The following overview of Lester Ward’s concept of gynæcocentric theory (1888, 1903) is from the book The Making of the Human Sciences in China, by Micah Muscolino (2019). It provides a more succinct statement of Ward’s ideology than is found in the originating chapter on the subject.

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Where Ward’s chapter becomes remarkable is his claim that evidence supports a theory that human species began as female. Claiming support for this scientific fact Ward drew on Darwin, geologist Sir Charles Lyell (whose work influenced Darwin), American zoologist John A. Ryder, paleontologist Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, and other zoologists for support.

Thus, in Ward’s theory, the Arachnida or spider family is not a perversion, but an ancient form of reproductive exchange in which the female extracts sperm and consumes the sperm donor. A then popular view was that the male human, male mammals generally, and male birds in particular, are superior to the female and that the female is a form of “arrested development” in the human species where males have evolved more quickly than females. Ward’s repudiation here is ingenious. The female, he argues, “simply represents the normal condition, while the condition of the male is abnormal due to his great powers of variability.” He argues that “females cannot … vary [because] they represent the center of gravity of the biological system.”

Ward made sexual selection the more complex process. It was, he argued, nature’s mechanism to maintain female centeredness in reproduction and preserve the female as the “hereditary trunk” of what we would call DNA. While the female is the ancestral trunk, in humans, unlike other mammals, the sexes choose each other on the basis of different, functional, evolutionary mandates. The female chooses males on the basis of their superiority within the species. The males oblige females, on the basis of the mandate, to naturally select partners who show the capacity to adapt. Instinct gives the female the ability to discriminate among individuals in a species. The human male evolved from the indiscriminate release of sperm to the faculty of taste.

In other words, men have evolved to discriminate among women on the basis of innate aesthetic appeal. We can see this in lower level organisms where evolution, say of spiders, is changing the relative size of males because female spiders are consistently choosing larger sperm donors. When sexual attraction appears in species—most do not have the capacity for libido (a subjective desire for a specific mate)—the aesthetic capacity of individual males plays a functional role in natural and even perhaps in social evolution.

Females are the original humans. Males are an effusion or an extrusion that makes human evolution what it is. The female has an aesthetic that helps her to decide her sexual partner’s relative worth, and where she remains superior in human evolution is in her capacity to discriminate. In Ward’s imagination the evidence presents a situation where female humans have sex-selected for rationality in men rather than for strength or good looks. Because the criteria include rationality, women bred men who were more rational, and a gender power imbalance was the result. Ward is careful to say that both sexes in humans have rationality. But he is more interested in how evolutionary rationality in men enabled men to seize control of the children. This led to the overthrow of the mother right and the establishment of patriarchy. The evolutionary redress to this injustice is already in process. Men abuse women not because they are hateful or strong or stupid. They have simply not yet evolved the capacity that all women have, of empathy. As women begin to socially select for this quality, the obvious abuses of the patriarchal present should resolve.

SOURCE: The Making of the Human Sciences in China, by Micah Muscolino – Brill, (2019)

The following volume by Scott Nearing ‘Woman and social progress: a discussion of the biologic, domestic, industrial and social possibilities of American women‘ (1912) includes lengthy references to Lester F. Ward and his gynæcocentric theory in relation to “women’s progress.”

The following mentions Lester Ward’s theory, from the Irish Citizen – Saturday 09 May 1914.

The following article appeared in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser – Friday 24 April 1914

The following excerpt is from the 1928 book The Lure of Superiority: A Study In The Psychology of Motives, by W.F. Vaughan (pp. 197-198)

The following is an excerpt from E. Belfort Bax’ The Fraud of Feminism, Chapter VI: Some Feminist Lies and Fallacies, where he examines Lester Ward’s ‘Gynœcocentric Theory’ which Bax refers to as “a fallacy of some importance.” – PW

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We must now deal at some length with a fallacy of some importance, owing to the apparatus of learning with which it has been set forth, to be found in Mr Lester F. Ward’s book, entitled Pure Sociology, notwithstanding that its fallacious nature is plain enough when analysed. Mr Ward terms his speculation the “Gynœcocentric Theory,” by which he understands apparently the Feminist dogma of the supreme importance of the female in the scheme of humanity and nature generally.

His arguments are largely drawn from general biology, especially that of inferior organisms. He traces the various processes of reproduction in the lower departments of organic nature, subdivision, germination, budding, etc., up to the earlier forms of bi-sexuality, culminating in conjugation or true sexual union. His standpoint he thus states in the terms of biological origins:

“Although reproduction and sex are two distinct things, and although a creature that reproduces without sex cannot properly be called either male or female, still so completely have these conceptions become blended in the popular mind that a creature which actually brings forth offspring out of its own body, is instinctively classed as female. The female is the fertile sex, and whatever is fertile is looked upon as female. Assuredly it would be absurd to look upon an organism propagating sexually as male. Biologists have proceeded from this popular standpoint and regularly speak of ‘mother cells,’ and ‘daughter cells.’ It, therefore, does no violence to language or to science to say that life begins with the female organism and is carried on a long distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms of a-sexual reproduction, from fission to parthenogenesis, the female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the functions of life, including reproduction. In a word, life begins as female.”

In the above remarks it will be seen that Mr Ward, so to say, jumps the claim of a-sexual organisms to be considered as female. This, in itself a somewhat questionable proceeding, serves him as a starting-point for his theory. The a-sexual female (?), he observes, is not only primarily the original sex, but continues throughout, the main trunk, though afterwards the male element is added “for the purposes of fertilisation.” “Among millions of humble creatures,” says Mr Ward, “the male is simply and solely a fertiliser.”

The writer goes on in his efforts to belittle the male sex in the sphere of biology. “The gigantic female spider and the tiny male fertiliser, the Mantis insect with its similarly large and ferocious female, bees, and mosquitoes,” all are pressed into the service. Even the vegetable kingdom, in so far as it shows signs of sex differentiation, is brought into the lists in favour of his theory of female supremacy, or “gynæcocentricism,” as he terms it.

This theory may be briefly stated as follows: – In the earliest organisms displaying sex differentiation, it is the female which represents the organism proper, the rudimentary male existing solely for the purpose of the fertilisation of the female. This applies to most of the lower forms of life in which the differentiation of sex obtains, and in many insects, the Mantis being one of the cases specially insisted upon by our author. The process of the development of the male sex is by means of the sexual selection of the female. From being a mere fertilising agent, gradually, as evolution proceeds, it assumes the form and characteristics of an independent organism like the original female trunk organism. But the latter continues to maintain its supremacy in the life of the species, by means chiefly of sexual selection, until the human period, i.e. more or less(!), for Mr Ward is bound to admit signs of male superiority in the higher vertebrates – viz. birds and mammals. This superiority manifests itself in size, strength, ornamentation, alertness, etc.

But it is with man, with the advent of the reasoning faculty, and, as a consequence, of human supremacy, that it becomes first unmistakably manifest. This superiority, Mr Ward contends, has been developed under the ægis of the sexual selection of the female, and enabled cruel and wicked man to subject and enslave down- trodden and oppressed woman, who has thus been crushed by a Frankenstein of her own creation. Although in various earlier phases of human organisation woman still maintains her social supremacy, this state of affairs soon changes. Androcracy establishes itself, and woman is reduced to the role of breeding the race and of being the servant of man. Thus she has remained throughout the periods of the higher barbarism and of civilisation. Our author regards the lowest point of what he terms the degradation of woman to have been reached in the past, and the last two centuries as having witnessed a movement in the opposite direction – namely, towards the emancipation of woman and equality between the sexes. (Cf. Pure Sociology, chap.xiv., and especially pp. 290-377.)

The above is a brief, but, I think, not unfair skeleton statement of the theory which Mr Lester Ward has elaborated in the work above referred to, in great detail and with immense wealth of illustration. But now I ask, granting the correctness of Mr Ward’s biological premises and the accuracy of his exposition, and I am not specialist enough to be capable of criticising these in detail: What does it all amount to? The “business end” (as the Americans would say) of the whole theory, it is quite evident, is to afford a plausible and scientific basis for the Modern Feminist Movement, and thus to further its practical pretensions.

What Mr Ward terms the androcentric theory, at least as regards man and the higher vertebrates, which is on the face of it supported by the facts of human experience and has been accepted well- nigh unanimously up to quite recent times, is, according to him, all wrong. The male element in the universe of living things is not the element of primary importance, and the female element the secondary, but the converse is the case.

For this contention Mr Ward, as already pointed out, has, by dint of his biological learning, succeeded at least in making out a case in so far as lower forms of life are concerned. He has, however, to admit – a fatal admission surely – that evolution has tended progressively to break down the superiority of the female (by means, as he contends, of her own sexual selection) and to transfer sex supremacy to the male, according to Mr Ward, hitherto a secondary being, and that this tendency becomes very obvious in most species of birds and mammals.

With the rise of man, however, out of the pithecanthropos, the homosynosis, or by whatever other designation we may call the intermediate organism between the purely animal and the purely human, and the consequent supersession of instinct as the dominant form of intelligence by reason, the question of superiority, as Mr Ward candidly admits, is no longer doubtful, and upon the unquestionable superiority of the male, in due course of time, follows the unquestioned supremacy.

It is clear then that, granting the biological premises of our author that the lowest sexual organisms are virtually female and that in the hermaphrodites the female element predominates; that in the earliest forms of bi-sexuality the fertilising or male element was merely an offshoot of the female trunk and that this offshoot develops, mainly by means of sexual selection on the part of the female, into an organism similar to the latter; that not until we reach the higher vertebrates, the birds and the mammals, do we find any traces of male superiority; and that this superiority only becomes definite and obvious, leading to male domination, in the human species – granting all this, I say, what argument can be founded upon it in support of the equal value physically, intellectually and morally of the female sex in human society, or the desirability of its possessing equal political power with men in such society? On the contrary, Mr Ward’s whole exposition, with his biological facts of illustration, would seem to point rather in the opposite direction.

We seem surely to have here, if Mr Ward’s premises be accepted as to the primitive insignificance of the male element – at first overshadowed and dominated by the female stem, but gradually evolving in importance, character and fruition, till we arrive at man the highest product of evolution up to date – a powerful argument for anti-Feminism.

On Mr Ward’s own showing, we find that incontestible superiority, both in size and power of body and brain, has manifested itself in Androcracy, when the female is relegated, in the natural course of things, to the function of child-bearing.

This, it can hardly be denied, is simply one more instance of the general process of evolution, whereby the higher being is evolved from the lower, at first weak and dependent upon its parent, the latter remaining dominant until the new being reaches maturity, when in its turn it becomes supreme, while that out of which it developed, and of which it was first the mere offshoot, falls into the background and becomes in its turn subordinate to its own product.

Source: Justice, September 4, 1909, p. 5
Section: “Our Women’s Circle”
Topic: Lester Ward’s Gynæcocentric Theory

The Evolution of Sex

One or two comrades have written me asking for more detailed information about Professor Lester Ward’s writings, and more especially about that theory of the evolution of the sexes, which he sets forth in the fourteenth chapter of “Pure Sociology.”

It is somewhat difficult to summarise within the space of an article this “Gynæcocentric Theory,” which Professor Ward takes over 150 pages to unfold; but as I do not wish to disappoint the inquiring comrades I will do my best; only adding that I hope later on, in pamphlet form, to do greater justice to and help to popularise what is such an important addition to our sociological knowledge.

Professor Lester Ward opens the subject with some introductory statements about the reproductive forces such as:

“No fact in biology is better established than that reproduction represents a specialised mode of nutrition, through the renewal of the organism …. If we recognise only two forms of nutrition, natural selection determines which form shall be employed. Individual nutrition will be continued so long as there is no danger of the individual being cut off. Ultra-individual nutrition will begin as soon as there arises a chance of the individual being cut off, and it will be emphasised by any direct threat to the life of the individual. Hence reproduction is not possible in animals to the young that are growing rapidly, not to plants that are over nourished …. Reproduction is not only ultra-nutrition, in going beyond the individual, but it is altro-nutrition, in carrying the process to and into another. It is as we shall see the beginning of altruism.”

In a later part of the chapter we read:

“The introduction of fertilisation in connection with reproduction was gradual, and was not at first at all necessary to it. It came in at the outset as an occasional resort for infusing new elements after a long series of generations through normal reproduction. This occasional fertilisation is called the alternation of generation …. So great was the advantage of fertilisation that in the animal kingdom it first came to accompany each separate act of reproduction itself. From the fact that such is the case in all the higher animals, which are the ones best known to all, the error arose that fertilisation is an essential part of reproduction, and that sex is necessary to reproduction, an error difficult to dislodge.”

These postulates granted, Professor Ward goes out to prove that the female sex in evolution has always been the important sex, because it is the female sex only that reproduces, and carries on the species or race.

“The fertilising organ or miniature sperm sac was the primitive form of what subsequently developed into the male sex, the female sex being the organism proper, which remained practically unchanged …. The selection by females of the best specimens among males and rejection of the inferior ones caused the male to rise in the scale and resemble more and more the primary organism or female. But other qualities were also selected than those that the female possessed. This was due to the early development of the aesthetic faculty in the female, and these qualities were in the nature of embellishments.

The male, therefore, while approaching the form and stature of the female, began to differ from her in these aesthetic qualities …. When the human race finally appeared, through gradual emergence from the great Simian stock, this difference in the sexes existed, and sexual selection was still going on …. Neither sex had any more idea of the connection between fertilisation and reproduction than have animals, and therefore the mother alone claimed and cared for the offspring, as is done throughout the animal kingdom below man. So long as this state of things endured the race remained in the stage called gynococracy, or female rule. That this was a very long stage is attested by a great number of facts …. As it was brain development alone which made man out of an animal by enabling him to break over faunal barriers and overspread the globe, so it was brain development that finally suggested the casual nexus between fertilisation and reproduction, and led to the recognition by man of his paternity and joint proprietorship with woman in the offspring of their loins. This produced a profound social revolution, overthrew the authority of woman, destroyed her power of selection, and finally reduced her to the condition of a mere slave of the stronger sex, although that strength had been conferred by her. The stage of gynaecocracy was succeeded by the stage of androcracy, and the subjection of woman was rendered complete.”

As will be readily seen by these quotations, Professor Lester Ward has linked up the many threads of knowledge obtained from biological and ethnological studies, and has woven therefrom an important sociological theory that “life begins as female,” and that the male was evolved much later “for the sole purpose of securing, a crossing of ancestral strains, and the consequent variation and higher development; that the male sex began as a simple fertiliser, assuming a variety of forms; that for reasons hereafter to be considered, the male in most organisms gradually assumed more importance, and ultimately came to approach the size and general nature of the female; but that throughout nearly or quite the whole of the invertebrates, and to a considerable extent among the vertebrates, the male has remained an inferior creature, and has continued to devote its existence to the one function for which it was created.”

It is almost needless to point out now why the story of Eve being made from Adam’s rib was invented, why woman was taught that her function of reproduction was something unclean, and she could only be cleansed after childbirth by religious ceremonial, why female infanticide was universally practised, and why, more especially, any form of learning was denied to the mass of subject women.

It had taken many generations and untold suffering to reduce woman to the necessary state of subjection, where she ceased to exercise selection, but was now fought for and forced to the uses of men. Every form of pressure, therefore, from tradition, from religious belief, from fear, from public opinion, and from convention, must be brought to bear on sex relations, family life, and what is known to the elect as “woman’s sphere,” in order to ensure that subjection, and keep the balance of power in life outside and inside the home on the side of the man.

D.B.M.

The following is a 1920 book review of Race Motherhood, Is Woman The Race? – by Dora B. Montefiore (also published 1920). The topic of the book and review is Lester Ward’s Gynocentrism Theory.

The importance of Lester F. Ward’s ‘Gynæcocentric Theory,’ presented first as a speech to a group of feminists in the year 1888, and subsequently as an essay in 1903, cannot be overstated. There were numerous writers promoting gynocentric ideology prior to Ward’s effort, however he was the first to use the term for a complex biological theory that has generated thousands of subsequent academic and newspaper articles promoting female superiority, and likewise many protests against the incoherence of his theory – including by early men’s human rights activist Ernest B. Bax (see below).

Ward’s gynocentric theory exerted a major influence on feminist thought, while also circulating in popular culture and in universities where, as one account from 1920 reveals:

“While a comparatively small number of people read this theory from the original source, it is still being scattered far and wide in the form of quotations, paraphrases, and interpretations by more popular writers… College reference shelves are still stocked with books on sex sociology which are totally oblivious of present-day biology. For example, Mrs. Gilman (Man-Made World), Mrs. Hartley (Truth About Woman) and the Nearings (Woman and Social Progress) adhere to Ward’s theory in substantially its primitive form, and not even sociologists like Professor Thomas (Sex and Society) have been able to entirely break away from it.”

The following selection of articles directly mention Ward and/or his gynæcocentric theory.

– Our Better Halves, by Lester F. Ward (1888)
– The Real Woman Problem: Raising Women Up (1888)
– Lester Ward’s Call To Elevate Women (1888)
– A New Defense Of Woman (1888)
– Science and “Our Better Halves” (1888)
– Lester Ward and Sex Supremacy (1888)
– Professor Ward On Women’s Superiority (1889)
– The Gynæcocentric Theory, by Lester F. Ward (1903)
– ‘Gynæcocentricity’ Poem from the London Punch (1903)
– Lester Ward’s Gynæcocentrism Theory & Marxism (post 1903)
– The Evolution of Sex According to Lester F. Ward (1909)
– The Future of Women – by D. M. N. (1909)
– Ernest B. Bax Responds to Lester Ward’s ‘Gynocentric Theory’ (1909)
– “The Evolution of Sex” – A Protest Against Ward’s Gynæcocentric Theory (1909)
– The Book of Women’s Power – edited by Ida M. Tarbell (1911)
– Woman and Gynæcocentric Social Progress – by S. Nearing (1912)
– Ernest B. Bax: Examines Lester Ward’s ‘Gynœcocentric Theory’ Fallacy (1913)
– Some Biological Aspects of Feminism – by R.E. Ryan (1914)
– The Influence of Gynaecocentric Theory On Feminism – by C. M. Walsh (1917)
– Race Motherhood: Is Woman The Original Human Race? – by D. Montefiore (1920)
– Book Review of D. Montefiore’s ‘Race Motherhood’ by D. M. N (1920)
– ‘Gynocentric Theory’ in Colleges and Popular Culture, by M. M. Knight et.al (1920)
– The Foundations Of Feminism – by Avrom Barnett (1921)
– The Lure of Superiority: ‘Gynæcocentric Feminism’ by W.F. Vaughan (1928)

Contemporary articles deconstructing gynocentric theories:

– Lester Ward’s Gynocentrism Theory in Chinese Literature – by Ping Zhu (2015)
– How Lester F. Ward Developed a “Patriarchy Theory” – by M. Muscolino (2019)
– Lester Ward’s Gynocentrism & The Deification of Women – by Peter Ryan (2020)
– Briffault: Rules for the Rational Simp – by Peter Wright & Paul Elam (2021)
– Eight Traits of the Bio-Gynocentrist – by Vernon Meigs (2022)
– Bio-gynocentrism: Turning Science Into Goddess Worship – by Peter Ryan (2022)
– Gynocentrism – A Review by Aman Siddiqi (2021)
– The ‘Natural Gynocentrism Fallacy’ – critique by Hanna Wallen (2023)
– ‘Biological Gynocentrism’: Falling Into The Feminist Trap? – by Peter Wright (2023)