By Peter Wright & Paul Elam

Many students of sexual politics posit the “scientific” notion that our culture of extreme gynocentrism is a basic biological reality; that we should either get with the program and enjoy it or bow out in a nihilistic fashion.

An alternative explanation of gynocentrism suggests it is merely an exaggeration of human potential; one that leads to social and reproductive failure despite common beliefs.

The bioscience lexicon can be helpful in understanding this.

A superstimulus refers to the exaggeration of a normal stimulus to which there is an existing biological tendency to respond. An exaggerated response, or, if you will, superresponse, can be elicited by any number of superstimuli.

For example, when it comes to female birds, they will prefer to incubate larger, artificial eggs over their own natural ones.

Large, colorful eggs are a superstimulus. Leaving real eggs out to die is the superresponse.

Similarly, humans are easily exploited by junk food merchandisers. Humans are easily trained to choose products that cause heart disease, diabetes, and cancer over the nutritious food they evolved to eat and thrive on, simply by playing tricks on the taste buds and manipulating the starvation reflex.

Sugar and refined carbohydrates are superstimuli. Consuming toxic substances is the superresponse.

The idea is that healthy human behavior evolved in response to normal stimuli in our ancestor’s natural environment. That includes our reproductive instincts. The same behavioral responses have now been hijacked by the supernormal stimulus.¹

From this perspective, we see that a superstimulus acts like a potent drug, one every bit comparable to heroin or cocaine which imitate weaker chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, all of which occur naturally in our bodies.

As with drug addictions, the effects of superstimuli account for a range of obsessions and failures plaguing modern man – from the epidemic of obesity and obsessions with territoriality to the destructive, violent and suicidal behaviors central to our modern cult of romantic love.

An interesting tidbit about superstimuli of manufactured narcotics is the phenomenon known as “chasing the dragon.” It is a term that originated in the opium dens of China, and it refers to what happens the first time a person inhales opium vapor. The resulting euphoria is complete, even magical — the first time.

Subsequent to that, the user tries again and again, with ever-increasing amounts of the drug, to re-create that first blissful high. They can’t do it. The brain is now familiar with the flood of manufactured opiates. The user gets high and very addicted, but the magic of the first experience is an elusive butterfly.

They pursue it, though, with all their might, chasing the dragon they rode in their first experience.

We see a similar phenomenon with men trying desperately in their relationships with women to be rewarded with redeeming love, sex and approval, through the use of romantic chivalry. It sends them, like an addict, traveling the path of a Mobius strip, going in circles, chasing the dragon.

There is little doubt in our minds how this happens.

Here are three examples of human superstimuli, and how they are used to elicit a destructive superresponse in the human male.

1. Artificially manufactured neoteny

Neoteny is the retention of juvenile characteristics in body, voice or facial features. In humans, neoteny activates what is known as the parental brain, or the state of brain activity that promotes nurturance and caretaking. The activation occurs through something called an innate releasing mechanism.

A classic example of an innate releasing mechanism is when seagull chicks peck at the parent’s beak to get food.

Each adult seagull has a red spot on the underside of their beak, the sight of which instinctively triggers, or releases, the chicks to peck. It is the innate releasing mechanism.

This innate releasing mechanism, of course, is essential to the survival of seagulls, and there is something like it to be found in all birds and mammals — any creature that cares for its offspring. In mammals, juvenility is one of the innate releasing mechanisms that unconsciously determine our motivations to protect and provide, thus ensuring the survival of the species.

Juvenile characteristics in humans, however, can also be manipulated to garner attention and support that far exceeds the demands of survival.

In particular, neoteny is exploited by women to gain various advantages, a fact not lost on medical doctor and author Esther Vilar, who writes:

Woman’s greatest ideal is a life without work or responsibility – yet who leads such a life but a child? A child with appealing eyes, a funny little body with dimples and sweet layers of baby fat and clear, taut skin – that darling minature of an adult. It is a child that woman imitates – its easy laugh, its helplessness, its need for protection. A child must be cared for; it cannot look after itself. And what species does not, by natural instinct, look after its offspring? It must – or the species will die out.

With the aid of skillfully applied cosmetics, designed to preserve that precious baby look; with the aid of helpless exclamations such as ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ah’ to denote astonishment, surprise, and admiration; with inane little bursts of conversation, women have preserved this ‘baby look’ for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her.” ²

Zoologist Konrad Lorenz discovered that images releasing parental reactions across a wide range of mammalian species were rounded heads and large eyes (left), compared with angular heads with proportionally smaller eyes that do not elicit such responses.

Compare Lorenz’s images on the left with images of skilfully applied eye makeup above by the modern woman in search of romance. The many colored eyeshadows, eyeliners, and mascaras, not to mention the hours practiced in front of the mirror opening those eyes as wide as possible and fluttering – all designed to spur the viewer’s paleo reflexes into action.

Neotenic female faces (large eyes, greater distance between eyes, and small noses) are found to be more attractive to men while less neotenic female faces are considered the least attractive, regardless of the females’ actual age.³ And of these features, large eyes are the most effective of the neonate cues⁴ – a success formula utilized from Anime to Disney characters in which the eyes of adult women have been supersized and faces rendered childish.

2. Exaggeration of sexual qualities

Clothing and postures which exaggerate the hips, thighs, ass, breasts have been cultivated for millennia.

The cut, color, and drape of clothing; the underwear, corsets, lingerie and the shoes, hats, jewelry and other accessories make for a long study in the evolution of fashion – and in terms of sexuality they stand for nothing less than superstimuli designed to elicit an overload of sexual attraction in the viewer.

Perhaps more interesting on the enhancement front is the arrival of plastic surgery designed to transform the body into a theater of superstimuli, sometimes with grotesque, even fatal results. Such is the risk invited and embraced in the pursuit of enhanced sex-appeal.

Breast implants, butt implants, botox injections, nose jobs, tummy tucks, facelifts – all designed for enhanced sexuality, and even more importantly, enhanced power and control.

3. Artificially intensified pair-bonding drive

We have all heard the advice of the seasoned matron to younger women; “Don’t turn your love on like a tap or he will lose interest – withhold some affection and you’ll always have him begging for more.”

This message is now so widespread that animal-training techniques are being redeployed by women who wish to control their man’s attachment needs. In How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers we read,

Consistently a dog is “nicest” when he wants to be fed. Then he becomes all wags and licks. A known trick for keeping a dog on his best behavior is to just fill his bowl halfway so he’s yearning for more.

Same goes for his appetite for affection. Keep him in constant emotional hunger for you and he’ll be more attentive and easier to control.

As cruel as it sounds, withholding affection, sex, approval and love have become part of women’s repertoire of superstimuli used to coerce men into service. Perhaps there was a time when that service could have been considered an appropriate response to a survival oriented stimulus. Now, however, it has been replaced by superstimuli and male service has degenerated into a destructive superresponse.

Such dating advice for women abounds on the internet with the aim to intensify a man’s desire by turning a secure bond, a necessity for healthy relationships, into a brass ring. Only on the ride of romantic chivalry, like all carnival sideshows, the game is rigged. The brass ring remains ever just out of reach.

Men’s basic human need for love, acceptance, and security, is frustrated, leaving them in a perpetual cycle of deprivation.

Indeed, it is one of the core principles of romantic love to keep the bond in the realm of tantalizing denial, and men, therefore in constant readiness to be manipulated and used.

The word tantalizing comes from the Greek story of Tantalus. Tantalus, as the fable goes, offended the Gods. His punishment was to be placed in a river with the water up to his neck. A tree full of ripe, red apples leaned toward him.

The Gods afflicted him with a raging thirst and hunger. When he bent his head down to slake his thirst – the waters receded. Likewise, when he reached up to grab one of the apples, the branch recoiled higher and out of his reach.

Women are socialized to tantalize men with the possibility of pair-bonding, to keep fruit of love ever out of reach, and to further muddy the waters with the dictates of romantic chivalry.

If you want that pair-bond, which is to say if you want to be more tantalized, you had better greet her with flowers, hold the door open, and of course pick up the bill.

Be prepared to live that way for the rest of your life, exiled to the river with Tantalus, ever thirsty and hungry. In modern times, simple attachment is transformed into something complex – an impulse now guided by customs of a romantic chivalry, designed to tilt maximum power toward the woman.

Even when the pair-bond is supposedly attained, you may still experience the withdrawal of love, sex and approval as a method of control. It can even be worse once bonded than during the courtship process.

Such behavior from women is not a simple, innate reflex, but one in which they are culturally educated and socialized. Most girls become fluent in the game of inclusion and exclusion, in groups or among friends, well before the reach the age of 10 and the meta-rules learned there reappear again in popular dating advice – rules designed to meddle in the attachment security we social creatures would otherwise enjoy sans the manipulations.

The rules for women resonate shamelessly throughout an entire genre of literature:

– Keep an air of mystery
– Only put in 30 percent effort
– Make him come to you
– Never see him with less than 7 days notice
– Never call him unless returning a call
– Never return a call or text immediately
– Make him approach you
– Don’t call back immediately. You are a girl in demand.
– End call first after 15 minutes ALWAYS. (Even though it sucks. He will call you more.)
– Even if you are not busy, pretend like you are

Those items are the product of a cursory scan of just two internet dating sites with advice for women. They are not, however, an invention of the information age. They are the long codified expressions of what women have been taught, from generation to generation, since the advent of romantic chivalry.

They are obedience training basics for conditioning the romantically chivalrous man — superstimuli, powerfully effective in eliciting a superresponse. In this case, servile, blind sycophancy from weak, non-introspective men.

Romantic Love

Romantic love can be reconceptualized as a cluster of superstimuli, with each facet driving the human nervous system into over-excitement. That excitement tends to negatively impact men’s long-term welfare. The damage is not contained there. Our social and familial world is disintegrating rapidly under the excesses and toxicity of romantic love. In a way, romantic love has become one of the most anti-human exploitations of human biology to ever grace our species.

To understand where this originated we need to take a brief look at the history of romantic love, previously called courtly love, to show that the same elements were already at work at its inception. As laid out in great detail by medieval forebears, the literature reveals the same exaggerated neoteny, enhancements of sexuality, and the same obsessions surrounding control of romantic attachment.

While the neoteny ploy has been in operation at least since ancient Egypt in the form of colored eyeshadow and eyeliners, the practice gained greater popularity after the Crusaders found eyelid-coloring cosmetics used in the Middle East and who spread the practice throughout Europe.⁵ By the Middle Ages, European aristocrats were widely using cosmetics, with France and Italy becoming the chief centers of cosmetics manufacturing, including the use of stimulant compounds like Belladonna (Italian name meaning “beautiful woman”) that would make the eyes appear larger.⁶

Thus neoteny, manufactured by artisan techniques, became the cultural inheritance of each successive generation of girls who were – and still are – taught the art of applying and then displaying makeup, especially to the eyes. Such practices probably encouraged praises of women’s eyes in troubadour poetry, such as we read by the poet Ulrich von Liechtenstein in his autobiography titled In The Service of Ladies. There we read;

The pure, sweet lady knows well how to laugh beautifully with her sparkling eyes. Therefore I wear the crown of lofty joys, as her eyes become full of dew from the ground of her pure heart, with her laughing. Immediately I am wounded by Minnie.”

Clothing too was always used to enhance sexuality, however fashions didn’t change much over the course of millennia and their sexual utility was not fully realized. The beginnings of frequent change in clothing styles, along with recognition of their multitude ways of enhancing sexuality, began in Europe at a time that has been reliably dated by fashion historians James Laver and Fernand Braudel to the middle of the 14th century – a period when sexualised items like lingerie and corsets began their rise to fame.⁷

Jane Burns PhD adds further evidence of clothing’s role of sexually empowering medieval women in her book Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture.⁸

As mentioned earlier, the most powerful of romantic love’s tricks was the tantalizing of men with a promise of attachment, a goal that would remain largely out of reach. Stories of the troubadours attest to a hope-filled agony that plagued the male lover, with men dwelling in a strange kind of purgatory in waiting for a few “solaces” from the beloved.

The medieval love-game went into full swing when codes of romantic conduct encouraged a toying with the two extremes of acceptance and rejection. Compare the above list of dating rules with the following list from The Art of Courtly Love – a love manual widely disseminated in the 12th century:

– Love is a certain inborn suffering.
– Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.
– Love constantly waxes and wanes.
– The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.
– Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.
– Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.
– Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.
– The lover is always in fear that his love may not gain its desire.
– The greater the difficulty in exchanging solaces, and the more the desire for them, and love increases.
– Too many opportunities for seeing each other and talking will decrease love.⁹

Shakespeare’s most romantic of plays tells the same story, with Juliet keeping her lover midway between coming and going, between stable pair-bonding and the single life. Here Juliet tells her obedient lover;

‘Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone.
And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silken thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.

To which Romeo replies, in accord with the expectations of romantic love;

I would I were thy bird.

Following this little detour into history we now come to a final juncture of this article where we ask Aristotle’s million dollar question – that for the sake of which. To what end are these superstimuli employed?

Many would offer the clichéd answer that such practices garner “reproductive success,” that the woman employing them gains a quality mate and produces offspring to perpetuate the species. But this explanation is too simple. For starters, there are other aims of a human life than reproduction; such as garnering of food resources, securing wealth, attachment needs, or of securing narcissistic gratification for a woman who may never intend to have offspring – the resources garnered via her carefully orchestrated superstimuli can serve other ends.

Moreover, it appears not to have entered the minds of the reproduction enthusiasts that such strategies may, in fact, be deleterious to reproduction – all one has to do is look at the failing relationships everywhere, lowering birth rates, and decaying societies in the West that do not portend a future of success riding on the back of the superstimuli we’ve grown so fond of exploiting.

Narcissistic gratification is certainly one motive we’ve under-emphasized in our focus on reproduction, though it too is not the final motive. There can be nothing more gratifying to the narcissistic impulse than to wield power – as do most women – and to this end superstimuli places immense power in their hands.

Narcissistic indulgence may well be a heavily socialized trait in modern women, but it also proves to be a short-term windfall with not so gainly long-term results. Evidence shows that the misery index for women has risen sharply in the age when they “have it all.”

To summarize all that we’ve said, the extreme gynocentrism we live with today is a freak, a Frankenstein that on some level should not be, or at least should not be any more than the super-sized Cuckoo chick that swells in the nest of a tiny finch. It’s an event that our systems were not specifically designed for – yet we remain caught in the insoluble loop of desire that keeps it going.

We might think of it as a propaganda campaign every bit as strong as those used during the world wars to target our territorial reflexes, only this campaign has been in continual use and refinement for the last 900 years.

Whatever gynocentric impulse lies buried in our nervous system, it has now been supersized, and we continue to supersize it with ever more refinements of superstimuli – but if we regain our awareness we might, just might, kick this Cuckoo’s egg out of our biological nest – that can begin by recognizing that we have been hypnotized and deciding that we no longer wish to indulge it.

It’s as simple as choosing not to chase the dragon, but to slay it.

Sources:

[1] Wikpedia article for Superstimulus.
[2] Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man, (1971).
[3] Jones, D., Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness and Facial Neoteny: Cross-Cultural Evidence and Implications, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 5 (1995), pp. 723-748.
[4] Cunningham, M.; Roberts, A.; Vu, C., “Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours”: consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68 (2): 261–79 (1995).
[5] John Toedt, Chemical Composition of Everyday Products, (2005).
[6] Linda D. Rhein, Mitchell Schlossman, Surfactants in Personal Care Products and Decorative Cosmetics, (2006)
[7] Laver, James., Abrams, H.N., The Concise History of Costume and Fashion, (1979).
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, Vol 1: The Structures of Everyday Life“, William Collins & Sons, (1981)
[8] Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (2005)
[9] Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love (republished 1990). Capellanus’ love manual was written in 1185 at the request of Marie de Champagne, daughter of King Louis VII of France and of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Cuckoo image by vladlen666 – Own work, CC0,

 

Lo que viene a continuación es una versión ampliada de un artículo de 2014. —PW

Muchos hombres buenos del Club de los Calzonazos deben mostrar buen comportamiento para poder mantener una relación pacífica con su media naranja —(1860)¹

El Club de los Calzonazos es una organización absolutamente real, de alcance mundial, que lleva funcionando de manera continuada durante al menos 200 años. Atendía las necesidades de los hombres casados que sufrían maltrato doméstico por parte de sus esposas, y también atendía a jóvenes solteros que más adelante, tras casarse, quizá tuvieran que enfrentarse a los mismos problemas.

El Club de los Calzonazos (básicamente un proyecto para crear “buenos hombres” consistía en una red internacional de lugares de encuentro a los que acudían los hombres en busca de apoyo, especialmente si estaban sufriendo maltrato emocional y físico por parte de sus esposas. En este sentido, el club es similar a Al-Anon, el movimiento moderno de apoyo a cónyuges de alcohólicos. Estos clubs animaban activamente a los maridos a que tolerasenel maltrato de sus mujeres, y su estrategia consistía en aplacarlas con el medio que fuese necesario para moderar los comportamientos abusivos.

La palabra clave aquí es “aplacar”, que es algo que los hombres hacían sobradamente.

Se esperaba que los miembros del Club de los Calzonazos, por ejemplo, les llevaran el desayuno a la cama a sus esposas a diario, y que hicieran la mayoría de las tareas domésticas, incluso después de un duro día de trabajo, con la esperanza de conseguir que sus mujeres mantuvieran un humor más afable o (más exactamente) menos abusivo. A continuación se recogen instrucciones a todos los miembros del club:

• Que todo miembro de esta sociedad encienda el fuego, prepare la tetera y haga hervir agua antes de despertar a su esposa por la mañana.
• Que todo miembro le lleve a su esposa la ropa a la cama, tras haberla aireado y calentado, o recibirá una multa de dos peniques por cada falta.
• Que le contará a su esposa el trabajo que ha llevado a cabo, y le preguntará si desea que haga algo más antes de irse a trabajar esa mañana.
• Que si algún miembro llega a casa para la cena y se encuentra a su esposa chismorreando, y la cena sin hacer, no se quejará, sino que cocinará para sí mismo y para su familia, además de algo que le guste a su esposa para cuando esta vuelva a casa, o recibirá una multa de tres peniques.
• Que si algún miembro, tras la jornada de trabajo, llega a casa y descubre que su mujer no ha lavado la vajilla, o alguna otra cosa que considera que debería haber hecho, debe hacerlo él mismo y no criticarla; igualmente, debe atender el fuego, calentar agua, barrer la casa, fregar el suelo y hacer las camas al gusto de ella, o recibirá una multa de cuatro peniques.
• Que cuando algún miembro haya finalizado su semana laboral, deberá volver a casa con su salario y entregárselo íntegramente a su esposa.
• Que cuando algún miembro haya entregado su salario a su esposa, le preguntará qué desea que haga a continuación; si desea que vaya a la tienda, deberá ir, pero si desea ir ella misma, deberá quedarse y limpiar la casa y los muebles, y ordenarlo todo de manera que ella esté contenta cuando vuelva, o recibirá una multa de seis peniques.
• Que todas las mañanas de domingo, los miembros se levantarán a las seis de la mañana, encenderán el fuego, lavarán y vestirán a los niños (si los tienen) y los prepararán para el colegio, sin tener que molestar a su amada esposa; pero si ella le pide una pipa de tabaco, polvo de rapé o un refresco, deberá dárselo inmediatamente, o recibirá una multa de seis peniques.
• Que si por ventura la esposa de un miembro desea tener prendas de calidad, como un sombrero de terciopelo de seda, un fino gorro con flores artificiales, un vestido nuevo, un miriñaque, botas, sandalias, medias de seda o cualquier otra prenda de moda, su marido deberá proporcionárselas, empleando para ello el dinero de sus horas extra, o recibirá una multa de un chelín y ocho peniques.
• Que cuando la esposa de un miembro esté enferma o de parto, deberá correr tan rápido como pueda en busca del médico, ya sea de día o de noche, con nieve o con escarcha, granizo o lluvia, o recibirá una multa de dos chelines.
• Que cualquier miembro que se niegue a lavar al niño cuando haya hecho de vientre o defecado, recibirá una multa de seis peniques.
• Que todos los miembros deberán lavar los pañales sucios del niño cuando su esposa se lo ordene, o recibirá una multa de cuatro peniques.
• Que todos los lunes por la noche, los miembros deberán lustrar los zapatos y los zuecos de su esposa y sus hijos.
• Que todos los martes por la noche, los miembros deberán ir a buscar la ropa para lavar.
• Que todos los miércoles por la noche, los miembros deberán revisar la bodega y comprobar que hay suficiente té, café, azúcar, mantequilla, pan, queso, harina, harina de maíz, carne de ternera o de carnero, y si resulta que falta algo, deberá ir a comprar más sin quejarse.
• Que todos los jueves por la noche, los miembros deberán proporcionar a sus queridas esposas aquello que, según las circunstancias, pueda mejorar su felicidad íntima, como refrescos o licores.
• Que todos los viernes por la noche, los miembros deberán revisar las medias, camisas, etc., que necesiten un remiendo, y deberá remendarlas él mismo.
• Que todos los miembros deberán cumplir religiosamente las últimas cinco normas, o recibirán una multa de tres peniques por cada negligencia, impuesta por el comité².

A veces, los miembros que sufrían maltrato a manos de sus esposas disfrazaban estas instrucciones(habituales en la mayoría de los Clubes de los Calzonazos)con humor y burlas hacia sí mismos. Esto ha llevado a concluir, erróneamente, que estos clubes eran una mera comedia. Pero se trata de una suposición incorrecta, tal vez fomentada por el rechazo a la idea de la violencia femenina: el problema del maltrato doméstico era una preocupación grave para los clubes, como también lo eran las estrategias para enfrentarse a ella.

También se recomendaba a los hombres que absorbiesen cualquier violencia o maltrato sin quejarse, tolerándola estoicamente para no provocar ni irritar más a la maltratadora. La política del club explicaba que así era como uno se convertía en un “buen hombre”. Si la esposa del hombre continuaba con su maltrato tras estos gestos conciliadores, los oficiales del club preguntaban al hombre qué podía haber hecho inconscientemente para provocarla; también le preguntaban cómo podía servirla mejor para que no volviera a irritarse. La respuesta a esa pregunta solía ser que el hombre hiciera más tareas domésticas, aunque también existía una intervención innovadora: “acunar a la esposa hasta que se durmiera”; hablaré de esto más adelante.

Los clubes de los calzonazos existieron a centenares desde el siglo XVIII hasta la época contemporánea, y en lugares tan diversos como Inglaterra, Austria, Estados Unidos, Alemania, Francia, Australia, Yugoslavia, China y Japón.

¿Por qué, en una época en la que estamos tan centrados en las relaciones de género, no hemos oído hablar de estos clubes, teniendo en cuenta que en muchos había cientos de miembros esforzándose por sobrellevar matrimonios difíciles? Ni una mención de los historiadores, a pesar de la disponibilidad de materiales sobre los Clubes de los calzonazos. ¿Por qué?

Porque no pega con la imagen del “marido patriarcal dominante” que presentan las interpretaciones históricas modernas.

Así que con la intención de corregir la historia, a continuación presentamos un breve fragmento de un libro de 1810, titulado Descripción de una antigua y honorable sociedad, vulgarmente conocida como El club de los calzonazos, que demuestra que el proyecto de creación de “hombres buenos” lleva existiendo al menos 200 años, y probablemente aún más tiempo:

“[Los maridos] se someten a la agradable esclavitud de sus esposas en tan gran número, y con tanta buena voluntad, como en cualquier otro período ilustrado de la historia antigua o moderna.”

“El calzonismo, que cuenta en sus filas con la mayor parte de los hombres más célebres que han nacido desde la creación hasta el día de hoy, ya sean legisladores, filósofos, conquistadores, poetas y enviados de Dios, no requiere otro argumento para justificar y establecer su derecho a influir y actuar de manera extensiva, que el lenguaje de todo amante, que admite sin reparos ser (y jura seguir siendo) el esclavo de su querida, antes del matrimonio; por lo tanto, aquel que niega la supremacía de la mujer que se convierte en su esposa es culpable de una rebelión criminal y antinatural contra la autoridad de la mujer, que el mismo Dios le ha impuesto al hombre. Sin embargo, si se quieren conocer otros argumentos, podrían aportarse muchos que demuestren que la superioridad de la hembra es de orden natural. Por ejemplo, tanto el más noble como el más fiero de los perros se someten dócilmente a los gruñidos y ladridos de la perra más lastimera de su especie.”

“Porque en el calzonismo no se hacen distinciones: la mujer sin igual mandonea a su vasallo tanto como la campesina: a todas se aplica por igual la feliz descripción del poeta:

“El vasallo encorvado de la esposa tirana,

Que no posee ni un céntimo que no le pertenezca a ella,

Que no tiene voluntad más que si ella se digna a dársela,

Que debe contarle los secretos de sus mejores amigos,

Que teme más que a nada una bronca a puerta cerrada.”

“Las normas que acatan los miembros de esas reuniones estaban en todo punto adaptadas para preservar la existencia de la institución. Los miembros que tuviesen el honor de recibir un ojo morado de su cónyuge tenían derecho a una asignación de 10 chelines con 6 peniques, mientras ese glorioso color perdurase. La asignación por los dos ojos morados era de un libra y un chelín. En cualquier caso, era necesario aportar pruebas de que la contusión había sido adquirida de acuerdo al verdadero espíritu del auténtico calzonismo, es decir, sin resistencia ni murmuración, según el ejemplo de nuestro inestimable miembro fallecido, Sócrates, al cual, junto a su esposa, alude el poeta en las siguientes líneas:

“Él sabía cuán a menudo ella lo regañaba,

Cuántos orinales le arrojaba al sabio,

Quien con paciencia se secaba la cabeza,

Y repetía: la lluvia sigue a los truenos.”

Los hombres casados que no tuvieran el honor de pertenecer a la Sociedad, eran sinceramente invitados a asistir a estas reuniones, no en calidad de miembros, sino de visitantes, para que pudieran convencerlos para unirse al ser testigos de la absoluta felicidad que esta otorga. Porque, ¿qué felicidad puede ser mayor que la de pertenecer a una esposa que se ocupa de la pesada carga de regular no sólo su conducta, sino también la de su marido y la del resto de su familia; a una esposa que se toma la molestia de recibir y gestionar todo el dinero; a una esposa que amablemente lleva a cabo la tarea de juzgar en nombre de su marido (en todos los casos) lo que debe hacer; cuánto tiempo debe pasar en el bar; cuánto dinero debe gastar; qué secretos debe guardar (ella, en realidad) y cuáles deben ser divulgados? En resumen, una mujer que carga sobre sus espaldas toda la ansiedad, todos los problemas, dejándole a su querido esposo la única y agradable tarea de ejecutar sus órdenes; recordemos que:

“Su propio cuerpo no es de él, sino mío,

Porque así lo dijo Pablo, y Pablo es un gran enviado de Dios.”

“El plan y el objeto evidente de la institución siempre ha sido preservar y, si es posible, ampliar el justo y loable dominio del bello sexo. Por ello, en las distintas reuniones se consideró adecuado solicitar también la asistencia de hombres solteros, no sólo para que se beneficien de tan perfectos ejemplos de sumisión, sino para que los solteros que aún no hayan pensado en el matrimonio, o que no hayan reparado en un aliciente para casarse tan importante como la existencia de nuestra institución, sean persuadidos de la conveniencia de colocarse, tan pronto como sea posible, a la altura de la mayor parte de los grandes hombres del mundo, a este respecto.”

“Los métodos más habituales que utilizan las hembras para intentar ejercer por completo ese poder ilimitado que les pertenece por derecho, consisten en, poco tiempo después del matrimonio, volverse extremadamente ruidosas y agresivas, y asegurarse de reprender a sus maridos por cualquier acción que realicen, crean o no sinceramente que su conducta ha sido censurable. Este método a veces se acompaña de golpes físicos. Si se continúa este comportamiento con perseverancia y energía, lo más probable es que se tenga éxito, pero existe un peligro considerable de resistencia por parte de individuos brutales imprudentemente denominados hombres de espíritu; esa resistencia puede acompañarse de consecuencias extremadamente perjudiciales para el semblante femenino. Sin embargo, recomendaría rotundamente a las mujeres que empleen este método con aquellos caracteres afeminados que tienen más miedo a recibir una paliza que disposición a defender su título de hombría, y considero especialmente apropiada su práctica con todos los petimetres y lechuguinos, criaturas que no poseen mayor prueba de su estatus de hombre que el hecho de tener dos piernas y vestir pantalones.”

“Ciertas mujeres siguen el rumbo contrario, con mucho éxito. En un momento dado cubren a sus maridos de caricias, exageran su propio afecto, y parecen no tener otro pasatiempo que convencerlos de que el único objetivo de sus vidas será inventar nuevos halagos, y hacerlos absolutamente felices en todos los aspectos. Sin embargo, en otro momento afectan enfado: una melancolía repentina y huraña sustituye su alegría anterior; suspiran con frecuencia, y rompen a llorar; además, sufren desvanecimientos y ataques de histeria.”

El desdichado marido de semejante esposa, alarmado por estos sorprendentes síntomas, le pregunta con ansiedad por el motivo. Ella finge evadir la pregunta; él se vuelve más insistente; ella insiste en su negativa a darle un motivo; su importunidad se acrecienta; hasta que al final le dice, con un gentil reproche y un estallido de dolor, que él le está rompiendo el corazón, que la única recompensa de su amor es el abandono, etc., etc. Asombrado por unas acusaciones que no cree merecer, al principio se esfuerza por ridiculizar lo que denomina ansiedad infantil. Sin embargo, ella finge seguir dudando; él protesta solemnemente, declarando su inocencia; y ambos se reconcilian. No obstante, en unos días se representa la misma farsa una y otra vez, hasta que el hombre infeliz se convence, en contra de lo que le dicen sus propios sentidos, de que su comportamiento ha sido inmoral. Es más, para aplacar a su afligida compañera, acaba por confesar sus faltas imaginarias, y promete corregirse en adelante. Por miedo a ofenderla involuntariamente, aprende a vigilar estrechamente sus propias acciones, tiene miedo a fijarse en las acciones de su esposa y, por el mismo motivo, es muy cauto a la hora de contradecirla, no sea que su crueldad le provoque un desvanecimiento; en resumen, se convierte en miembro de la Sociedad de los Calzonazos.

“Aunque el objetivo principal de nuestra sociedad es expandir la dominación del sexo femenino, no queremos en absoluto alcanzar ese fin con medios reprobables o inadecuados. Los únicos miembros dignos de la Sociedad son aquellos que lo son por estar convencidos de que serlo es algo útil, además de por un adecuado sentido de la superioridad de sus esposas. Sin embargo, todos esos miembros han sido tratados de una forma muy distinta a la que hemos descrito. Primero se han visto obligados a reconocer (y que todas las esposas se esfuercen por hacer lo mismo) que sus esposas, gracias a su cuidado y su frugalidad, están mejor adaptadas que ellos mismos para encargarse de sus preocupaciones; gracias a su comportamiento atento, que están mejor dotadas para gobernar sobre la familia; gracias a su benevolencia y moderación, que nunca abusarán de la autoridad que se les confiera. En un núcleo familiar así, jamás habrá conatos de resistencia. Las órdenes de una de las partes serán cumplidas con diligencia por la otra. Se establecerá una perpetua armonía; y las correcciones, cuando sean necesarias, se acatarán según la norma fundamental de la Sociedad, sin murmuración y sin resistencia alguna.”³

El pacificador de esposas del Buen Hombre

Caja de paz del club de los calzonazos —Cura evidente para una esposa enfadada

Los buenos hombres del Club de los Calzonazos fueron responsables de un invento interesante: una cuna para adultos, que se empleaba para relajar a las esposas irritadas en vez de a los bebés. Si os fijáis veréis que tienen un pie curvado para que el solícito marido la pueda mecer suavemente de lado a lado.

La “Caja de paz” fue inventada en 1862 por un miembro del club llamado Harry Tap, y los miembros del Club de los Calzonazos que sufrían el comportamiento tempestuoso de sus esposas podían alquilarlas. Si una esposa maltrataba demasiado a su marido, el marido le pedía a su esposa que se acostase en la caja, que podía mecerse como la cuna de un niño, para conseguir que la esposa se durmiera. Mientras ella dormía, el marido realizaba todas las tareas del hogar, y después despertaba a su esposa, que con suerte ya se habría calmado.

Ahora que estos jugosos datos históricos salen a la luz, parece que hemos cerrado el círculo; regreso al futuro. Aquí seguimos, con el sombrero en la mano, suplicando perdón a la Querida Mujer por haberla disgustado, esperando que se dé cuenta de lo mucho que estamos intentando ser hombres buenos.

Puede que a estas alturas sientas náuseas al saber que los hombres han estado arrastrándose ante semejante maltrato durante cientos de años, o puede que miles, y aun así se nos sigue exigiendo que Lo encajes como un hombre™, Seas un hombre™, y que Seas un buen hombre™. Si te sientes así, no estás solo, y con el creciente ejército de hombres y mujeres del Movimiento por los Derechos del Hombre, puedes contribuir a acabar con unas costumbres ginocéntricas tan nefastas.

FUENTES:

[1] Huddersfield Chronicle – Sábado 11 de agosto de 1860

[2] Esta lista de deberes se utilizaba en la división de Rochdale del club, y es una versión resumida de un documento oficial anterior que circulaba por los clubes: Acta de mejora de nuevas normas y órdenes (1840).

[3] Descripción de una antigua y honorable sociedad, vulgarmente conocida como El club de los calzonazos(1810).

By Paul Elam

Everyone knows that men have a tendency to protect women. But why do we see men, often so magnificently strong with other men or when facing danger, suddenly become shadows of themselves against the will of a woman? Indeed, why is it so rare that you ever see anyone even questioning this apparent paradox?

Is it nature? Is it social conditioning? Or is it something else that makes so many men Sampson, primed to be in the clutches of Delilah?

That is the subject of this series, the Real History of Men on An Ear for Men. Each story, mythology or belief system contains a beginning, a history that defines the present, and a future goal or destination.

If you are religious in the Abrahamic sense, you have the moment of creation, the historical legends, and allegories that shape and define modern customs and beliefs, and the predictions of a future; a place in time where you or your people if you prefer, are going.

Buddhism, a non-religious philosophy, begins with enlightenment, historically shared by way of Dharma, or teachings, which set the individual free from life’s inherent negativity, taking them to a better place. Failure at the lessons, as we see in Hinduism as well as Buddhism, condemns the person to be reborn into life’s struggles until they get it right. But in getting it right, they have a destination in mind.

Even most atheists share the same basic psychological architecture as religious people. There is the big bang or some other theory of the beginning of the universe, long periods of formation and creation, including human evolution, and ultimately an end, or at the very least, a new beginning.

There are even narratives within narratives. The universe has one story, the earth has another, as it also has a beginning, middle and end. The USA is another example. The American Genesis was an exodus from England; its story was building the new world and a destination of freedom and opportunity. A kind of promised land. At least that is the internalized narrative of America for many in the world, even for some of those who hate it.

We are all, in one form or another, affected by this existential three-act play, and in that we have a natural inclination, a drive to script everything, from mythologies about national, state and local identity, to our laws and social customs. We create these archetypal stories and then emulate them, acting out uniquely human psychodramas in never ending cycles that shift with the changes in culture. If we are lucky in the midst of all this, we get to experience the belief that we know who and what we are.

In short, humans are story creatures. We need stories to orient ourselves in life. Those stories, the stories we unconsciously write about ourselves, and even stories that dwell in our unknown history, are always there, shaping what we think, feel and do.

For the purpose of this talk, I am going to apply this to the world of men, who are without a doubt in an ever increasing crisis of identity and confusion about their place in the world.

Depending on who you talk to, we have a pretty clear narrative of the human story, the story of mankind. There are certainly differences in what that story is from culture to culture and subculture to subculture, and no identified group will have near all the facts right, but anywhere you look there are people with a shared set of beliefs that form their core identity as human beings.

That certainty of identity starts to unravel when we replace the word human with the word man. While the story of mankind is, for the most part, uncomplicated, for men it is, especially in these times, muddled and rife with conflict.

It isn’t because the story of men is convoluted or overly complex. It is because our story has been erased and rewritten with a faulty mythology. The first two acts of our play have been gutted and revised to the point that act three, our collective future, has evaporated.

It’s impossible to underestimate the power of that internal narrative. Just as religious zealotry can foster wars and contagious hatred, other belief systems run amok can popularize bigotry and a host of other psychosocial maladies. To make myself clear that this is not a blanket condemnation of religion, and for the sake of honesty, I point out that atheists are no more exempt from this than anyone else, as history clearly demonstrates.

Right now the story of masculinity, and by that I mean the commonly internalized narrative, is as simple as it is toxic. In the beginning, there was the original sin of male dominance and power. The history that defines masculinity now is one of pernicious control and abuse, especially of women, that led to a coveted state of privilege, and the future is, must be, a prophetic destruction of privilege that does not exist and an end to masculinity as we once knew it.

It matters not that this is a false narrative, oblivious to reason and fact. It is still the prevailing narrative. The associated archetypes and mythologies formed in our minds and now permeate our consciousness. They already contain the power to shame and silence us with manufactured guilt. Those who see it and fight are few, but even in that fight, we acknowledge the presence and power of the narrative.

The masculine future is here. Hatred for men is institutionalized. Male suicide is surging, testosterone levels are plummeting, as is the presence of men in higher education and the workforce. Fathers are disappearing from the lives of their sons, resulting in gangs and prisons filling with men, and even more demonization.

And at the same time, male deference to women is at a staggering level, as is damseling by very powerful women who find no shortage of men of all stripes to fly on autopilot to their rescue. We are all but ignoring tumors in men to attend to hangnails in women.

In fact, I am here to argue that this deference to women, this insanely sacrificial servitude, is now an archetype of manhood. It is ingrained into what Plato called the anima mundi, the soul of the world, which now every man bears it like a cross.

The question here is how that lemming-like deference, that lack of self, was written into our story. I ventured into the shallow end of that pool in another article I wrote, titled Servant, Slave, and Scapegoat.

The short version of it is that our classic male archetypes — heroes, kings, warriors and the like — have been twisted and deformed by gender ideology.

You might think that the ideology came from gender feminism, whether the current third wave carnival or the second wave of the late 1960’s or even the first wave of the mid-1800’s but all those are comparatively minor events in this story. Act one of this three-part play has its beginning over 900 years ago in the mid 12^th century.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a remarkably wealthy and powerful woman. At different points of her life, she was the queen of both England and France. She was also a temperamental, rebellious woman by historical accounts. All indications are that she was a woman who lived in constant dissatisfaction with her lot in life.

In many ways, her life and that of her daughter Marie mirrored more modern feminists like Betty Friedan. They were women of serious means, bequeathed to them by men. They were women who used their privilege, free time and resources practice sexual politics.

Eleanor and Marie dedicated themselves fervently to promoting the standard of courtly love. They commissioned traveling troubadours to spread a redefinition of love and attachment according to the courtly standard. And, understand this, that story, that narrative, still dictates much of our lives today.

So what exactly is courtly love? The late Joseph Campbell, a highly regarded mythologist, writer, and lecturer shared his ideas on it after years of research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9gqkTJjris

One of the stories commissioned by Marie, who also dictated the details, was that of Lancelot and Guinevere. At its core, it was a story of glorified adultery and betrayal. It was a message that courtly love was exalted notion of love and rose above the moral standards of the times, even above the power and importance of a king.

And so went the theme of all courtly love. The way knights, and ultimately all men fit in this story, was in blind service and dedication to women, abandoning themselves and their values for the privilege of being a vassal.

As we can see in this next segment by Campbell, blind obedience to that narrative is not quite as romantic as it sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0X0WsRfxxc

I’m not saying that Eleanor of Aquitaine invented Courtly Love or Romantic Chivalry. Some scholars have reasonably concluded that the trend was making small waves in multiple cultures at the time. Myths like Helen of Troy and Sampson and Delilah far predated Eleanor and Marie. Our legends were already replete with cautionary tales about the devastation wrought from male surrender to the pull of infatuation.

Eleanor’s work to change the healthy narrative, an expression of her lust for personal power, is the genesis of our story. And its’ history is well documented. The message started with nobility and spread to all the principal courts of Europe. From there it disseminated to the masses and has been a powerful and destructive part of men’s story ever since.

Looking back, Act One of this story is the first ever historical example of a social movement designed to manipulate the biological tendency toward gynocentrism, and to coerce men into a role of enhanced servitude to women. It was wildly successful, and it has affected human beings as much or more than religion and technology. Certainly more than psychology, which was emerging as a discipline about the same time as courtly love.

And as many know, there has been a deep and painful cost to men for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDRydrY1VcI

That’s worth thinking about.

The Greek goddess Hera was the patroness of marriage, status, and social power, and as I hope to demonstrate here, a goddess appropriate to feminism too. By analyzing the character of a goddess we follow the late psychologist James Hillman’s suggestion that “Mythology is psychology in ancient dress,” – ie. it gives us insight into human nature, and more specifically into the nature of feminism.

No other goddess in the Greek pantheon comes close to capturing the activities we associate with feminism – not the warlike independence of the Amazons, not the esteemed motherhood of Demeter, and not the allure of Aphrodite. These are merely peripheral topics taken up by a feminism that is concerned with securing multiple varieties of power, and Hera is the goddess I’m going to finger for that role.

Marriage

Hera was first and foremost a goddess of marriage, or rather the goddess of marriage. Under her sign marriage tamed men to great advantage of the Greek State, and the State in turn extended honors to her cult. In parts of Greece men could not be recognized as citizens until the day of their marriage, thus enticing men to marry and providing a means for Greek cities to continue reproducing the citizen-estate, not to mention securing a ready supply of laborers, taxes and military personnel to boot. James Hillman writes,

Marriage belongs to the state; it belongs to society, to the community. Zeus and Hera are social stability; they are the state in a way, so we can be married by a Justice of the Peace at City Hall, because marriage is also secular. We recognize that by having both church weddings and legal weddings. Our tax code, our inheritance laws acknowledge that a fundamental structure of the organization of society is marriage. Therefore some can claim it has nothing in particular to do with the persons who are engaged; it hasn’t anything to do with God; it hasn’t anything to do with symbolic representations. It is a fundamental structure of society belonging to the polis or the city or the community.¹

While the marriage of Hera and Zeus is mythological, life in this instance had a way of imitating art. In the marriage month (Gamelion ) the mythical marriage of Hera and Zeus was reenacted and celebrated with public festivities, a time when many couples would get married in imitation of the divine couple. On these occasions prayers and offerings were given to Hera, and the bride would pledge fidelity to extending Hera’s dominion on earth. One can only surmise that the riches, status, and influence of the divine couple became a model to which each couple would hope to aspire.

Another facet of Hera’s cult was the focus on buildings, and her temples were usually the biggest and most lavish in all Greece. Women would carve small houses, or make them out of clay and give as offerings to the Goddess. Remarking on this practice, Hillman states that our modern obsession with houses and real estate, one of the bedrocks of our economy, may also arise from a Hera-like sentiment;

If you think back to all the times you play house as a child, or had a dollhouse, or made little houses out of cartons and boxes, this is an archetypal move going on. We forget that the house is not just something made by an architect and sold you by a developer… What one does for the house, to the house, with the house, is taking care of Hera. Housekeeping is a Hera activity. Our culture recognizes this. Think of the enormous quantity of house magazines: House and Garden, House Beautiful, Home Decorating, Architectural Digest, World of Interiors, the home section of newspapers, home improvement on TV, supposedly a best-selling TV show or one of the most watched, “This Old House.”

“I know a woman who decorates people’s houses. You pick out the furniture and the fabrics – then she’ll lay out the paintings you should have, what repros you should have on the wall, and the bric-a-brac and what colors the walls should be and so on. She told me that in every one of the cases that she works with (of married couples), the woman picks out everything in the house and the entire house belongs to her except for the husband’s desk and his playroom and maybe the garage. He has his little area and the rest of the house is hers. He makes no decisions about what color the upholstery should be or the kinds of window shades.

“Often when you go to people’s houses the wife shows off the house while the husbands talk shop. “Come, let me show you my house; I want to show you the house.” She’s showing a part of her Hera nature.

“There are these old sayings (whether you go with the gender of them or not): a woman likes a man who can do things around the house, and she hates it that she always has to pick up after him and he leaves things in a mess. By desecrating the house that way, he insults Hera. And a man likes a woman who’s a good housekeeper. These are Hera statements. Another one: She loves the house more than me. And the jokes: A man is making love to a whore and she says, “You’re the greatest;” and when he’s making love to his mistress, she says, “I love you so much.” But when he’s making love to his wife, she says: “I wonder what color we should paint the ceiling.” Now, that is a nasty gender joke, but it isn’t! She really loves the house. That’s crucial and shouldn’t be treated as just a kind of obsession. Her obsession with the house equals his obsession with sex.¹

In a telling newspaper cartoon some years ago, two women were conversing. The first said she was getting a divorce, to which her friend replied it must be an awful thing to go through. “Not really” the woman replied, “it’s actually a dream come true; I get the house, the furniture, the artworks and the kids. I’ve been planning this divorce since I was a little girl!” In this cruel cartoon we get a sense that the husband was merely a backdrop to securing the larger vision of a house, renovations, furnishings and the children. But especially the house.

Taming Men

Hera was nicknamed ‘The Tamer.’ She tamed horses, men and heroes and in some places was recognized as the tamer of the seasons, of nature, and even the universe itself.

Her goal was to limit wildness and freedom by placing all creatures in her service. Her tools-for-taming were the entrapment of men and women in marriage, the use of her own sexuality as an enticement for conformity; shaming, and aggressive punishment of any rebellious behaviours. Even her lordly husband Zeus did not escape her control: “Hera’s cruel rage tamed him.”²

Hera was worshipped as ‘Goddess of the yoke,’ an enslaving device symbolizing her desire to create utilities of beasts and men. She yoked obedient men to wives, and yoked heroes to an inevitable death through their performance of labours that bring betterment to women and society.

In the Iliad Hera is said to tame heroes through death, not marriage. Death through service to others was considered -and is still considered- something appropriate for males and for their own good. In The Myth of Male Power Warren Farrell recounts a Greek story which illustrates the fact:

The Hero As Slave:

Once upon a time, a mother who wanted to see the beautiful statue of Hera had no oxes or horses to carry her there. But she did have two sons. And the sons wanted more than anything to make their mother’s wish come true. They volunteered to yoke themselves to a cart and take her over the mountains in the scorching heat to the faraway village of Argos, the home of the statue of Hera (the wife of Zeus). Upon their arrival in Argos, the sons were cheered and statues (that can be found to this day) were built in their honor. Their mother prayed that Hera give her sons the best gift in her power. Hera did that. The boys died. The traditional interpretation? The best thing that can happen to a man is to die at the height of his glory and power. Yet had this been a myth of two daughters who had substituted themselves for oxen to carry their father somewhere, would we have interpreted the daughters’ deaths as proof that the best thing that can happen to a woman is to die at the height of her glory and power? The statues and cheers can be seen as bribes for the sons to value their lives less than their mother’s request to view a statue. The fact that the statue was of Hera, the queen of the Olympian gods and protector of married women is symbolic. The sons’ sacrifice symbolized the mandate for men to become strong enough to serve the needs of mothers and marriage, and to be willing to call it glory if they died in the process. Which is why the name Hercules means “for the glory of Hera”.³

Sexual manipulation was another of Hera’s strategems to gain what she wanted. In one popular tale, for instance, she asked if she could borrow Aphrodite’s magic girdle to help her woo the King of the gods. By borrowing Aphrodite’s natural charms (the girdle) Hera imitated the goddess of love and sex and thereby seduced Zeus. As we read in Homer’s Iliad, the magical girdle of Aphrodite had the power to create subservience in the target;

Hera was divided in purpose as to how she could beguile the brain in Zeus of the aigis. And to her mind this thing appeared to be the best counsel, to array herself in loveliness, and go down to Ida, and perhaps he might be taken with desire to lie in love with her next her skin, and she might be able to drift an innocent warm sleep across his eyelids, and seal his crafty perceptions…

Now, when she had clothed her body in all this loveliness, she went out from the chamber, and called aside Aphrodite to come away from the rest of the gods, and spoke a word to her: ‘Would you do something for me, dear child… Give me loveliness and desirability, graces with which you overwhelm mortal men, and all the immortals…

Then in turn Aphrodite the laughing (philomeides) answered her: ‘I cannot, and I must not deny this thing that you ask for, you, who lies in the arms of Zeus, since he is our greatest.’ She spoke, and from her breasts unbound the elaborate, pattern-pierced zone (himas), and on it are figured all beguilement (philotes), and loveliness is figured upon it, and passion of sex (himeros) is there, and the whispered endearment (oaristos) that steals the heart away even from the thoughtful. She put this in Hera’s hands, and called her by name and spoke to her: ‘Take this zone, and hide it away in the fold of your bosom. It is elaborate, all things are figured therein. And I think whatever is your heart’s desire shall not go unaccomplished.’ So she spoke, and the ox-eyed lady Hera smiled on her and smiling hid the zone away in the fold of her bosom.⁴

Hera employed sexual manipulativeness as an artifice to purchase the power and influence she so desperately craved. Today we would call this behavior “Love bombing,” which has the ability to tame a man to schemes he might otherwise have never dreamed of following.

Binding Hera’s rage

When Hera didn’t get her desired measure of power, when her status didn’t reach high enough, or worse, when she lost status or power, things went very badly for the world around her. Epithets of spitefulness, jealousy, vengefulness, vindictiveness, cruelty and rage belong to the scorned goddess, and from a reading of the myths it seems she felt scorned much of the time.

We turn for example to the priestess Medea who murdered her children as revenge against her husband’s transgressions. Her husband, Jason of Argonauts fame, decided to leave her after the marriage went stale. He found a new bride and Medea devised to make them suffer for their happiness. Much like the goddess Hera to whom Medea was priestess, she carried out a scorched-earth policy in the face of frustrated power urges, saying;

Sorry, kids, but your dad’s a douche

I will send them with gifts in their hands, carrying them unto the bride a robe of finest woof and a chaplet of gold. And if these ornaments she take and put them on, miserably shall she die, and likewise everyone who touches her; with such fell poisons will I smear my gifts. And here I quit this theme; but I shudder at the deed I must do next; for I will slay the children I have borne… and when I have utterly confounded Jason’s house I will leave the land, escaping punishment for my dear children’s murder, after my most unholy deed… so help me God, Never shall he see again alive the children I bore to him, nor from his new bride shall he beget issue, for she must die a hideous death, slain by my drugs. Let no one deem me a poor weak woman who sits with folded hands, but of another mould, dangerous to foes and well-disposed to friends.⁵

After killing Jason’s bride with a poison-smeared robe, murdering her own children, and then setting fire to the palace, Medea fled to Athens where she married the mighty King Aegeus, thereby securing a place of notoriety in the mythological scheme of Greece.

Mythologist Karl Kerenyi asks, “What should we make of it that Medea, a barbaric representative of the Hera world, and her gloomy cult, found acceptance in the sacred precinct of Zeus’ spouse?”⁶ Kerenyi was struck by the fact that Hera remained associated with Medea’s barbarism and surrounded her with the sanctity of her own world. Our thoughts on this question might extend to a similar comparison of moderate feminism and how it remains associated with radical feminism’s relational and cultural terrorism.

The Greeks understood better than we moderns, however, that impulses of the psychopathic mind needed to be restrained by a civil society.

To that end the Greeks developed a religious ritual that involved winding a rope tightly around a statue or effigy of the Goddess Hera, particularly during what they imagined to be her ‘unfulfilled’ moments. That hog-tying symbolized containment of destructive energies resulting from loss of status or power. Participants understood the binding was of the proverbial ‘woman scorned,’ a ritual teaching how to deal with such behavior in the lives of mortals.

In contrast to her fulfilled behavior within marriage, when the Queen of Heaven lost her marital station and status, she would tear the social fabric into black confetti. Hera then became monstrous or in some stories started giving birth to monstrous creatures who did her bidding. Jungian psychologist Murray Stein talks to this monstrous side of the goddess;

This compounding of evil upon evil is an image of Hera in her Iuno inferna aspect and energized by a full-blown animus rage and destruction, running amuck through the world, devouring whomever she can lay her hands on. Hera is in this development a veritable epidemic of pathology.

The ancient cults of Hera showed great foresight and wisdom in “binding” her image during the dangerous periods of her cycle. This was prophylactic against the potentiation of the she-dragon. But what could they have done to prevent this potentiation in the face of the Typhaonian spirit energizing it? Hera’s reaction to her experience with Zeus bursts all fetters, for without a full experience of the Teleia [fulfillment] aspect of the cycle the bindings on the infernal aspect of it cannot possibly hold. Thus we find in the Homeric and classical image of her a Hera Unbound, whose boundlessness knows no limit to destruction. The rhythm inherent in the archetype has been disturbed, and we get a sort of symphony whose rhythm is one long downbeat. The restoration of Hera Teleia is an individual and cultural historical project that is still being worked on in our time.⁷

Feminism

The comparisons of Hera and Medea with feminism are unmistakable. The male shaming, intimidation, manipulation, and power-seeking are all there – as are the destructiveness and scorched-earth policy accompanying frustrated goals.

It’s no surprise that a Google search for Hera + feminist returns over 80,000 results, and Medea + feminist over 100,000, and the number of feminist orgs, initiatives and editorials paints its own picture; The Hera Women’s Cancer Foundation; Hera Entrepreneurs Against Trafficking; Hera Hub: female-focused co working space and entrepreneurship; The Hera Herald; Hera Society; Hera Health, Empowerment and Rights for Women; Hera Communications: Empowerment, Enrichment, Enlightenment; Women’s Club Hera (etc.).

Along with Hera, Medea is universally recognized as a feminist heroine. As an example of feminist websites promoting her we read, “There is, however, one other role that we twenty-first-century audiences are able to recognize in Medea: that of the feminist pioneer. And the fact that this precursor of the suffragettes is a mythic character dramatized nearly 2,500 years ago by a man is quite astonishing.”⁸

The Wikipedia entry for Medea reads, “Medea is widely read as a proto-feminist text to the extent that it sympathetically explores the disadvantages of being a woman in a patriarchal society,” – to which characterization is implied (by feminists) that we dare not read her as anything but a hapless victim, as one Jungian analyst Cheryl Fuller was to discover.

Fuller, a feminist, gives a revealing account of what happened when she attempted to shine a light on the dark side of Medea, and by extension of women. She writes;

Eight years ago as I searched for a dissertation advisor, I ran into a wall with the feminist scholars on the faculty of my university. As soon as I explained that I wanted to write about Medea came the assumption: of course, they said, you will be looking at the patriarchy as the issue in her behavior. And when I replied that indeed I was not going to be looking in that direction, but rather at Medea herself and at the meaning intrinsic to her acts and her story, interest in my work evaporated and they declined to serve on my committee. Though long a feminist myself, I had been absent from developments in academic feminism. It had escaped my attention that there were “right” ways and “wrong” ways to study women, both real and mythological, and clearly considering Medea as anything other than a victim of the patriarchy was the “wrong” way.

I persisted, found an advisor who could accept my apparently heretical viewpoint and happily explored the character of Medea and developed a description of a Medea complex. But the resistance to considering that Medea could be anything other than a hapless victim of the patriarchy continued to intrigue me and set me to wondering about the meaning of excluding this dark and troubling aspect of her, and by extension all of us, from our understanding of what it is to be human and more specifically a woman. It is this wondering which is the subject of my paper.⁹

In summary, the traditional binding of Hera has failed and her destructive energies are loosed upon the world – to devastating effect. Her bindings began to unravel in the Middle Ages with the advent of an indiscriminate chivalry that saw men worshiping women as pure and infallable vessels, while failing to recognize and bind their destructive potentials with reasonable forms of social constraint.

While we continue on our current path the scorched earth policy too will continue… compliments of a vengeful, and power-craving Hera.

References:

[1] James Hillman, ‘Hera, Goddess of Marriage’ in Mythic Figures (2007)
[2] Joan O’Brien, ‘The Tamer of Heroes and Horses,’ Chapter 6E in The Transformation of Hera, (1993)
[3] Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power, Simon and Schuster, (1993)
[4] Richard Lattimore, Trans. The Iliad of Homer (1951)
[5] Medea By Euripides (431 B.C.E), Translated by E. P. Coleridge (1891)
[6] Karl Kerenyi, Goddesses of Sun and Moon (1979)
[7] Murray Stein, Hera: Bound and Unbound, in Spring: an annual of Archetypal Psychology (1977)
[8] Medea: Everywoman, Many Women (website)
[9] Cheryl Fuller, Medea, Feminism and the Shadow (2009)

Author’s note: Part of the Taming section was previously published in the article How to tame men.

WOMEN’S VOICES

– Christine de Pizan: the first gender warrior
– Jane Anger: gynocentrism in 1589
– Modesta Pozzo: gynocentrism in 1590
– Lucrezia Marinella: gynocentrism in 1600
– Margaret Cavendish: gynocentrism in 1662
– Elizabeth Poole Sandford: Female Power, Influence, and Privileges in 1835

FEMINISM

PSYCHOLOGY OF FEMINISM – GOOGLE SCHOLAR

– Impact of Feminism on Narcissism and Tolerance for Disagreement among Females
– Further Basic Evidence for the Dark-Ego-Vehicle Principle: Higher Pathological Narcissism Is Associated With Greater Involvement in Feminist Activism

HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS ON WOMEN OF THE ANGLOSPHERE

– Japanese visitor amazed by American gynocentrism (1872)
– ‘Female Aristocracy’ Long Observed In The Anglosphere (1896 – 1929)
– USA, Champion of Extreme Gynocentrism (1846 – 1929)
– American Woman and Her Dutiful Husband — (Max O’Rell, 1903)
– New Feminine Aristocracy in The USA (The Independent, 1909)
– The New American Sex Aristocracy – by Constance Eaton (1929)
– ‘The Henpecked Male’ by Hendrick de Leeuw (1957)
– American Man – The Most Manipulated Male on Earth (Esther Vilar, 1971)

 

 

The following is a three-part extract from Dr. Frank Tallis’ excellent book Love Sick. The book surveys the concept of romantic love, or more accurately the sickness of it, with Dr. Tallis’ extensive clinical experience confirming just how sick-making these practices can be. Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate—exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love.

In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love.

A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

Love sick (part 1)
Love sick (part 2)
Love sick (part 3)

Historical writings about courtly and romantic love

– The Art of Courtly Love – by Andreas Capellanus (1190)
– First mentions of “Romantic love” in English literature (1700-1800)
– Romantic Love In England And America – by Henry Finck (1887)
– Leo Tolstoy on Romantic Love (1888)
– Madame Bovary Syndrome (1892)
– Mediaeval Love – by Violet Paget (1895)
– Courtly and Romantic Love – by Lester F. Ward (1903)
– The Troubadours – by H.J. Chaytor (1913)
– The Romantic Impulse And Family Disorganization – by Ernest W. Burgess (1926)
– Western Fairy-Tale marriages Vs. Dowry – by Peh Der Chen (1932)
– The Romantic Fallacy, by M. Elliott & F. Merrill (1934)
– The Origin And Nature of Courtly love – by C. S. Lewis (1936)
– Eleanor of Aquitaine’s ‘Courts of Love’ – by Amy Kelly (1937)
– Romantic love & the destruction of western marriage – Denis de Rougemont (1939)
– J.R.R. Tolkien criticizes chivalry and courtly love (1941)
– The Family And Romantic Love – by A. Truxal & F. Merrill (1952)
– The Mirror of Narcissus in the Courtly Love Lyric – by F. Goldin (1956)
– Romantic love introduced cuckoldry & hatred of husbands – Maurice Valency (1958)
– Female sexual desire as described in the Middle Ages – Maurice Valency (1958)
– The Social Causation of the Courtly Love Complex – Herbert Moller (1959)
– Courtly Love as Religious Dissent, by Jeffrey B. Russell (1965)
– Study: Decline In Dowry Practice Linked To Rise In Romantic Love – J. Balwick (1975)
– The Origin And Meaning of Courtly Love – Roger Boase (1977)
– Masculine submission & ‘Love service’ – Sandra Alfonsi (1986)

Contemporary writings about courtly and romantic love

– Courtly Love Today (Summary of paper by John G. Rechtien – 1988)
– Courtly Love Described (Brooklyn College – 2000)
– Courtly Love, An Overview (Michael Delahoyde – 2006)
– Rise of Courtly Love (Brandy Stark – 2007)
– To ‘Believe’ in Love – The Religious Significance of the Romantic Love Myth in Western Modernity (Sarah Balstrup – 2012)
– The Sexual-Relations Contract (Peter Wright – 2013)
– Damseling, Chivalry and Courtly Love (part 1) (Peter Wright – 2016)
– Damseling, Chivalry and Courtly Love (part 2) (Peter Wright – 2016)
– The Evolution of Gynocentrism Via Romance Writings (Peter Wright – 2017)
– To Be a Better Man: Courtly Values Revived in Modern Film (R. Cormier – 2018)
– Sexual Feudalism (Peter Wright, Wiki4Men entry – 2019)
– Courtly Love – by Joshua J. Mark (2019)
– ‘Frau Minne’ Goddess of Romantic Love (Peter Wright, 2020)
– Is Romantic Love a Timeless Evolutionary Universal, Or a Creation of The Middle Ages? (Peter Wright, 2022)
– A brief commentary on Jankowiak & Fischer’s misuse of the term ‘romantic love’ (Peter Wright, 2022)
– Challenging The Claim That Romantic Love is Universal: Excerpt from William Reddy’s The Making Of Romantic Love
– A comment on Don Monson’s ‘Why is la Belle Dame sans Merci? Evolutionary Psychology and the Troubadours’ (Peter Wright, 2022)
– A Short Reflection on Love Terminology (Peter Wright, 2023)
– Romantic Love Encourages Female Narcissism (Peter Wright, 2023)
– “Dame Amour” – French personification of courtly love (Peter Wright, 2024)
– Love in the Song of Songs (Peter Wright, 2024)
– Christian Churches Conflating Romantic Love with Agape (Peter Wright, 2024)
– Romantic love versus family love: Amore vs Storge (Peter Wright, 2024)
– Origins of the word romance and the phrase romantic love in English literature (2017)
– When Romantic Love Came To India (Peter Wright, 2025)
– When Romantic Love Came To China (Peter Wright, 2025)
– The Medieval Women Who Engineered The Rise Of Troubadour Poetry (Peter Wright, 2025)
– Open-AI: How Courtly Love Is Still In Play In The 21st Century (June, 2025)
– Shared Practices and Beliefs in Courtly Love, Romantic Love, and “Dating” (2025)