The following book titles are all aimed at female readers and were collected from a cursory glance at Amazon. This sample is nowhere near the entirety of those available in this, er, genre – but they are sufficient to paint a picture of how millions of women around the world apparently view relationships with men as experiments in animal behaviorism and manipulation strategies, with the aim of controlling men.

The tables of contents reveal the books as patently disrespectful toward men, misandric and certainly repulsive for any self-respecting male. But for the adventurous reader who would like to look more closely at the content, each of the titles are searchable at Amazon.com.

 

The following is a sampling of men’s human rights initiatives constituting the early men’s rights movement, a list that could be easily expanded into thousands of initiatives by the diligent researcher. Bear in mind that although we are talking of a single men’s movement, it is more accurately defined as the aggregate of separate initiatives in the same manner as separate feminist initiatives are spoken of as one movement:

1810 A network of meeting places under the collective name ‘Henpeck’d Husbands Club’ are established for men who were enduring abusive behavior from wives. The club set up dozens of chapters across Britain and in Europe, which offered support and advice for men enduring emotional or physical abuse.  1856  A long newspaper article entitled A Word for Men’s Rights is published in Putnam’s Monthly, which discusses sexist laws that oppressed men and benefited women, including the practice of frivolous, unjustified lawsuits for supposed breach of marriage promise. 1857  A Mr. Todd proposes a “Men’s Rights Conference” be held in response to exaggerations of the women’s rights movement. 1875  Article entitled Women’s and Men’s Rights appeared in the 1875 volume Historic and literary miscellany by G.M.D. Bloss 1886  Ernest Belfort Bax, England, writes his first major commentary on gynocentrism and misandry, ‘Some Bourgeois Idols; Or Ideals, Reals, and Shams.’ 1890s  New York Alimony Club (informal) 1896  Ernest Belfort Bax, England, co-authors book, The Legal Subjection of Men (Twentieth Century Press). 1896  Anti-Bardell Bachelor Band, Atlanta Georgia. Formed to fight against a national campaign headed by activist Charlotte Smith (Women’s Rescue League) to promote a tax on bachelors. Another, similar effort was made by the Hoboken Bachelor’s Club in Hoboken, New Jersey. 1898  League for Men’s Rights formed by Mr. William Austin in London. The movement is reported in newspapers of the time as a “Men’s Rights Movement”. 1907 Wisconson salons start “men’s rights” movement to stop wealthy wives financially abandoning disabled husbands in men’s refuges. 1908  Ernest Belfort Bax, England, republishes his 1896 book, The Legal Subjection of Men (New Age Press) 1911  Anti-Alimony Association, New York 1912  Ernest Belfort Bax, England, writes a landmark book ‘The Fraud of Feminism’ in which he called feminism a fraud and discussed “female privilege” 1912  Anti-alimony leader: George Esterling – Denver, Colorado 1925  Samuel Reid, “Alimony Sam,” the “alimony martyr” of California 1926  Men’s Rights organizations formed Bund für Männerrechte, Vienna, founded by Sigurd von Hoeberth (Höberth) and Leopold Kornblüh in March 1926. In January 1927 the Bund split into two organizations circa: Aequitas (Hoeberth), Justicia (Kornblueh); journal “Self-Defense” 1926  Themisverbandes (Men’s Rights organization for female members, Sigurd Höberth von Schwarzthal). The founding of this organization led to a schism in Bund January 1927  Aequitas Weltbund für Männerrechte (Aequitas Word Federation for Men’s Rights) (international), Vienna, following a schism in Bund für Männerrechte (Federation for Men’s Rights). This was Sigurd Hoeberth’s new organization for men’s rights which welcomed female members. 1927  Justitia Verein für Männer und Familienrecht (Justitia Society for Men’s Rights and Family Rights), Vienna, founded by Leopold Kornblüh following a schism in Bund für Männerrechte (Federation for Men’s Rights). This group did not allow female members. 1927  Alimony Club of Illinois, Society of Disgruntled Alimony Payers, Chicago, founded by Dr. Vernon B. Cooley and second wife, Mrs. Bessie Cooley 1927  Alimony Payers Protective Association, led by Robert Gilbert Ecob 1927  Milwaukee Alimony Club, Wisconsin 1927  Fifty-Fifty League, London; manifesto “The Sex War” 1928  Tibet Men’s Rights organization (name of org. unknown), founded by Amouki 1929  ‘World’s League for the Rights of Men’ formed in the UK, advocating for male issues, and holding an anti-“ultra-feminist” stance. The League had chapters in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, and other Continental centres. 1930  D. A. M. Association, Kansas City, Missouri, founded by French L. Nelson 1930  National Sociological League, Dr. Alexander Dallek, executive secretary 1931  Organization “The Modern Men’s Rights Movement” (formation date unknown) publishes broadsheet, The Gauntlet outlining goals for gender equality and “emancipation of man from feminist domination.” 1932  Alimony Club of New York County (Adolph Wodiska) (cited Jan. 9, 1932) 1932  Ohio Alimony Association, Cleveland 1933  National Divorce Reform League, Theodore Apstein (cited Feb. 14, 1933) 1933  “Men’s rights” org ‘1933 Men’s Association’ started by lieutenant colonel R. A. Broughton, England 1935  Alimony Reform League, New York 1948  Society for Men’s Rights forms to address various forms of social and legal discrimination against men, London. 1948  Men’s rights magazine ‘Men’s Review’ launched in England, with at least two consecutive volumes circulated across the country. 1960 Divorce Racket Busters (incorporated 1961 as U.S.A. Divorce Reform, Inc.) – California – Reuben Kidd. This initiative continued to operate into the late 1960’s.

^{Feature image: Ernest Belfort Bax.}

For a more detailed overview of the Men’s Human Rights Movement,
click on the following Amazon title:

The following articles explore the similarity of courtly & romantic love with the structural practices of BDSM. 

• Courtly Romance as Sadomasochistic Erotica – by Tom Driver (2020)
• Sadomasochism and Courtly Love – by Emmanuel-Juste Duits (1999)
• Male Masochism in Victorian Women’s Literature – by Carol Siegal (1995)
• Male Masochism and Culture in – by Arnold Kamiat (1936)
• Guinevere and Lancelot- by William de Leftwich Dodge (1910)
• Male Masochism in Courtly Love – by Jean Markale (1987)
• The Masochism of Sir Lancelot – By Tom Driver & C.S. Lewis (2024)

 

DSM criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are compared in the table below with beliefs and behaviours of the gynocentrism oriented woman (GW):

The following excerpt from Mental Disorders of the New Millennium describes how a narcissistic disposition may be ‘acquired’ by individuals on whom society projects special status: elites, doctors, actors, singers and so on. Acquired situational narcissism (as its called), may help to explain some of our cultural fixation with prioritizing women’s status, esteem, wellbeing, and dignity.

* * *

CAN NARCISSISM BE ACQUIRED?

The question remains as to whether narcissism can be culturally conveyed or whether it is inevitably the result of what Heinz Kohut called “repeated empathic failure” or an emotional developmental disability. Psychiatrist Robert B. Millman defined the concept of acquired situational narcissism, a temporary psychological dysfunction that often accompanies fame. Dr. Millman believes that his celebrity patients may act awful because of the situations in which they find themselves. He argues that they acquire their narcissism by being fed their image by the entourage and media around them.

In an interview with New York Times reporter Stephen Sherrill, Millman notes, “They’re not normal. And why would they feel normal when every person in the world who deals with them treats them as if they’re not? We’re all complicit in acquired situational narcissism. . . . We’ve created it. They’re just responding to us.” Millman also notes, as for all narcissists, “Their marriages fall apart, they make lousy parents, they take copious quantities of drugs, they get into trouble with the law. Because they truly don’t believe the world is real, they begin to think they’re invulnerable. Some even risk their lives, since the world can’t hurt them if it’s not real.”

Sam Vaknin, a prolific writer on this subject, disagrees. He argues that because every human being—regardless of the nature of his society and culture—develops healthy narcissism early in life, it becomes pathological only by abuse. For Vaknin, acquired situational narcissism is merely an amplification of earlier narcissistic conduct, traits, style, and tendencies. Not only are narcissists drawn to celebrity, but once powerful, rich, or famous, they gain immunity from social sanctions for expressing the underlying disorder. Whether or not cultures can create narcissism is an interesting question. What is not in doubt is how cultures support narcissism.

Therapists who believe in the process of Acquired Situational Narcissism or cultural narcissism naturally see positive results with major shifts in the environment. Thus, Jennifer, a woman known even among her most competitive colleagues as a “heartless litigator and shameless self-promoter,” found herself in a crisis when a disaster threatened the lives of her parents and siblings. Although it was with great regret and some anger, she “temporarily” returned to the small town in British Columbia to which they had relocated, to “see to their affairs and protect my inheritance.” Out of the San Francisco legal environs, she experienced a “new world” in which she didn’t have to prove herself at all. In the course of her six-month stay, and the deaths of both parents, she found, for the first time, an ease with herself and a relationship with a man who “should have been beneath me.” She decided to remain in British Columbia, transition to a far less aggressive career, and was reportedly happy for the first time in her 45 years. Ironically, that spring, her name appeared on a magazine touting the toughest ten lawyers in California. For the first time in her life, the accolade was unimportant.

Source: “Can Narcissism Be Acquired?” (subheading pp.43-49). in Plante, T. G. (Ed.). Mental disorders of the new millennium. Greenwood Publishing Group. (2006).

* * *

See also:  Studies in  female narcissism & gynocentrism

Gamma bias refers to a cognitive gender bias theory developed by Seager & Barry (2019).¹

Gamma bias refers to the operation of two concurrent biases: alpha bias (exaggerating or magnifying gender differences) and beta bias (ignoring or minimizing gender differences). Gamma bias occurs when one gender difference is minimized while simultaneously another is magnified, resulting in a doubling of cognitive distortion.²

Seager & Barry state that gamma bias works by magnifying women’s issues and achievements and minimizing men’s issues and achievements. Alternatively, the dynamic is reversed and employed to minimize negative female traits and behaviors, while magnifying or exaggerating negative male traits or behaviors.

Theories on the purpose of gamma bias

Hypotheses regarding the growth of gamma bias and the disfavoring of males include evolutionary pressures for males to protect and provide for women which involves a reluctance to view men as vulnerable. Alternatively there is the sociological explanation of ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’ bias which may have developed around men and women in the form of social conventions.¹

A more detailed explanation is provided by gynocentrism theory³ which posits the genesis of gamma bias in medieval Europe where feudal class distinctions between lords and their subjects were re-applied to relationships between men and women under the euphemistic labels of “chivalry” and “courtly love.” The application of such class distinctions led C.S. Lewis to refer to it as “the feudalisation of love,” making the observation that this sociological development “has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched.”

Lewis explains that European society drifted essentially from a social feudalism to a sexual feudalism, fostering a convention of male chivalry in service to elevated Ladies of aristocratic society — a convention that moved by degrees, over time, to be embraced by all classes of people. The psychological operations supporting the ‘feudalization of love’ are numerous and involve gamma bias, male gender blindness, and misandry to name a few. The internal operations result in a gender empathy gap which reinforces the root medieval trope.

References:

[1] Seager, M., Barry, J.A. (2019). Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues: Gamma Bias and the Gender Distortion Matrix. In: Barry, J., Kingerlee, R., Seager, M., Sullivan, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan
[2] John Barry & Martin Seager, Can we discuss gender issues rationally? Yes, if we can stop gamma bias
[3] Wright, Peter. Gynocentrism As A Narcissistic Pathology. New Male Studies 12, no. 1 (2023).

Further reading:

• Gynocentrism defined
• Gynocentrism theory lectures
• Gynosympathy
• Women-are-wonderful effect
• Gynomyopia
• Confirmation bias
• Schema bias

 

The following excerpt is from a chapter titled ‘The Archetype of The Victim’ in Lyn Cowan’s book Tracking The White Rabbit: Essays In Subversive Psychology (page.92). Here the author makes a direct correlation between victimhood identity and enactment of what Jungians refer to as the child archetype.

* * * *

As noted earlier, the root of the word victim carries an ancient meaning of “increase” or “growth.” However, I am not suggesting that victimization ought to be considered an occasion of “positive growth.” To do so minimizes the horror and fear and shame or represses them completely. The injunction to the victim to “grow” through adversity is a subtle appeal to the victim’s ego to leave the victimization experience behind (a form
of denial). “Growth” in this usage is defensive, the demand of an anxious parent who does not know what to do for a child in pain (as in, “Grow up, stop crying, stop feeling sorry for yourself”).

A deeper objection to the demand on the victim to “grow” is that it keeps the experience of the victim within a fantasy of the child. Whatever complex meanings victimhood may have for the soul are obscured and reduced to false simplicity by forcing them into the single perspective of the child archetype. Thus the victim appears passively childlike or irresponsibly childish. This may be one reason why our culture takes a profoundly ambivalent attitude toward victims: either total neglect and abuse or idealization and galvanic convulsions to rescue. (Remember little Jessica McClure, who fell down a well in Texas in 1989? The whole country vicariously participated in the rescue operation.)

When perceived through the child archetype, the victim is infantilized: whatever injury has been done can now only be understood as a sign or consequence of psychological immaturity – the naïvety of a child, the innocence of a child, the carelessness of a child, the abuse of a child, the child who cries for grownups to play fair. Instead of an adult drama deep in the soul’s sacred interior, victimization is seen as one of many misfortunes that befalls a child. We demand either excessive responsibility of the victim (“She should have known better”) or expect him or her to be as helpless in trauma as a child.

By “archetype” I can only refer to the phenomenal archetype, that which manifests itself in images. The noumenal archetype per se cannot by definition be presented so that nothing whatsoever can be posited of it. In fact whatever one does say about the archetype per se is a conjecture already governed by an archetypal image. This means that the archetypal image precedes and determines the metaphysical hypothesis of a noumenal archetype. So, let us apply Occam’s razor to Kant’s noumenon. By stripping away this unnecessary theoretical encumbrance to Jung’s notion of archetype we restore full value to the archetypal image.’

(Hillman 1971).

The archetypal school rejects the noun “archetype,” even as it retains the adjective “archetypal.” For Hillman (1983), the distinction between archetypes and archetypal images, which Jung regards as comparable, respectively, to Kantian noumena and phenomena, is untenable. According to him, all that individuals ever encounter psychically are images – that is, phenomena. Hillman is a phenomenologist or an imagist: “I’m simply following the imagistic, the phenomenological way: take a thing for what it is and let it talk” (p. 14). For the archetypal school, there are no archetypes as such – no neo-Kantian categories, or noumena. There are only phenomena, or images, that may be archetypal.

For Hillman, the archetypal is not a category but a consideration – a perspectival operation that an individual may perform on any image. Thus Hillman (1977, pp. 82–83) says that “any image may be considered archetypal.” The archetypal is “a move one makes rather than a thing that is.” To consider an image archetypal is to regard it as such, from a certain perspective, to endow it operationally with typicality – or, as Hillman prefers to say, with “value.” Thus, perspectivally, an individual may “archetypalize” any image. Merely considering it so makes it so – or, as Hillman (1975/1979) says, merely capitalizing it makes it so – as in the “Sunburnt Girl” (p. 63). In effect, the archetypal school embraces what Jung tries (never, he admits, entirely with success) to avoid – that is, what he (CW 9.i, p. 59) calls “metaphysical concretism.” Jung says that “any attempt at graphic description” of an archetype inevitably succumbs to metaphysical concretism “up to a point,” because the qualitative aspect “in which it appears necessarily clings to it, so that it cannot be described at all except in terms of its specific phenomenology.” Concrete descriptive qualities cling quite obviously to an archetype like the Great Mother (less evidently to an archetype like the Anima, which is more abstract) – as they also do to the Sunburnt Girl. Most Jungians would be reluctant to dignify the Sunburnt Girl as equal in status to the Great Mother – or even to regard the image as “archetypal” at all. When Hillman capitalizes the Sunburnt Girl, he considers the image archetypal, typical, or valuable. He does not posit or infer the metaphysical existence of archetypes prior to the images. For archetypal psychologists, any and every image, even the most apparently banal, can be considered archetypal.

This post-Jungian, post-structuralist usage of the term “archetypal” is controversial. Most Jungians retain the term “archetype” and continue to define it as Jung did. One Jungian analyst, V. Walter Odajnyk (1984), criticizes Hillman for adopting the name “archetypal psychology.” According to Odajnyk, Hillman should simply have called the school “imaginal psychology” to avoid unnecessary terminological ambiguity. “Archetypal psychology,” Odajnyk (1984, p. 43) says, “sounds as though it were based on the Jungian archetypes, when in fact it isn’t.” This criticism is cogent to Jungians who remain strict structuralists. It is unpersuasive to archetypal psychologists, for they believe that the archetypal, or the typical, is in the eye of the imaginer – or in the imagination’s eye. In a sense, the archetypal is in the eye of the beholder – the subject who beholds an image – but it is also, in another sense, in the eye of the imagination, a transcendent dimension that archetypal psychologists regard as ultimately irreducible to any faculty immanent in the subject.

Source: Michael Vannoy Adams, ‘The Archetypal School,’ Chapter-6 in The Cambridge Companion to Jung. 2008

Archetypal Image

ARCHETYPAL psychology axiomatically assumes imagistic universals, comparable to the universali fantastici of Vico (Scienza Nuova, par. 381), that is, mythical figures that provide the poetic characteristics of human thought, feeling, and action, as well as the physiognomic intelligibility of the qualitative worlds of natural phenomena. By means of the archetypal image, natural phenomena present faces that speak to the imagining soul rather than only conceal hidden laws and probabilities and manifest their objectification.

A psychological universal must be considered psychologically. An archetypal image is psychologically “universal,” because its effect amplifies and depersonalizes. Even if the notion of image regards each image as an individualized, unique event, as “that image there and no other,” such an image is universal because it resonates with collective, trans-empirical importance. Thus, archetypal psychology uses “universal” as an adjective, declaring a substantive perduring value, which ontology states as a hypostasis. And, the universals problem for psychology is not whether they exist, where, and how they participate in particulars, but rather whether a personal individual event can be recognized as bearing essential and collective importance. Psychologically, the universals problem is presented by the soul itself whose perspective is harmoniously both the narrow particularity of felt experience and the universality of archetypally human experience. In Neoplatonic thought, soul could be spoken of as both my soul and world soul, and what was true of one was true of both. Thus, the universality of an archetypal image means also that the response to the image implies more than personal consequences, raising the soul itself beyond its egocentric confines (soul-making) and broadening the events of nature from discrete atomic particulars to aesthetic signatures bearing information for soul.

Because archetypal psychology gives priority to particular pattern over literal particle – and considers that particular events are always themselves imagistic and therefore ensouled – imagination too is assumed to be primordially patterned into typical themes, motifs, regions, genres, syndromes. These kinds of patterns inform all psychic life. Gilbert Durand (1960, 1979) – following upon the lines opened by Bachelard – and Durand’s Centre de Recherche sur l’Imaginaire (w3.u-grenoble3.fr/cri/) have been charting the inherent organization of the imaginary as the basis of cultural anthropology and sociology, even as the basis of psychological meaning in all consciousness. Durand’s papers published in the Eranos Yearbooks since 1964 present a range of archetypal cultural analysis.

Archetypal psychology has pressed beyond the collection of objective data and the correlation of images as verbal or visual symbols. If archetypal images are the fundamentals of fantasy, they are the means by which the world is imagined, and therefore they are the models by which all knowledge, all experiences whatsoever become possible: “Every psychic process is an image and an ‘imagining,’ otherwise no consciousness could exist …” (CW 11:?889). An archetypal image operates like the original meaning of idea (from Greek eidos and eidolon): not only “that which” one sees but also that “by means of which” one sees. The demonstration of archetypal images is therefore as much in the act of seeing as in the object seen, since the archetypal image appears in consciousness itself as the governing fantasy by means of which consciousness is possible to begin with. Gathering of data does less to demonstrate objectively the existence of archetypes than it does to demonstrate the fantasy of “objective data.”

Furthermore, unlike Jung who radically distinguishes between noumenal archetype per se and phenomenal archetypal image, archetypal psychology rigorously refuses even to speculate about a nonpresented archetype per se. Its concern is with the phenomenon: the archetypal image. This leads to the next step: “… any image can be considered archetypal. The word ‘archetypal’ rather than pointing at something … points to something, and this is value … by archetypal psychology we mean a psychology of value. And our appellative move is aimed to restore psychology to its widest, richest, and deepest volume so that it would resonate with soul in its descriptions as unfathomable, multiple, prior, generative, and necessary. As all images can gain this archetypal sense, so all psychology can be archetypal… ‘Archetypal’ here refers to a move one makes rather than to a thing that is” (Hillman 1977b).

Here, archetypal psychology “sees through” itself as strictly a psychology of archetypes, a mere analysis of structures of being (gods in their myths), and, by emphasizing the valuative function of the adjective archetypal, restores to images their primordial place as that which gives psychic value to the world. Any image termed archetypal is immediately valued as universal, trans-historical, basically profound, generative, highly intentional, and necessary.

Since “archetypal” connotes both intentional force (Jung’s “instinct”) and the mythical field of personifications (Hillman’s “gods”), an archetypal image is animated like an animal (one of Hillman’s frequent metaphors for images) and like a person whom one loves, fears, delights in, is inhibited by, and so forth. As intentional force and person, such an image presents a claim – moral, erotic, intellectual, aesthetic – and demands a response. It is an “affecting presence” (Armstrong 1971) offering an affective relationship. It seems to bear prior knowledge (coded information) and an instinctive direction for a destiny, as if prophetic, prognostic. Images in “dreams mean well for us, back us up and urge us on, understand us more deeply than we understand ourselves, expand our sensuousness and spirit, continually make up new things to give us – and this feeling of being loved by the images … call it imaginal love” (Hillman 1979a). This message-bearing experience of the image – and the feeling of blessing that an image can bring – recalls the Neoplatonic sense of images as daimones and angels (message bearers). “Perhaps – who knows? – these eternal images are what men mean by fate” (CW 7:?183).

Although an archetypal image presents itself as impacted with meaning, this is not given simply as revelation. It must be made through “image work” and “dream work” (Hillman 1977b, 1979a). The modes of this work may be concrete and physical as in art, movement, play, and occupational therapies; but more importantly (because less fixedly symbolic), this work is done by “sticking to the image” as a psychological penetration of what is actually presented including the stance of consciousness that is attempting the hermeneutic. Image work is not legitimately such unless the implicit involvement of a subjective perspective is admitted from the start, for it too is part of the image and in its fantasy.

Image work requires both aesthetic culture and a background in myths and symbols for appreciation of the universalities of images. This work also requires a series of tactical moves (Hillman and Berry 1977), frequently linguistic and phonetic (Sardello et al. 1978; Severson 1978; Kugler 1979b) and etymological (Lockhart 1978, 1980; Kugelmann 1983), and also grammatical and syntactical experimentation (Ritsema 1976; Hillman 1978a). Other tactical moves concerning emotion, texture, repetitions, reversals, and restatements have been described by Berry (1974).

The primary intention of this verbal work with images is the “recovery of soul in speech” (Sardello 1978a), which at the same time reveals the erotic and aesthetic aspect of images – that they captivate, charm, persuade, have a rhetorical effect on soul beyond their symbolic content. Image-work restores the original poetic sense to images, freeing them from serving a narrational context, having to tell a story with its linear, sequential, and causal implications that foster first-person reports of the egocentric actions and intentions of a personalistic subject. The distinction between image and narrative (Berry 1974; Miller 1976a) is fundamental to the distinction in imaginative style between archetypal polytheistic psychology and traditional psychologies that are egocentered, epic narrations (therapy).

Three further developments in theory of archetypal images are worth attention. Paul Kugler’s work (1978, 1979a) elaborates an acoustic theory of images as structures of invariant meaning apart from linguistic, etymological, semantic, and syntactical meaning. Charles Boer and Peter Kugler (1977) have correlated archetypal images with the theory of perception of J.?J. Gibson, asserting that archetypal images are afforded directly by the environment (and are not subjective), so that “archetypal psychology is mythical realism.” Casey (1979) sets forth the idea that imagination is so closely related with time, both psychologically and ontologically, that actual image-work not only takes time into soul or makes temporal events soul events but also makes time in soul.

Source: Hillman, James. Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account (Uniform Edition). Spring Publications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process philosophy assumes that the universe and human systems are ‘continually becoming.’ It emphasizes the elements of change and novelty as contrasted with a belief in permanence of forms, and uniformity. In the Greek tradition Heraclitus said that no person ever steps into the same river twice, because on the second attempt it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Vaginoplasty, womb transplants, hormone blockers, hormone injections. These things represent the crowning achievement of cultural feminism, creating a kind of unforeseen gyno-dystopia resulting from the elevation of all things female. That same feminism exerts a gravitational pull that tends to filter all human events through its interpretive lens.

Many women show their participation in the feminist worldview via postures of gendered narcissism, while men might show their participation in it by acts of chivalry or, more recently, by initiating changes to their sexual and gender orientation (MtF) in order to become more like women.

Gynocentric feminism is the soil from which the transgender revolution has sprouted, and it represents nothing less than a dissolution of centuries of accumulated gender customs. As Simone de Beauvoir famously stated, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature.”

To explore the outcome of this thinking a bit further, I’lI start with a quote from the brilliant Darren J. Beattie from Revolver News:

It used to be that getting a high SAT score and getting into an elite college was the greatest path to social mobility in the United States

Now, it is becoming m to f trans

— Darren J. Beattie ? (@DarrenJBeattie) August 26, 2022

I think Darren’s comment is important in that it emphasizes the historical tilt toward MtF orientation as holding higher currency than FtM – particularly in the USA. That remains the case, although a more recent behavioral anomaly among teenage girls is falsely skewing the data. This representative sample from the 2021 Canadian Census tells the story:

 

From this table we see that a statistical anomaly results from a fad among many of the 15 – 24 age group; an experimental phase, especially among teen girls. Above this age bracket, trans-identification appears contingent on an internal sense of self as transgender. After age 29, all age brackets have more MtF which supports the theory that there are different motivations, and levels of psychological identification, per age group. I will note in passing that many parents are noticing peer pressure to transition among the younger age groups of girls, as one Mumsnet mother testifies:

The mother of an 11-year-old girl tells Mumsnet that her daughter is feeling ostracised because she is one of the few girls in her class who doesn't say she is transgender. Several of the replies are mothers saying they are experiencing this with their daughters as well pic.twitter.com/BFrWi3StTy

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 23, 2022

The historical rise of cultural gynocentrism

Putting the teenage anomaly to one side, we can say that gynocentrism remains a predominant motivator for transgender choice in the European and Anglosphere contents, especially in the USA which has for centuries been a champion of more extreme forms of gynocentrism, as demonstrated by the following prima facie observations:

In 1846 a London Sun article describes American culture as an epicenter of exaggerated gynocentrism & chivalry:

I am convinced that a lady, no matter what her age and attractions might be, could journey through the whole extent of the union, not only without experiencing a single annoyance, but aided in every possible way with unobtrusive civility. Indeed a great number of Saphonisbas and Almiras do travel about, protected only by the chivalry of their countrymen and their own undoubted propriety.

To them the best seats, the best of everything, are always allotted. A friend of mine told me of a little affair at New York Theatre, the other night, illustrative of my assertion. A stiff-necked Englishman had engaged a front place, and of course the best corner: when the curtain rose, he was duly seated, opera-glass in hand, to enjoy the performance. A lady and a gentleman came into the box shortly afterwards; the cavalier in escort, seeing that the place where our friend sat was the best, calling his attention, saying “The lady, sir,” and motioned that the corner should be vacated. The possessor, partly because he disliked the imperative mood, and partly because it bored him to be disturbed, refused. Some words ensued, which attracted the attention of the sovereign people in the pit, who magisterially enquired what was the matter?

The American came to the front of the box and said, “There is an Englishman here who will not give up his place to a lady.” Immediately their majesties swarmed up by dozens over the barriers, seized the offender, very gently though, and carried him to the entrance; he kicked, cursed, and fought all in vain: he excited neither the pity nor the anger of his stern executioners; they placed him carefully on his feet again at the steps, one man handing him his hat, another his opera glass, and a third the price he had paid for his ticket of admission, then quickly shut the door upon him, and returned to their places. The shade of the departed Judge Lynch must have rejoiced at such an angelic administration of his law! – England in the New World.

In 1856, author of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine published the following summary of the relations between men and women in America:

“Long before the cry of woman’s rights was openly raised, the powers and prerogatives of the American husband had been gradually undermined. Usage superseded law, and trampled it under foot. Sentiment put logical consistency at defiance, and the American husband has thus become a legal monster, a logical impossibility, required to fly without wings, and to run without feet.

“While the wife is thus rendered to a great extent independent of her husband, he, by a strange inconsistency is still held, both by law and public opinion, just as responsible for her as before. The old and reasonable maxim that ‘he who dances must pay the piper,’ does not apply to wives—they dance, and the husband pays. To such an extent is this carried, that if the wife beats her husband, and he, having no authority to punish her in kind, applies to the criminal courts for redress, she will be fined for assault and battery, which fine he must pay, even thought she has plenty of money of her own. or, in default of paying, go to jail! Such cases are by no means of unprecedented occurrence in our criminal courts.

In 1903 culture critic Max O’Rell observed the following about gynocentrism in the USA:

“The government of the American people is not a Republic, it is not a monarchy: it is a gynarchy, a government by the women for the women, a sort of occult power behind the scenes that rules the country.”

Price Collier observed in 1909:

In England the establishment is, as a rule, at any rate from a man’s point of view, more comfortable than the American home. Americans staying any time in England, whether men or women, are impressed by the fact that it is the country of men. Likewise the English, both men and women, who visit America are impressed by the fact that America is the country of women.

The Kalgoorlie Newspaper reported the following in 1910:

“In Europe the aristocracy is largely relieved from drudgery in order that they may cultivate the graces of life. In America the attempt is being made to relieve the women of all classes from drudgery, and we are glad to see that some of them at least are making good use of the leisure thus afforded them. It is a project involving unprecedented daring and self-sacrifice on the part of American men, this making an aristocracy of half the race. That it is possible yet remains to be proved. Whether it is desirable depends upon whether this new feminine aristocracy avoids the faults of the aristocracy of the Old World, such as frivolousness and snobbishness.”

Irishman George A. Birmingham wrote in 1914:

“There are people in the world who believe that we are born again and again, rising or sinking in the scale of living things at each successive incarnation according as we behave ourselves well or badly in our present state. If this creed were true, I should try very hard to be good, because I should want, next time I am born, to be an American woman. She seems to me to have a better kind of life than the women of any other nation, or, indeed, than anybody else, man or woman… American social life seems to me — the word is one to apologize for — gynocentric. It is arranged with a view to the convenience and delight of women. Men come in where and how they can…. The American woman is certainly more her own mistress than the Englishwoman, just because America does its best for women and only its second-best for men. The tendency among American humourists is to dwell a little on the greed of the Englishman, who is represented as incapable of earning money for himself. The English jester lays more stress on the American woman’s desire to be called “my lady,” and pokes sly fun at the true Democrat’s fondness for titles. The American man is reverent toward women. It is not the homage of the strong toward the weak, but the obeisance of the inferior in the presence of a superior. This difference of spirit underlies the whole relationship of men to women in England and America. The English feminist is up against chivalry and wants equality. The American woman, though she may claim rights, has no inducement to destroy reverence.

Albert Einstein observed in 1921:

Above all things are the women who as a literal fact, dominate the entire life in America. The men take an interest in absolutely nothing at all. They work and work, the like of which I have never seen anywhere yet. For the rest they are the toy dogs of the women, who spend the money in the most unmeasurable, illimitable way and wrap themselves in a fog of extravagance. They do everything which is in the vogue, and now quite by chance they have thrown themselves on the Einstein fashion.

Summary and conclusion

Following the above collection of artifacts, we can begin to wrap these details into a more coherent conclusion, and for this I’m going to turn to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) for a template. Hegel naturally didn’t write about vaginoplasties or the transgender movement, but he did write about process philosophy and the proposition that social processes are an ever-recurring cycle which he characterized by three phases (1) an initial set of cultural beliefs called a thesis, (2) next arises dissatisfaction and a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and lastly (3) there occurs a synthesis of culture beliefs whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.

 Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.

This provides a suitable template for organizing the peculiar shifts in gender ideology we’ve been witnessing over recent centuries which, following Hegel, we can now characterize as follows:

• Thesis: Centuries of gynocentrism
• Antithesis: Men’s rights backlash
• Synthesis: Discovery of malleability of the sexual body (hormones/surgery), accompanied by belief in gender fluidity, resulting in a dissolution of clear sexual and gender boundaries, along with all traditional culture privileges that have accumulated around biological sex. [This completes the synthesis of the two conflicting ideas]

As mentioned elsewhere, the transgender movement is not a cause célèbre driven by men’s rights advocates, as is sometimes claimed. Rather, the current support for transgender rights is derived from the power of government administrations and global regimes playing “freedom one-upmanship” – ie., the feigning of moral purity to position themselves at top of the global hierarchy.

The elites however are not the ones ultimately driving this process forward, even if they are doing the job of hastening, supporting and exploiting it. Instead, it appears to be Hegel’s mysterious process philosophy that is driving the changes, and the elites and sundry grifters are riding this gender-bender horse in a rodeo of competing cultural powers.

Where does all this leave us?

We can draw the conclusion that over the last century our framing of gendered customs has become increasingly captured by a gynocentric turf war between traditional women, and progressive feminist forces, with trans activism being an emerging force that is actively working to disrupt it. Time will tell if the transgender movement continues its disintegrative influence over traditional sex roles, however the surgical and chemical technology that has allowed this to flourish does not look like disappearing anytime soon – in fact researchers are just getting started.

The chemical invention of the birth control pill, introduced for women in the 1950s, served to crown the gynocentric culture project and to cement the dominance of its centuries-long evolution. The chemical and surgical “support” for trans-people holds equally gargantuan potential; which includes the tangential possibility of leading us past the polarizing gynocentric setup and back to a saner place where everyday men and women can be themselves without coercion and judgement… notably minus those inflated gender privileges and ideologies that have driven us into this position to begin with.

See also:

• Transphobia vs. Manphobia
• Unintended Consequences of Transgender Activism on Men’s Issues

Toward A Gender Transition Movement

By Warren Farrell

“Taking what had worked for most women in the past and seeing it as a plot against them led us to see men as “owing” women. This created Stage II entitlement: women being entitled to compensation for past oppression. This prevented us from seeing the need to make a transition from Stage I to Stage II together : the need not for a women’s movement or a men’s movement, but for a gender transition movement.”

– Myth of Male Power

A gender transition movement will be the longest of all movements because it is not proposing merely to integrate blacks or Latinos into a system that already exists; rather, it is proposing an evolutionary shift in the system itself—an end to “woman-the-protected” and “man-the-protector.” This division is rooted in our biology; it exists among animals.

Gender transition starts by opening the lace curtain and closing down feminism-as-the-one-party-system-of-gender-politics. That combination frees women to hear what men at least could say if the media, academia, and government were not frustrating the already silent sex. It would bring into communication with each other the four major gender perspectives: traditional men, traditional women, transitional men, and feminists.

What does the communication consist of? For starters, how we can allow maximum freedom for both sexes without losing sight of our commitments to our partners and children. Redistributing housework, childcare, and work outside the home within each family; solutions to domestic violence, date rape, and sexual harassment that incorporate men’s experiences. Funding the thirty-four neglected areas of men’s health; making men’s birth control a reality….

An Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) might be relabeled an Equal Rights and Responsibilities amendment (ERA) and made user-friendly to men. Such an amendments legislative guidelines might suggest that congressional districts be deprived of welfare funding if judges assigned the children to women more than 60 percent of the time in cases of contested custody; it would deprive universities of public monies as long as there were significantly more women’s studies courses than men’s studies courses; it would deprive TV stations of federal licensing if the FCC found a consistent pattern of male-bashing or consistent attention to women’s issues and neglect of men’s issues. Being user-friendly to men includes funding research on the denial of dad time, on false accusations, and on violations of due process and the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ERRA would mean a new era—an era of shared rights and shared responsibilities.

Life and Death

A gender transition movement would incorporate men’s issues. Men’s issues are issues of life and death. Why do men whose spouses die or who are divorced commit suicide ten times as often as the women? Why are men in all ten “glass cellars” of disposability (e.g., more of the street homeless than women and children combined, 94 percent of the workplace deaths, dying five years sooner) even as we only discuss “glass ceilings”? Instead of having only an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), men’s issues of life and death might best be addressed by an Equal Life Opportunity Commission (ELOC).

* * *

“Ideally there should not be a men’s movement but a gender transition movement; Only the power of the women’s movement necessitates the temporary corrective of a men’s movement.” ~ Warren Farrell.

Source: Farrell, Warren, and James P. Sterba. Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?: A Debate (Point/Counterpoint). Oxford University Press (October 10, 2007), 2008. (pp.105-106)