accomplishments of the Jacobin Club, or like canvassing only conservatives to explain modern liberalism. It would be a good example of poor methodology, and would help us very little in our search for truth. Right? So then, our universally applicable definition cannot be expanded beyond that which we stated before: feminism is the project for increasing the power of women.

We must not be swayed by feminist attempts to deny the universalizing tendency inherent to feminism. In their attempts to win the debate over what feminism is, feminists are notorious for abridging their own ideology to a nub of its whole, and presenting their support for – and your dissent from – feminism as resting entirely on a single issue. Let me give an example, in which you are confronted by the Appeal to Franchise. You have just stated that you do not support feminism. Your feminist opponent’s next move is to reduce the entirety of feminism to women gaining the right to vote – thus implying that you must oppose this, since you claimed to oppose feminism. You must simply remind all onlookers that feminism is about more than this and cannot be reduced to a single item as she has tried to do. You can openly state your support for that single item – in this case, the vote – while nevertheless maintaining your antipathy towards feminism, this being in no way reducible to women’s right to vote.

Essentially, your conscience is clear, and you are free to label yourself a non-feminist – and even, an anti-feminist – sans the implication that you therefore support every single thing that feminism opposes.

So, to recap: the only thing we are all going to be able to agree on is that feminism is the project for increasing the power of women. As you may have noticed, feminists go a little further than this when speaking about what they think feminism is, and they shall have plenty of half-truths and obfuscations to offer up if you ask them politely enough – though remember, it’s not their job to educate us about these things. 

icarus

 

As such, we may leave them to their own fluffy fantasies, and move beyond the universal definition to one which more accurately accounts for men’s experiences of the world.

So, here is the definition I offer up: “feminism is the most recent, and presently the most culturally dominant form of Gynocentrism. It is a victim ideology which explicitly advocates female supremacy, at every facet of life in which men and women meet; it does so in accordance with its universalizing tendency, and so it does so in each sphere of life, including but extending beyond the political, social, cultural, personal, emotional, sexual, spiritual, economic, governmental and legal. By female supremacy, I refer to the notion that women should possess superiority of status, power and protection relative to men. It is the dominant cultural paradigm in the Western world and beyond. It is morally indefensible, although its adherents ensure that their hegemony goes unchallenged through the domination of societal institutions and the use of state violence.”

In response to last week’s lecture, Primal offered up his own definition of feminism, which is not quite the same as mine, but the two are certainly complementary:

Gender-feminism is an overarching ideology built on a stack of bald-faced lies. As the primary reverse-sexist superstition of Post Modern age, it forms the foundation for female sexual supremacy in the name of ‘gender’ equality. Like other half-baked Utopian fantasies, it is totalitarian to the core. It is formed from a witch’s brew of recycled but dis-credited ideological relics from the trash heap of history…relics like Marxism, Romanticism and Classism. It’s proponents proudly destroy well-established standards of scholarship to force others to take the ideology seriously. It’s adherents have spread like carcinogenic pathogens in authoritarian institutions…that is wherever power is perverted for political reasons. It’s philosophy is nonsensical, circular, and self-serving. As the primary moral foundation for the mainstream hate groups which operate in the name of Women’s Rights worldwide, gender-feminism is a dangerous dogma and one that has no place in civil discourse.

Both of our definitions are rather lengthy, although I think it is useful to have a statement of exactly what we mean by the term. It could be much shortened and presented as follows: feminism equals female supremacism.

That the shortened version is more memorable is offset by its unfortunate implications that i) only women are feminists, and ii) all women support feminism. Neither i) nor ii) is correct. The charge of supremacism alone is not really sufficient for our purposes; it leaves too much left unsaid regarding what this supremacism is, and about the success rate of feminism so far. For shorthand purposes, it will do, but it should be remembered that it is a reduction of broader definitions as worked out here and elsewhere.

What may be more useful for our purposes in presenting our view of what feminism is is a brief statement of its goals. Feminism essentially seeks the following goals:

(1) The expropriation of resources from men to women.

(2) The punishment of men.

(3) To increase (1) and (2) in terms of scope and intensity indefinitely.

I feel that such a definition will strike a nerve with feminists themselves – because it hits a little too close to home. That the real-world effects of the feminist project have indeed been (1) and (2), and that these have increased in scope and intensity over the years (3) is frankly, irrefutable.

Time has yielded the truth about what happens when feminist-minded women come to occupy the most powerful positions in society, and that is that Men’s Rights are systematically trashed. The more power that feminists have, the more new laws are created to accomplish greater confiscation of men’s property and intensifying violations of their liberty, bodily integrity, and lives.

But there is hope. For it is deeds, not words, that shall speak our enemies. Have a pleasant weekend, everyone.

Adam


Further Reading:

Exposing Feminism. Language manipulation

Alex Schroeder. Progressivism Is Not Progressive

ISP. Feminist False Consciousness

 

 

GYNOCENTRISM THEORY LECTURE SERIES:
1. Staring Out From the Abyss
2. The Same Old Gynocentric Story
3. Refuting the Appeal to Dictionary
4. Pig Latin
5. Anatomy of a Victim Ideology
6. Old Wine, New Bottles
7. The Personal, as Contrasted to the Political
8. Chasing Rainbows
9. False Consciousness & Kafka-Trapping
10. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part I
11. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part II
12. How to Break a Dialectic

Refuting the Appeal to Dictionary

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

Lecture No. 3

“Have you ever actually looked up the word feminist in a dictionary? It means equality between the sexes. It is not about hating men. This is very simple and you would know if you actually looked it up” – Diva

Following on from last week’s overview of Gynocentrism then and now, I propose that there is a common thread of female-worship running through, and linking, traditional conceptions of masculinity – historically expressed in what we might call ‘patriarchy’ – and feminism, which has taken over state and supranational institutions, and is poised to unleash the explicit persecution of men.

It may well take many more of these lectures before this is fully elucidated, but I mention it here for two purposes. The first is a reminder that reference to this common thread runs through all these musings: that Gynocentrism has been with us for a long, long time, and has only changed its form, not its content. This is the crux of Gynocentrism Theory, and it is the narrow focus which I am taking over a broad range of subjects.

Secondly, to shift the discussion towards feminism. There is the danger of reading into Gynocentrism Theory a minimization of feminism’s effects, considering that it is only the most modern version of a phenomenon which is centuries old. On the other hand, though, it is the most active form of Gynocentrism that we must presently deal with; it is the enemy, and as the all-singing, all-dancing tremendous final act in this regard, it is a phenomenon worthy of study in its own regard.

comedytragedy

 

Better the devil you know! It is said that it is better to know thine enemy, but feminists are highly effective at obscuring their own intentions, actions, history, and penchant for the use of eristic. Amidst the smoke and mirrors, a chorus of shrill voices from all directions can be heard to proclaim, “it’s not our job to educate you about feminism!”

Fine – then we shall have to cast around for ourselves, burrow for gems of knowledge, and procure our own judgments on what feminism is. And since feminists themselves have disavowed their role as our educators, the conclusions which we reach shall require no sanction from them. If it is not their job to educate us about feminism, then it could hardly be anybody else’s but our own, could it? And yet, strangely enough, when we do seek out knowledge for ourselves, they object most vociferously to our findings, as though they do in fact covet the role of educator after all. It has been repeatedly suggested that we might like to check the dictionary.

This is a spurious request, not least because there is no ‘the dictionary’. There are, rather, dictionaries (plural). The Appeal to Dictionary is one which is made by people who, to put it bluntly, are not very bright. Such people apparently believe that language is a finite array of words, each carrying a single objective definition, the final arbiter of which is The Dictionary.

In the real world, language is ever fluctuating and it is corruptible. It is a collection of meanings, designated by terms – but quite how these are configured is determined by the vagaries of time and place! And very often, people disagree about how terms are, or should be, designated to meanings – and how meanings are, or should be, designated to terms!

The very existence of contested terminology, then, seems to refute the Appeal to Dictionary. Where disputes arise over the definition or use of a term, this is an indication that we have several meanings (or ideas, or concepts, if you prefer) huddled together under the same word-umbrella. To put it another way: there are several things, but they are all designated by the same word. A given configuration of terms to meanings may benefit certain people, and be of detriment to certain others!

Let’s take an example – sometimes, the claim that feminism supports women in making false rape allegations has been refuted by a reference to feminism’s stated support for sexual equality. “Feminism,” a feminist would say, “is about sexual equality, and nothing more.”

And yet false rape allegations still exist – as does feminist complicity in the making of them. This issue has only been deprived of recognition in language. The feminist has expertly obscured the complicity of feminism in the making of false rape allegations, by whitewashing the ideology as being “about sexual equality, and nothing more.” If we accept her argument that feminism only refers to support for sexual equality, then we no longer have any terms with which to discuss or understand false rape allegations, beyond viewing them as a series of unrelated incidents. Certainly, we wouldn’t be able to consider false rape allegations in their proper context, which is as part of a system of control and persecution. The phenomenon of a false rape allegation is surely not explicable by what we understand when we say “sexual equality,” and since feminism is about nothing more than that, we are left with no linguistic resources with which to meaningfully speak about it; we have been struck dumb. In short, we have an existing thing, but it is no longer designated by any words. How then could we draw attention to it, criticize it, oppose it?

Let’s take another example. A feminist may well create a false partition in the problem of Father’s Rights by defining it in such a way that feminist culpability is overlooked. She could, for instance, say that “patriarchy is to blame for the unequal treatment of fathers.” Once again, she has controlled the language – meanings are split between terms, or they are compressed into one, and the intended outcome is that the guilty party avoids being taken to task!

Now, you might think – “why does this matter? A feminist might say this or that, but I don’t believe her; my own experiences tell me that it’s not true, and I’m unlikely to be fooled by what she says.”

That’s all well and good. But there are a lot of people out there who will be fooled by what she says – including those who possess the very real physical power to imprison you, destroy you, or alienate you from your loved ones. Feminists aren’t just saying this to people like you and I – their nonsense gushes forth in all directions, like crude oil from a burst pipe, flowing towards anybody who will listen, and especially those who can “do something about it.” Their message comes through, louder than a rushing waterfall, whether you want to hear it or not – and their whole project depends upon the relentless repetition of a dozen or so mantras, and the sinking of their sentiments into the collective subconscious. This is why they endlessly prattle on, typically parroting stock phrases like subordinate cells in a hive mind! They do it because it works – at least, until somebody stands up and points out that the Emperor’s not wearing any clothes.

And then, all hell breaks loose!

rosetta

 

It was necessary to speak at length on this point, because we must realize that political language is never neutral, and implications are always hidden in the configuration of ideas and terms. The role of Men’s Rights Advocates is to critically assess the feminist use of language, and to determine where we would be well-served to separate out several ideas which are referred to by one term, or to compress several terms into one. We should never respond to a feminist argument without first looking critically at the terms through which it is being conducted. To put it in Gamespeak, we must “control the frame!”

The Appeal to Dictionary can be summarily dismissed. Official dictionaries represent establishment positions. Feminism, as it is in vogue, is officially defined in the way that its adherents would like the world to see feminism; it is not defined in a way that describes, or accounts for, the totality of the project. That which happened, or still happens, but does not reflect the establishment view, is simply ignored. To define feminism as

 

the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men…

is to brush aside much of its unpleasant history – and to deprive skeptics of the resources for an unofficial linguistic and historical analysis of the term. This old revision of the Wikipedia page ‘Feminism and Equality’ contains plenty of material which disputes the black-and-white dictionary definition, although the page itself has fallen prey to the very same forces which seek to delimit the linguistic opportunities of their critics. Thankfully, Wikipedia archives old versions of its articles, so the efforts of one Nick Levinson in exposing the explicitly anti-male tenor of several famous feminist works has not gone to waste. Let’s get cracking!

 

Jill Johnston, in Lesbian Nation, called for men to eliminate the qualities they hold as men. “Man is completely out of phase with nature. Nature is woman. Man is the intruder. The man who re-attunes himself with nature is the man who de-mans himself or eliminates himself as man […] A small but significant number of angry and historically minded women comprehend the women’s revolution in the visionary sense of an end to the catastrophic brotherhood and a return to the former glory and wise equanimity of the matriarchies.”

Mary Daly, in Gyn/Ecology, wrote in favor of reversing power between the genders […] “As a creative crystallizing of the movement beyond the state of Patriarchal Paralysis, this book is an act of Dis-possession; and hence, in a sense beyond the limitations of the label anti-male, it is absolutely Anti-androcrat, A-mazingly Anti-male, Furiously and Finally Female.”

“Do women need land and an army . . .; or a feminist government in exile . . .? Or is it simpler: the bed belongs to the woman; the house belongs to the woman; any land belongs to the woman; if a male intimate is violent he is removed from the place where she has the superior and inviolate claim, arrested, denied parole, and prosecuted. . . . . Could women ‘set a high price on our blood’?” – Andrea Dworkin

Phyllis Chesler, in Women and Madness, drew on matriarchal history, Amazon mythology, and psychology and, with some ambivalence about relying on biology alone as a justification, argued that a war between the genders has always been underway and that women would benefit from using their full powers to be the exclusive wielders of political power to produce an unequal society in which men live but are relatively powerless, even if such a society is no more just than a patriarchy, and called for feminist women to dominate public institutions in their self-interest. “Amazon society, as mythology, history, and universal male nightmare, represents a culture in which women reign culturally supreme because of their gender […] In Amazon society, only men, when they were allowed to remain, were, in widely differing degrees, powerless and oppressed […] If women take their bodies seriously—and ideally we should—then its full expression, in terms of pleasure, maternity, and physical strength, seems to fare better when women control the means of production and reproduction. From this point of view, it is simply not in women’s interest to support patriarchy or even a fabled ‘equality’ with men.”

One organization that was named The Feminists was interested in matriarchy. Two members wanted “‘the restoration of female rule'”.

AMAZONS

 

Unless the aforementioned organization and books did not really exist, we are forced to conclude that feminism cannot only have been about the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of equality with men. At the very least, what we must say is that some feminists may have supported equality, while other feminists have overlooked equality and have outright supported female superiority. And neither can the latter group be reduced to a handful of fringe lunatics. As Nick Levinson points out (much to the chagrin of feminist moderators), two and a half million copies of Phyllis Chesler’s Women and Madness were sold.

That’s a whole lot of hate.

And a whole lot of energy is spent actively sweeping this kind of thing under the rug, by those who have since realized how damaging honesty can be to one’s case. Modern feminists are far more rhetorically disciplined than their forthright foremothers, and have concluded that unpopular plans are not helped into motion by being discussed openly. Rhetorical discipline adds a whole new layer of subterfuge to all that has been said regarding the designation of terms to ideas. It will not suffice only to look at what they say; we must watch carefully what they do. And haven’t some of the above recommendations come true, per the actions of feminists? Is it not now the case that male intimates accused of violence are removed from their homes in which the woman has the superior and inviolate claim, as Andrea Dworkin hoped for? Have feminist women not dominated public institutions in their own interest, as Phyllis Chesler advocated? As Gynocentrism Theory tells us, women already had a “high price on their blood” – much higher than that of men, at almost any time in history. This simple fact is the reason why it was possible for the prescriptions of radical feminists to be achieved in the first place – and for dissidents to have been so effortlessly marginalized.

Still, times change. Establishments are overturned, and words are officially redefined. If the new definition of a word proves more accurate, then it must have existed for some time, unofficially, before the word’s revision. Sometimes, establishments must change before terms catch up. The dictionary lags behind definition, because the establishment is stuck in the mud. I predict that, as we reach a critical mass opposed to feminism, and shortly before its collapse, we may well see some concessions in the form of alternative definitions of the term becoming accepted.

Adam
Further Reading:

J. Durden. Feminism as a Language Ideology

ArgusEyes. Why I am NOT a Feminist

Davout. Oxford English Dictionary massacres the definition of “anti-feminist”

 

 

GYNOCENTRISM THEORY LECTURE SERIES:
1. Staring Out From the Abyss
2. The Same Old Gynocentric Story
3. Refuting the Appeal to Dictionary
4. Pig Latin
5. Anatomy of a Victim Ideology
6. Old Wine, New Bottles
7. The Personal, as Contrasted to the Political
8. Chasing Rainbows
9. False Consciousness & Kafka-Trapping
10. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part I
11. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part II
12. How to Break a Dialectic

Gynocentrism Theory

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following seminal lectures on Gynocentrism Theory were given in 2011 by Adam Kostakis

1. Staring Out From the Abyss
2. The Same Old Gynocentric Story
3. Refuting the Appeal to Dictionary
4. Pig Latin
5. Anatomy of a Victim Ideology
6. Old Wine, New Bottles
7. The Personal, as Contrasted to the Political
8. Chasing Rainbows
9. False Consciousness & Kafka-Trapping
10. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part I
11. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part II
12. How to Break a Dialectic

Staring Out From the Abyss

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment
Lecture No. 1

“I love an opposition that has convictions” – Frederick the Great

The Battle of the Sexes has degenerated into a Dirty War, and we are, each of us, being drafted into it by forces who care not a whit for equality or fairness.

Propaganda, as a tool of control, is effective only insofar as the vision of the world that it presents concords with the perception of the world experienced day-to-day by its targets. The wider the gap between the perceived world and the propagandistic representation of the world, the less effective – and therefore less useful – the propaganda will ultimately be. We have reached a juncture at which women are increasingly rejecting feminism as irrelevant or inapplicable to their lives, because the world that feminist orthodoxy describes does not appear to be planet Earth. At the same time, we are approaching a zenith of feminist control over the actual inhabited world, which combines state repression with gender tribalism, both forces intensifying exponentially as they use each other as leverage to climb ever higher.

mountain

I am reminded of an ancient riddle, which asks, ‘how high can one climb up a mountain?’ The answer is ‘to the top,’ because once you reach the summit, the only possible way is down. Feminism has no obstacles left; total control is within its grasp, and by total, I do mean in the sense that it shall be totalitarian. The victim card has served as an entry pass through the back door of state and supranational institutions. Now empowered over men, feminists have re-established the principles of Valerie Solanas’ Scum Manifesto, declaring – in language clearly evocative of the Final Solution – that we shall soon witness The End of Men. The ‘sex war’ is not cooling down as women approach (or in some cases, surpass) equality with men – it is heating up. Feminists are not only publicly inciting male hatred and getting away with it, they are using their positions in government, in academia, in think tanks and in the media to make their violent fantasies a reality, advocating the renunciation of men’s basic human rights.

To take one recent example, the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the world recently announced that an international mobile prosecution unit shall be established specifically to target men around the world. To take another recent example, a leading feminist has suggested that certain legal principles designed to protect innocent citizens from persecution and unjust imprisonment, dating back to the signing of the Magna Carta, should be withdrawn from men. Nor is feminism a problem confined to the Western world. Men are subject to the arbitrary rule of women in India, facing severe penalties for inadvertently causing the slightest offense.

None of this squares with the ‘women-as-victim’ cliché, which has so usefully served feminists in getting to this point. Nevertheless, feminism is firmly entrenched and in control of the mechanisms which boast the monopoly on physical power, legitimate or otherwise. There is hardly any countervailing force which remains. The West has found its new Imperial Mission to replace Global Christendom: enforced worship of women. As any dissenting voice is immediately and violently stamped out, feminists are free to radicalize their anti-male agenda to the point of moral sickness and to unleash unto the world all manner of vindictive atrocities.

For you see, when propaganda has ceased to be an effective tool of control, one seeking control will simply find other means. Control of the state – the monopoly on physical violence – is the means which feminists have sought. But unlike propaganda, which manipulates the mind, state control only brutalizes the body. The power of the controllers always ultimately rests upon the resilience of the controlled, hence consent must still be manufactured. The Roman Empire did not last for five hundred years by the exercise of brute force, but by mass support; the Emperor was glorified as a mortal deity, and even the smallest townships in his realm voluntarily erected statues and altars in his honor. For too long, men have been worshiping at the altar of the female, and it is tempting to believe that this psychological submission will not yield even in the face of physical oppression or extermination – that men will march to their demise like sacrificial lambs, hoping to win women’s favor with their last servile actions. But proclamations regarding The End of Men may well turn out to be as empty as those which were made nearly twenty years earlier, concerning The End of History. The so-called Clash of Civilizations which followed led that author to refute his own position. We should be optimistic that a true Clash of the Sexes will soon have feminist-minded women eating crow.

As feminism grows ever more powerful, and begins to realize its radical ambitions, it will simultaneously exhaust its capacity for manufacturing consent. Those chivalric illusions which ensure the consent of men, and which feminism ultimately rests upon – ‘women-as-victim,’ ‘women-as-precious,’ ‘women-as-helpless,’ and so on – will become rather more difficult to maintain in time. The more force is advanced against men to bridle and inhibit their lives, the more discontent shall be nurtured among them. The misandry bubble is due to burst, and with every example of overreach, which sees yet more good men cast into the role of criminal and subjected to humiliating and vicious punishments, another crack appears in the wall, another step we take closer to the day that the whole hateful edifice collapses under its own weight – and, crucially, under ours.

Our task, then, is twofold: first, to prepare the ground, in order to hasten the collapse of feminism.

Second (and complementary to the first): to construct the ideological weapons to help prevent a feminist resurgence following its collapse.

Both of these goals require, not force, but some propagandizing of our own. Things being the way they are, this does not require us to distort the truth. On the contrary, we shall, for the most part, be exposing those truths which others have distorted; revealing the facts to a wider audience than has yet received them, diligently and unapologetically. As one notable activist in the field recently put it, he does not need to attack feminists – all he needs to do is quote them. Simply exposing feminist hatred to the disinfecting sunlight of the world might well be enough to turn the tide – which is why enormous energies are expended on misdirecting, discrediting, neutralizing and obscuring the arguments and advocates of the opposition.

vigeland2

 

One key strategy for the achievement of our task was announced at an April 2010 conference, in the form of Male Studies, a new discipline already facing hostility from an academic world that has long been a bastion of radical feminism. That this sore thumb, this thorn in the side of scholarly uniformity should provoke such outrage as it has done should not be surprising. Here is a selection of topics which Male Studies is set to cover:

Socioeconomic factors leading to males’ over-involvement in the criminal justice system, underemployment and limited opportunities as fathers, resulting from changes in child custody law (economics, forensics, law, public policy);

Misandric representations of boys and mature males in the media and advertising (media studies including cinema, television and internet, and advertising);

Accounts of the experience of being male (history, literature, autobiography);

Pressing issues related to the emotional well-being of boys and older males, most notably depression and suicide (clinical psychology, medicine and psychiatry, social work).

Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in the late 19th century, warned that if one gazes into the abyss for long enough, then one shall find the abyss gazing back into them. It must be deeply troubling for feminists, to wake up one morning and find other people deconstructing them, having made it their mission in life to expose and correct feminist wrongdoing.

This would seem to be the reason for the abusive response, from the feminist sector, to the idea of men discussing issues of sex and sexism without the supervision of women. It matters not what feminists think of Male Studies, because feminists are not the discipline’s target audience; its success is not dependent upon their approval, a fact they will no doubt have trouble reconciling themselves to. Regardless, even if they launched a concerted campaign to stop men from discussing their experiences through the fora of academia, they are incapable of preventing this from happening elsewhere. The true sticking point for would-be dictators today is that we live in an Information Age. It is rather difficult to control the flow of information when our very epoch is defined by it. So, let’s have these discussions right here, right now – as long as people can use the internet to congregate and speak their minds, nothing can stop us. Let’s have these discussions in a million other places too, out in the real world – because if men had never spoken up about their experiences, as men, then we would not be looking forward to the commencement of Male Studies in the near future.

There are already a great number of websites devoted to Men’s Rights issues; indeed, these seem to have proliferated over the last few years, sprouting up all over the pasture like so many delicious mushrooms! For most of these weblogs, their content needs no greater unifying theme than opposition to feminism. Given the growing and active network of people concerned about the status of men today, it has become possible to push the envelope a little further. This weblog aims to encourage the intellectual crystallization of what we are calling the Men’s Rights Movement, by taking a narrow lens across a broad range of topics. This weblog is dedicated to the elucidation of Gynocentrism Theory.

What is Gynocentrism Theory? To put it simply, it is a system which explains social relations between the sexes. It supersedes Patriarchy Theory, the cornerstone of all feminist thought. Now memetic, Patriarchy Theory has proved a remarkable tool in denying men their rights, including their most basic human rights to dignity and bodily integrity, on the pretense that all men are oppressors (or at least, allied with oppressive men from whom they receive benefits) and that all women are victims of male power. Gynocentrism Theory is the articulation of many years of effort by various thinkers in the Men’s Rights sphere to describe a vision of the world which more accurately reflects the experiences of men – and many women, too. In contrast to the simplistic, black-and-white tribalism of Patriarchy Theory, Gynocentrism Theory does not equate male fulfillment with the holding of tyrannical power over women. Gynocentrism Theory does not accept that men act as a power bloc. On the contrary, Gynocentrism Theory exposes the divergence between demographics and interests; fundamentally, that while a small number of men may be the ones holding social and political power, this by no means implies that they do so for the benefit of all men; and that in fact, more usually, they do so for the benefit of most women and to the detriment of most men. Gynocentrism Theory advocates that power be understood as multi-faceted, and that policy has historically been a matter of appealing to, and protecting, women.

monkeys

The above, no doubt, shall make heads spin among those who assume that power at all levels can be identified according to the shape of the genitals of those who get to make important decisions – regardless of what they actually decide.

Any more shall be beyond the scope of this introductory lecture. And so, we shall continue this train of thought next week. Lectures will be held on Saturdays, and students from around the world are invited to attend – or catch up in their own time if they prefer. Discussions shall be held immediately afterwards. Unlike most feminist weblogs, whose authors take after their mentor Mary Daly in systematically denying men a voice, all shall be welcome to speak here, although expulsions shall be warranted in the case that obscene material or personal information is posted. I prefer that feminists be fisked than filtered out, but the fate of truly persistent trolls shall be delivered at my discretion.

I bid you all a reflective day, and I’ll be seeing you again.

Sooner than you think.

Adam Kostakis

Further Reading:

Angry Harry. Gaea IV

The Futurist. The Misandry Bubble

Fidelbogen. For the Benefit of Newcomers: A Review of Some Basic Things

 

 

GYNOCENTRISM THEORY LECTURE SERIES:
1. Staring Out From the Abyss
2. The Same Old Gynocentric Story
3. Refuting the Appeal to Dictionary
4. Pig Latin
5. Anatomy of a Victim Ideology
6. Old Wine, New Bottles
7. The Personal, as Contrasted to the Political
8. Chasing Rainbows
9. False Consciousness & Kafka-Trapping
10. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part I
11. The Eventual Outcome of Feminism, Part II
12. How to Break a Dialectic

Dom vs Unruly Supremacist

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following article provides a useful differentiation between female domination, and female supremacy. Gynocentric culture is a mixture of these two things and, from my perspective at least, female sexual domination lends itself to a transmogrification into female supremacy – ie. a little power leads to absolute power by dint of the power urge in human nature.

MGTOW and male ‘mother love’

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

Male mother love:
MOMMYThis idea suggests that men’s relationship aspirations are driven by an unconscious yearning for “mother” love, from which all MGTOW men should attempt to liberate themselves. Oedipus complex, anyone? Whatever the real influence of “mother” love this presents a historically tired argument for male motivation. It is one that no longer appears in the practice of psychology and for good reason; over 100 years of analysis have proven the theory of less value than first suspected, and the man who first theorized it as a “universal complex” is thought to have suffered the complex himself. Behaviorism, psychoanalysis and the long reign of the Oedipus complex have been superseded by contemporary attachment theory which has deepened our understanding and shown that male need for attachment and affection need not be linked to that word “mother”.

None of this is to dismiss the pivotal importance of attachment desire in males, and there are portions of the so-called “mother love” theory that warrant close and ongoing discussion. In fact the science of attachment is potentially one of the most fruitful paths of investigation for MGTOW there is. The issue here is that whilst promising, the discussion about adult attachment theory in relation to MGTOW is currently underdeveloped and is therefore of limited use as a theoretical base.

A Voice For Choice (2014)

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following was first published on A Voice for Men in 2014. – PW

I was recently drawn into a conversation about the variety of contrary positions held by Men’s Human Rights Advocates: i.e. individual advocacy for men vs. group advocacy; traditionalist vs. progressive beliefs; women friendly vs. women shunning; gay vs. straight; faith-based vs. atheist; marriage vs. celibacy; victim narratives vs. no victim narratives; Republican vs. Democrat and so on.

That variety is further demonstrated in the contrary opinions of AVfM articles where we read, for instance, the neotraditionalist articles of Janet Bloomfield, versus the anti-traditionalist position of John Hembling.

How is one meant to build a coherent mission statement out of this mess of contrary opinions?

AVfM’s mission statement gives a few basic guidelines, but stops short of pushing any Thou Shalt commandments. Lets take a look at the current mission statement:1

Mission Statement

The past 50 years have been a time of remarkable change in the world of western women. With the help of technology and forward thinking, our society has thrown off sex-based expectations and limitations for women, allowing them important, long-deserved access to the path of self-actualization.

We now live in a world where a woman’s role in life is one of choice, not a destiny shaped by tradition, determined by biology, or forged in law. This, we think, is as it should be.

This revolution in freedom and identity, however, will not be complete until the same standards find their way into the lives of the average man. The absence of that complementary change in the lives of men has created an imbalance that erodes the autonomy of both sexes. Unless this changes, that imbalance will worsen.

Freedom from sex-based expectations for just one sex will never result in freedom for either sex. It is simply a foundation of exploitation on which tyranny is built and administered.

As a society, we are already on that path. The noble idea of freedom and equity between the sexes has been corrupted. It has become a malignancy on our social consciousness. What used to be cooperation between sexes is now gynocentric parasitism that inhabits every level of men’s existence, from cradle to coffin. The efforts to enhance the rights of women have become toxic efforts to undermine the rights of men.

It is time for equity-minded men and women to engage in the final push for freedom for both sexes, and indeed for all human beings. It is time for the interests of humanity to take precedence over the interests of men and women as political factions and social adversaries.

It is time for a movement that truly favors humanity, not a particular sex. It is time for feminism to fulfill its promise of equality, and to quit making a mockery of it.

With those humanist ideals guiding our path, we hereby proclaim the mission of A Voice for Men as “Changing the Cultural Narrative.”

Changing the Cultural Narrative

Since the turn of the 21st century, men’s advocacy has seen a shift toward changing the cultural dialogue on social and mainstream media. That challenge to popular narratives, so many of them gynocentric and misandric, has amounted to a grassroots effort involving a deconstruction and reconstruction, an effort ultimately in the service of creating a greater and better range of choices for men.

A stronger emphasis on cultural narratives forms a legitimate second wave of men’s rights activity in contrast to the lobbying of legislators and requesting reforms to misandric laws that characterized the earlier advocacy of the twentieth century. It is our understanding that, with few exceptions, laws governing gendered expectations are eventually brought into line with the prevailing cultural expectations.

Such an enterprise is not new. Similar narrative revolutions in religious beliefs and social orientations have happened throughout history, where cultural pressures led legislating bodies, and even individual magistrates, to interpret and draft new laws in the light of said expectations.

For this reason we long ago adopted ‘Changing the Cultural Narrative’ as the site’s byline. This makes a clear statement about what AVfM’s mission is and has been since the start, and addresses disinformation spread in some corners of the internet claiming the MHRM, and specifically AVFM, is about lobbying the government for legitimacy and legal recognition. Those claims are about as credible as the SPLC. What they say is simply not true.

AVFM’s mission focuses pretty much exclusively on changing the cultural dialogue. We have never lobbied politicians for laws, we don’t seek a “Violence Against Men Act,” or even changes in divorce and custody law. We admire, report on and support those undertaking such efforts but that is not the same thing as doing them. We are certain, though, that changing the cultural narrative — forcing a new dialogue — opens the door for laws to change in a positive way even if we are not an active part of those efforts.

Our Values

  • AVfM regards gender ideologues and all other agents of misandry as a social malignancy. We do not consider them well-intentioned or honest agents for their purported goals and extend to them no more courtesy or consideration than we would klansmen, skinheads, neo Nazis, or other purveyors of hate.
  • We will educate them where they are willing to learn, but hold them accountable for their ignorance as much as their actions; We take no side at all in partisan political struggles and, after weighing the evidence at hand, generally view all organized mainstream political options as gynocentric;
  • We support and endorse only non-violent reactions to feminist governance and in fact are trying to prevent future acts of violence that feminist governance has already inspired;
  • We oppose gynocentrism in all its forms; We oppose all state authority over or interference in the private lives of consenting adults engaged in any form of interpersonal relationship;
  • We take no stand on religion or lack of religion. We neither endorse nor oppose religious principles. We encourage a greater and better range of choices for men, backed by cultural blessing, as essential to a healthy functioning society.

The interesting thing you’ll notice above is that rather than taking sides on the big issues, most statements are non-committal – no stand on religion, no side in partisan politics, supporting those already in a family unit or marriage whilst strongly cautioning against it’s dangers in the current zeitgeist. About the only thing A Voice for Men takes an unequivocal stance against is misandry, gynocentrism, and the multitude of problems it causes.

Why aren’t the above position statements more absolute in support for one side or the other of popular issues; has AVfM gone soft on mission?

No, not really soft, but smart.

And respectful of individual male self-determination.

Like the endless stupidity that arises from arguing which is the One True God, trying to nail down the One True MHRA Stance on every issue is equally ludicrous. Rather, defining the MHRM becomes partially an act of stating what it is not, of saying neti neti – “neither this, nor that” to every partisan position people attempt to reduce it to. The MHRM can’t be reduced to traditionalism, it can’t be reduced to progressivism, nor conservatism, liberalism, atheism, activism, or any other ism.

Then comes the important question of what the MHRM is – the definition that everyone can agree on despite differences in ideology?

Clearly the movement involves cultural and self-advocacy for males in the face of a misandric world… but to what end? AVfM and the wider MHRM – MGTOW too – is based on men having a choice to believe whatever they damn well want to believe and to be afforded the agency and cultural blessing to follow their dreams. The fight for options, for a greater and better range of choices for men and boys is the Ace-card that trumps all partial positions; eg. the fight for educational equality, for greater reproductive choices, for genital integrity, more equitable health cover, fairer treatment in family court, and so on.

That constitutes the one defining goal that most MHRAs hold in common even when they violently disagree with each other on other issues.

So by all means boast that you’ve won the right to be a traditionalist (though the MHRM denounces the gynocentric aspects of it), or to be a celibate, or intactivist, or to receive a university education as a result of your hard-fought men’s rights activity, and I’ll be the first to offer congratulations. Just don’t tell me that the entire MHRM should be aiming for that one choice you decided to opt for.

Voices for choices, millions of them….. that’s what the MHRM stands for.

Note:

[1] Since writing this article, AVfM’s mission statement has been revised and expanded to include further meta-ideological commitments. The above article has been edited to include the new statement.

Penalties for not marrying (1903)

/ rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following article provides evidence that bachelor movements have existed throughout history, and that societies usually end up pressuring bachelor men to marry. The following piece first appeared in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser on Saturday 21 November 1903. – PW


No marriage

PENALTIES FOR MARRYING

Matrimony is considered a punishable offence in some communities. These circles of society are small, but their edicts are strong. The larger community, if it takes cognisance of a man’s single state, usually imposes a fine for not getting married, as in Argentina where bachelorhood requires the payment of an increasing tax to the government.

But in certain circles marriage is regarded as an offence. At Oxford University, for instance, a fellow of All Souls’ College forfeits his fellowship if he takes to himself a wife while he is supposed to be studying the classics.

He not only must pay a penalty, but he must present his college with a memorial in the shape of a silver cup, on which is inscribed the words, “Descendit in matrimonium” – “He backslid into matrimony.”

The aristocratic Bachelors’ Club of Piccadilly, London, ostracises members who forget themselves so far as to marry. Instant expulsion is the punishment for this offence. The backsliders must leave the company of the bachelors for ever. As an act of grace they pay a fine of 100 dollars and become honorary members of the club, but that is their own salvation.

Not only England has these anti-matrimony clubs. Their formation in Chicago has been treated as a joke, as it has in other American cities. Bachelors in other countries have lent an air of seriousness to their endeavours.

It is serious for a member of a certain Junggesellen Club [Bachelor club] in Germany to lapse into matrimony. As soon as his intention becomes known he is tried in the club court, with the president as judge, where he is allowed to plead in extenuation of his offence. On the skill of his pleading and his excuses depends his fine, from 100 to 250 dollars.

This fine is devoted to a dinner, at which all members appear in mourning garb. At its conclusion the president reads the sentence of expulsion, and the delinquent is led from the premises to an accompaniment of groans and lamentations.

Only last winter a recreant was condemned to swim twice across the Seine at midnight, with the result that a severe attack of rheumatic fever nearly robbed him of the bride he had paid the heavy price to wed.

While the bachelor sometimes has to pay dearly for a wife, in at least one country it scarcely pays to remain celibate. In Argentina the man who prefers single to married bliss has to pay a substantial and progressive tax. If he has not taken a wife by the time he has reached his 25th birthday he must pay a fine of 5 dollars a month to the Exchequer.

Source: Lancashire General Advertiser on Saturday 21 November 1903

 

See also: Bachelor movement of 1898

The “yonic cultus”

/ rtbavfm / 3 Comments

The following was written by E. Belfort Bax in the year 1887 under the title No Misogyny But True Equality. In this piece Bax speaks of the ‘yonic cultus’ and ‘yonic superstition,’ – a polite English phrase referring to a ‘cult of vagina’ as some call it today – PW

better than nothing

No Misogyny But True Equality

Ernest B. Bax - 1913

Ernest B. Bax – 1913

And now let us come to the main point in dispute [about female privilege]. I have made no “impeachment of women in general.” What I have impeached is the ascendency of women as a privileged caste or class. What I maintained is that whatever may have been the disabilities of women in earlier stages of society, in our modern bourgeois society (Western Europe and its colonies), there is an increasing tendency to erect women into a “sacra-sacred” class, the members of which are to be exempted from all the disagreeable consequences of their own actions, to have the criminal law suspended in their favour, to win in every civil suit, to be treated as martyrs and heroines every time a slight inconvenience befalls them. This is what I term the modern 19th century form of the Yonic cultus.

Mrs. Besant will not take me seriously when I state that men have been given six months for protecting themselves against their wives’ violence. Yet this is literally true. The case I had in my mind occurred, if I remember rightly, about March last. The exact date I forget, but I noticed it in the Commonweal at the time.

About a year-and-a-half ago there was a case at Highgate (as far as I recollect), in which a woman actually attacked her husband, who was an invalid and I think a cripple, with a knife, inflicting serious injury, and was let off scot free. If in the higher administration of the law there is gross and egregious favouritism shown to women as women, this is none the less so in the mere setting of the law in motion. A little more than a year ago a boy was sentenced, by Mr. Justice Day, to penal servitude for life, for attempting to extort money by threats of an indecent charge.

Now women are allowed (vide Mr. Howard Vincent, Pall Mall Gazette, July 13th last) under the very eyes of the police to exercise as a regular trade, a practice which in the male, on a single offence, is deemed worthy of the penultimate penalty of the law.1

Now I ask has ever greater privilege accrued to any class than this. The mediaeval “benefit of clergy,” pales down before the modern bourgeois “benefit of Sex.” Again, an alderman ventures upon a little feeble civic banter with some flower-girls who are brought up before him for obstructing the pathway.

The Yonicists are up in arms. These “poor girls,” are insulted. The newspapers gush with indignation. Mdme. Dronin is arrested on false information; by virtue of her sex the whole delinquent officialdom bows before her, from Home Secretary downward, with apologies and costly gifts. A scream goes forth that women are bullied by the police in the streets. Parliament adjourns. The welkin rings with wrath against police tyranny. Over mere male Socialists, that doesn’t matter – but over prostitutes – Oh! The Pall Mall Gazette rubs its eyes and snivels “Brethren shall we harry our sisters”? The same Pall Mall Gazette, bien entendu is very anxious to have its brothers “harried” for so much as looking at a woman in the streets; for the crime of accosting two years hard labour would, we suppose, be “grossly inadequate.”

Talking about the Pall Mall Gazette, by the way, it is difficult to believe its editor was not intentionally “lying” at home “for the benefit of his country” – women, as he conceived, when he declared the other night that only a woman could be arrested on unsupported testimony. A man deserves to be condemned to travel every day for a twelvemonth with single women on the Metropolitan Railway that can make such an impudently false statement.

As regards this matter, however, I, for one, am quite willing that no charge should be taken against a woman for annoyance in the street on the unsupported testimony of a man, provided no charge is taken against a man for indecent assault on the unsupported testimony of a woman. How now, what do you say to this, Mr. Stead? Completely destroy the blackmail industry – wouldn’t it? Now take this case – Barbarous cruelty to a young child, through whipping, is charged against the police – the child is a boy, a question is asked in Parliament, an investigation promised, and the matter shelved.

Compare this with the case of a female arrested on an unproved charge by a policeman, and locked up for a couple of hours. She whimpers, and the respectable classes are set in a blaze.

Yonic Superstition

Vagina 2I think that the Yonic superstition is in nothing more clearly evinced than in recent criminal legislation. The tender body of a young child may be flayed by a brutal policeman, just because it happens to be of the male sex; if it be of the female, to lay a finger on it is sacrilege, and for precisely the same offence it practically receives no punishment. The British Bourgeois affects horror at Count Schouvaloff’s birching of the court maids of honour at St. Petersburg, whose bodies were presumably better able to bear a castigation than the babes he complacently reads of in his paper as being sentenced to ten strokes of the birch by a police magistrate.

Then take the clause in the recent Criminal Law Amendment Act, which provides that in the case of illicit intercourse between a boy and a girl, while the boy may be sent to the penal servitude of a reformatory for five years the girl remains absolutely untouched. Now it is universally admitted that girls develop earlier than boys, so that this is a simple premium for girls with precocious criminal tendencies to entrap youths.

If it is prejudicial to the interests of society that intercourse should under any circumstances take place in the case of girls under sixteen, what conceivable rational ground can there be for limiting the penal consequences to one side of the equation. A more abominable infamy it would probably be difficult to find in the whole course of modern legislation.

Such are the outward and visible signs of the worship of the female principle in the modern world. Newspaper gush, one-sided legislation, “purity” meetings.

As it is holiday season, perhaps the editor of To-Day will allow me to be frivolous, and narrate a dream I had the other night:

I had been reading the Pall Mall Gazette, and Mrs. Besant’s article after supper – and on going to sleep me thought I was in an ancient city. Temples, with griffins and other queer stone creatures abounded on all sides. Groups of quaintly robed idlers were standing about an open square (in which I suddenly found myself) talking eagerly together.

Presently there issued from one side of the square a procession of white-robed figures that looked ghostly in the twilight as they advanced with measured step to the sound of the lyre and the lute. I asked of one who stood near what it was that I saw. “Knowest thou not, O son of the stranger,” replied he, “that the great goddess (the name I couldn’t quite catch) has vouchsafed to appear to men in mortal form, that she commands new rites, and will unfold to her worshippers the holy mysteries of the militant virgin.”

This was interesting, and I eagerly watched the approaching votaries. While I had been waiting it had been growing rapidly dusk. But now the moon shone forth. By its light, I thought I detected, in spite of their strange garb, foremost among the advancing throng, not as I expected, Orientals of the third century B.C., but the homely figures of Mr. Stead and Mrs. Ormiston Chant, hand in hand, singing as they danced, and dancing as they sang, a joyous hymn of ecstacy. I looked again, and behind them detected, as I fancied, the features of Mrs. Josephine Butler and Mr Waugh, in similar raptures. My historical sense suffered a shock and I essayed to withdraw a little, but ere I had done so my neighbour laid his hand on me, “See,” said he, “the goddess herself approaches.”

As I turned, the sharp cut features of a man, evidently a priest, caught my eye. He was clad like the rest in a plain white robe, but on his breast a large triangular silver breastplate glistened in the moonlight, and on his head was a conical crown. Could it be, but no – yet it was very like – the good Mr. Marson! In his hand he bore a standard whence gleamed in massy silver the model of a fish.

Behind the high-priest followed a car drawn by eight milk white mares, and in a kind of palanquin a veiled figure I knew to be the goddess. “Bow, vile stranger,” said my neighbour, “adore that virginity which was, and is, and is to come, before which even the legislators veil their faces.” But I kneeled not, neither adored, but standing looked on.

The procession halted before a temple, four priests came out and raised the palanquin. A thrill ran through the assembled multitude as the time arrived, when just for one moment the sacred veil should be raised. At the further end of the square a body of richly-attired old men emerged, with bowed heads, from a massive and imposing building. These, I understood, were the legislators, the fathers of the city.

Now, thought I, for a chance to see one of the great types of ancient female beauty, if not the Trojan Helen, at least a Semiramid, a “Mrs.” Caudaules, or a Cleopatra! The veil was raised, there stood forward in the pale moonshine – “Miss” Cass ! I turned and felt a little sick. I suppose I must have swooned at the sight of the shopocratic vestal, for the next thing I recollect is being aroused by a crowd rushing forth from the temple, headed by him and her, whom I had taken for Mr. Stead and Mrs. Ormiston Chant, shrieking death and destruction to the male principle. “Hail to the eternal virgin-militant womanhood!” They all raised diamond-shaped daggers on high and conjured the moon-goddess that ere her virgin rays paled that night the city should be purged for ever of maleness, and dedicated a holy priestess to her service.

I didn’t know exactly what it all meant, but thought I might as well go and look at something else, and so moved away, clutching a steel J pen and a fragment of the Pall Mall Gazette, which, in the event of the hero of Northumberland street beginning to show “venom,” I intended to use as a charm, crying In hoc signa vinces, (The allusion to the power of the new journalism; I thought would be sure to “fetch” him and make him forget his dreadful vows).

However, at that instant I awoke – to reflections on the mutability of human affairs and the difference between the militant Yonicism of two thousand years ago – the group of smooth-faced white-robed fanatics, fish-sign on forehead, triangle on breast and diamond-shaped dagger in hand – and the militant Yonicism of to-day with its black frock coats, Exeter Halls, newspaper articles, London police-courts, lobby wire pulling, and vigilance societies, and I thought that on the whole in spite of certain elements of unpleasantness I preferred the former.

Let me assure Mrs. Besant I am no hater of “women in general.” What I hate is – women in the “particular” position of a privileged class as they are at present. I decline to bow down before a sexual principle, or to admit the justice of granting privileges on the basis of a sex-sentiment. What I contended and still contend is that the bulk of the advocates of woman’s rights are simply working, not for equality, but for female ascendency.

It is all very well to say they repudiate chivalry. They are ready enough to invoke it politically when they want to get a law passed in their favour – while socially, to my certain knowledge, many of them claim it as a right every whit as much as ordinary women.

Says Mrs. Besant, “Why use the existence of bad women as an impeachment of women in general?” Now I want to know who has done so. I certainly have not. All I say is, don’t allow the worst characteristics of bad women to come into play by giving them free leave to use the tribunals for purposes of spite, revenge or blackmail! Don’t pull out your biggest pocket handkerchief at every tale of wife-beating, before you have heard the other side! Don’t allow women to ruin men by legal process, as a punishment for not marrying them, when they want them to! Don’t allow wives to “sell up” their husbands, or to compel their husbands to maintain them in idleness, while they are allowed to keep all their own property or earnings singly to themselves.

In stating this view of the question plainly, I may say I am only giving articulation to opinions constantly expressed in private by men amongst themselves. A noisy band fills the papers with lying rhodomontades, & c., & c., on the “downtrodden woman,” and their representations are allowed to pass by default. I am styled a misogynist forsooth, because I detest the sex-class ascendency, striven for by a considerable section at least of the bourgeois Women’s Rights advocates, and desire instead a true and human equality between the sexes.

Notes:

1. This is not all. It is now proposed by the Saturday Review and Pall Mall Gazette that this promising branch of female industry should be “protected” by the curtailment of cross-examination. A Mrs. Brereton, the other day, brought what the jury by their verdict pronounced a false, or to put it mildly, “doubtful” charge against a man. It is now actually complained by the journals in question that this verdict was obtained or furthered by the too severe cross-examination of the prosecutrix. Hence it is argued that cross-examination must be in future limited to questions not embarrassing to the prosecution. Could sex privilege go much further!