“Female Aristocracy” germinating in American schools in 1900

In the year 1900 F.E. DeYoe and C. H. Thurber articulated the following concerns in an article for The School Review entitled, “Where Are the High School Boys?” According to DeYoe and Thurber, a school system that served more girls than boys was a school system headed for disaster.

American schools in 1900

“It is the people’s college, and yet it is obvious that from this people’s college the boys are, for some reason or other, turning away. During most of this century we have been agitating the question of higher education for women. Possibly we have neglected a little to attend to the higher education of boys. Certainly, if we are not to have a comparatively ignorant male proletariat opposed to a female aristocracy, it is time to pause and devise ways and means for getting more of our boys to attend the high school.

We have the anomaly of schools attended chiefly by girls though planned exclusively for boys. A half century ago girls were reluctantly admitted to the high schools and academies as the simplest and most inexpensive way of meeting the cry for justice to women in educational advantages. Now we find the girls apparently driving the boys out of these very schools.”

[F.E. DeYoe and C. H. Thurber, 1900]

 

Natural gynocentrism fallacy

This expanded Wiki4men article outlines the ‘natural gynocentrism fallacy,’ a concept coined by Hannah Wallen. – Ed.

The Natural gynocentrism fallacy refers to the belief that sexually mature women are the most important unit within the human species due to the role they play in reproduction – ie. it is a belief in which women are assumed to be more valuable to human society, and to human relationships, than are men and children. A corollary assumption is that women’s lives and wants should be prioritized over those of men and children.

Natural gynocentrism involves a denial of the fact that all adult humans, including women, are child-centric, gene-centric, and utilitarian toward that end, with an associated denial of the fact that that women’s evolutionary value is thus as an instrument of the child’s creation and protection and not because her gender is valued per se outside this utilitarian function.

Successful pregnancies, the proposed motive for a lifelong prioritization of women, typically occupied around 5% of a woman’s life in recent history, and less than 2% of lifespan today if women choose to have any children.1 When breast feeding and infant care are added to the equation the timeline can be extended marginally, however in the context of traditional extended families who share care of older children this still leaves the majority of women’s life-span without rationale for a perpetual gynocentric prioritizing or pedestalizing.

Individuals making the argument that human culture “can’t overcome natural gynocentrism” have failed to see that women’s role in reproduction is actually the opposite of gynocentrism, and that women’s evolutionary role involves treating women like men – ie. that women are only important because of what they can (and/or are expected to) do as utensils for perpetuation of the species.

Hannah Wallen, who coined the phrase natural gynocentrism, illustrates the fallacy with the following example:

An example that demonstrates this is in a disaster movie where a family is on the mountainside of a volcano that is erupting, and they’re trying to escape down the mountain. They take a boat through a waterway only to discover it’s acidic. They’ve lost their ability to propel the boat and the liquid is eating through it. Grandma sacrifices herself to save the rest of the family, and she can because she’s done having babies, while the other adults in the boat are actively involved in raising children. So-called “natural gynocentrism” is about children and does not contribute to or make inevitable the irrational gynocentrism we see in modern culture.3

Wallen summarises that gynocentrism is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, is not inevitable, and is something that can be corrected. She states that historical gynocentric attitudes that have been been treated as natural and as the reason why gynocentrism could never be eliminated are false, and the reality is that women (and men) have child-centric & gene-centric attitudes.4

References:

[1] Fertility Rates, Our World In Data
[2] Hunter-gatherers lived nearly as long as we do but with limited access to healthcare
[3] Twitter comment, Apr 21, 2023
[4] Private communication (April 2023)

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See also:

– Is Gynocentrism Adaptive? (Peter Ryan)
– Maladaptive Gynocentrism Is Not “Natural” (Peter Wright)
– Robert Briffault’s Law Doesn’t Apply to Humans (Peter Wright)
– Has the MRM Become a Gynocentric Ideology? (Peter Wright)
– ‘Biological Gynocentrism’: Falling Into The Feminist Trap? (Peter Wright)
– Lester Ward’s Gynocentrism & The Deification of Women (Peter Ryan)
– Eight Traits of the Bio-Gynocentrist (Vernon Meigs)
– Bio-gynocentrism: Turning Science Into Goddess Worship (Peter Ryan)

‘Female Aristocracy’ Long Observed In The Anglosphere

Female Aristocracy in English prisons in 1896:

The following is from a Letter To The editor of Reynolds Newspaper in 1896 titled ‘A Privileged And Pampered Sex:

SIR,–A paragraph in your issue of the week before last stated that oakum-picking as a prison task had been abolished for women and the amusement of dressing dolls substituted. This is an interesting illustration of the way we are going at present, and gives cause to some reflection as to the rate at which a sex aristocracy is being established in our midst. While the inhumanity of our English prison system, in so far as it affects men, stands out as a disgrace to the age in the eyes of all Europe, houses of correction for female convicts are being converted into agreeable boudoirs and pleasant lounges. [full newspaper article here]

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Female Aristocracy in American schools in 1900:

In the year 1900 F.E. DeYoe and C. H. Thurber articulated concerns in an article for The School Review which asked, “Where Are the High School Boys?” According to DeYoe and Thurber, a school system that served more girls than boys was a school system headed for disaster. They wrote:

“It is the people’s college, and yet it is obvious that from this people’s college the boys are, for some reason or other, turning away. During most of this century we have been agitating the question of higher education for women. Possibly we have neglected a little to attend to the higher education of boys. Certainly, if we are not to have a comparatively ignorant male proletariat opposed to a female aristocracy, it is time to pause and devise ways and means for getting more of our boys to attend the high school.

We have the anomaly of schools attended chiefly by girls though planned exclusively for boys. A half century ago girls were reluctantly admitted to the high schools and academies as the simplest and most inexpensive way of meeting the cry for justice to women in educational advantages. Now we find the girls apparently driving the boys out of these very schools.”

[F.E. DeYoe and C. H. Thurber, 1900]

* * *

Female Aristocracy in American Society in 1909:

The following is from the The Independent which reported a push to set up a female aristocracy in America. The article was titled The New Aristocracy:

“To be successful in the cultivation of culture a country must have a leisure class,” says the editor. “We Americans recognise this fact, but we are going about the getting of this leisure class in a new way.

“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.”  [Source: The Independent, Volume 67, 1909]

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The New American Sex Aristocracy in 1929:

The following was written by Constance Eaton, and published the  Daily Telegraph- 16 August 1929.

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Response to Aristocracy in American Society in 1929:

The following is a journalist’s response to Constance Eaton’s 1929 claim that the sexes have been crafted into social classes – aristocratic women, and their male serfs.

“THE AMERICAN MALE has always had a tendency to put woman on a pedestal, even if he is not so poetic about it as were the heroes of the age of chivalry. The modern ‘equality of the sexes,’ instead of doing away with this, has only changed its manner of expression. Woman may stand on the same political plane with man, but spiritually he considers her as remote as the stars. Mentally and morally she is supposed to belong to a higher sphere.”  At least that it what Constance Eaton, who has been making observations a la Keyserling, Sigfreid, Tolstoi, and others, for readers of The Daily Telegraph of London, believes she has discovered in what she terms America’s sex aristocracy. It makes interesting reading to write that woman is considered mentally superior to man, in America. This may be true of the women, but in my experience I have found few men who held such a view. The burden of Miss Eaton’s thesis is that man earns the money, woman spends it, woman forms the only leisure class, and that woman has spent her life cultivating herself. Man is abject before woman’s superiority.

* * *

Another Response to Eaton’s New American Aristocracy

OUR “SEX ARISTOCRACY”

Bertrand Russell arrives with the announcement that our American civilization is the “most feminine since old Egypt,” and Constance Eaton, who has been peering at us curiously for the edification of the readers of the London Daily Telegraph reports that what we really have in America is an aristocracy, not of money, not of blood, nor brains, but of sex. Our men, she finds, place women on a pedestal—on a throne—and they take it seriously and proceed to govern. Man here is the worker. He is the peasant of the field, the brother of the clod, the artisan of the factory, and his mission is to sweat and toil and accumulate spoil to lay at the feet of the lady—the aristocrat who neither toils nor spins. She even does our thinking for us, for Constance Eaton is sure that our culture is wholly of the manufacture of the women. She puts it thus:

“She is a typical representative of the new American sex aristocracy. She has spent her life cultivating herself, body and mind, and when her husband gives over for a while the pursuit of the money which has made this possible to Join her in a holiday abroad, she expresses withering scorn for his lack of style, manners and culture.”

Thus it seems that men in America are in a bad way—pathetic tools of the women—and that our civilization is feminine. At first blush this seems tragic. But, on second thought, does not every one now know that woman is the stronger sex and that her domination makes for strength? These foreign visitors who pounce upon our women and their domination of the men have not found us very romantic or sentimental in International conferences nor on international battlefields. If this is due to our femininity, perhaps we may worry along.

SOURCE: The Evening Sun, dated Wednesday 09 Oct, 1929, Page 4.

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Female Aristocracy in Anglosphere Society – 2011:

By Adam Kostakis:

“It would not be inappropriate to call such a system sexual feudalism, and every time I read a feminist article, this is the impression that I get: that they aim to construct a new aristocracy, comprised only of women, while men stand at the gate, till in the fields, fight in their armies, and grovel at their feet for starvation wages. All feminist innovation and legislation creates new rights for women and new duties for men; thus it tends towards the creation of a male underclass.”

“But what are the women’s rights advocated today? The right to confiscate men’s money, the right to commit parental alienation, the right to commit paternity fraud, the right to equal pay for less work, the right to pay a lower tax rate, the right to mutilate men, the right to confiscate sperm, the right to murder children, the right to not be disagreed with, the right to reproductive choice and the right to make that choice for men as well. In an interesting legal paradox, some have advocated – with success – that women should have the right to not be punished for crimes at all. The eventual outcome of this is a kind of sexual feudalism, where women rule arbitrarily, and men are held in bondage, with fewer rights and far more obligations.”

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See Also: USA, champion of extreme gynocentrism

New Feminine Aristocracy (The Independent, 1909)

The following is from a newspaper article dated 1909:

* * *

NEW FEMININE ARISTOCRACY
NARROWLY TRAINED MEN

A question of deep human interest has been raised by the “Independent” when it asked: “Why do so many fine women remain unappropriated?”

“To be successful in the cultivation of culture a country must have a leisure class,” says the editor. “We Americans recognise this fact, but we are going about the getting of this leisure class in a new way.

“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.”

Of one contributor the editor says, “She belongs to the self-supporting class as much as the American men with whom she associates, and she has a right to expect them to be her equals in taste and accomplishments. Although in our opinion she attaches too much importance to the conventional stigmata of culture, we must acknowledge the justice of her indictment. In the educated classes the American man is undeniably inferior to the American woman a range of interests, in refinement of taste, in manners, and in conversational ability, and his deficiencies cannot be altogether accounted for by his absorption in business. They are due rather to mental laziness and lack of ambition.

“That the American man prefers to ‘hold his religion in his wife’s name’ is an old joke.  He is also content to turn over to his better half his literature, his art, and his music, and she is likely in the future to have a monopoly of his science and political economy. Women are in the majority, not only in the churches but also in the lectures, concerts, operas, theatres, art galleries, libraries and study clubs :  that is, in all forms of the collective pursuit of religious, intellectual, and artistic culture. This is partly due to the greater gregariousness of women, but the number of men who privately cultivate the fine arts is insignificant.  the qualitative disparity is greater than the quantitative.  The better the music or the pictures or the play, the fewer the men.  The lowest and worst concerts and operas are attended only by men. As those of mediocre quality the audience is about half and half. And the music that requires the closest attention and the highest intelligence for its appreciation has chiefly women for its auditors.

“The present trend in education increases this difference between the sexes. There are more women being educated than men, and they are receiving a wider culture. They are in overwhelming majority in the graduating classes of the high schools, and wherever they are allowed to they predominate in the department of the liberal arts of the universities. That is, the men are being more narrowly trained for their vocations and the women are gaining a broader outlook and a cultivated aesthetic taste. ”

Original source: The Independent, Volume 67, 1909
Secondary source: Article, Kalgoorlie Miner, 5 January 1910

What is Damseling? Chat GPT definition

What is Damseling? Chat GPT provides the following answer:

“Damseling” is a term used to describe a behavior in which someone, typically a woman, portrays themselves as helpless or in need of rescue in order to elicit sympathy or assistance from others. The term is derived from the word “damsel,” which is a term used to describe a young unmarried woman. In some cases, individuals may engage in damseling as a manipulative tactic to gain attention or to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.  Damseling can take many forms, such as exaggerating or fabricating problems, over-relying on others for help, or using a victim mentality to manipulate others into meeting their needs.

Screenshot:

The Power of Feminine Weakness

By Greta Aurora

Women’s weakness and vulnerability is a great source of power. This uniquely feminine power has no male equivalent, because men are generally expected to be able to defend themselves from harm.

Female victimhood has the potential to raise a woman’s social status by making people sympathise with her and want to help her. A man’s weakness, on the other hand, tends to lower his status in the eyes of others.

‘Chivalry’ by Frank Dicksee (1885)

Janice Fiamengo writes:

“Well over a century ago, our ancestors debated women’s demand for voting and other privileges. Traditionalists argued that women faced a choice: they could either have special treatment on the basis of their alleged vulnerability as a group, or they could have political equality, but they couldn’t have both. Lo and behold, women got both, with peculiar results for our political culture.

In our time, the performance of powerlessness has become a dominant strategy of power, nowhere more evident than in politics. “I’ve been traumatized” is now a more galvanizing cry than “I can handle that”—and trembling weakness often eclipses demonstration of strength and competence.”

Everyone pays attention to a distressed woman. Everyone wants to help her and keep her safe. It’s an essential biological instinct to protect the weaker sex, without which our species would’ve gone extinct a long time ago. On the other hand, a man in distress is usually blamed for the situation he’s in; he’s told to try harder and do better.

A woman in distress is not expected to defend herself, because she’s assumed to be weak, vulnerable and in need of male protection. The damsel in distress archetype is the epitome of female victimhood and the resulting power. It doesn’t matter if the distress is real, imagined, acted or exaggerated: there’s always someone around to rescue the damsel and cater to her every need. The saviour may be a man, the government or the media (as in the case of Amber Heard).

Women and Children First

All human beings are innately driven to protect children – an instinct essential for survival. Adult women are able to harness the same empathy people have for children due to a biological phenomenon called neoteny.

 

Neoteny refers to the retention of juvenile features in adults. In humans, this is a physical characteristic in women that signals innocence and vulnerability. It therefore elicits caring and nurturing responses from other people.

Examples of neotenous or baby-like features that are important for women’s facial attractiveness are large, widely spaced eyes and a small nose and chin. Cross-cultural studies have shown that these features are considered attractive by men all over the world.

Contrast these traditionally feminine features with typical masculine traits resulting from high testosterone levels, such as a pronounced jaw, chin, cheekbones, and brow ridges. In women, the hormone estrogen contributes to the maintenance of neotenous features. During puberty, testosterone levels in boys increase dramatically, which causes them to develop the masculine characteristics that clearly differentiate them from girls.

When we see a tiny baby or puppy, we instinctively want to keep them safe. This is the same instinct women can exploit well into adulthood, while men lose this opportunity after hitting puberty.

An eye-opening social experiment has shown that people are more likely to want to protect girls than they are to care about boys, even before the effects of puberty begin to manifest. In the experiment, people rescued the little girl first, followed by the dog and then the cat. The little boy was the last to receive help from passers-by. Another study has found that both men and women are more likely to sacrifice a man than a woman when it comes to both saving the lives of others and pursuing self-interests. This is heartbreakingly representative of our society, which incessantly exaggerates the discomfort of women, while downplaying the suffering of men.

The price of women’s power has always been male sacrifice. This was as true a hundred thousand years ago and a thousand years ago as it is today.

Feminists misrepresent men’s efforts to protect and serve women as patriarchal oppression. But the truth is that all cultures glorify male suffering and self-sacrifice, while putting girls on a pedestal for their beauty and innocence.

Traditionally, women had fewer rights because they had virtually no responsibilities, and they certainly weren’t required to sacrifice themselves for their community. In the West today, women have the same rights as men, while still enjoying special treatment.

The Temptation of Damselling

Some women exploit the power of the damsel in distress more than others, but I believe we all use it from time to time. I think we are all aware of this power at an instinctual level.

There are, of course, horrible instances of actual violence against women. But women making false allegations and playing the damsel don’t make life any easier for real survivors. In fact, they’re making it much more difficult for actual survivors to get help and justice. They’re also doing a lot of harm by calling into question women’s competence and ability to rule over their own lives.

 

*For more articles by Greta Aurora visit her Substack Feminine Power

Red Pill Grandparenting

Casualties of the family court, AKA fathers and children, are so great in number I wouldn’t be surprised if they outnumbered the collective casualties of all wars over the last century. Each of them were made casualties by a family court culture that sides with mothers bent on establishing ownership of children, a goal achieved via character assassination of fathers, and a performance of damseling.

If women are reduced to proverbial chattel within the English law system, which of course they never were, we can only conclude that children have always been the chattel of the chattel. Ernest B. Bax elaborates this point in the following comment penned in the year 1896:

CUSTODY OF CHILDREN

It has always in England been laid down as a fundamental law based on public policy, that the custody of children and their education is a duty incumbent on the father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not permitted to waive his exercise of the right by pre-nuptial contract. (See the Agar v. Ellis Case.)

This rule of the Common Law of England is of course in harmony with the policy of all Europe and Christendom, as well as with the historic conditions of the European social organisation, if not with the primal instincts of the race.

Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that the custody of infants of tender years remains with the mother until the child attains the age of seven. But they go much further than that. As a matter of course, and without considering in the least the interests of the child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody and education of all the children to the litigant wife, whenever she establishes –an easy thing to do– a flimsy and often farcical case of technical “cruelty.”

The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining the children as well as herself out of his property or earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing that they will brought up to detest him.

Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes with her the children of the marriage, there is practically no redress for the husband if in narrow circumstances. The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court, as already stated, is expensive to the point of prohibition. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the attendant scandal of a process will probably have no other result than to injure his children and their future prospects in life.

– Ernest B. Bax, The Legal Subjection of Men (1896 p.16)

Most people reading this will know the story described by Bax all too well. The situation remains unchanged to this very day. What is slightly less well known is the impact on grandparents, especially paternal grandparents who tend to become collateral damage along with the alienated father. Mothers instinctively know that grandparents will side with their son in the face of such brutality, so they make the callous and cynical decision to alienate the paternal grandparents and thereby obliterate all potential for opposition.

Callous is hardly a strong enough word for it, but whatever the appropriate adjectives, here we remain thanks to a gynocentric feminism that has eaten away at family cohesion over the last two centuries.

The chances of this happening to grandparents are extremely high, except on the basis that they demonstrate a sycophantic compliance with, and longsuffering utilitarianism towards the mother and her inflated wants – babysitting on demand, transport to and from school, regularly complimenting the mother on her great single parent skills, and the often clear expectation to ‘pay up’ financially by buying items for the grandchildren or offering large money gifts for Christmas & birthdays – which of course the mother will decide the best use of.

This is the level of extortion that so many alienating mothers resort to – a kind of pay-to-play that grandparents are subjected to. For any self-respecting grandparent the juice may not be worth the squeeze, especially if faced with continued disapproval and grifting.

When it comes to mothers displaying pronounced control issues within the intact young family, it raises the serious question of whether grandparents should form a relationship with grandchildren at the outset, and if so, how deep (or superficial) and how frequent. Such control issues are usually bankable indications that everything will eventually turn to shit, and grand parents need to wise up and decide how best they will deal with the broken relationships issue in advance.

Like the MGTOW response toward an excess in women’s relational and legal power, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an equivalent boycott trend among grandparents emerge – in this case jettisoning a portion of the increasingly vulnerable grandparent role. Grandparents Going Their Own Way (GGTOW). That is not to say that such grandparents would be disowning their son or his progeny – on the contrary – the aim would be to protect both he and his children from a greater heartache in the case of deeply attached bonds being destroyed by the mother.

The cultivation of some distance serves the goal of mitigating the likely heartache were it to happen. The less abiding and less intense the grandparent-grandchild relationship, the less drama there will be with the inevitable fallout. There would be some clear heads prevailing among the casualties, which may be all the better to help pick up the pieces for the ones you love.

Keeping a greater distance, but continuing to demonstrate a believable measure of love and support may be the most practical way for grandparents to maintain stability in the extended family, especially in the event of its collapse.

Politics of Transgender Identity