Gynocentrism and misandry

January 22, 2019July 13, 2020 / Peter Ryan / 2 Comments

By Peter Ryan

In my previous article “Perversions of gynocentrism”¹, I discussed the void of respect for men and boys. We live in a culture that does not respect the male half of the human race. To call this truth out is to attract the ire of feminists and be labelled a whinger and a misogynist that is just angry his supposed “privilege” has been taken away. The contempt that our gynocentric society has for men and boys is a forbidden topic to discuss.

This hostile reaction to discussing men’s issues and their well-being and labelling any men that discusses them a whinger, is not just seen from feminists. It is also expressed from a substantial number of men and women in society. It is an ugly reality of human nature that people do not like to confront their own bigotry and when they are confronted, it generally elicits a hostile response. The reality is that the misandry that feminism vomits out into society, is just a symptom of a much more deeply rooted problem in our culture.

Men and boys cannot read a newspaper, watch television, go online, listen to the radio, go to work, or to college or school, or even socialise with their peers, without being regularly bombarded with hateful and bigoted messages that there is something inherently toxic about them or wrong with them because they happen to be male. There is a feminist campaign of psychological warfare directed at men and boys. Tom Golden has compared it² to the communist brainwashing of political dissidents in China and made a compelling argument feminists are using the same techniques.

In my article “Diagnosing Gynocentrism”³, I discussed how gynocentrism is associated with a belief in female superiority. This belief holds that women and girls are naturally and inherently superior to men and boys based on being female. This belief emerges from two attitudes. There is an underlying attitude that masculinity is inherently flawed and that masculinity is toxic, violent, predatory, destructive and primitive. There is also a corresponding attitude that femininity is flawless, pure, peaceful, empathetic, life-giving and civilised. Gynocentric slogans like “women civilise men”⁴ and feminist terms like “toxic masculinity”⁵, are just two expressions of this same belief system. Female superiority is a belief system that leads to the dehumanisation of men and boys and the deification of women and girls.

Within one week of me publishing “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, the American Psychological Association released their guidelines on dealing with men and boys, which pathologises traditional masculinity. Ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink, has written a brilliant article debunking this nonsense⁶ and I highly recommend people take time to read it. Numerous psychologists such as Dr. Gad Saad⁷, Dr. Shawn Smith⁸ and Dr. David Ley⁹ in Psychology Today, have strongly criticised these guidelines and the demonisation of masculinity and the feminist ideological bias within them. A few days later, Gillette releases their new ad¹⁰ on how men need to reform themselves and evolve past their primitive, violent and predatory ways (because apparently all men in general are now represented by the actions of a handful of predatory, backwards and violent men). These examples of demonising men and masculinity are nothing new. This has been going on for decades.

Where I live, we have government funded man-bashing ads on TV on a regular basis¹¹, holding men in general collectively responsible for domestic violence. If one woman is murdered by a man, the media are quick to collectively hold all men¹² as sharing responsibility for their death. There is of course no discussion of female violence toward men. This is despite the abundance of research available¹³ that shows it is hardly a tiny fraction of domestic violence, but actually a substantial portion of it.

There is of course no collective blame directed at women in society for the actions of individual women that commit child abuse and physically attack their male partners. There should not be either, because all women and all men are not responsible for the actions of individual men and individual women. Of course this is understood when we look at female violence toward men and children, but not in the case of male violence toward women and children. That is just one gynocentric double standard that helps keep reinforcing the bigoted attitudes we have about men and women, which in turn drives the belief in female superiority.

Man bashing ads are like grains of sand on the beach. Books¹⁴and research papers¹⁵ have even been written on how pervasive the negative portrayal of men and masculinity is in this culture. The institutionalisation of misandry is also widespread in our society. Misandry is present in our political system, our universities, our family courts, our legal system, our schools, our universities, our corporations, our mainstream media and our government departments. It is in our policy, in our laws, in our news, in our entertainment, in school and university syllabus and academic scholarship and it is increasingly invading our personal spaces and social interactions.

None of this is new. What is new is the level of outrage the Gillette ad has generated. 2019 will mark the ten year anniversary of A Voice For Men. Ten years ago the Gillette ad would barely have created a ripple. There would have been some criticism, but hardly to the level we are presently seeing. This change in societal attitudes is a new phenomenon and an emerging trend. People have finally had enough. People are starting to notice the impact of what disrespecting the male half of the human race has in their own lives and they are recognising the true face of feminism. We have a long, long way to go, before we unlearn centuries of gynocentric programming. We are however starting to see society question the cultural narrative that something is inherently flawed about masculinity and also feminist ideology.

I did leave a comment on the Gillette ad. I responded as follows:

“Is this ad the best a man can get? Imagine if this ad generalised all black people or all women by the actions of a few individuals. Would such bigotry even get past production and be released? So why is it suddenly ok to generalise the male half of the human race by the actions of a few men? This is wrong. It is not “some” men doing the right thing, it is actually most men. Inspiring men to do better, requires respecting men to begin with. Seeing the worst in men and using shame and guilt to inspire them to do better, just creates the understandable level of hostility we see toward this ad. Men are not toxic, this message and messages like it are toxic. Inspiring men to do better, requires portraying a positive image of masculinity to your audience and not deriding them. Such simple logic.”

Predictably feminists attempted to gaslight me. That is their predictable (all so predictable) response when they get challenged on their own double standards. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, it must be me and the million or so other people like me that expressed a problem with the ad. Not in one instance in the replies under my comment, did feminists answer my question about whether this ad would have even got past production if it had of portrayed black people or women in this way.

Gillette would have us believe “some” men but not most men, are doing the right thing by others. It is implied through omission that the majority of men need to reform themselves. The ad clearly exploits a perceptual bias called anchoring¹⁶, to set the perceptual frame in the viewers minds right from the beginning, that men in general are to be found guilty for the actions and behaviour of a handful of predatory and violent men. Then it proceeds to lecture men from a morally self-righteous position, on what men should be doing to redeem themselves. I will ask the question again, would feminists approve of this ad if an ad like this was made about women? I think we all know the answer to that and their silence to that simple question is deafening.

Feminists were predictably quite quick to obfuscate an examination of their own double standards and bigotry, by accusing people of having a problem with men acting like decent human beings, or even going as far as insinuating that I was somehow one of those toxic men portrayed in the ad. This is the predictable game feminist ideologues play- They set the bait to elicit anger from men, there is an angry reaction from men and then they frame themselves as victims of male aggression. It is all in your head, there is something wrong with you etcetera, etcetera. Gaslighting is a preferred tactic by feminists. But the central question that I asked still remains unanswered. Would these same feminist ideologues be perfectly fine with a comparable video being made about women? Indeed people have noted that double standard and have produced such videos¹⁷.

Men and women do not have a problem with the message of men acting like decent human beings. They do have a problem with an ad framing men in general as violent, primitive, predators and that only “some” men are doing the right thing. They do have a problem with an ad that takes such a pompous and morally self-righteous position to judge and shame it’s male customer base and then dare to lecture them on how they should behave. The ad like most feminist inspired ads, is dripping with condescension toward men¹⁸.

Paul Elam did an excellent response to the ad linked here¹⁹. I also left a comment on that video as follows:

“When I wrote about there been a void of respect for men, I was not saying that as a minor footnote. We live in a society that is so gynocentric it pathologises the very type of men and masculine traits it depends on to exist. They say fish rots from the head and it certainly does. This ad is nothing new, just more of the same. The misandry in ads has been going on for decades.

Feminist ideology is the religion of the corporate kleptocracy we live in. The steady progression of this toxic ideology through our public institutions and businesses, is the product of decades of general apathy from the public toward the well-being of men and boys. Society gave feminism the green light to demonise and dehumanise men and boys and marginalise them in the name of equality decades ago. Business executives and politicians go along with it because society mostly does not care and has shown zero concern for decades. Is anyone going to protest outside their HQ? Is anyone going to make a formal complaint or take legal action over this ad? Is this really going to lead to any serious and long-term boycott of their products? Is there going to be any real tangible consequences for this business and any well organised movement to pushback against this misandry?

There were many ads, articles, books and shows like this before and most people said nothing. Only now is the rotten stench of feminism starting to bother people.

You reap what you sow. This will continue to worsen until people confront and correct their own gynocentric programming. Exactly how bad the stench of feminism needs to get before that occurs, depends on how much people are willing to suffer for their own gynocentric stupidity. The moral laziness of society toward gynocentrism is really to blame, not a business that just reflects the fashionable bigotry of the day. Look in the mirror people.”

One year ago there was another video that attracted similar levels of controversy. Does anyone care to guess what it was? It was the Jordan Peterson interview with Kathy Newman on Channel 4²⁰. So you were saying? So you were saying? So you were saying? Remember? Strawman, gaslight, strawman, gaslight. Precisely the same feminist tactics of painting men as villains and portraying themselves as victims, was on full display a year ago from that interview and in its aftermath. Just like now, there were millions of people that heavily criticised that interview. The cycle of misandry repeats itself over and over again each year and it will continue to escalate.

So my question to people is what are you going to do now? This is not a new problem. I can pretty much guarantee with certainty that the bigotry and contempt that our feminist controlled society has towards men, is going to keep continuing and keep escalating. You can expect more ads like this. What we are presently facing is not something that just grew overnight. The demonisation and the marginalisation of men and masculinity, has been going on for decades. It was the apathy and the indifference of the general population to what feminists were doing then, that allowed the pervasive misandry in our society to be normalised by feminists and grow to the point we are observing today.

I want people to really think about how deeply entrenched the hatred of men would have to be in our society, for the American Psychological Association to come up with their feminist inspired guidelines toward treating men and boys. I went through multiple examples in “Perversions of Gynocentrism”, on describing the world we now live in and how they illustrate a void of respect we have for men and boys. It is not hyperbolic for me to say that if I replaced men with Jews in some of the hateful content coming from our feminist media, academics and politicians, it would not look at all out of place in Nazi Germany. Could you imagine the outrage if the Washington Post article, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”²¹ was written about Jews? Antisemitism is reprehensible and so is misandry. The fact you can write such hateful drivel about men in a major mainstream media publication, goes to show you just how depraved our society has become.

To get to this level of feminist depravity and hatred towards men in society, the general population had to be apathetic and indifferent enough to the well-being of men to permit it. That is the disgusting truth that no one wants to acknowledge. Even a substantial number of antifeminists will stop short of examining the reasons why feminists have been so successful in implementing their agenda, with next to no resistance from the population. All of these mothers and fathers with sons did nothing for generations, while feminism gradually infected and then spread through our institutions, companies, politics, media, legal system and public and private organisations. Despite the massive outcry over this one ad that goes for less than 2 minutes, the concern and outrage from the public over a multitude of far more serious examples of systemic and institutional misandry in society, is relatively little.

Men and boys are far behind girls at every level of education from kindergarten to postgraduate education. They have been struggling academically for decades in a feminist controlled education system that prioritises women and girls learning needs and avoids and silences any attempt to address this imbalance. Young men have seen their rights to due process eliminated on college campuses and their lives ruined from false allegations, thanks to biased feminist university policies and kangaroo tribunals. Husbands and fathers face severe bias in the family court and divorce process and many of them lose everything- wife, kids, house and sometimes their lives. Countless fathers are killing themselves on a regular basis from being alienated from their children. Men are now facing a social climate thanks to metoo# and changes to the legal system, where a woman can virtually point the finger at a man and based on an unproven accusation from more than 20 years ago and with no trial, the man can have his life destroyed. The list goes on and on.

Many of these problems have been around for decades and they are systemic in nature and have impacted millions of men and boys. The silence from our society to these issues has been deafening, because mostly no one cares. Like I said, the Gillette ad that went for less than 2 minutes, got more attention in one week than any of those men’s issues I just mentioned have gotten from society in twenty years! If these things were happening to women, we would be up in arms and there would be a revolution. The indifference to the suffering and marginalisation of men and boys, is a readily observable feature of society. This is the gender empathy gap²².

It is a stark and surreal claim to talk about men being privileged in a society that bends over backwards on every occasion to cater to feminist demands to prioritise female well-being (even to the point of spending money on stopping “manspreading” on public transport), while at the same time shaming and ostracising men and boys and showing such indifference to their suffering. So whilst I am glad to see the reaction to the Gillette ad, that reaction is just a blip on the radar screen. In contrast the reaction from society in general toward the systemic misandry within it, has been one of silence, indifference and in some cases encouragement. If people want to see real change, then that will have to change.

Feminism has been able to spread through the public and private sectors of our society with ease, because our leaders have correctly perceived that they will receive greater consequences from feminists for not going ahead with the feminist agenda, than from the general public if they do. Politicians will gladly parrot feminist talking points on domestic violence for example, because they know the attacks they will get from feminists in the media and elsewhere if they do not, will be orders of magnitude more detrimental to their political careers, than the consequences they will receive from the general public by doing so. I noticed Stardusk has raised this very same point in relation to his response to the Gillette ad²³ and also emphasised the importance of saying “no” to these feminist ideologues. It is the same situation in any big organisation that feminists infest.

Our society has been slowly rotting away from the inside year after year and decade after decade, from the slow and gradual feminist subversion of our institutions, academia, media, legal system, political system and corporations etc. The feminist capture of the universities has been essential to feminisms spread throughout society, ensuring that our future politicians, policy and law makers, business professionals, mental health professionals and educators, are thoroughly indoctrinated in feminist ideology and go on to work at senior levels where they can spread feminist ideology within the private and public organisations they work for.

In many ways modern society today resembles a termite infested house. The feminist infestation has gone by unimpeded for decades and now suddenly the damage is starting to appear on the surface. What people need to realise is the Gillette ad is just the tip of the iceberg of this problem. We now have a situation where the public and private sectors of our society, blatantly express the female supremacist values of feminist ideology and the general population is disgusted by what it sees. But what the general population is disgusted by, is really just a reflection of its own gynocentric double standards. All that was required for this to occur, was for people to remain indifferent to male-being for long enough to let feminism implement their agenda and entrench themselves in our institutions and corporations etc.

In “Perversions Of Gynocentrism” and “The Normalisation Of Gynocentrism”²⁴, I explained at a social and cultural level how the spread of feminism and gynocentrism has been achieved. Gynocentrism is at the heart of the pervasive misandry we are observing today and feminism is merely a political manifestation of gynocentrism. We are not going to overcome feminism by simply limiting our focus to criticising feminist ideology. We have to ask serious questions about why society has been so easily overtaken by feminism. We have to confront our own apathy toward male well-being. We have to confront our pedestalisation and deification of women and girls. We have to confront our own gynocentric programming and how that programming taps into basic sexual and emotional drives and short-circuits them. If we are not prepared to confront our own gynocentrism, then feminism will continue to degrade our society until it inevitably collapses from a fempocalypse²⁵.

Only if society cares enough about male well-being to react in a manner that leads to serious consequences for our politicians, businesses and academics etc to lead them to change their ways and resist feminism, will we see any change. Until then it will remain business as usual and feminism will keep on escalating the misandry in our society. Feminism has had several decades to infest every branch of society and has a great deal of political and financial momentum behind it. Feminism will not be defeated by a single protest or a single boycott or a single march or a single legal battle. It is going to take a sustained effort on multiple fronts to remove the decades of feminist rot in our society. It is going to take a society prepared to rise above its own gynocentrism and its one-sided concern for only female well-being, to generate a strong enough response to defeat feminism. Half measures will not be enough. If people truly have had enough of misandry like the Gillette ad, then we have to go the whole way and question our own double standards that prioritise female well-being and ignore male-being.

The gynocentric seeds of our own destruction bore the fruit of feminism. Feminism is just an extension and a reflection of our own bigotry. We have an underlying belief in female superiority embedded in our culture which we do not want to look at, because we do not like the reflection that stares back at us. We have bigoted attitudes toward men and toward women engrained in our culture. The women are wonderful effect²⁶ and the female in-group bias²⁷, are real measurable phenomena in our society and are the subject of scientific enquiry. We need to unlearn those attitudes. Men are not collectively responsible for the actions of mass murderers and serial rapists. Women and girls are not all sugar and spice and men and boys are not all primitive violent Neanderthals. The notion of women and children first and the complete disregard for male well-being, is indefensible in a modern developed society where women enjoy the same rights as men.

The underlying belief in female superiority that has gradually been embedded in our gynocentric culture and the attitudes it is based upon, need to be confronted and eradicated. Masculinity is not toxic, these gynocentric elements of our culture are toxic.

References:

Jane Anger: gynocentrism in 1589

December 13, 2013December 22, 2023 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following quotes written by ‘Jane Anger’, sixteenth century female English author on the subject of men’s imperfections – PW.

“Wee are contrary to men, because they are contrarie to that which is good: because they are spurblind, they cannot see into our natures, and we too well (though we had but halfe an eie) into their conditions, because they are so bad: our behaviours alter daily, because mens vertues decay hourely. If Hesiodus had with equity as well looked into the life of man, as he did presisely search out the qualities of us women, he would have said, that if a woman trust unto a man, it shal fare as well with her, as if she had a waight of a thousand pounds tied about her neck, and then cast into the bottomles seas: for by men are we confounded though they by us are sometimes crossed.

Our tongues are light, because earnest in reprooving mens filthy vices, and our good counsel is termed nipping injurie, in that it accordes not with their foolish fancies. Our boldnesse rash, for giving Noddies nipping answeres, our dispositions naughtie, for not agreeing with their vilde mindes, and our furie dangerous, because it will not beare with their knavish behaviours. If our frownes be so terrible, and our anger so deadly, men are too foolish in offering occasions of hatred, which shunned, a terrible death is prevented.

There is a continuall deadly hatred betweene the wilde boare and tame hounds, I would there were the like betwixt women and men unles they amend their maners, for so strength should predominate, where now flattery and dissimulation hath the upper hand. The Lion rageth when he is hungrie, but man raileth when he is glutted. The Tyger is robbed of her young ones, when she is ranging abroad, but men rob women of their honour undeservedlye under their noses. The Viper stormeth when his taile is trodden on, & may not we fret when al our bodie is a footstoole to their vild lust: their unreasonable mindes which knowe not what reason is, make them nothing better then bruit beastes.”

“The creation of man and woman at the first, hee being formed In principio of drosse and filthy clay, did so remaine until God saw that in him his workmanship was good, and therfore by the transformation of the dust which was loathsome unto flesh, it became purified. Then lacking a help for him, GOD making woman of mans fleshe, that she might bee purer then he, doth evidently showe, how far we women are more excellent then men.

Our bodies are fruitefull, wherby the world encreaseth, and our care wonderful, by which man is preserved. From woman sprang mans salvation. A woman was the first that beleeved, & a woman likewise the first that repented of sin. In women is onely true Fidelity: (except in her) there is constancie, and without her no Huswifery. In the time of their sicknes we cannot be wanted, & when they are in health we for them are most necessary. They are comforted by our means: they nourished by the meats we dresse: their bodies freed from diseases by our cleanlines, which otherwise would surfeit unreasonably through their own noisomnes. Without our care they lie in their beds as dogs in litter, & goe like lowsie Mackarell swimming in the heat of sommer.

They love to go hansomly in their apparel, and rejoice in the pride thereof, yet who is the cause of it, but our carefulnes, to see that every thing about them be curious. Our virginitie makes us vertuous, our conditions curteous, & our chastitie maketh our truenesse of love manifest. They confesse we are necessarie, but they would have us likewise evil. That they cannot want us I grant: yet evill I denie: except onely in the respect of man, who (hating all good things, is onely desirous of that which is ill, through whose desire, in estimation of conceit we are made ill.

But least some shuld snarle on me, barking out this reason: that none is good but God, and therfore women are ill. I must yeeld that in that respect we are il, & affirm that men are no better, seeing we are so necessarie unto them. It is most certain, that if we be il, they are worse: for Malum malo additum efficit malum peius: & they that use il worse then it shold be, are worse then the il. And therefore if they wil correct Magnificat, they must first learn the signification therof. That we are liberal, they wil not deny sithence that many of them have (ex confessio) received more kindnes in one day at our hands, then they can repay in a whole yeare: & some have so glutted themselves with our liberality as they cry No more. But if they shal avow that women are fooles, we may safely give them the lie: for my selfe have heard some of them confesse that we have more wisdome then need is, & therfore no fooles: & they lesse then they shold have, & therfore fooles.

It hath bene affirmed by some of their sex, that to shun a shower of rain, & to know the way to our husbands bed is wisedome sufficient for us women: but in this yeare of 88, men are grown so fantastical, that unles we can make them fooles, we are accounted unwise. And now (seeing I speake to none but to you which are of mine owne Sex,) give me leave like a scoller to proove our wisdome more excellent then theirs, though I never knew what sophistry ment.

Ther is no wisdome but it comes by grace, this is a principle, & Contra principium non est disputandum: but grace was first given to a woman, because to our lady: which premises conclude that women are wise. Now Primum est optimum, & therefore women are wiser then men. That we are more witty which comes by nature, it cannot better be prooved, then that by our answers, men are often droven to Non plus, & if their talk be of worldly affaires, with our resolutions they must either rest satisfied, or proove themselves fooles in the end.”

Abusive “shrews” and intimate partner violence

November 27, 2013July 9, 2017 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The Spirit of Chivalry, by Sir Walter Scott (1818)

September 17, 2013November 12, 2023 / Peter Wright / Leave a comment

The following excerpts describing gynocentric-chivalry are taken from Sir Walter Scott’s 1818 essay in the volume Essays on Chivalry, Romance, and the Drama

* * *

The main ingredient in the spirit of Chivalry, second in force only to the religious zeal of its professors, and frequently predominating over it, was a devotion to the female sex, and particularly to her whom each knight selected as the chief object of his affection, of a nature so extravagant and unbounded as to approach to a sort of idolatry. The original source of this sentiment is to be found, like that of Chivalry itself, in the Customs and habits of the northern tribes who possessed, even in their rudest state, so many honourable and manly distinctions, over all the other nations in the same stage of society. The chaste and temperate habits of these youth, and the opinion that it was dishonourable to hold sexual intercourse until the twentieth year was attained, was in the highest degree favourable not only to the morals and health of the ancient Germans, but must have contributed greatly to place their females in that dignified and respectable rank which they held in society.
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Amid the various duties of knighthood, that of protecting the female sex, respecting their persons, and redressing their wrongs, becoming the champion of their cause, and the chastiser of those by whom they were injured, was represented as one of the principal objects of the institution. Their oath bound the new-made knights to defend the cause of all women without exception ; and the most pressing way of conjuring them to grant a boon was to implore it in the name of God and the ladies. The cause of a distressed lady was, in many instances, preferable to that even of the country to which the knight belonged. Thus, the Captal de Buche, though an English subject, did not hesitate to unite his troops with those of the Comte de Foix, to relieve the ladies in a French town, where they were besieged and threatened with violence by the insurgent peasantry.

The looks, the words, the sign of a lady, were accounted to- make knights at time of need perform double their usual deeds of strength and valour. At tournaments and in combats, the voices of the ladies were heard like those of the German females in former battles, calling on the knights to remember their fame, and exert themselves to the uttermost. “Think, gentle knights,” was their cry, “upon the wool of your breasts, the nerve of your arms, the love you cherish in your hearts, and do valiantly for ladies behold you.” The corresponding shouts of the combatants were, “Love of ladies! Death of warriors! On, valiant knights, for you fight under fair eyes? Where the honour or love of a lady was at stake, the fairest prize was held out to the victorious knight, and champion from every quarter were sure to hasten to combat in a cause so popular. Chaucer, when he describes the assembly of the knights who came with Arcite and Palemon to fight for the love of the fair Emilie, describes the manners of his age in the following lines;

“For every knight that loved chivalry,
And would his thankes have a passant name,
Hath pray’d that he might ben of that game,
And well was him that thereto chusen was.
For if there fell to-morrow such a case,
Ye knowen well that every lusty knight
That loveth par amour, and hath his might,
Were it in Engellande, or elleswhere,
They wold hir thanked willen to be there.
To fight for a lady! Ah! Benedicite,
It were a lusty sight for to see.”

It is needless to multiply quotations on a subject so trite and well known. The defence of the female sex in general, the regard due to their honour, the subservience paid to their commands, the reverent awe and courtesy, which, in their presence, forbear all unseemly words and actions, were so blended with the institution of Chivalry as to form its very essence. But it was not enough that the “very perfect, gentle knight,” should reverence the fair sex in general. It was essential to his character that he should select, as his proper choice, “a lady and a love,” to be the polar star of his thoughts, the mistress of his affections, and the directress of his actions. In her service, he was to observe the duties of loyalty, faith, secrecy, and reverence. Without such an empress of his heart, a knight, in the phrase of the times, was a ship without a rudder, a horse without a bridle, a sword without a hilt ; a being, in short, devoid of that ruling guidance and intelligence, which ought to inspire his bravery, and direct his actions. The least dishonest thought or action was, according to her doctrine, sufficient to forfeit the chivalrous lover the favour of his lady.

It seems, however, that the greater part of her charge concerning incontinence is levelled against such as haunted the receptacles of open vice ; and that she reserved an exception (of which, in the course of the history, she made liberal use) in favour of the intercourse which, in all love, honour, and secrecy, might take place, when the favoured and faithful knight had obtained, by long service, the boon of amorous mercy from the lady whom he loved par amours.In these extracts are painted the actual manners of the age of Chivalry. The necessity of the perfect knight having a mistress, whom he loved par amours, the duty of dedicating his time to obey her commands, however capricious, and his strength to execute extravagant feats of valour, which might redound to her praise, –for all that was done for her sake, and under her auspices, was counted her merit, as the victories of their generals were ascribed to the Roman Emperors— was not a whit less necessary to complete the character of a good knight.

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On such occasions, the favoured knight, as he wore the colours and badge of the lady of his affections, usually exerted his ingenuity in inventing some device or cognisance which might express their love, either openly, as boasting of it in the eye of the world, or in such mysterious mode of indication as should only be understood by the beloved person if circumstances did not permit an avowal of his passion. The ladies, bound as they were in honour to requite the passion of their knights, were wont, on such occasions, to dignify them by the present of a scarf, ribbon, or glove, which was to be worn in the press of battle and tournament. These marks of favour they displayed on their helmets, and they were accounted the best incentives to deeds of valour. The custom appears to have prevailed in France to a late period, though polluted with the grossness so often mixed with the affected refinement and gallantry of that nation.

Sometimes the ladies, in conferring these tokens of their favour, saddled the knights with the most extravagant and severe conditions. But the lover had his advantage in such cases, that if he ventured to vencounter the hazard imposed, and chanced to survive it, he had, according to the fashion of the age, the right of exacting, from the lady, favours corresponding in importance.

The annals of Chivalry abound with stories of cruel and cold fair ones, who subjected their lovers to extremes of danger, in hopes that they might get rid of their addresses, but were, upon their unexpected success, caught in their own snare, and, as ladies who would not have their name made the theme of reproach by every minstrel, were compelled to recompense the deeds which their champion had achieved in their name. There are instances in which the lover used his right of reprisals with some rigour, as in the well-known fabliau of the three knights and the shift; in which a lady proposes to her three lovers, successively, the task of entering, unarmed, into the mêlée of a tournament, arrayed only in one of her shift. The perilous proposal is declined by two of the knights and accepted by the third, who thrusts himself, in the unprotected state required, into all the hazards of the tournament, sustains many wounds, and carries off the prize of the day.

On the next day the husband of the lady (for she was married) was to give a superb banquet to the knights and nobles who had attended the tourney. The wounded victor sends the shift back to its owner, with his request, that she would wear it over her rich dress on this solemn occasion, soiled and torn as it was, and stained all over with the blood of its late wearer. The lady did not hesitate to comply, declaring, that she regarded this shift, stained with the blood of her “fair friend, as more precious than if it were of the most costly materials.” Jaques de Basin, the minstrel who relates this curious tale, is at a loss to say whether the palm of true love should be given to the knight or to the lady on this remarkable occasion. The husband, he assures us, had the good sense to seem to perceive nothing uncommon in the singular vestment with which his lady was attired, and the rest of the good company highly admired her courageous requital of the knight’s gallantry. It was the especial pride of each distinguished champion, to maintain, against all others, the superior worth, beauty, and accomplishments of his lady; to bear her picture from court to court, and support, with lance and sword, her superiority to all other dames, abroad or at home. To break a spear for the love of their ladies, was a challenge courteously given, and gently accepted, among all true followers of Chivalry, and history and romance are alike filled with the tilts and tournaments which took place upon this argument, which was ever ready and ever acceptable. Indeed, whatever the subject of the tournament had been, the lists were never closed until a solemn course had been made in honour of the ladies.

There were knights yet more adventurous, who sought to distinguish themselves by singular and uncommon feats of arms in honour of their mistresses; and such was usually the cause of the whimsical and extravagant vows of arms which we have subsequently to notice. To combat against extravagant odds, to fight amid the press of armed knights without some essential part of their armour, to do some deed of audacious valour in face of friend and foe, were the services by which the knights strove to recommend themselves, or which their mistresses (very justly so called) imposed on them as proofs of their affection.

Sometimes the patience of the lover was worn out by the cold-hearted vanity which thrust him on such perilous enterprises. At the court of one of the German emperors, while some ladies and gallants of the court were looking into a den where two lions were confined, one of them purposely let her glove fall within the palisade which enclosed the animals, and commanded her lover, as a true knight, to fetch it out to her. He did not hesitate to obey, jumped over the enclosure ; threw his mantle towards the animals as they sprung at him; snatched up the glove, and regained the outside of the palisade. But when in safety, he proclaimed aloud, that what he had achieved was done for the sake of his own reputation, and not for that of a false lady, who could, for her sport and cold-blooded vanity, force a brave man on a duel so desperate. And, with the applause of all that were present, renounced her love for ever. This, however, was an uncommon circumstance. In general, the lady was supposed to have her lover’s character as much at heart as her own, and to mean by pushing him upon enterprises of hazard give him an opportunity of meriting her good graces, which she could not with honour confer upon one undistinguished by deeds of chivalry.

Source:Essays on Chivalry, Romance, and the Drama, by Sir Walter Scott

Gynotopia: Love, Peace and Kill All The Men

September 15, 2013February 18, 2024 / Peter Wright / 6 Comments

Gynotopia

Often all-female worlds are imagined as Utopias. The details of the Utopia vary, but the idea that a world without men would be a Utopia recurs again and again in literature throughout the centuries. Neither is the idea entirely fiction, as we see from modern examples where feminists literally call for the extermination of part or all of the male population; a fantasy that does not occur in the reverse.[1][2]

In the decades before World War II, gynotopias tended towards the Utopian. In the 50’s, the “Love-Starved Amazons In Outer Space” genre was created. The 60’s and 70’s spawned two new, closely related gynotopian genres. One was a feminist utopian school, different from the older utopian novels in its bitterness towards men. The other might be termed “backlash fiction”; written by men, these novels featured monstrous Amazons ruthlessly murdering men by the bushel. In many of these stories of both camps, a plague or war lowers the number of males and a handful of highly intelligent, strong-willed women decide to seize power for themselves, and they know they have to make sure there are few or no males if they want to hold on to it.

The Book of The City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan.

Aside from classical myths describing tribes of Amazons, the first serious attempt at dreaming up a gynotopic society comes from protofeminist Christine de Pizan in the Middle Ages (c.1405). The storyline proposes that a city be constructed entirely by women – one that will be ruled entirely by women, every one of whom is virtuous, chaste and pure. Christine inserts herself into the story as its most suitable ruler, as she is the wisest, and most chaste and pure of all women. Christine’s city presents and shelters women as goddesses. Like Pygmalion, who was uninterested in real women, she sculpts the perfect female so that men can worship the illusion. In this sense Christine was very much a traditionalist attempting to uphold and entrench all the privileges enjoyed by her gender since chivalric love had been introduced. For a longer essay discussing this author and her book see Christine de Pizan: the first gender warrior.

Mizora: a World of Women by Mary E. Bradley Lane

Mizora, published in 1880 is an all-female Utopian novel full of murderous ideologies hauntingly remniscent of Nazism. In this Utopia a disinterest in sex is maintained, but the women wear beautiful and elaborate clothes. Instead of agrarian subsistence, Mizora is technologically highly advanced; they synthesize most of their food from minerals, have cured most diseases, have flying machines, and their parthenogenesis takes place in a laboratory. Their planned economy, unlike every planned economy in real life, has created great prosperity for all. Everybody is blonde and blue-eyed. The Nazis did not invent their “master race” theory all by themselves; in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not only did many people take the pseudoscience of eugenics seriously, but there was a widely held theory that blue-eyed blonds were the highest type of human. The theory is discussed in depth in Joanna Pitman’s fascinating book On Blondes.

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination, with most the male population originally killed by “natural” forces, and any remaining intruder males held captive in a fortress-like building

Bees in Paradise by Marriott Edgar

In this early (1944) and more lighthearted example of this genre Arthur Tucker and a few other men are shipwrecked on an island whose sole visible population is beautiful young women. (Like Wonder Woman’s home, it is called Paradise Island.) Men apparently exist, though we never see any of them; all the important work is done by women, who rule this society completely. However, their birth rate is dangerously low, and to their bafflement they are unable to induce men to marry them – which, since the movie was made in 1944, is the only way they can get pregnant. It does not occur to them that their policy of executing all husbands two months after the wedding might have something to do with it.

The Day of the Women by Pamela Kettle

The back cover of this British pulp novel really says it better than I possibly could:

A female Prime Minister… human stud farms run by women… mass rallies at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the day of the dominating women… all this and more in a take-over bid of the Seventies that turns to high-heeled fascism, a dictatorship of unbridled power lust. A female elite has taken over England. Led by their ‘mother’, the sleek Diana Druce, they perform an economic miracle – and put the jackboot through the idea that women are the weaker sex. Author Pamela Kettle paints, in mercilessly naked detail, a picture of the near future that is not only possible, but probable…

The Sex War by Sam Merwin, Jr.; also available via Kindle as The White Widows

Merlin’s 1953 science fiction novel in which a chemist researching hemophilia becomes a pawn for ‘The White Widows, ‘ a group of women who intend to take over the world — and eliminate all men!

This one is about a conspiracy of genetically superior women who want to take over the world and, once they have the technology to reproduce without them, do away with men entirely. Notice the blood on the lower abdomen of the man in the background. I don’t recall any castration in the novel, but the cover’s implication is pretty darn clear.

Elseworlds: Created Equal

In this graphic novel, all the men in the DC universe die of a plague… except for Superman and Lex Luthor. The author apparently couldn’t figure out whether to be male chauvinist or female chauvinist. This is a sterling example of how many interesting psychological complexes bubble up as soon as people start writing about gynotopias. Futuristic all-female world in which one male is made as an experiment. This falls into the category of satire against radical feminism. Without men, the world becomes a stagnant dictatorship, although in this novel, the dictatorship functions reasonably even if it is dull, unlike in real life, where dictatorships are full of unrest and don’t tend to last long.

“Well, who wants men, anyway?” she said with an attempt at nonchalance that didn’t quite come off. Crinila smiled in the darkness. “Why, nobody, Lycia darling. Not even the men themselves will want men. All they will ever want is women.”

The Holdfast Chronicles by Suzy McKee Charnas

The gynotopian “female planet” has also been shown up as everything from well-meant nonsense to hateful rage, and Miss Charnas’s series is no exception. She claims not to hate men, but when you read her fictional history of how those nasty men destroyed the earth, killed off most of our species in massive wars, and then enslaved all women, even contemplating raising women for food, it’s kind of hard to believe her. (Incidentally, Miss Charnas vehemently opposes the current wars in the Middle East that have unseated dictatorships which treat women almost this badly, and of course similarly opposes Western civilization, in which women have been better treated than in any other society in history.)

Facing dwindling reproduction, the men devised a procedure by which genetically altered women could be fertilized by horse sperm. Aside from the scientific improbability, I found this rather interesting, since according to Greek legend, horses were extremely important to Amazons – many Amazon names incorporate the Greek word for “horse” – and there were predictable jokes and speculation that their horses took the place of men in, ah, various ways. I don’t know if the parallel is deliberate. In any case, able to reproduce without men (because of technological advances made by men), these women escaped and became roving Amazons. This leads to the most worthwhile book in the series, The Furies, which Miss Charnas says upset many readers who were hoping for a more conventional feminist fantasy about how everything turns into fluffy bunnies without any of those big bad men around. Instead these Riding Women become just as brutal to men as men had been to them. This makes The Furies the most realistic novel out of the series; an hour of reading child abuse case histories will eradicate any notion that women are not capable of being violent or cruel.

The final novel, The Conqueror’s Child, centers on the daughter of a hero of the Riding Women – a daughter who she abandoned as soon as she was born, following the model of real-life feminists. The story is about how the matriarchy finally wipes out the patriarchy for good, and how some women were magnanimous enough to allow some men to live. Miss Charnas claims to envision a society where the sexes are genuinely equal and both have all human options open to them, but her own story belies this: “The sponsorship of men and boys is a way of providing them with what amounts to a family of sharemothers, who show them how decent people behave and require that they themselves do so,” Miss Charnas burbles happily, describing this as “an alternative to enslaving the men or keeping them permanently on the stick”. We are asked to believe, in defiance of all of human history, that the men submit to this. I do not have the space here to dispute Miss Charnas’s definition of “decent behavior”, but I will point out that apparently killing or enslaving men is not excluded from it. But we can hardly expect the author to have a realistic view of human nature when we see in what denial she is about animals: “Any fool can see what makes a reasonable society by looking at who rules a band of horses or a flock of goats.” Please pause for a moment to digest that sentence. She is asking us to take four-legged grass-eating animals as a model for government. I think “fool” is the right word here. She continues, “Despite noisy male pantomime of mastery, the chief invariably turns out to be the queen doe or the lead mare, not the randy, hysterical buck or the stallion with the arched neck and rolling eyes.” Gracious, she does hate the menfolk, doesn’t she? Well, I have never studied horses, goats or deer, but I have invested considerable time into studying our close relatives the apes, and male dominance is universal among them.

Stormquest is a 1987 sword-and-sandals B movie. The nations of Kimbia, which has no men, and Ishtan, which keeps men as slaves, are at war. Add to the mix Ishtan men who are rebelling to demand equality with women and Kimbian women who were condemned for liking the men they bred with. The treatment of men by Ishtans is quite appalling, though to be fair the Ishtan queen is almost as cruel to her female subjects as her male slaves. In a female-ruled society where men are kept solely for breeding, two women come to believe that their society’s treatment of men is wrong, and lead them in a revolt against the system.

Whoever made this movie seems to have had some pretty big Issues. Not on DVD, but the entire movie can be viewed in segments on a certain free video site.

In City of Women by David Ireland, men have been banished from Sydney, Australia, but still run amok outside the city.
Dustjacket synopsis:

“The city of women is love, Billie Shockley says.
“But in the city of women that is her world, love takes strange forms.
“The city is Sydney, from its familiar streets and gardens men have been banished. Their existence still threatens its precincts and Old Man Death moves rapaciously and relentlessly among its citizens.
“Billie observes them – their hedonism, rivalry, passions, cruelty, power, fragility. Reflecting her own anguish at the loss of love and youth, they suffer brutality and decay.
“But, she tells her gentle leopard, she will never admit it’s all over.

“City of Women is David Ireland’s most recent novel. It follows his highly acclaimed A Woman of the Future, which in 1979 won for him, for the third time, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, shared the Age Book of the Year Award for 1980, and has become a best-seller.

“Gender Genocide” also published as Who Needs Men? by Edmund Cooper

A masterpiece of sexism. Fascist Lesbian Amazons have wiped out almost all of the men on earth and are working on the few remaining. The Amazons reproduce by cloning. The heroine, Rura Alexandra, is a First-Class Exterminator of men… until she meets one, is raped by him, falls deeply in love with him, gets pregnant and follows her man to the ends of the earth.

“Rura spent her days learning to forget that she had ever been an exterminator, learning to become a woman. It was an exciting process. It was as if she were peeling away a superficial persona and discovering something quite different underneath…. She learned to sing the old songs that Diarmid loved, to do the things that would please him; she learned when to be passive and when to take the initiative, and how to respond to excite him. She began to feel proud of her swollen breasts and swollen belly. These were the outward and visible signs of the true nature of womanhood.”

You know, I’m all in favor of heterosexuality (when it’s practiced by heterosexuals, that is), but the above inspires me to date myself by reviving a phrase of my adolescence: “Gag me with a spoon.”

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

“In Ammonite… the attempts to colonize the planet Jeep have uncovered a selective virus that kills all men and all but a few women. The remaining women undergo changes that enable them to communicate with one another and the planet itself, and give to birth to healthy, genetically diverse children.”

Retreat: As It Was by Donna J. Young

This novel is set in the distant past when there were no men, just women who lived in peace and harmony. They all fly around in spaceships being sisterly (and occasionally more) and understanding of each other, mystically in tune with nature and growing spiritually and all that stuff. Then a radiation mutation causes: “You and all the women on the Eulalia suffered a slight change in one chromosome. One tiny leg of an X was chopped off. The effect on Jarre and all their offspring…” well, you get the idea. They mutated into men, and that was when all the trouble began. If you believe that the world would become a paradise if there were no Y chromosomes in it, this book is for you.

Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearheart

You know it’s going to be a bad book when you flip through it and find made-up words like “earthtouch”. These women live in “the Hills”, that is, out in the wilderness, where they talk to trees, live in perfect peace with each other and are far more in touch with their feelings than anybody ought to be. Not far away a normal (that is, with men and women) society lives in a place called “the City”. Naturally the City is a horrible place full of technology and competition where nobody talks to trees. In the very first chapter the author tells us that men are just too full of hate and violence to be fit to live and just need to die out, which these compassionate, in-touch-with-nature kindly and compassionately watch them do.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

The virulent hatred of men exhibited by feminists who boast endlessly about how compassionate and nurturing they are is the most tiresome thing about feminist-Utopian gynotopias. This badly written and ideologically asinine novel has for some mysterious reason garnered wide acclaim. Among the author’s embittered potshots at the male gender are a scene in which a man (a Marine, of course) consults a book called WHAT TO DO IN EVERY SITUATION when a woman rejects his advances and follows its instructions: insult her and “Girl backs down – cries – manhood vindicated.” Gee, real subtle there.

When It Changed by Joanna Russ

Science fiction story. Centuries ago, a plague killed all the male members of a space colony. Since then, women have carried on, living in Lesbian relationships and reproducing by egg fusion. They’re doing fine until an Earth ship full of males lands. Naturally the nasty males have caused Earth to have nuclear war and all those other bad things that Whileaway doesn’t have, and the patronizing men compulsively assure the women that “sexual equality has been re-established on Earth”. Written by a Lesbian-feminist, it’s male chauvinist in a kind of backhanded way; though the women of Whileaway hunt big game and fight duels and are generally quite capable of looking out for themselves, all the tall, strong, confident men have to do is swagger in and the women of Whileaway instantly feel themselves intimidated and outclassed.

The Gate To Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

This is a space colony that has lost contact with Earth in which men and women live separately. The women have cooperation and harmony and nurturing while the men are mean old Warriors, though there’s not actually anyone else to fight with. Little boys are sent to live with the warriors at the age of five, where the men corrupt them into being horrible violent monsters, which would never happen if they stayed with their mothers. The main characters also spend some time with another society which practices a religion which is an obvious cypher for Christianity. It’s equally obvious that the author hates Christianity; the occupants of Holyland, who worship the All-Father, are ignorant and dirty and constantly beat their women and are terrified of the thought of anybody enjoying sex. Oddly enough, no matter how often the enemies of Christianity promote this image of them, real-life Christians stubbornly refuse to start acting the way they are assured they do.

Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham, a famous science fiction story. Was made into a Night Gallery episode.

A young woman wakes up in a future three generations after the men have been wiped out by a plague. There are four classes of women: Mothers, who bear children, Servitors who do menial work, Workers for hard labor, and the ruling class, the Doctorate, so called because it is dominated by the doctors, without whom reproduction is impossible. Men have been forgotten except by a few scholars. A historian tells the protagonist, “It was quite a dreadful state of affairs because although there were a great many women, and they had outnumbered the men, in fact, they had only really been important as consumers and spenders of money. So when the crisis came it turned out that scarcely any of them knew how to do any of the important things because they had nearly all been owned by men, and had to lead their lives as pets and parasites.” She continues with standard feminist rhetoric, very prescient for a story written in 1956, despite the protagonist’s desperate attempts to explain the joys of the man-woman relationship. In essence, this story is the feminist fantasy: the intellectual career-oriented women are able to seize power, do away with men, and relegate more traditional women to a subordinate role without its doing men any good because there aren’t any.

?A late addition to this genre is The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice. The first vampire, Akasha, decides to end war and crime once and for all by eliminating the source: men. After she inspires women and other vampires to kill all the world’s males, except for a few for procreation, she is confident that the world will become Eden. Nor is the genre dead today. In 1982, Sally Miller Gearhart wrote an essay titled “The Future – If There Is One – Is Female” in which she demanded that in future, men be limited to ten percent of the population. In 1999, Mary Daly envisioned a utopian future of parthenogenetically reproducing women and no men in Quintessence. In 2004, Bryan Sykes wrote Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men, he suggested that in the not too distant future, men may be biologically superfluous, and that this will be just as well given how awful men are. In 2008 A. N. Wilson speculated that we could not only do away with men, but change our species entirely in the next half century: What would the world be like without men?

This 1971 novel doesn’t quite belong in this category, but I included it because it’s such an excellent example of backlash against a disturbingly realistic gynotopian worldview.

Editors note: the above content is mirrored with a few minor changes (eg. title and intoductory paragraph, content removed/added) from the website ‘Gynotopias.’ – PW

Chivalry, traditionalism and MGTOW

September 5, 2013December 4, 2023 / rtbavfm / 1 Comment

The following video series by Barbarossaaa discuss what he calls “traditionalism,” a shorthand term for traditional gynocentric culture and its practices.

Schlafly podcast gives ridiculous divorce advice:

Traditionalism and feminism, the great gynocentrisms of our time:

Organic dissolution of traditionalism, and small government platitudes:

Traditionalism and chivalry = the other feminism:

Traditional Relationships…nothing but business and a bottom line:

Do men Justify their own exploitation?

To learn more about MGTOW see YouTube for some excellent channels and discussions: Men Going Their Own Way

Gynocentrism today: female supremacy

September 5, 2013June 20, 2020 / rtbavfm / Leave a comment

The following video from ManWomanMyth’s YouTube Channel provide a sample of cultural practices that characterise the gynocentrism of today’s world.

Nathanson and Young on gynocentric feminism

August 9, 2013August 10, 2013 / rtbavfm / 1 Comment

Excerpts from the Nathanson and Young Misandry Trilogy

“Feminist calls for equality, or even equity, sound at first like nothing other than calls for justice. Lurking just below the surface, though, is often the call for gynocentrism. Whatever its underlying motivation, gynocentrism has already been institutionalized, either directly or indirectly, in laws or interpretations of them, constitutional amendments or interpretations of them, and bureaucracies at every level of government. The rhetoric has functioned like that of motherhood. Who would ever oppose that in public? Equality is not only the legitimate expression of egalitarian feminism, therefore, but also the ideal front for ideological feminism. Not only are students exposed to gynocentric indoctrination, but so are legislators, judges, bureaucrats, corporate managers, and employees.” [p. 116]

“Systemic gynocentric bias has led to more than a demand for quotas, usually known as “targets.” It has led also to a demand for social and cultural revolution. Ideological feminists measure progress according to a “female standard” and in view of “female knowledge.” Ideological feminists denounce equality of opportunity, insisting on equality of result. Ignoring the fact that the former has been greatly modified over the past thirty years to suit women, they claim that modifying it has prevented a critique of what they believe is the “phallocentricity” of knowledge. Women have nothing to learn or gain, in other words, from the experience of men.” [p. 116]

“[Gynocentrism] is a worldview based on the implicit or explicit belief that the world revolves around women. It is therefore the counterpart of androcentrism, a worldview based on the implicit or explicit belief that the world revolves around men. Our point was that gynocentrism has become de rigueur behind the scenes in law courts and government bureaucracies, which has resulted in systemic discrimination against men. “ [p. 309]

“Misandry and gynocentrism are not necessarily linked at all. People can be preoccupied with their own needs and interests without denying those of other people, much less hating them…. But wait. Even though misandry is not an inherent feature of gynocentrism, it is an inherent possibility (just as misogyny is an inherent possibility of androcentrism). If the world revolves around women, then it follows that nonwomen –which is to say, men- are irrelevant except for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. All it takes to produce misandry is the ideological proposition that “they” are not merely irrelevant, but inadequate or evil.” [p. 310]

Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Legalizing Misandry, 2006
______________

“Gynocentrism is a form of essentialism – as distinct from scholarship or political activity on behalf of women- to the extent that it focuses on the innate virtues of women. But this worldview is explicitly misandric too, because it not only ignores the needs and problems of men but also attacks men. Misandry is a form of dualism that focuses on the innate vices of men. In this moral or even ontological hierarchy , women are at the top and men are at the bottom.” [p. 58]

Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Sanctifying Misandry, 2010

Feminism: gynocentric or egalitarian?

August 9, 2013June 27, 2023 / gynocentrism / 4 Comments

Editor’s note: The following post appeared on the ‘Alas‘ blog in 2009 and is repeated here as a qualifier of the difference between gynocentric and egalitarian feminism. The definition is a good first attempt to capture the essence of something which is pervasive within feminism. It is hypothetically possible to eschew all of the gynocentric criteria, while still being a feminist recognised by other feminists, though their number, if they exist, must be very small indeed.

Feminism: gynocentric or egalitarian?
By Ballgame (2009)

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear up what I’m guessing is probably a common misconception about the terms, “gynocentric feminist” and “egalitarian feminist.” The terms are not intended as descriptions of the particular feminist’s focus of discussion or activism. A woman could be focused entirely on preserving women’s right to access abortion … and be an egalitarian feminist. A man could be focused on male bonding a la Robert Bly and yet still be a gynocentric feminist.

The terms actually get at the principles of the feminist in question. If a feminist believes that men are universally privileged by gender and women are not, or that women have inherently superior insights into questions of gender than men, or that women are entitled to define the terms of gender discussions and that men must ‘check their privilege’ before entering into those discussions (and women don’t have to check theirs), or believes that men oppressing other men is an example of men ‘oppressing themselves’ (or other similar ‘men are Borg’ type notions), or has a habit of vilifying reasonable and respectful critics of feminist misandry, then that person is a gynocentric feminist.

If, on the other hand, a feminist believes that both men and women are oppressed by gender, and believes that everyone struggling against gender oppression deserves respect (regardless of which gender’s oppression they’re working against), then that person would more likely be an egalitarian feminist. (I say “more likely” because I’m tired and I suspect my ‘egalitarian’ definition here is probably pretty incomplete.)

Gynocentrism and its Discontents

August 9, 2013June 27, 2023 / gynocentrism / Leave a comment

by Hugh Ristik (2007)

Feminism and gynocentrism

Feminism focuses on women. It focuses on women’s perspectives, interests, rights, and victimization. In other words, it is gynocentric (literally, “woman-centered”). And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. That being said, there are ways in which gynocentrism can go horribly wrong.

I am starting a series of posts on gynocentrism from the premise that feminism is gynocentric, either by the definitions that feminists give, or by their works. If the gynocentric nature of feminism isn’t obvious to everyone, then I’m happy to back up.

Types of gynocentrism

Feminism didn’t invent gynocentrism. There is a heavily gynocentric tinge to some versions of paternalism and conservative attitudes that focus on protecting women. Feminism, however, took gynocentrism to a new level. Feminists not only focused on women’s victimization, they also focus on women’s perspective and experience. (One possible exception is postmodern versions of feminism that explicitly deny the meaningfulness of the category “Woman.” Aside from finding these versions of feminism to play dishonest semantic games, my intuition is that they engage in their own covert forms of gynocentrism.)

…

In What Good is Gynocentrism, I argued that feminist gynocentrism isn’t inherently unjust, and that it can have the side-effect of benefitting men. In this post, I discuss how the ways that feminists’ focus on women’s interests can be problematic. There is a short distance between focusing on women’s interests, and marginalizing men’s interests. Feminists often step over this line. As Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue, “even though misandry is not an inherent feature of gynocentrism, it is an inherent possibility.”¹

I’m not saying that all, or necessary most feminists step over the line; I make no speculation about the proportion of feminists who fall into misandric versions of gynocentrism. I’m more interested in criticizing those versions when they appear.

How could gynocentrism go wrong?

Gynocentrism, as practiced by feminism², entails a focus on women’s experiences, rights, needs, and victimization. That is because women have experienced—and currently experience—violations of their rights, denial of their human needs, and victimization at the hands of males, of each other, and of society.

Once feminist women figured out all the ways that women were getting the short end of the stick, they were justifiably pissed off. They concluded that they were oppressed, and that men were privileged. Many feminists went even further, and saw men as the “oppressor class” towards women. The ways in which men were getting the short end of the stick were typically not considered.

The odious “comparative suffering” argument

And here is where gynocentrism started going wrong. These feminist women were correct to identify victimization, denial of rights, and oppression of women. The mistake was in concluding that in general, men were “less” disadvantaged in society than women, simply because men weren’t necessarily disadvantaged in the ways that women were. This conclusion presupposes some metric or scale on which women’s disadvantages weigh heavier.

However, to weigh one thing against another, you need to know the weight of both. Yet feminists only had an idea of the weight of women’s victimization. Since, as part of gynocentrism, they examined only women’s experiences, and not men’s experiences, they had no idea of what disadvantages, harms, and violations of rights that men were experiencing. This ignorance did not stop those feminists. They placed women’s oppression on one side of the scale, watched the balance tip, and concluded that women’s oppression weighed heavier. Men’s oppression never made it onto the scale.

Nathanson and Young have called this attitude “comparative suffering,” and indepedently, Daran called it the “Odious Comparison.”

Dualism

Through their gynocentric lens, feminists figured out that women were suffering, and that the agents of that suffering were often male. Yet some of these feminists committed two fallacies. The first fallacy was to assume that if men were oppressors under the gender system, they could not be oppressed by it. The second fallacy was to paint men in general as victimizers and abusers of women. The attitude towards men became very dualistic; as Nathanson and Young argue:

The worldview of ideological feminism, like that of both Marxism and National Socialism—our analogies are between ways of thinking, not between specific ideas—is profoundly dualistic. In effect, “we” (women) are good, “they” (men) are evil. Or, to use the prevalent lingo, “we” are victims, “they” are oppressors.”³

The focus of feminism

In this way, gynocentrism slid into the tendencies for some feminists to focus on the experience, needs, and victimization of women, along with the oppressiveness, privileges, violence, and sexism of men. Simultaneously, this type of feminist discourse ignored or downplayed the experience, needs, and victimization of men, along with the oppressiveness, privileges, violence, and sexism of women.

But what is wrong with this focus? The experience of women is important. Women are victimized in society (regardless of agreement with specific feminist claims of victimization). Men do have (some) unjust privileges over women. Some men victimize women. Since all of that is true, what could be the problem with pointing it out?

The answer is that there isn’t one. The problem is not inherently with the gynocentric focus of feminism. The root of the problem is the content of feminism, which causes the gynocentric focus of feminism to become a problem.

————————

Nathanson, P., & Young, K. (2006). Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. 310.[?]
By “feminism,” I mean feminists who don’t identify themselves as “equity feminists,” “egalitarian feminists,” or “individualist feminists.” These dissident feminists tend to not be gynocentric, and have fundamentally different philosophical and epistemological assumptions to other feminists. Mainstream feminists tend to dispute that dissident feminists are really feminists, which only underscores how gynocentric mainstream feminism is.[?]
Nathanson, P., & Young, K. (2006). Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Cultureen. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. xii.[?]

Editor’s note: The first two sections above “Feminism and gynocentrism” and “Types of gynocentrism” are from the author’s longer piece What Good is Gynocentrism, and serve here as an abridged preamble to his article Gynocentrism and its Discontents. [I was unable to find a contact email for the author, but he is welcome to contact me if he has any concerns about the above reproduction]

Gynocentrism and its Cultural Origins

Misandry

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