By Robert Franklin

On reading my last post, I realized that I’d glossed over an issue that I should have addressed.  So, dear reader, mea culpa.

I too hastily said that feminism, from its origins in the mid-19^th century to today, has urged the abandonment of sex roles.  That’s not completely accurate.  Feminism has always urged society to grant women the freedom to step outside of their traditional role, but has been less enthusiastic about men’s doing so.  At least until recently.

Feminism has been astonishing successful; it’s achieved far, far beyond anything its intellectual underpinnings merited.  Feminist analysis of society, power and male/female relationships has always been at odds with basic facts and should long ago have been laughed out of serious public discourse.  But that hasn’t happened and, to the contrary, basic articles of feminist faith have been incorporated into everything from statute law to our “understanding” of sex, the workplace, much of history and more.

So how did something so intellectually bankrupt come to have such a powerful influence on our society?

The answer is traditional sex roles.  Metaphorically, when women screamed “Help!”, men came running to their rescue. Feminism has always relied on men, particularly members of dominant male hierarchies, a.k.a. power elites, to play the role of the knight on the white charger, St. George versus the dragon.  So feminists have always played the maiden in distress, the better to recruit male power to their cause.  That explains why feminists so often describe women as helpless victims of the most minor, everyday events and practices, a phenomenon remarked on by countless commentators.  Why appear strong, when the appearance of weakness works so well?

Why has it worked?

Females have always been the protected sex.  That was appropriate as long as human survival was in question, as it was for countless millennia.  So men took on that role and do so to this day; evolved biology powerfully shapes behavior, so the mere fact that we no longer live in a world fraught with the perils faced by hunter-gatherer societies doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned the behaviors on which we relied for so long to survive.  Remember the YouTube videos from several years ago showing a man in a public place loudly berating his female companion?  Complete strangers – all of them men – intervened to make sure the woman wasn’t hurt.  But when the same couple, both of them actors, switched roles and it was the woman not only shouting at the man, but hitting him, no one lifted a finger.  Passersby barely glanced at the scene.

The journalist Dorothy Dix understood the dynamic perfectly.  She agitated for women to be allowed to serve on juries.  Her reason?  Because all-male juries, when faced with a lachrymose female defendant accused of murdering her husband, too often voted to acquit.  Dix understood that female jurors wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, so justice for male victims demanded that women participate in judging female defendants.

Feminism’s dark genius was and is to harness that male protective instinct for its own goals.  So the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 was, among other things, one long cry for help – help with rights, marriage, divorce, property, etc.  So was the demand for the vote and later the Tender Years Doctrine, obtaining credit in a woman’s name, and the like.

Needless to say, many of the goals of feminism were, certainly by the standards of today, perfectly legitimate.  Male-dominated power structures were right to accede to many of their demands.  But, whether the demands were legitimate (e.g. the vote) or not (exemption from military conscription, the Tender Years Doctrine), the dynamic was the same.  Women cried “Help!” and men “rode to their rescue.”

More recent events make that dynamic painfully clear.  Indeed, it’s informative to view today’s feminism as simply testing the limits of the male inclination to protect. Perhaps air-conditioning in office buildings constitutes patriarchal oppression that “the Patriarchy” needs to change.  That garnered ridicule, but little traction.  What about “free bleeding,” i.e. abandoning tampons as more masculine oppression?  A non-starter.

Those “issues” may seem trivial, but nevertheless illustrate that the dynamic, i.e. testing to see if male power will respond to a cry for help with corrective action, continues.  Non-trivial issues demonstrate the same.

For example, we’ve known for decades that women are at least as likely as men to commit domestic violence and, since the 1970s, the male powers that be have lavished attention and money on female victims.  But that same male power has always turned a blind eye to male suffering and female perpetration.

Likewise, due process of law has been gravely compromised in response to feminists’ demand that more men go to prison when women cry “Rape!”  Every acquittal of a man accused of sexual wrongdoing is greeted with feminist outrage, regardless of the weakness of the case against him (see, e.g. the case of Gian Ghomeshi).  And academic institutions and male-dominated businesses rush to fire powerful men on the mere accusation by a woman of even minor sexual impropriety.  When writer Stephen Galloway was hounded out of his tenured position at the University of British Columbia, women levelled the accusations and men in the university’s power structure kicked him off campus and shunned him socially long before it was revealed that he’d done nothing wrong.

In short, the helpless woman/knight on the white horse dynamic is alive and well and feminists know it.  Feminist success depends on it and always has.

Therefore, the fight to turn back the worst depredations of feminism is simultaneously a fight to turn men from their traditional ways of thinking about and acting toward women.  As long as men in power respond to feminist complaints like chivalrous knights, feminists will continue to push for more and more and more.  Why wouldn’t they?

Until then, intellectual distortions blight the landscape of public discourse. When feminists don the mask of the helpless, victimized woman in order to stimulate the savior response in men, while also arguing that gender is a societal construct that must be abolished, cognitive dissonance is born.  I strongly suspect that the former cannot beget the latter, that using sex roles to abolish sex roles will never succeed.  Perhaps it’s not intended to.   Perhaps Little Nell and her rescuer are perfectly happy with their roles.

After all, as I established several posts back, feminism has always been about “more for us,” i.e. more power, more money, more rights, more privileges for women.  If traditional sex roles provide that “more,” and they do, then feminists would be foolish to do anything but continue the drama that pays so well, until someone mercifully brings the curtain down.

In the meantime, the ironies pour on us like a biblical flood.

Men and disability – Part 1
Men and disability – Part 2
Men and disability – Part 3

In part one of this series we looked at men with disabilities who achieved greatness. In part two we looked at an emerging culture of gynocentrism in the disability sector, along with the impoverished and at times hostile “support” extended to men in need of assistance. In this third and final part we look at a new kind of man with a disability – a man who says “No” to bigotry and other forms of mistreatment, and who gears his life toward the cultivation of self-respect.

To illustrate this new kind of man we will turn to the Greek myth of the goddess Hera and her disabled son Hephaestus – a son who has to challenge his mother’s ableism and bigotry before he can take his rightful place in the Olympian society. In this myth Hephaestus plays a role not unlike the hero Perseus who must stop Medusa’s hostilities before men can go about their lives again in safety and dignity.

The son of Hera and Zeus, Hephaestus was born parthenogenically – ie. from Hera alone and not from the result of a sex act with Zeus. We are told that she planed to give birth to a son after Zeus went and gave birth to Bright Eyed Athena who became a golden child of the gods. Hera was incensed that Zeus would give birth to Athena without her sexual aid, and her creation of Hephaestus was carried out in revenge. Hera’s message was essentially “You give birth without me, well I can do that too!”

Some myths suggest her son was born disabled, and others say he became disabled after his mother (or father) threw him from Mt. Olympus whereupon he landed hard on the earth and damaged his legs. In any case the dominant legend is that Hera gave birth to him already disabled, for which she was mightily disgusted in his lack of perfection.

Hera was angry and spoke thus among the assembled gods:

 “Hear from me, all gods and goddesses… my son Hephaestus whom I bore was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and a disgrace to me in heaven, whom I myself took in my hands and cast out so that he fell in the great sea. But silver-shod Thetis the daughter of Nereus took and cared for him with her sisters: would that she had done other service to the blessed gods!”¹ 

Zeus gestures to his daughter Athena, while Hera hurls her disabled son from Mt. Olympus circa 200-150 B.C.

Hera was ashamed of her son’s disability, one which caused him to limp on both feet since the soles and heels were turned back to front and were not fitted for walking but only for a forward-rolling motion of the whole body.⁴ This ‘difference’ made Hephaestus a fringe person on Olympus, and threatened to put his mother on the fringes too, so she hid the secret by throwing her son to what she assumed would be his death. Fortunately he was saved by some kindly goddesses who nurtured him back to health.

After his fall from the heavens Hephaestus grew up on a secluded island and there learned the art of blacksmithing. He devoted himself to the task with such discipline that his artisan skills became the finest in the world. Despite the pride he took in these achievements he would not forget the cruel treatment of Hera who dismissed him as ugly and lacking in usefulness. Like so many men today who wish to be seen as something other than utilities for women and society, Hephaestus remains angry;

Hephaestus says: “Thetis saved me when I suffered much at the time of my great fall through the will of my own brazen-faced mother, who wanted to hide me for being lame. Then my soul would have taken much suffering had not Eurynome and Thetis caught me and held me… With them I worked nine years as a smith, and wrought many intricate things; pins that bend back, curved clasps, cups, necklaces, working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of Okeanos around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur.” ²

Classical sociologist Philip Slater suggests that Hera despises her son’s masculinity and his disability, preferring instead to have a son of heroic proportions who could provide her with utility and glory. Hera’s attitude provokes, in later myths, a kind of self-abasing buffoonery from Hephaestus that Slater interprets as “an appropriate response to his mother’s narcissistic resentment of males–she cannot deflate him if he is already deflated–but it is therefore all the more inappropriate for dealing with her contrary desire for him to be a display piece and an agent for the expression of her masculine strivings. It is for this reason, after all, that she threw him down from Olympus.”³

Like Hephaestus, many men with disabilities are angry. They realize that they are being doubly marginalized due to the curse of having a penis yet being unable, or perhaps unwilling, to perform as utilities for women and society – they know they are being negatively judged for it.

In her mythos Hera provides the quintessential example of gynocentric feminism, along with ableist and misandrist attitudes to boot. Her attitude represents much that is wrong with the disability sector today – an underlying bigotry that men must reject if they are to enjoy freedom, dignity and self-respect.

Challenging that bigotry is precisely what Hephaestus does. He gains redress against Hera for rejecting him by making her a magical golden throne which, when she sat on it, did not allow her to stand up. None of the other gods could release her and they begged Hephaestus to return to Olympus to let his mother go, but he refused, saying “I have no mother.”⁴

The gods were impressed with his rebuke of Hera and agree accept him back into Olympian society as one of their own. This may be viewed as a positive reappraisal of his disability – Hephaestus possesses previously unrecognized skills, is sharp of mind, humbles Hera, and is accepted by the other Olympians. Here is a synopsis of the story thus far;

After his abandonment, Thetis found him and took him to her underwater grotto and raised him as her own son.

Hephaestus had a happy childhood with dolphins as his playmates and pearls as his toys. Late in his childhood, he found the remains of a fisherman’s fire on the beach and became fascinated with an unextinguished coal, still red-hot and glowing.

Hephaestus carefully shut this precious coal in a clamshell, took it back to his underwater grotto, and made a fire with it. On the first day after that, Hephaestus stared at this fire for hours on end. On the second day, he discovered that when he made the fire hotter with bellows, certain stones sweated iron, silver or gold. On the third day he beat the cooled metal into shapes: bracelets, chains, swords and shields. Hephaestus made pearl-handled knives and spoons for his foster mother, and for himself he made a silver chariot with bridles so that seahorses could transport him quickly. He even made slave-girls of gold to wait on him and do his bidding.

Later, Thetis left her underwater grotto to attend a dinner party on Mount Olympus wearing a beautiful necklace of silver and sapphires that Hephaestus had made for her. Hera admired the necklace and asked where she could get one. Thetis became flustered, causing Hera to become suspicious; and, at last, the queen god discovered the truth: the baby she had once rejected had grown into a talented blacksmith.

Hera was furious and demanded that Hephaestus return home, a demand that he refused. However he did send Hera a beautifully constructed chair made of silver and gold, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Hera was delighted with this gift but, as soon as she sat in it her weight triggered hidden springs and metal bands sprung forth to hold her fast. The more she shrieked and struggled the more firmly the mechanical throne gripped her; the chair was a cleverly designed trap.

For three days Hera sat fuming, still trapped in Hephaestus’s chair; she could not sleep, she could not stretch, she could not eat. It was Zeus who finally saved the day: he promised that if Hephaestus released Hera he would give him a wife, Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty. Hephaestus agreed and married Aphrodite.⁵

After his mother rejects him for having a mobility impairment he becomes angry and he ensures that her mobility is impaired by trapping her in a throne. The gesture can be read as forcing Hera to experience a mobility challenge that she seemed utterly unable or unwilling to sympathize with.

Commenting on the story, disability advocate William Ebenstein states;

In the Hephaestus myth we can discern a positive psychology of anger that is grounded in the experience of disability. The disabled deity refuses to play the role of the passive victim. Instead he is an active creator in forging his future place in society. Hephaestus’ revenge is accomplished in such a clever and artful way that, in the end, it is enriching for the entire Olympian community.

In Hephaestus we find a character who is motivated by his anger to confront a world that has discarded him. He stages what amounts to a non-violent demonstration, an act of civil disobedience that completely shuts down Olympus. His stubborn anger does not lead to acceptance, adjustment or passivity. On the contrary it lifts him up to reclaim his dignity and civil rights. The story depicts a community that must adjust to someone who has been stigmatized, segregated, and discriminated against. It is the disabled character himself who creates the humorous situation as an effective tool to confront his oppression and challenge the existing order.⁶

Hephaestus’ anger energizes his expression of outrage in place of squashing it as a male character flaw. The problems he sees are in the world and Hephaestus takes action there, where it counts. His demonstration of outrage in response to an ugly world, or over acts of mistreatment, is mental health at its finest and similar expression needs to be encouraged and supported for all people with disabilities. In fact, speaking out of one’s anger is a perfect example of what is intended by the disability-related term self-advocacy.

Like our mythical protagonist, the ?Hephaestus man’ understands where the problem lies and will not have his concerns silenced.

Too often we see psychotherapists and rehabilitation counsellors engage in gender stereotyping, viewing positive anger as ‘male aggression,’ ‘patriarchy,’ or ‘toxic masculinity’ that in disabled and nondisabled men supposedly needs correcting. However killing the outrage is a misandric move, one that leads to a loss of personal agency in the world for men.

Thus far Hephaestus’ story has been one of rejection and redress. However the story is far more than a one-dimensional recounting of an “angrycrip” who ends up exacting revenge against his tormentors. It involves the larger vision of forging self-respect, the beginnings of which were long stirring before he sought to challenge the ableist culture among the gods.

Following his story from beginning to end we see the goal of self-respect is something Hephaestus cultivates quite independently from the respect he has won from the gods.⁷ After rejoining the Olympian hierarchy as dignified contributor – craftsman of the gods – he continues the inner work he started as a child when he located value in his own eyes, and not in the shallow eyes of others.

The key principle, one given in an incisive article by Paul Elam, is “self-respect isn’t earned, it’s taken.”⁸ When Hephaestus engages with the Olympian community, he doesn’t need to wait around for their validation, he has already wrested it by his own self-assessment.

The Hephaestus man is the one who expresses his outrage at offensive behavior, and who chooses to cultivate self-respect. By respecting himself and demanding the same from others, Hephaestus demonstrates exactly what these things mean for men in today’s world, disabled or not.

References

[1] Evelyn-White translation, Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (1914)
[2] Richmond Lattimore translation, The Iliad by Homer (1951)
[3] Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and The Greek Family (1968)
[4] Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, pp.155-158 (1951)
[5] Wikipedia, Greek myths of Hephaestus, (Roman name Vulcan changed to Hephaestus above)
[6] William Ebenstein, Toward an Archetypal Psychology of Disability Based on the Hephaestus Myth (2006)
[7] Murray Stein, Hephaistos: A pattern of introversion, in The Selected Works of Murray Stein (1973).
[8] Paul Elam, Self-respect isn’t earned, it’s taken (2015)

Men and disability – Part 1
Men and disability – Part 2
Men and disability – Part 3

As with parenting and school education, the disability sector is overwhelmingly managed and staffed by women. They are the nurses, community support workers, personal care assistants, physiotherapists, guidance counselors and so on. That domination ensures women’s views about gender govern the provision of services for most disabled men. Before discussing the problems created by this skewed situation, let’s begin with a look at the rise of the disability rights movement.

Although disability issues received varying levels of attention throughout history, they became an international cause célèbre from 1960s, this on the tail of the black civil rights movement in America, and coinciding with the rise of second wave feminism. This generated nothing short of a revolution in awareness about the lives and needs of people with disabilities.

The disability rights movement helped to secure greater access to the social and physical environment, as well as opportunities for independent living, employment, education, and housing. It also promoted freedom from abuse, neglect, and other violations, and the establishment of civil rights legislation to secure these opportunities and rights.

So far so good. However in recent years the movement has suffered mission-creep into the arena of gender politics. We are now more likely to hear about domestic violence and sexual assault against disabled women, their wage discrimination and other forms of double-disadvantage, while contrasting them with the depravity, privilege, rapiness and violence-proneness of disabled men — a narrative fostering denial of vulnerabilities men may face along with a demonizing of men to boot.

It’s a growing problem that needs to be stopped.

I’m not suggesting we should stop paying attention to issues like sexual assault and abuse against women, which absolutely must be addressed for this vulnerable demographic. But we needn’t demonize men and boys as the default perpetrator class, nor discriminate against them which we do by refusing to recognize males as victims of abuse and by dismissing or silencing those who might speak about it.

I know dozens of disabled men who have suffered serious violence or sexual abuse who have been afraid to tell someone for fear of being disbelieved, blamed or ridiculed. Marginalizing the issues of disabled men in the service of a one-sided gendered approach ultimately undermines the good work of the disability rights movement during the last 50 years – it shifts the focus from a humanitarian movement to a largely sexist one from within its own culture.

The gynocentric approach is compounded by the fact that most workers in the sector are women, who understandably have a more empathic appreciation of women’s concerns than men’s. The existence of female bias in the disability sector can be stressed in the following way: many women possess an inadequate understanding of the experiences and concerns of men with disabilities.

Poorly educated female workers, ie. those providing most of the frontline services, tend to rely on male stereotypes to guide their understandings of clientele, imposing the usual boilerplate images of males as utilitarian, rough, insensitive, sport obsessed, sex-obsessed, and so on. That vision is devoid of deeper knowledge of men generally, is at variance to the individuality of males specifically, and it tends to dictate the tone of care.

At this point readers may feel I’m being a little hard on female disability workers, which is correct. More accurately I’m being hard on the current culture of disability services because of the growing gynocentric trend, and pointing to an area of potential improvement in service provision. To be fair, I have no hesitation in admitting the existence of excellent female disability workers who do understand men’s issues and provide a very high quality of support, but these are more often the exception rather than the rule. This article however is attempting to show where disability services are failing in their duty of care for men, and the increasing gynocentric culture is, at least to my thinking, the area of greatest failure.

Having worked in the disability field for 30 years, I’ve had more opportunity than most to observe the provision of services to men. The following are six areas where gender stereotyping is failing men with disabilities.

1. Men do, women are
In a recent article I described how men are considered utilities or ‘action men’ expected to be of service to others.¹ The expectation is sadly no different for disabled men, and one of the first things female support workers often do is put him to work doing odd jobs and showing him how to be ‘useful’ to women and society. A woman with an identical disability will often get asked a different set of questions – like what do you want to do to have fun.

2. Male aggression or violence is an attempt to dominate
Both men and women with disabilities sometimes find life frustrating and lash out in anger. Typically males are lectured about how their aggression upsets other people, causes damage to the wider world, and are instructed on how to control their anger – while the disabled woman who lashes out in the same manner is calmed and asked what or who is bothering her and perhaps how the world might be rearranged so that it doesn’t upset her again. Disability support workers are less likely to consider the real distress or powerlessness that causes men to lash out.

3. Males are rarely victims of violence
Government media campaigns focusing solely on “violence against women” have encouraged the assumption that men are default perpetrators who don’t suffer violence. The belief among support workers that disabled men are safe from violence has created an environment in which abused men are less likely to speak up and seek help… there is no encouragement to do otherwise. Despite the fact that U.S. Department of Justice has reported violence crimes against disabled men and women at roughly equal rates,² a Google search for information delivers the following disparity of awareness:

• “Violence against disabled women” = 4330 results.
• “Violence against disabled men” = 9 results.

4. Males are unlikely to suffer sexual abuse or rape
As with men in prisons who experience high levels of sexual assault, disabled males are four times more likely than nondisabled men to be sexually assaulted or raped.³ The researchers of that study found that more than 5 percent of disabled men reported experiencing sexual assault during the past year, about equal to sexual assaults against disabled women.³

If ‘rape culture’ is based in social invisibility and voicelessness of a victim group, then disabled men are dealing with a legitimate rape culture – one entrenched by the people who receive a weekly pay-cheque to help lift that silence. Again a Google search speaks volumes:

• “Sexual violence against disabled women” = 1520 results.
• “Sexual violence against disabled men” = 0 results.

5. Men are less in need of assistance than women

As addressed in part one, disabled men are deemed privileged by patriarchy while women with disabilities are considered doubly disadvantaged by the same. The gynocentric privileges historically afforded to women have not yet entered the discourse – such as being recipients of living expenses drawn from male labor, or receiving greater provision and protection generally. Gynocentric prioritization is further underlined in phrases like “damsel in distress,” “ladies before gentlemen,” “girls before boys” or “ladies first,”, which are codes of chivalric and gentlemanly behavior that place disabled men in second place on the basis of their sex.

The stereotype of the cigar-smoking, brandy swilling patriarch, in combination with the custom of “ladies first,” sees that men are at a disadvantage to women in the fight for limited disability services.

6. Male sexual needs are socially unacceptable
Men’s sexual desires are gross and in need of suppressing or civilizing, so think some individuals charged with supporting men with disabilities. Cultural narratives characterizing male sexuality as dirty, violent and oppressive are clearly toxic to male self-image, however some among the mostly female workforce have adopted that negative mindset and with it created barriers to men’s attempts to enjoy healthy sexual expression.

When a disabled man desires a woman, or masturbates, or perhaps decides to hire a prostitute – all natural behaviors – female support workers tend to be unsupportive, believing sexual desires must be tamed in the service of something more civilized such as nonsexual dating and romantic love.

I have observed female staff match-make male and female clientele — treating them like Barbie & Ken in a child’s dolls house — while also instructing men in the arts of non-sexual chivalry, such as bringing gifts and flowers for a potential girlfriend or perhaps taking her to a romantic restaurant while the support worker plays hostess. While perhaps well meaning, my reading of such intervention is that it leaves out many aspects of male nature, especially male sexual needs, in favor of gynocentric themes which is ultimately an insult to the men in question.

. . .

These are just a few examples of biases men with disabilities face. Problems generated by gynocentrism and misandry within the disability sector (and beyond) are sometimes blatant and at other times subtle, but in either case they are mostly unrecognized and unquestioned by those on the front lines of service provision.

Men with disabilities receive little more empathy than their able-bodied counterparts – and in some respects they receive less. As with all men’s issues, from health funding to prostate cancer, birth control options, or homelessness, men are going to have to speak up – in fact they are going to have to shout up. Those in power might not see men’s pain, but they will hear men’s anger.

This leads to the next article in this series where we will look at a new kind of man with a disability – he is the one who says “No” to gynocentrism and other forms of mistreatment, and acts decisively to shut them down.

References

[1] Peter Wright, Don’t just do something, SIT THERE (June 2015)
[2] Harrell, E., Rand, M., Crime Against People with Disabilities, U.S. Department of Justice (2008)
[3] Mitra, Monika, Vera E. Mouradian, and Marci Diamond. Sexual Violence Victimization Against Men with Disabilities, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2011)

Feature image: Cpl. Anthony McDaniel

Men and disability – Part 1
Men and disability – Part 2
Men and disability – Part 3

Throughout history men with disabilities have reached the heights of human achievement in personal and cultural terms, and they did so without the help of social justice warriors or modern reforms to laws, community access, or improved social attitudes toward disability.

Think of the presidents, artists, scientists, blade runners and the Everest-scaling amputees who reached for greatness, along with their less visible counterparts who went about their daily lives in less grandiose but nevertheless competent ways while living with a disability.

Disability always poses limitations on a person’s physical or mental abilities, but the disability never encompasses the entire person – there remain competencies that deserve equal recognition in the mix.

Said differently a person is never completely disabled, just as there is no such thing as a person without a disability, however mild; eg. asthma, eczema, or gluten allergy can likewise interfere with daily functioning, forcing you to buy special creams and soaps or having to skip lunch with friends because you can’t eat the food at that restaurant.

A study of high achievers illustrates the point of competency existing alongside disability. Franklin D. Roosevelt had post-polio paralysis, Ray Charles was blind, Christopher Reeve had a spinal injury, George Washington had dyslexia, Ludwig van Beethoven went deaf, Albert Einstein had Aspergers, Leonardo Da Vinci was epileptic, and the cosmologist Stephen Hawking has advanced motor neurone disease. Yet all of these men reached the top of their fields of interest.

Admiration of such men is today frowned upon by social justice warriors (SJWs) who believe the achievements misrepresent the common man with a disability and lead him to feel inferior by comparison. Referred to disparagingly as “supercrips” (super cripples), SJWs disparage high achievers as tall poppies who disrupt the level playing field, traitors who promote ableism instead of accepting their lot as sufferers without talents or abilities.

In a more reasonable use of the term, supercrip is sometimes employed as a reference to fanciful caricatures; eg. exaggerated claims about men on the autism spectrum as genius savants; or that the deaf have the sight of an eagle; or that the blind possess sonic radar abilities like dolphins or bats that help them move around the physical environment. There is no doubt, however, that the supercrip slur is also aimed at men with disabilities who genuinely achieved great things, but who are perceived as succeeding due to an unfair degree of male privilege.

Sound familiar? Most would have heard this criticism before, after 50 years of feminism’s attempts to tear down every man who has had the drive and discipline to reach the top of his field. Even our disabled heroes are not spared by feminists who refer to them as ‘privileged by patriarchy’ and thus less handicapped than disabled women:

“It will be argued in this paper that disability is a more severely handicapping condition for women than for men… [men] are relatively advantaged in that they can observe and may aspire to the advantaged place of males in today’s society. Women with disabilities are perceived as inadequate to fulfill either the economically productive roles traditionally considered appropriate for males.

“In research conducted by Mauer disabled females were more likely than disabled males to identify with a disabled storybook character; the disabled males were more likely to identify with the able-bodied character (1979). Disabled men may have a choice between a role of advantage (male) and a role of disadvantage (disability). Their decision is frequently a strategic identification with males.¹

Feminist scholars refer to this as a ‘double disadvantage’ experienced by disabled women because they suffer from both disability and sexism, while their male counterparts are presumably being served up with caviar in their patriarchally privileged, gold-plated wheelchairs. Referring to the intersectional model, many feminists would go further and talk of multiple disadvantages such as triple, quadruple, or quintuple handicaps as would be the case for a black, transgendered, albino woman with a disability….. but I digress.

Indeed, a survey of feminist-inspired literature reveals a disturbing emphasis on what is lacking in comparison to what is good in the lives of disabled individuals, with that fixation coming at the expense of recognizing the multiple competencies or abilities that disabled individuals might possess. Moreover, the practice of gender stereotyping obscures the uniqueness of the individual, as underscored by sociologist Tom Shakespeare who states, “Disabled people’s gender identity is more complex and more varied than this stereotypical view indicates. Some women feel liberated from social expectation as a result of impairment; some men feel doubly inferior.”²

The double-disadvantage meme has led to the widespread view that disabled men gain privilege at women’s expense, an advantage apparently in need of restricting in order to give disabled women a head start. In order to bring women forward we are led to believe we must push men back and downplay their extraordinary achievements.

Ridding the world of tall poppies, however, results in having no one to look up to. It forces us to lower our vision to a mean-average of attainment where social justice warriors seem bent on placing us – including those with disabilities. Some of us may be content with day-to-day existing and are not interested in pushing our personal limits, but there are others who want more. By honoring the achievements of exceptional people we understand a greater range of possibility, and can set our goals as high as we choose.

References

[1] Michelle Fine, ‘Disabled women: Sexism Without the Pedestal’ Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (1977)
[2] Tom Shakespeare, ‘When is a man not a man? When he’s disabled,’ in Working with Men for Change, p.49 (1999)

Feature image of Stephen Hawking by Lwp Kommunikáció

On a recent Dad Talk Today Interview Dr. Warren Farrell spoke about a cultural feature of Western society called the Victim Industrial Complex:

“We have developed what some have called, and I agree with, a ‘Victim Industrial Complex’ where there’s tens of thousands of people who are making their living from the defense of women in courts, the defense of women in child custody cases, the defense of the victims, and appealing to the biological instinct that we all have to protect women, and then saying that men have the power as opposed to understanding if you are biologically programmed to protect somebody, that person who is protected is the one who has the power.”

In his book The Myth of Male Power,  Farrell refers to this problem as the creation of a Victimarchy:

But here’s the rub. When the entitled child has the majority of the votes, the issue is no longer whether we have a patriarchy or a matriarchy — we get a victimarchy. And the female-as-child genuinely feels like a victim because she never learns how to obtain for herself everything she learns to expect. Well, she learns how to obtain it for herself by saying “it’s a woman’s right” — but she doesn’t feel the mastery that comes with a lifetime of doing it for herself. And even when a quota includes her in the decision-making process, she still feels angry at the “male dominated government” because she feels both the condescension of being given “equality” and the contradiction of being given equality. She is still “the other.” So, with the majority of the votes, she is both controlling the system and angry at the system.” [The Myth of Male Power]

Elsewhere I have referred to the same phenomenon as a ‘Gynocentric Cultural Complex‘ which is comprised of three central motives: Damseling, chivalry and courtly love. Farrell’s mention of the Victim Industrial Complex taps the same three motives, especially the image of the damsel, or more accurately the ‘damsels in distress’ trope.

A cultural complex is defined as a significant configuration of culture traits that have major significance in the way people’s lives were lived. In sociology it is defined as a set of culture traits all unified and dominated by one essential trait; such as an industrial cultural complex, religious cultural complex, military cultural complex and so on. In each of these complexes we can identify a core factor – industry, religion, military – so we likewise we have core motives for the Gynocentric or Victim cultural complex in order for it to qualify for the title, and that core motive, as already mentioned, is the triad of damsels, chivalry and courtly love.

 

Dysfunctional Gynocentric Cultural Values Must Go

Black Pigeon Speaks (BPS) did a video recently titled, “ONLY Patriarchy Builds Nations * / & Other Uncomfortable Truths”¹. The video raised a number of pertinent factors to consider in what makes developed civilisations sustainable and in this article I will provide my thoughts on that and where Western society went wrong. As the societal consequences from decades of feminism become more and more apparent, there is a push in some corners of society for a return to gynocentric traditionalism².  The answer to feminism is not returning to promoting gynocentric traditionalism, by encouraging chivalry and infantilising women. Gynocentric traditionalism allowed feminism to gain traction in the first place. We got to where we are because we treat men as expendable and we do not hold women accountable for their actions and treat them like they are children. These dysfunctional gynocentric cultural values, have allowed the feminist trojan horse to take over society and have led to the marginalisation of men and boys. This marginalisation of men and boys, will eventually trigger socioeconomic collapse, or the “Fempocalypse” as Karen Straughan coined it³.

As BPS’s video addresses, there is an obvious need for the population of a country to reproduce and developed nations are at risk of dying out because of fertility rates falling below replacement levels. However I would add that investment in the survival of civilisation is just as important. There is no point breeding if there is no properly functioning civilisation, economy and infrastructure etc to support the survival of the population. Men are required for that to a much larger degree than women and always have been. Men are responsible for designing, innovating, building, maintaining, running and leading civilisation and no amount of feminist social engineering over the last 50 years has changed that. Indeed in one of BPS’s other videos⁴, he cites research on how only men pay taxes and how this covers what women as a group take out of the system. He is not the only one to point that out either. Even female consumer spending is substantially fuelled by income earned from their male partners and the result of male dominated industries and male driven economic activity and taxes, ensuring the viability of the female dominated service sector and public sector. There is much less money for women to spend and welfare to use, without men participating in the economy.

Like the low fertility rate, a silent time bomb is growing every year from the decades of neglect of boys in the education system and the epidemic of fatherlessness. We can see from the plethora of research available, the enormous costs of fatherlessness⁵ and the boy crisis in education⁶. These problems are going to have serious economic, financial and social consequences in the coming decades. Male unemployment and crime will skyrocket. These problems will eventually implode our economies into a depression, governments will default as fewer men will be in a position to pay taxes and social cohesion will erode from widespread crime, poverty, broken families and substance abuse. Society will come apart at the seams socially and economically.

We have seen what happens to societies when large numbers of men become disenfranchised. It does not end well for the society in question. Revolutions and civil war originate from such conditions and it is something to be avoided. Our civilisation runs because of men. If even one percent of men walked away from society for a day, we would have serious problems. If all men walked away from society for one day, it would collapse. Men are not expendable. It is quite the opposite and we are going to pay an enormous price as a society, if we fail to acknowledge men actually do have value. Feminism, the epidemic of fatherlessness and the boy crisis in education, have all grown in large part precisely because we treat men as expendable and do not care about the consequences that comes from marginalising men and boys. To treat men as expendable is to treat civilisation as expendable. Without healthy,  productive and well-adjusted men that can make use of their potential, there is no future for civilisation.  As I have mentioned before, even if we see men as machines, we understand the need to look after those machines to keep them working for us. If you don’t replace the oil in your car, it won’t last very long. Men are not machines, men are human beings. Looking after them properly requires more than basic parental investment. Men and boys must be treated with respect and compassion.

MGTOW is about men living life in their own way and refusing to be expendable. That is a good thing. Why? Because men have value to society and if men value themselves then they protect society and themselves from wasteful sacrifice of male potential. Men going their own way is not antithetical to civilisation. It is quite the opposite. Western civilisation was based around recognising the rights and freedoms of the individual for very good reasons. It is what made the West the success it became. Valuing individuality and respecting the rights and freedoms of the individual, is the basis of a free market economy and a free society. It generates tremendous economic prosperity and drives scientific and social progress and innovation.  These Western principles of valuing individuality and protecting individual rights and freedoms, is a very MGTOW concept. It is the group identity of the feminists and the far left, that is antithetical to MGTOW and advanced civilisation. Men naturally contribute to civilisation without coercion. It is literally in our DNA to invent, build, explore, discover, maintain, repair, protect and provide. We find it naturally fulfilling, we do it without coercion.

What MGTOW is about, is applying men’s natural gifts and desires to do these things in ways that are authentic to the man. If anything, MGTOW boosts the prosperity of society by preventing the huge waste that comes with treating men as disposable and preventing men from being exploited and used by a parasitic, corrupt and unsustainable gynocentric social system. MGTOW can instead freely apply their gifts and abilities in ways that are genuinely positive for society and for themselves (These are not automatically mutually exclusive things). There are countless men throughout history that have contributed to the advancement of their society enormously and did not get married or have children. Sir Isaac Newton, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Nikola Tesla, Ludwig van Beethoven and Adam Smith, are just a few of these men. Their scientific discoveries, intellectual and social contributions and technological breakthroughs, still have lasting impacts many years after their deaths on Western civilisation and the world. Getting married and breeding offspring is not the only contributing factor to the continuation of civilisation. Contributions to the scientific and technological knowledge base and intellectual capital and culture of civilisation, can be just as important and arguably be an even greater factor in ensuring the longevity of civilisation.

If we are going to give women equal rights as a society, then they must be held equally accountable. Otherwise it creates an imbalance that destroys society. Having reciprocity between the sexes is critical not just for individual relationships, but also for society. Treating men as expendable, provides no resistance to groups like feminists emerging and treading on men’s rights and marginalising men and boys. When men are regarded as expendable and you give women equal rights with no accountability, it does not take a genius to predict feminist groups will emerge and take advantage of that and they have.

By marginalising men and boys and treating them as expendable, you also reduce fertility rates below replacement levels. When fewer and fewer men have the finances and work status to meet the hypergamous expectations of women, thanks to the impacts of growing up in fatherless households, the boy crisis in education being unaddressed for decades and feminist initiatives like female hiring quotas, fewer and fewer children will be produced. When men are treated as expendable and put through the divorce and family court extortion and exploitation pipeline and women have no obligation to be accountable in relationships and roughly half of marriages end in divorce (the majority of which are initiated by women), many men will understandably start deciding not to marry and have families.

If we want a sustainable and prosperous society, we must recognise the value of men and boys and stop treating them as expendable. We must hold women equally accountable to men and encourage individuality over groupthink and identity politics. The parasitic feminist welfare state has to go too, which is something Stefan Molyneux has recently spoken about⁷. Like a parasite, it feeds off male taxpayers and supports lack of accountability from women (particularly from single mothers) and eventually destroys society. If you regard men as expendable and don’t hold women accountable, such a parasitic system will emerge. These dysfunctional values must go if we want civilisation to continue.

At the base of these dysfunctional values, is a belief in chivalry and the purity and superiority of women. Despite decades of feminism, chivalry is alive and well in our culture and in the corridors of power. I am not talking about men paying for dinners or opening doors for women. That type of chivalry is small potatoes compared to what we have today. I am talking about the widespread preferential treatment shown toward women by our governments, legal system, education system, health system, academia, media and culture, on the basis they are “vulnerable”, “victimised” women of the patriarchy and are in need of protection from “oppressive”, “privileged” men and thus deserve special treatment. Our modern feminist culture, is merely a modernised iteration of the same chivalrous tradition found in earlier gynocentric traditionalist cultures over past centuries.

Gynocentric Traditionalism Is Driven By Chivalry:

The core element of gynocentric traditionalism is chivalry. Chivalry is a tradition of male service to benefit women without reciprocity. It places women above men. Chivalry is a practice that takes advantage of men’s protective instincts and uses them to serve women under the guise women are the supposedly “weaker” sex. It is a tradition that encourages one standard of accountability for men and a lower standard of accountability for women toward the opposite sex. Women might be physically weaker than men, but the last time I checked they have all the same rights and privileges men do in Western society and some people make solid arguments they actually have more. Women are quite capable of being just as vicious verbally and socially as any man and many would probably argue they are more capable. Women can destroy a man’s life merely with an accusation in the post metoo# era, with no proof or legal due process required. Women are also quite capable of being physically violent and are especially adept at using the state and the legal system as a weapon of coercion on partners, husbands and fathers. Indeed it has been a principle driver of mainstream ideological feminism, to warp our legal system and shape government policy to marginalise men for the benefit of women.

Women are not the fragile powerless snowflakes some people would have men believe. Chivalry has emboldened and enabled feminist women, to rapidly warp our social norms, legal system, political system and mainstream media etc to elevate women above men. Women and girls enjoy a multi-billion dollar international feminist empire that puts their interests ahead of everything else in numerous sectors of Western society. This exclusive support for women and girls pervades the mainstream media, academia, legal system and education system, politics, private industry, government policy and public health, just to name a few areas. We even have entire government departments devoted to women and girls. There is no comparable set of organisations or level of support for men and boys. Predictably, women and girls are excelling at every level of education over men and boys and doing quite well in the workforce relative to men (especially for those under 30 years old).

I think I speak for a lot of men and boys when I say we are getting sick and tired of women and girls pretending they are weak and vulnerable creatures, when there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary. The social power women wield in society is enormous and chivalry has done nothing but enable that power to go unchecked for decades, if not centuries. Chivalry is a bigoted tradition that enabled the demonisation of men and boys in our culture. Our mainstream media and political system is awash with feminist women spreading hateful messages about men, boys and masculinity. If women in politics or in the mainstream media want to make bigoted generalisations about the opposite sex, then shielding them from the consequences with chivalry is not the answer. All it does is keep the cycle of demonising the male half of the population growing and growing without opposition. If you make bigoted remarks about the opposite sex, then you are not the victim and that suddenly does not change when the person making the bigoted remarks happens to be female. Chivalry does not have a place in a modern society where women have equal rights and freedoms to that of men. If you make bigoted remarks against men, you do not get to play the victim because the men around you respond in a manner you do not approve of.

Almost a decade ago Miranda Devine discussed a concept called, “Female Entitlement Mentality”⁸. It takes a sense of entitlement to expect men to behave like gentlemen toward women that act like bigots. Indeed Peter Wright wrote an article⁹ discussing a research study showing the link between entitlement in women and their disposition to support chivalry in men. Women have no place lecturing men about acting like gentlemen, when feminist academics write articles in the Washington Post titled, “Why can’t we hate men?”¹⁰. It is time for women to get off their pedestal and start taking accountability for their own words and behaviour. If you want men to be respectful toward you, then be respectful toward them. Two thousand years ago, a man called Jesus spoke of a simple concept to treat others the way you would like to be treated.

I certainly think women have it in them to empathise with men and accept accountability for their own choices, behaviour and words toward men. Karen Straughan’s own blog is called, “owning your shit”¹¹. The name says it all regarding accountability. There are plenty of other examples of women displaying these qualities I have come across both online and in my personal life. A more recent example for instance popped up on my YouTube feed over the weekend. Her name is Sydney Watson. Here are two videos of hers for people to look at regarding recent events in Australia concerning men and feminism, link¹² and link¹³. Of course there are the Honey Badgers, Janice Fiamengo and numerous other women.

I am not buying the idea women can’t overcome gynocentrism, any more than the false assumption men cannot overcome gynocentrism. Sure there are challenges, but gynocentism can be overcome provided it is recognised as a problem by society and a pathology that should be discouraged. As I explained in my article on normalising gynocentrism¹⁴, gynocentrism is so common because we have normalised it. Encouraging women that go against the gynocentric grain of the culture and holding women and girls accountable for their words and actions toward men and boys, would be a key step in the right direction in reducing gynocentrism in society. We most likely are never going to completely eliminate gynocentrism to absolute zero, just as we will never completely eliminate obesity. We will always have a residual level of pathological behaviour in society because human beings are imperfect. However we can reduce gynocentrism by a considerable degree from its present levels and make it far less common and a fringe behaviour rather than a normal behaviour in society. We have the behavioural control to do that as discussed in my earlier article, but only if we recognise gynocentrism for the pathological set of behaviours it is and we make an effort to reduce it.

Suggesting that feminism is the source of all men’s issues is short-sighted. Feminism grew from our past culture of gynocentric traditionalism and feminists have used chivalry and their victim ideology and revision of history, to pull the strings of the men in power for decades to get what they want. Without gynocentric traditionalism, there would be no feminism. Gynocentrism runs through both gynocentric traditionalism and feminism and is the real basis of the preferential treatment of women at the expense of the marginalisation of men.

Chivalry Is Antithetical To Freedom:

Dr. Warren Farrell had a famous saying, “women can’t hear what men do not say”. As long as men remain silent for fear of offending women, absolutely nothing is going to change and that silence will contribute to gynocentrism remaining normalised in the culture. So start speaking your mind to women if you are a man and stop self-censoring, because it is about time men found their voice. That is why A Voice For Men exists. Use the platform. Calling men and women out on their gynocentric bullshit is not spreading hate, it is generating powerful and badly needed cultural change and demanding an end to hypocrisy and sexist bigotry. People need to recognise that we are entering a stage where freedom of speech is now being undermined. Now is the time to speak while you still can. There is an authoritarian push from the left side of our political spectrum, to silence any dissent against them. It is a form of oppression and we must fight against it.

If this trend of censorship continues, then it may become illegal to even question feminist ideology, or even question any aspect of gynocentric behaviour by women or men. Chivalry at its modern extreme end, is antithetical to freedom of speech. Quashing dissenting speech in the name of protecting women, is a slippery slope that leads right to totalitarianism by a feminist authoritarian state. Once freedom of speech is lost, then the rest of our freedoms and basic rights soon vanish. If we reach that threshold and we are dangerously close to it, then the sun will set on our civilisation and what will follow will be a totalitarian dark age followed by collapse and then anarchy. We need to be speaking out now and protecting our freedom to do so while we still can.

References:

1. ONLY Patriarchy Builds Nations * / & other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS. Black Pigeon Speaks. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
2. Traditionalism vs. traditionalism. Peter Wright & Paul Elam. A Voice For Men. (Accessed July 2018).
3. Fempocalypse!!. Girlwriteswhat. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
4. Research Shows ONLY MEN Pay Taxes. Black Pigeon Speaks. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
5. The Consequences Of Fatherlessness. National Center For Fathering. (Accessed July 2018).
6. The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. Dr. Warren Farrell & Dr. John Gray (2018).
7. DEATH BY WELFARE. Stefan Molyneux. FreeDomain Radio. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
8. Women believe they live in the age of entitlement. Miranda Devine. The Daily Telegraph. May 20^th 2012. (Accessed July 2018).
9. Can women be chivalrous? Damn right they can. Peter Wright. A Voice For Men. (Accessed July 2018).
10. Why Can’t We Hate Men? Suzanna Danuta Walters. The Washington Post. June 8^th 2018. (Accessed July 2018).
11. Karen Straughan http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com/
12. WE NEED TO TEACH MEN NOT TO RAPE?. Sydney Watson. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
13. 4 REASONS WHY FEMINISM IS FULL OF HYPOCRISY. Sydney Watson. YouTube. (Accessed July 2018).
14. The Normalisation Of Gynocentrism. Peter Ryan. A Voice For Men. (Accessed July 2018).

 

The following passage critiquing Briffault’s Law is excerpted from Peter Ryan’s three-part essay Gynocentrism, Sex Differences and the Manipulation of Men. – PW

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The belief in female superiority ultimately rests on the unquestioned axiom that women are biologically valuable and men are biologically expendable, because women have a uterus and give birth and men do not. Propagating this lie is a part of normalising gynocentrism in our culture and is the foundational justification that is relied upon when gynocentric double standards are challenged.

Convincing men that they are expendable with this fictitious lie and using sophistry and twisted interpretations of biology to change men’s perception of themselves from a human being to a human doing, is a core means through which men are controlled in society. When men see themselves as expendable, then they willingly go along with their own exploitation. Even when they do not, men with this perception will not support any organised resistance to the exploitation and marginalisation of men because they perceive it as futile. The gynocentric programming has done its job in such cases- Men become paralysed in a mental prison of learned helplessness.

The notion that females determine all the conditions of the animal kingdom (or Briffault’s Law¹³), is part of that programming and is demonstrably false. Women are not omnipotent. Rape gangs exist, female sex slaves exist, female genital mutilation occurs, the murder and abortion of female infants occurs, arranged marriage exists, millions of Jewish women were exterminated along with men in death camps and the genuine marginisalisation of women exists in parts of Africa and the Middle East (and no I am not talking about Iran).

Even in highly traditional theocratic cultures like Iran, where both men and women are restricted, women cannot do as they please. Don’t believe me? Watch this documentary¹⁴ on women and divorce in Iran. Women do not call the shots in Iran and neither do men, the theocrats and the family do. Plus one for a restrictive culture and minus one for female omnipotence. Even in the West women do not always get their way. Trump got elected despite feminists and even the democrats don’t entirely follow female interests. These are not just exceptions to the rule, there are too many exceptions to count. These are chasms that cannot be explained with such an absolutist, monolithic and simplistic so-called “law”.

In dating and relationships we can see men that pump and dump women wanting marriage, or men that opt out of relationships entirely and go their own way. I have often heard women are the gatekeepers of sex, but men are far more selective when it comes to getting married and having a relationship than they are with sex. Women might only prefer the top twenty percent of men, but those same men have little incentive or desire to settle down with them. These men have an abundance of women that want them and many men in the top twenty percent can and do simply pump and dump them.

At the same time, whilst women are complaining about where all the good men went and men not earning enough and pretending like feminism has nothing to do with it, less and less men are interested in marriage and relationships. Men are becoming aware of the bias in divorce and family court and steering clear of marriage. They are also steering clear of certain women in the #metoo climate and domestic violence climate and refusing to be alone with female co-workers or mentor them. Then there is the wall, where women over 35 experience a sharp drop in their sexual mating value in contrast to the rising sexual mating value of their male counterparts. So no, women do not control every aspect of dating, relationships and how the sexes interact in the workplace. Ultimately women cannot force men to do anything and men do act at least to some degree on their own self-interest. There are too many exceptions to make the generalisation women control everything. They do not.

There is a big difference in suggesting women influence society and taking the absolutist position women control all the conditions of the animal kingdom and by extension society. Do women control every political and economic decision made by our governments? Did women cause Trump to launch an attack on an Iranian general? Did women tell the US government to bail out the banks? The reason modern evolutionary biology does not cite Briffault’s Law as a “law” or established theory, is because the facts and evidence do not support the absolutist position of female omnipotence it rests on. Evolutionary biology and psychology recognise female mate choice exists, but they also recognise male mate choice exists too and that other factors unrelated to female influence, also influence the conditions of society.

Like the Earth not being the centre of the solar system or universe and the Earth not being flat, modern 21^st century science recognises that it is a bit more complicated than women being at the centre of everything. Why does such an outdated and questionable concept like Briffault’s Law gain traction within sizeable communities of the manosphere? Men have been programmed from birth to see female approval as the mark of their worth. Mothers, sisters, female teachers, the wider culture and their female friends and partners, all inform men that their worth is tied to living up to whatever women’s preferred definition of what a man is. That’s why. It is another form of manipulation and control. In my previous article⁶ I wrote about precarious manhood and the social pressure on men to prove they are a “real man” and cited a video¹⁵ on the subject by Tom Golden. What was the “white feather”¹⁶ during World War One? What are messages like “The End Of Men”¹⁷ in the modern day? All methods to condition male identity around female approval and use precarious manhood to control men.

Naturally men have developed a perception from this programming, where they see women as the centre of the universe. This is the programming they have received their whole lives from every corner of society. That’s where this thinking comes from and the manosphere is not immune to sliding into this fatalistic line of thinking that women are the centre of everything. It is why junk concepts like Briffault’s Law still gain traction even in the manosphere. So when men like myself start writing about the fact that females do not control all the conditions of human society, some men in the manosphere perceive it as a denial of their lived experience and of their twisted and seriously flawed understanding of biological reality (which they almost never scrutinise).

It is your lived experience, it is my lived experience and the experience of every man in this gynocentric culture. I do not deny that. However even a casual observation of society shows Briffault’s law to be false. Women do not control all the conditions of society. It ain’t that simple. The fact men are conditioned from birth to assign their worth to what they do and think of themselves as expendable, does not then make them an expendable human doing any more than conditioning a human being to act like a dog makes them a dog. All it proves is that you can control how people perceive themselves by using social approval and operant conditioning. It just highlights how powerful the effects of social and psychological manipulation can be, especially when done from a young age on the target group (men and boys in this case). People are social learners and we are a social species and are susceptible to manipulation (especially when that is all we are exposed to from birth).

Men need to recognise the extent to which the lies they have been told about themselves influence their perception of themselves and of reality. Female omnipotence and male expendability are illusions our gynocentric culture uses to control men. Whilst the Myth of Male Power¹⁸ was an excellent book, an equally important book is The Manipulated Man¹⁹ by Esther Vilar. How do you convince the physically stronger sex to subordinate themselves to the physically weaker sex? Manipulation. That is the nature of the mechanism of control over men at work. How do institutions and governments exploit men whilst simultaneously relying on men to operate the system of their own exploitation? Manipulation.

Source: This excerpt taken from the longer article Gynocentrism, Sex Differences and the Manipulation of Men (Part One)

Please read part two of this article before continuing.

By Peter Ryan

An Examination And Case Study Of The Gynocentric Bias In Reporting Sex Differences:

To illustrate the gynocentric bias in scientific research and the impact it has on society, I would like to go through a case study of what I am talking about in detail. There is now a plethora of research and data showing an adult male advantage in general intelligence (men have a higher average IQ of roughly 3-5 IQ points). Despite this reality, this large body of research and its findings are ignored and kept from the public by academic gatekeepers. Don’t believe me? Watch this presentation²⁶. The truth is inconvenient and runs against the gynocentric narrative, so the research is ignored. That is the gynocentric filter operating in science. Males are not “allowed” to have any ability of value to a greater degree than women and reporting such a thing is sexist blasphemy. Of course there is no problem in reporting strengths women have relative to men though. That gets you published, earns you a plum academic position and appearances on television.

In addition to the cited presentation, people can read through this journal publication³² for even more information on the male advantage in general intelligence. The publication contains multiple journal articles that cover the positions of multiple intelligence researchers on the male advantage in general intelligence (experts from the field were invited to publish their papers for the publication to address the subject in question). Richard Lynn points out importantly in his presentation I cited earlier, that despite the plethora of research now available showing a male advantage in intelligence, academia continues to present a narrative to the public and in textbooks that there is no sex difference.

As Lynn explains in his presentation, the 3-5 IQ point male advantage in general intelligence, can have big effects on the representation of men and women at the upper ranges of IQ. Small differences in the average intelligence of the sexes, can have large effects at the tails of the distributions of intelligence. There are roughly 5 men for every woman with an IQ over 130 and 10 men for every woman with an IQ over 145, when there is a male advantage in intelligence of 3.9 IQ points. This is exactly the pattern observed in the population at the upper ranges of IQ and why there are so many more male geniuses than female geniuses in society. Lynn went on further to explain that the difference in intelligence between the sexes, can thus help explain the difference in representation between the sexes in the higher level occupations of society that require a high IQ. He also suggested this may help explain the gender disparity in representation in the sciences as well.

This male advantage in general intelligence has now been reported many times in numerous papers, by multiple researchers in multiple countries independently of each other and using a variety of different intelligence tests and measures of IQ. When the same IQ advantage in favour of males is consistently observed numerous times by multiple researchers and using different tests and measures of IQ, it cannot simply be ignored and considered an aberration. Here are two papers from different researchers both reporting a male intelligence advantage in g (or general mental ability) in the United States- linked here³³ and here³⁴. The studies show a male IQ advantage in g and also in full scale IQ. There are many other research papers from other countries (and also more from the US) reporting the same male IQ advantage. Some of these papers are cited in the journal publication linked earlier if people wish to read through further studies.

Some scientists in the journal publication I cited earlier did not entirely agree men had a greater general intelligence than women in their articles, such as- Roberto Colom and James Flynn. Other researchers agreed that a male advantage in general intelligence exists and have reported this observation in their own research and also in their papers published in the journal publication concerned (although to caution a scientific consensus does not make something factually correct, just highly probable). Richard Lynn responded and addressed both Roberto Colom’s and James Flynn’s criticisms at the end of the journal publication I cited.

Since then Roberto Colom along with his other colleagues, has actually recently published research³⁵ finding a male advantage in general intelligence as measured by g of 5 IQ points. As for James Flynn, even he says his research³⁶ does not show a female advantage for “cognitive factors”, despite the media distorting his research to promote the women are superior narrative. Richard Lynn in his response to Flynn, provided a number of research studies showing a male advantage in IQ in modern developed countries and from recent observations of current populations. The two papers I cited earlier from the US were published in 2012 and 2016 and Roberto Colom’s study from Spain was published in 2019. All three studies show a male IQ advantage in modern developed nations and from recent observations of current populations. The results of all 3 studies were statistically significant and had good sample sizes. There are many other recently published studies from modern developed nations showing the same male advantage in current populations. The male advantage in general intelligence is not a blip, it is not an aberration, it has not disappeared and it is not disappearing. It continues to be reported independently by multiple researchers (including previous researchers now, that were initially sceptical) and remains consistent.

As Richard Lynn has pointed out, men do have larger brains than women (the difference is not huge, but it is substantive and significant) and this can explain at least some of the male advantage in IQ. The brain size difference between the sexes and the known correlation between brain size and IQ, does actually predict the size of the 3-5 IQ point male advantage in intelligence that is observed. Claims that brain size is correlated with intelligence are not incorrect. What is incorrect to assert, is that brain size alone determines intelligence. The two positions are not one and the same and yet that does not stop disingenuous people from conflating the two positions. Controlling for other factors, people with larger brains do have a higher general intelligence. Comparing human brains to larger brains in other species like whales and then asserting there is no link between brain size and intelligence, is nonsensical when the species that are compared have a vastly different brain structure. The sexes do have different brains, but they are not as different as a human brain and a whale brain in terms of structure. It is worth stating now, that none these realities make women inferior to men. Intelligence it is not the sole metric of human worth or ability.

The male advantage in general intelligence is consistently found across racial³⁷ and other demographic criteria³⁸ and also across multiple countries, continents and both developed (OECD) and non-developed economies. As I mentioned, the male advantage in general intelligence is not based on one isolated academic paper, but a plethora of research. The denial of the data and research showing the higher intelligence of males by academic gatekeepers, is the same gynocentric pattern we see with the denial of the data and research on domestic violence by feminists and our institutions. In both cases such research is generally condemned as being pseudoscience, when in fact it is actually academia itself practicing pseudoscience by wilfully denying facts that do not conform to a particular ideological point of view.

It is one thing for one researcher to report these realities and quite another reality for multiple researchers in multiple countries to independently report the same findings. Are they all pseudoscientists involved in a grand patriarchal conspiracy to put women down, or are we really dealing with a gynocentric institutional bias against inconvenient facts? What is more likely in this day and age, where even saying there are two biological sexes in academia can now get you fired? Civilisation unfortunately has a history of condemning people (and sometimes executing them) that challenge long-held and pre-existing views, especially during hysterical social periods and environments- like university campuses in the West in the present day. Many universities now resemble institutions of higher indoctrination³⁹ rather than institutions of higher learning. Condemnation of certain researchers and academic witch-hunts does not make the researchers wrong, no matter how hard ideologues attack them.

I will grant that this research is uncomfortable to accept, however it is worth noting the large overlap between the sexes in the general intelligence IQ distribution (some women are more intelligent than some men and some men are more intelligent than some women) and that each sex has their own unique contribution to human intellectual and creative capital. Intelligence is not the only contributor to human intellect and creativity. Cognitive biases can make smart people think and behave stupidity and life experience, personality and acquired knowledge also impacts human intellect and creativity. So I am by no means suggesting everything women have to say and do is somehow less valuable than what men contribute.

Women do have cognitive strengths of their own in certain aspects of emotional intelligence, social cognition, memory and in certain aspects of verbal ability and perceptual speed (The speed that someone can complete relatively simple perceptual tasks, like matching words to pictures. In some tests of perceptual speed that are more verbally oriented women do better and in other tests of perceptual speed that are more spatially oriented men do better.). As with male advantages, there is also considerable overlap between men and women where female advantages exist.

The reason I am writing about this specific subject, is because of the glee that the feminist media reports women and girls outperforming men and boys in education and the ease with which they will automatically assert women and girls are smarter than men and boys. This regular pattern by our media of promoting female superiority, has been going on for decades now and is distorting the societal perception of men and women in a highly destructive manner for both sexes. The women are wonderful effect⁴⁰ is a real phenomenon and does impact how sex difference research is presented to the public in the media and within academia itself, as Christina Hoff Sommers exposed in her video⁴¹. Reporting a female advantage in a given area earns you praise from the establishment and from society. Reporting a male advantage makes someone a misogynist, especially if it comes from a man and it is about cognitive advantages men have over women. I respect the opposite sex enough not to come to the conclusion that men are superior to women, when looking at sex differences. Unfortunately it appears the same cannot be said in reverse in this gynocentric culture.

We live in a world that keeps telling men and boys they are stupid, simply because they do not perform as well as women and girls in an education system designed to prioritise female learning at the expense of male learning. Claims men and boys are stupid and slogans like “the future is female”⁴², lie in stark contrast to the reality that men run society and have discovered, built and invented the vast majority of the science and technology society runs on. There is a gynocentric disconnect with reality that badly needs correction. One has to really wonder why a supposedly “superior” and “smarter” female sex, would need an education system that prioritises their needs over men and boys and affirmative action and preferential hiring policies to promote women over men, just to reach parity with males. Even with the massive assistance and preferential treatment given to women and girls in education and in the workplace, the supposedly “superior” female sex still can’t overtake men in patents for inventions, Nobel prizes and representation at corporate board level, in politics and scientific research etc and the list goes on.

One has to really wonder how much of these claims of supposed female intellectual superiority because “grades”, actually have any substance to them. So let me make a few remarks to set the record straight about sex differences in cognition. Grades are not solely determined by intellectual ability, especially when the education system is stacked against boys. Effort and motivation effects grades and many boys are not motivated to put in the effort to academically achieve, in an education system that sees them as toxic and defective.

Even when boys perform as well as girls on standardised tests, boys are graded lower than girls in their actual schoolwork. This grade discrimination against boys has been reported in multiple studies and has been shown to impact boys future education. See this study⁴³ and this study⁴⁴ for discussion. There are many other studies reporting the same pattern of grading bias against boys. A common theme from the research, seems to be that boy’s grades are penalised as a result of boys not being as engaged and behaviourally compliant as girls in class. Boys are not receiving lower grades because of lower academic performance. They are receiving lower grades because the teachers have a grading bias against boys due to their lower engagement in class and less compliant behaviour.

Why would boys not be as engaged or as behaviourally compliant as girls in a feminised school environment where their learning needs and interests are neglected and girls are held up as the gold standard? It is such a mystery! Now we drug boys in school, because they cannot sit still in a school environment that tells them they are defective. I would not be able to sit still either and would want out of the gynocentric asylum! Boys and men are marginalised from kindergarten to postgraduate education. Despite the reality women and girls have surpassed men and boys in education for decades now, all of the affirmative action, policies and programs, are still overwhelmingly focused on women and girls in education. Our education system is obsessed with closing the gender gap in STEM. In contrast our education system has no interest in addressing the general academic achievement gap between girls and boys, or the massive gender gap in reading and the low male participation in the humanities, medicine and in the teaching profession itself etc.

Women and girls are surpassing men and boys at every level of education, but the stop the presses! We must focus all of our attention in education on increasing female STEM participation. That is gynocentric madness. At the same time this is occurring, men and boys are forced to sit through classes at school and at university, where they are told how not to be rapists and domestic violence abusers. Young men and boys are lectured to in class about toxic masculinity and the false historical narrative of male privilege and female oppression.

We wonder why men and boys are disengaging from education when they attend class and the subject of discussion is bringing about a matriarchy and castrating men and boys. This has actually happened⁴⁵ by the way. My full respect for the students that objected to this lunacy in class in the linked video. Just imagine the uproar from feminists and our society for a moment, if male teachers asked students to discuss bringing about an oppressive patriarchy in the West and the class began discussing mutilating female genitals as a means to control women and girls. Imagine for the moment the impact such an environment would have on the attitudes of female students toward the education system. Would they be engaged? Would they be compliant and behave well in class? Would they be motivated to put in the effort at school?

This is the environment men and boys are learning in, so reflect on that when you consider boys and their lower academic performance relative to girls. Whilst boys are bored, disengaged and unmotivated from having their learning needs and interests neglected by our feminised education system, they are being told how toxic and inferior men and boys⁴⁶ are in class. I would encourage people to read through the link I just cited and the account of the boy that experienced this misandric school environment first-hand and the impact that had on his academic performance. I will quote a passage of his account from the linked article:

“We were taught, at such a young age, all of the atrocities western men had committed against everyone else. We were literally, I’m not exaggerating here, taught to be ashamed of ourselves and of our gender culture. Girls were taught how great the suffragettes were and that without them they’d still be under the tyranny of evil men.

 I remember a particular class about this in history. The female teachers and female students were all laughing at the stupidity of boys and men. I remember the female teacher pointing out “all the men had to fight wars, while women didn’t, but it was always men that started the wars,” while the girls all laughed. I remember looking around at all the boys in my class just sitting there, quietly, blank stares on their faces, saying nothing. Then it hit me like a silver bullet. I was doing the same as them: nothing.

 However, after having years of political correctness and self-shame pumped into me by this so called education system, I had no knowledge of how to even discredit them. Everything they said seemed true. If it wasn’t for my father teaching me about the great men of our past at a young age, I actually think I’d be another sad fool indoctrinated into feminist ideology.”⁴⁶

There are two parts in that passage that have stuck with me for years. The first part- “We were taught, at such a young age”. Do people have any idea the long-term damage that does to men’s perception of themselves, to be given the message from the school system as a child that they are inferior, whilst their female peers laugh at them. I am going to call this for what it is- This is child abuse and this is brainwashing and feminism and gynocentrism in our education system are behind all of it. Then we wonder why boys are falling behind girls in education and we do absolutely nothing to address it. Instead we talk about how women and girls are “smarter” and how girls “mature earlier”. Anything to use sex differences to rationalise away the problem and justify neglecting boys. That right there, is the gynocentric use of sex differences by feminists and our gynocentric institutions and culture.

The second part of the passage that stayed with me is this- “If it wasn’t for my father teaching me about the great men of our past at a young age, I actually think I’d be another sad fool indoctrinated into feminist ideology”. This is why I make no apologies for spending a good chunk of this article and a good chunk of my series on gynocentrism, setting the record straight on male value and male strengths. Men and boys deserve it and men and boys need it. Notice how he mentioned the importance of his father in that statement. That is why feminism is at war with fathers. That is why feminism does not want adult men around children. They want to indoctrinate our children and psychologically castrate boys.

How many boys are now deprived of fathers? How many boys without a father are struggling in education? Reflect on the statistics in light of the young man’s account. Men and boys have been brainwashed to think they are inferior and expendable, when in reality this society would not last a day without them. As Tom Golden pointed out in a video⁴⁷, this is the same type of brainwashing the Communist Chinese used. Men and boys are telling us in their own words the effect this environment is having on them and on their male peers. That is why the video by Andy Man, “Who taught you to hate yourself”⁴⁸ is my favourite video. Watch the video and share it with your sons and other men. It is beautiful and I don’t say that lightly. Time for society to take a shot of wake the fuck up and swallow some red pills.

We know that when general intelligence is actually directly measured, it is men that have the advantage. The male advantage in general intelligence is consistently observed after the age of 16 and some male advantage is frequently seen at earlier ages of adolescence. During childhood a male advantage in IQ can also be observed sometimes. In the other cases, no sex difference in intelligence is observed in childhood favouring boys or girls. These observations are consistent with Richard Lynn’s developmental theory of sex differences in intelligence.

Even Roberto Colom who was initially somewhat critical of Richard Lynn’s position, has reported in his subsequent research³⁵ support for Lynn’s developmental theory. This was in addition to Roberto finding a male advantage in general intelligence of 5 IQ points in his study. There are numerous other studies supporting the developmental theory, in addition to Lynn’s own research and Colom’s study. The reason for this observed pattern in sex differences in IQ, is because of the slower maturity of boys. Boys brains are still developing, just like their muscles, while their female counterparts are finishing puberty. Like sex differences in physical strength, boys have to fully mature first before sex differences in intelligence emerge.

The notion that boys maturing more slowly makes them intellectually inferior to girls is nonsense. Even with the slightly slower rate of maturity of boys (boys are about 1-2 years behind girls of the same age prior to 16), boys are observed to either have the same IQ as their female counterparts of the same age, or have a higher IQ. As boys and girls mature, the male IQ advantage emerges and grows as the sexes approach adulthood. If we are going to argue earlier maturity makes girls “better” than boys, then perhaps we should start saying dogs, cats and monkeys are “better” than humans because they mature earlier. Higher intelligence in adulthood, is associated with a slower rate of development and later maturity. It takes more time to develop extra muscle and extra intelligence, just as it takes more time to build a skyscraper in comparison to a small office building.

In addition to the male advantage in general intelligence, men have other cognitive, psychological and physical strengths over women. Men have greater spatial ability, mathematical reasoning (Whilst there is no sex difference in basic arithmetic, there is a sex difference in the higher-level ability of mathematical reasoning. Despite what some media outlets report, males are better at maths.), mechanical reasoning, pattern recognition and systems thinking capacity than women. Men also score higher than women on psychometric tests assessing general knowledge comprehension and have faster reaction times than women. There are more male cognitive advantages I could cite, but that is the general outline.

In terms of other male psychological and physical advantages, men have a greater willingness to take risks, score higher on emotional stability (a personality trait) and demonstrate a greater ability to perform under both physical and psychological stress. Men make up the bulk of our geniuses, those with high IQ’s and inventors etc. Men do have greater physical strength and general fitness than women and even now such an obvious reality is becoming controversial to assert. Again I could go through a much bigger list of advantages men possess relative to women, but the point I am trying to make is that men do have strengths women lack and not just in the physical domain.

Why does any of this even need to be stated? For the last 50 years it has become socially taboo to acknowledge any strength men have relative to women. In the same period of time, it has become not only socially acceptable, but encouraged to promote a narrative women are superior to men. This social, cultural and institutional milieu of female superiority, feminism and gynocentrism, is all some generations of men and women have known for their entire lives and this needs to be corrected. A society that regards men as toxic, defective, expendable and inferior, does not have long before it collapses in on itself.

Men and boys are not stupid and women and girls are not smarter. The lower academic performance of men and boys in primary education through to tertiary education, is not the result of men and boys being less intelligent than women and girls. It is worth noting though, that even if there was a supposed sex difference in intelligence favouring girls, it would still be far too small to explain the large gulf in academic performance between the sexes and the chasm in university enrollment between men and women. Men and boys and their needs and interests are marginalised in the education system and that is a fact. I would invite people to watch this lecture⁴⁹ from education professional Dr. James Brown, on the bias against men and boys in education and to read Dr. Warren Farrell’s book on The Boy Crisis⁵⁰. There is a systemic gynocentric and feminist driven bias against men and boys in our education system and there has been for decades. You cannot expect men and boys to perform well in a system that views them as a problem and as inferior.

Sex Differences Are Not An Argument To Support Female Or Male Superiority:

I could keep going tit for tat citing a male advantage to every claim a female supremacist would make about women being superior to men. However ultimately claims of female or male supremacy rest on solely focusing on the strengths of one sex and the weaknesses of the other sex. It is tunnel vision. There is never serious consideration of the weaknesses of the supposedly superior sex (like ignoring the greater susceptibility of women to autoimmune disease) and the strengths of the supposedly inferior sex.  It is delusional to ignore half of reality and claim women are superior to men (just as it is to claim men are superior to women and ignore female advantages).

Some of the sex differences undoubtedly have at least some environmental component to them, but there is a biological component to sex differences and that includes sex differences in cognition. The biological advantages that each sex may have relative to the other, does not make one sex “superior” to the other in a general sense. Making such a general remark about the sexes is vague and nebulous and has no real practical application beyond justifying bigotry and it actually causes a great deal of harm. Claims of male superiority or female superiority are subjective value judgments for bigots and not objective fact. A person can acknowledge sex differences without claiming one sex is superior to the other sex. By presenting this information I am not suggesting men are superior to women and I am certainly not suggesting we should discriminate against women in favour of men based on these sex differences. In contrast, those promoting female superiority do not share this view and rely on sex differences to justify discrimination against men.

It is important that we understand that the sex differences that do exist, are the result of a coevolutionary path that men and women have taken together. These male and female advantages have developed in an evolutionary context in which both sexes lived and worked together to perpetuate society and the genome. The sex differences are meant to complement one another. Some people find that wishy washy, but the reality is the long developmental period of our offspring, combined with our large brains and social behaviour, required the sexes to interact with each other beyond just simple copulation. Yes some degree of inter-sexual conflict can and does occur (no biological system is completely perfect), but that does not mean the sexes have not cooperated with each other and worked together at all (no biological system that has lasted is completely flawed either). If it were not for men and women working together, human society would have died out thousands of years ago or we would still be in trees.

How The Manosphere Has Bought Into Gynocentric Lies About Male Biological Expendability And Greater Female Biological Value:

Gynocentrism distorts the presentation of sex difference research to the public and even within academia itself. There is very little scrutiny of any research claiming a female advantage in some area (no matter how small the sample size is or how poor the methodology used). In contrast there are massive efforts put into scrutinising and silencing any research reporting a male advantage in any area of value. There are bold and highly questionable claims made by some scientists (not all), about women being more biologically valuable than men and men more expendable and these claims are never properly scrutinised. There is junk science like Briffault’s law and pseudoscientific claims humans are naturally matriarchal and if only we could be more like Bonobos and women ran the world we would all live in peace. People will believe such nonsense if they hear it from a scientist, because they think what they are hearing has a factual basis to it. The problem is that so many people do not bother to check what is being said and many do not even know how to scrutinise the scientific literature. This allows gynocentric ideas to be promoted as legitimate science, when they are anything but.

What happens when science becomes so corrupted by gynocentrism, that facts are omitted and distorted to craft a narrative men are biologically expendable and women are more valuable? People believe it. Even many people in the manosphere and men believe it. So this belief then becomes held as some unquestioned biological axiom and never scrutinised, even by the manosphere. People do not notice what has been left out of what they were told. People do not realise the facts that were not considered in arriving at such a conclusion. People do not realise that the manipulation of such information to control the societal perception of men and women, controls the behaviour of men and women toward each other and toward members of the same sex.

It is in the interests of our gynocentric institutions to promote a narrative that men are biologically expendable and women are more biologically valuable. All that is required for this manipulation to work, is for people not to question what they presented with and not critically examine the research or arguments presented. Corrupted science is in many ways the perfect vehicle to spread such a deeply flawed and bigoted idea and have it widely accepted in society as some biological law of nature.

The manosphere has fallen into the trap of thinking that blindly embracing sex difference research without scrutiny, is somehow more reflective of reality because of their perception feminists assert and emphasise environment influence (which is to a degree correct, but not entirely the case). They have been blind to the gynocentrism lurking within science itself. As a result, certain gynocentric ideas have propagated in the manosphere without any resistance or critical examination. These include junk concepts like- Briffault’s law, men being biologically disposable and women having the greater biological value and the persistence of a community all coming down to the female rate limiting factor of reproduction and rare eggs etc. There is a big difference between acknowledging society exploits men and treats them as disposable and believing men are actually biologically disposable. There is a big difference between recognising that women influence society and relationships and believing women control all the conditions of society. There is a big difference between recognising the importance of reproduction to a community and believing that is the ultimate factor in determining the preservation of a community. None of these important distinctions have been discussed in the manosphere and that needs to change.

People in the manosphere need to question sex difference research and ridiculous claims that men are biologically expendable and women are more valuable because uterus and rare eggs/plentiful sperm etc, like they do the feminist wage gap and the feminist revision of the historical record etc. It is in the interests of the gynocentric gatekeepers in the sciences, to promote a narrative that men are expendable and women are valuable and that women are superior and men are inferior. I cannot repeat that enough because of the extent to which corrupted science has been used to brainwash people.

Unfortunately significant portions of the manosphere have fallen for this kind of manipulation of science, by only being presented with half the facts when it comes to asserting false claims of male expendability and greater female value etc. People have accepted the lie that men are expendable and biologically less than, without recognising that the science they are reading from is impacted from the very same gynocentric bias that permeates the rest of society. The influence of gynocentrism and feminism in framing how science on the sexes and biological sex differences is presented to the public, is not a new phenomenon. This extends back decades and has distorted our general understanding of sex differences to at least some degree.

Consider the science you are told about regarding the sexes with caution and critique all of it like you would a feminist study. There is a gynocentric agenda controlling what gets reported and presented regarding sex differences and the sexes in general and what does not. Is all of science corrupted? Of course not. Not all of history and humanities is corrupted either, but feminism has corrupted a significant chunk of the disciplines and science is no exception.

Conclusion:

As with all forms of manipulation, it is on closer inspection that manipulation is revealed. When people give simple overviews of obviously complex multifactorial phenomenon (like feminists explaining the gender wage gap as due solely to discrimination, or people arguing gynocentrism occurs because men are biologically expendable due to women being the rate limiting factor of reproduction), that should be a major red flag for people that the picture presented is most likely incomplete and wrong.

A new paradigm in explaining gynocentrism is required. The work of Peter Wright and Paul Elam in Chasing The Dragon⁵¹ and Slaying The Dragon⁵², was a big step in the right direction. However far more needs to be done. Later in this series, I will present a multifactorial model on gynocentrism. Biology is involved, culture is involved and technology is involved. Gynocentrism is an emergent⁵³ phenomenon arising from the combined effects of multiple factors. We need to be mindful that gynocentric programming can get in the way of properly understanding the problem we are dealing with. Like Neo who realises he is in the Matrix and has taken the red pill but still thinks he is breathing air when he fights Morpheus and must still deprogram, men still need to collectively realise that the gynocentric lie of supposed biological male expendability is not real. It is all part of the same gynocentric illusion to exploit men and keep men ignorant of their own intrinsic value and resigned to their own marginalisation.

The tunnel vision explanation that gynocentrism is all about the uterus and reproduction, is itself a product of gynocentrism warping the mind. It is a narrative to control and exploit men. Time to see the forest through the trees and let go of it.

 Time to fully deprogram from gynocentrism. Drop the false gynocentric fatalism of believing in male biological disposability and embrace your real intrinsic male value.

References:

26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSLoiFSpp0g

32. https://mankindquarterly.org/archive/issue/58-1
33. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886911002212
34. https://search.proquest.com/openview/db73c91bd057a53f3deb1a3cae4aacf0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=30967
35. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330058508_Testing_the_developmental_theory_of_sex_differences_in_intelligence_using_latent_modeling_Evidence_from_the_TEA_Ability_Battery_BAT-7

36. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/men-women-and-iq-setting-the-record-straight
37. http://helmuthnyborg.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Publ_2015_Sex-differences-across-diffferent-racial-ability-levels.pdf
38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AkgRj2KgA
39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jEQYHAFfjg
40. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_are_wonderful_effect
41. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhm_HZ9twMg
42. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/real-men-dont-write-blogs/201703/memo-our-sons-and-grandsons-the-future-is-female
43. http://ftp.iza.org/dp5973.pdf
44. https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.07-Terrier.pdf
45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgrFdtHWtQU
46. https://avoiceformen.com/boys/generation-z-boys-in-modern-britain/
47. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wSZVm7PXlM
48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64nFPc93idc
49. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LafoOGN-obQ
50. https://www.amazon.com.au/Boy-Crisis-Boys-Struggling-About/dp/1942952716
51. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VygKQV-hEpY
52. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5WLNMX4COA
53. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Please read part one of this article first.

By Peter Ryan

How Sex Differences Are Used To Propagate A False Narrative That Men Are Inferior And Expendable:

The manipulation of men does rely on framing sex differences to support a narrative men are inferior to women and that men are biologically expendable. There is a misplaced belief in the manosphere that feminism takes the position that the sexes are the same and that any sex differences that exist are due to socialisation. This is wrong. Feminists are quite happy to emphasise sex differences if it is to women’s social advantage, or helps support a narrative in female superiority. The manosphere needs to carefully evaluate claims of innate sex differences and not just assume there is no gynocentric agenda behind those in the media and academia that promote such claims. The feminist infestation in our academic institutions and mainstream media is extensive these days.

Feminists are quite happy to point out the greater physical aggression of men and erroneously associate it all back to testosterone and argue male violence is innate. This is despite the abundant research showing that aggression in men does not originate from testosterone and that testosterone can actually result in selfless acts. Please watch this short but informative video²⁰ from accomplished behavioural scientist Prof. Sapolsky and this documentary²¹, on what the research actually shows on the effects of testosterone. Testosterone does not make men violent brutes.

Testosterone acts as a behavioural amplifier and drives men to seek status. The male sex hormone does not actually cause aggression and violence. Testosterone amplifies aggression and violent tendencies that have already been previously triggered by other processes in the brain by the environment under certain contexts. Even then this amplification depends on prior social learning and also the interplay with other hormones and biochemical processes. In contrast testosterone can also promote selfless acts. In reality testosterone amplifies both good and bad aspects of human behaviour to drive men to acquire status. At one extreme you have men like Jesus Christ and at the other extreme you have Adolf Hitler. People cannot acknowledge the worst in men and ignore the good and then claim they are accurately representing men (as feminists do).  Testosterone is not toxic and neither are men. Men are human beings and like women they can be good, bad and everything in between.

A society that treats men as disposable utilities and with no compassion and ignores boys that are physically and sexually abused (including by adult women that abuse boys), will produce male violence and violent men. This will direct testosterone to amplify negative behaviours, rather than positive behaviours. How we treat men and boys and their well-being, has far more to do with male aggression and violence than testosterone. A major contradiction society has with male violence that feminists fail to acknowledge, is that we are actually quite happy for men to be violent as long as it serves societies needs and protects women. We have forced men through conscription to fight each other in wars and then feminists blame men for being violent in wars men were forced to participate in. This is despite the fact millions of men had no choice in the matter.

I also note feminists are silent on the indirect violence women initiate by getting men to be violent for them (like women hiring hitmen to murder their husband’s, which actually happens more often than people think) and the psychological and social violence of women (women and girls often bully each other this way and it can drive other girls to suicide). The misuse of the legal system as a weapon in divorce and family court to marginalise countless fathers and alienate children from their dads, is also a frequent form of female violence in society that is not identified as the violence that it is.

Feminists are also silent on the physical violence of women in intimate partner relationships. This is despite clear research findings²² that female violence is actually a substantial fraction of domestic violence and that women are actually the majority of perpetrators when only one partner is violent in the relationship. This feminist pattern of selectivity with facts, is not limited to violence and aggression. Feminists are quite happy to embrace biological sex differences when transgenderism threatens the exclusivity of female privileges and ignore these same biological sex differences when they are inconvenient. Bigots are selective in the facts they acknowledge and the manosphere needs to recognise that feminism is absolutely okay with emphasising sex differences to pedestalise women.

People need to recognise that for the last fifty years and particularly the last thirty years, feminism has been able to heavily influence our media, academia and educational institutions with little resistance and shape the public perception of how we see men and women. Feminism has not been arguing men and women are the same. Feminists have been arguing women are superior to men. The culture has been saturated with the following messages for decades: Mothers are brilliant and dads are bumbling fools. Women are peaceful and men are violent. Men are inherent rapists and domestic  violence abusers and women are their victims. Adult men are potential pedophiles that cannot be left around children, adult women are always safe around kids. The examples go on like this. Feminism has relentlessly pushed the message that women are better than men and contributed to these bigoted beliefs forming. It is only in areas where it is to the benefit of women to support sameness, that feminists argue the sexes are identical.

Many boys have now been raised with no father and educated in a gynocentric school system and exposed to a gynocentric culture, in which they are told men are obsolete, the future is female and boys are stupid. That is going to impact how boys see themselves and other men in relation to women and not for the better. We can see the impact of this mass brainwashing on society just by asking people on the street like this man did²³. Society has been manipulated to perceive women as being above men and that does influence how society treats men relative to women and how men treat themselves in relation to women (especially the younger generations of men, that have known nothing but a consistent cultural message that they are inferior because they are male).

How Gynocentrism Distorts Our Understanding Of The Science Of Sex Differences:

People think that feminism and gynocentrism in academia have not impacted the sciences- They have. Human sex difference biology, psychology and evolution is presented to society through a gynocentric lens. Yet the reality that a gynocentric bias operates in science like it does in the rest of society, does not appear to have been acknowledged by some people in the manosphere quoting questionable research, concepts (like Briffault’s law), books and news articles presenting science on sex differences.

Gynocentrism in the coverage of sex difference science exists. That is why you get books from scientists preaching female superiority such as, The Natural Superiority Of Women²⁴ and Women After All²⁵. It is why you get the willful denial of inconvenient research in academia on sex differences in intelligence²⁶, greater male variability and male genius²⁷ and on single motherhood and the importance of fatherhood²⁸, that does not go with the gynocentric narrative. Stating facts that do not support the view women are superior to men, does not then make someone a male supremacist that supports male superiority. However that is exactly how such researchers are framed in supposedly objective academic circles, when they bring up facts that run against gynocentrism. These same academic thought police, don’t seem too fussed about half-baked arguments women are superior to men though.

So rest assured the gynocentric bias in wider society, is also present in the sciences concerning research on sex differences. Men are persuaded by facts and logic and so gynocentric academics crafting a narrative of male inferiority and supposed male biological expendability, by using cherry picked science and omitting inconvenient facts without acknowledgement²⁹, is a great way to control the male mind and maintain the narrative women are superior to men in the wider culture. As I have written about, our institutions have a vested interest in keeping men down and thriving off their exploitation. Manipulating sex difference research to promote a message in academia and the media that men are genetically defective, inferior and biologically expendable, is a means to persuade people that gynocentric bigotry has some justification and rational basis to it.

It is all about framing facts to paint a desired picture and omitting facts that are inconvenient. Just as in the performance of a magic trick, or the mainstream media editing interview footage to suit an agenda, the manipulation of scientific information to persuade people to accept a narrative in female superiority, requires proper framing so that people do not notice what is not written about and what is left out. This is especially effective if your audience is interested in science and yet does not have much formal knowledge of science and cannot critically evaluate the positions presented or notice what is omitted and ignored (which is a great deal for those making sophist and pseudoscientific arguments to support a narrative of female superiority).

Is the entire scientific community like this? No. However there is a significant gynocentric influence within the scientific community in maintaining the gynocentric narrative that women are valuable and superior and men are expendable and inferior. Some of it is unintentional and just a result of years of gynocentric programming that everyone including scientists have been shaped by. When you are taught to perceive and interpret things a certain way from birth and your gynocentric colleagues validate preconceived assumptions about men and women, that will affect how you conduct research and how you draw conclusions. Such a gynocentric bias applies even for scientists supposedly pursuing objective truth.

Certain cohorts of the scientific community do police how science is presented to the public and make sure it is kept within the gynocentric Overton window of approved discourse. Just look at the example on greater male variability and male genius I cited earlier in this article. Janice Fiamengo has also discussed in a recent video³⁰ , the alarming feminist gatekeeping and thought policing going on in the hard sciences at major universities. I would highly encourage people to watch Janice’s video, it will shock you. The reality is there is feminist authoritarian oversight present in the sciences at universities. The feminist control of academia and academic research, is not just confined to the humanities. I can cite multiple examples of researchers being silenced for going outside the gynocentric Overton window and the authoritarian feminist control of science. These are not isolated incidents, it is a pervasive problem.

There is some level of institutional gynocentric bias in scientific research and there are academics that harbour and espouse such views as maleness being a birth defect³¹. Just imagine for the moment if an academic dared to suggest being female was a birth defect, or that females were the simpler less enhanced sex. What do people think the reaction would be? Again the common thread with such claims of female superiority, is that those promoting it present only half the facts on sex differences that are convenient (and omit the other half of the facts that are inconvenient) to promoting their narrative.

In part 3 of this article I will examine a case study of gynocentric bias in scientific research, where I think the manosphere has gone wrong with discussing sex differences and what we can do to correct things. I will then present my final thoughts on this subject.

References:

1. 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4W3WSJ8F78
   21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Iq45Nbevk
   22. https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-statistics-at-a-glance/
   23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxpX6IQ3GY4
   24. https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Superiority-Women-5th/dp/076198982X
   25. https://www.amazon.com/Women-After-All-Evolution-Supremacy/dp/0393352315/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=women+after+all&qid=1579516088&s=books&sr=1-1
   26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSLoiFSpp0g
   27. https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/
   28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fD-XfL7wb4
   29. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-015-0029-1
   30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmgrsvoh_cw
   31. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/16/400075715/is-it-sexist-to-say-that-women-are-superior-to-men

This article is in three parts. This is part one.

By Peter Ryan

Moving Beyond A False Gynocentric Understanding Of Biology:

As I have discussed in previous articles, there is a widely held belief in our gynocentric culture and even in the manosphere, that women are more biologically valuable than men because they are the rate limiting factor of reproduction and men are supposedly expendable. I have explained in great detail why this is not the case in the following articles and have covered every common argument that is used to justify this false and factually incorrect claim:

• Gynocentrism and the golden uterus (part one)¹
• Gynocentrism and the golden uterus (part two)²
• Gynocentrism and the value of men (part one)³
• Gynocentrism and the value of men (part two)⁴
• The nature of male value and our gynocentric culture (part one)⁵
• The nature of male value and our gynocentric culture (part two)⁶

This claim is pervasive and is the foundation of the core belief in female superiority that drives gynocentrism in our culture. That is why I have written so much about it. Maintaining the lie that men are expendable and only women are valuable in the culture, is critical to maintaining gynocentrism. The claim of greater female biological value, is sometimes used to explain the origins of gynocentrism and even justify gynocentrism in society. Ironically this claim is actually a product of gynocentrism itself. In reality the two sexes have equal biological value, but biological value manifests itself differently in each sex. In women biological value is generally more focused on reproductive output and in men biological value is generally more focused on survival output. Of course there is considerable overlap (the sexes are more alike than different⁷) between the sexes and exceptions, but that is the general pattern.

There are some people that erroneously suggest that sexual selection is greater than natural selection and therefore reproduction is more important than survival. This is factually incorrect and can be debunked quite easily. If an organism does not survive long enough, it either does not reproduce or does not reproduce at a frequency that preserves its lineage, or its offspring die and the lineage dies with them. There is an equilibrium between sexual selection and natural selection. If the fitness benefits of sexual selection of a particular trait, are outweighed by the fitness costs of that trait arising from reduced survival, then natural selection will override sexual selection.

It is correct that certain traits can arise in a species that may enhance reproduction at the cost of reduced survival, but this can only develop to a certain degree (and the reverse can occur too where survival is enhanced at the cost of reproduction, in circumstances where the net fitness benefit of survival is greater). Positive feedback loops in sexual selection can occur, this is sometimes identified as Fisherian runaway selection⁸. However eventually such a process terminates when costs to survival become too high and natural selection pressure begins to exceed sexual selection pressure. In a species where this does not occur soon enough, a species will become extinct (like the Irish Elk). Over billions of years, evolution has eliminated species that reproduced at the expense of their own survival in an unsustainable manner. Sexual selection and reproduction are not biological absolutes that exist in a vacuum. Natural selection can override sexual selection and impacts on survival can be more important to evolutionary success than impacts on reproduction.

Each sex has its own optimal life history strategy to propagate the genome. There is overlap between the sexes, but there are also differences. One key difference between males and females, arises from the greater evolutionary success for males in taking on high risk and high effort challenges and hardships, that have a high return or benefit. A man that risks his life to earn social status or acquire resources, may win big and this may greatly increase his mating opportunities and the frequency with which he passes on his genes. Women thanks to their uteri, are limited to reproducing much more slowly and also incur a cost or risk to their primary reproductive function from taking on such risky hardships.

This basic sex difference, is just one of the reasons why men more so than women, are prepared to take on risks and challenges and engage in hardships. It is also one of the key reasons why men are less able to elicit support and protection from society and why women are more capable in doing so. Taking on risks and hardships requires self-reliance and independence from the support and protection from society. Developing traits that elicit support and protection from society, is at least to some degree (but not in an absolute sense) incompatible with male life history strategy. It is not a supposedly greater biological value of women that is behind society providing greater support and protection to women, it is a difference in the manner in which males and females optimise their evolutionary success that has in part led to this difference in societal concern.

We do have a predisposition⁹ to show greater concern for female well-being in certain contexts. That it is a reality and it has nothing to do with women being biologically more valuable than men. Eliciting support and protection from society is a strength that women possess in greater abundance than men, because it is more aligned with women’s life history strategy. A certain underlying biological bias toward supporting and protecting women over men does exist. It is important to remember though as I cited before, that whilst sex differences exist, the sexes are more similar than they are different. Both sexes for instance have evolved and display neotenous features. Our sexual dimorphism is intermediate and not huge like some other animals. So whilst an underlying bias to support and protect women over men may exist, it is not necessarily a huge chasm like sex differences in many other species. It is also important to recall as I mentioned in the normalisation of gynocentrism¹⁰, that human civilisation has arisen from a capacity to make intelligent decisions and control and where necessary inhibit our instinctual impulses. The biases and impulses that drive gynocentric behaviour can be controlled and overcome to a substantial degree.

We can overcome our biases as a society provided that:

1. We are aware of them.
2. We recognise the need to address them as beneficial and worthwhile to our society.
3. We introduce social and legal measures into our culture and society to keep them in check.
4. We recognise and counter efforts to undermine those social and legal measures (like addressing attacks on due process and freedom of speech).

Racism has a biological basis to it, as politically incorrect and as troubling as that sounds. Humans are tribalistic by nature and we have in-groups and out-groups. However we have made efforts to address racism in our culture, in our legal system and in our institutions. We are not slaves to innate biological sexism or racism, with no capacity to change our behaviour. We had slavery and legally and socially sanctioned discrimination in the West for hundreds of years based on racist bigotry and we overcame that. What change seems impossible in the present, actually is not so impossible. Slaves thought the same thing centuries ago and look where we are now.

In my previous article⁶, I mentioned that ironically in some ways feminism has actually demonstrated our capacity to override biology. Feminism has created large numbers of childless women, whose lineage will die with them. Where feminism has taken hold, many societies are pursuing a path that is in contravention to our biological imperative and the populations are failing to replace themselves and continue their lineages. Whilst culture is indeed informed by biology, it is not completely and absolutely restricted by it. Culture also can and does shape biology to some degree (read these articles here¹¹ and here¹²).

Part of the evolutionary advantage of culture, is to extend behaviour to a certain degree beyond the current evolved biological envelope and allow radical adaptation. Such radical adaptation is not possible if culture is completely unable to go beyond biological predispositions. This is why we can get things like feminism emerging in human society. It is why we can overcome our tribalistic tendencies and overcome racism. It is why we don’t have a society where it is a free-for-all and survival of the fittest. It why we are able invest in activities that are so abstract and distant from the biological activities directly related to genome propagation.

I am not suggesting that there is no biological basis to gynocentrism. What I am suggesting is that the biological basis to gynocentrism does exist and has nothing to do with women being more valuable than men and more to do with the positive and negative effects of our evolved sex differences that arose from each sex having a different strategy in passing on their genes. I am suggesting that whilst certain biases have a partial biological basis to them, like our bias toward female neoteny, we can still manage and overcome these biases. I am not suggesting we can completely eliminate gynocentrism, I am suggesting we can substantially reduce it. Just as we cannot completely eliminate racism, we can and have been able to substantially reduce it. Slavery is no longer a mainstream practice in the West as it was for centuries. Hanging people of a particular skin colour from a tree is not socially or legally acceptable either and racism is not socially or legally sanctioned in society. These are all massive leaps forward that we have taken and positive leaps. Pockets of racism exist, but racism is no longer normalised throughout mainstream society. We can do the same with gynocentrism.

The fatalistic thread of the manosphere, is not achieving anything except keeping men in a perpetual state of learned helplessness. Men are valuable and men do matter. As I mentioned at the start of this article, gynocentrism is based on the core belief women are superior to men. The belief in female superiority ultimately rests on the unquestioned axiom women are biologically valuable and men are biologically expendable, because women have a uterus and give birth and men do not. Propagating this lie is a part of normalising gynocentrism in our culture and is the foundational justification that is relied upon when gynocentric double standards are challenged.

Convincing men that they are expendable with this fictitious lie and using sophistry and twisted interpretations of biology to change men’s perception of themselves from a human being to a human doing, is a core means through which men are controlled in society. When men see themselves as expendable, then they willingly go along with their own exploitation. Even when they do not, men with this perception will not support any organised resistance to the exploitation and marginalisation of men because they perceive it as futile. The gynocentric programming has done its job in such cases- Men become paralysed in a mental prison of learned helplessness.

Briffault’s “Law”:

The notion that females determine all the conditions of the animal kingdom (or Briffault’s Law¹³), is part of this programming and demonstrably false. Women are not omnipotent. Rape gangs exist, female sex slaves exist, female genital mutilation occurs, the murder and abortion of female infants occurs, arranged marriage exists, millions of Jewish women were exterminated along with men in death camps and the genuine marginisalisation of women exists in parts of Africa and the Middle East (and no I am not talking about Iran). Even in highly traditional theocratic cultures like Iran, where both men and women are restricted, women cannot do as they please. Don’t believe me? Watch this documentary¹⁴ on women and divorce in Iran. Women do not call the shots in Iran and neither do men, the theocrats and the family do. Plus one for a restrictive culture and minus one for female omnipotence. Even in the West women do not always get their way. Trump got elected despite feminists and even the democrats don’t entirely follow female interests. These are not just exceptions to the rule, there are too many exceptions to count. These are chasms that cannot be explained with such an absolutist, monolithic and simplistic so-called “law”.

In dating and relationships we can see men that pump and dump women wanting marriage, or men that opt out of relationships entirely and go their own way. I have often heard women are the gatekeepers of sex, but men are far more selective when it comes to getting married and having a relationship than they are with sex. Women might only prefer the top twenty percent of men, but those same men have little incentive or desire to settle down with them. These men have an abundance of women that want them and many men in the top twenty percent can and do simply pump and dump them.

At the same time, whilst women are complaining about where all the good men went and men not earning enough and pretending like feminism has nothing to do with it, less and less men are interested in marriage and relationships. Men are becoming aware of the bias in divorce and family court and steering clear of marriage. They are also steering clear of certain women in the metoo# climate and domestic violence climate and refusing to be alone with female co-workers or mentor them. Then there is the wall, where women over 35 experience a sharp drop in their sexual mating value in contrast to the rising sexual mating value of their male counterparts. So no, women do not control every aspect of dating, relationships and how the sexes interact in the workplace. Ultimately women cannot force men to do anything and men do act at least to some degree on their own self-interest. There are too many exceptions to make the generalisation women control everything. They do not.

There is a big difference in suggesting women influence society and taking the absolutist position women control all the conditions of the animal kingdom and by extension society. Do women control every political and economic decision made by our governments? Did women cause Trump to launch an attack on an Iranian general? Did women tell the US government to bail out the banks? The reason modern evolutionary biology does not cite Briffault’s Law as a “law” or established theory, is because the facts and evidence do not support the absolutist position of female omnipotence it rests on. Evolutionary biology and psychology recognise female mate choice exists, but they also recognise male mate choice exists too and that other factors unrelated to female influence, also influence the conditions of society.

Gynocentrism And The Psychological Manipulation Of Men:

Like the Earth not being the centre of the solar system or universe and the Earth not being flat, modern 21^st century science recognises that it is a bit more complicated than women being at the centre of everything. Why does such an outdated and questionable concept like Briffault’s Law gain traction within sizeable communities of the manosphere? Men have been programmed from birth to see female approval as the mark of their worth. Mothers, sisters, female teachers, the wider culture and their female friends and partners, all inform men that their worth is tied to living up to whatever women’s preferred definition of what a man is. That’s why. It is another form of manipulation and control. In my previous article⁶ I wrote about precarious manhood and the social pressure on men to prove they are a “real man” and cited a video¹⁵ on the subject by Tom Golden. What was the “white feather”¹⁶ during World War One? What are messages like “The End Of Men”¹⁷ in the modern day? All methods to condition male identity around female approval and use precarious manhood to control men.

Naturally men have developed a perception from this programming, where they see women as the centre of the universe. This is the programming they have received their whole lives from every corner of society. That’s where this thinking comes from and the manosphere is not immune to sliding into this fatalistic line of thinking that women are the centre of everything. It is why junk concepts like Briffault’s Law still gain traction even in the manosphere. So when men like myself start writing about the fact that females do not control all the conditions of human society, some men in the manosphere perceive it as a denial of their lived experience and of their twisted and seriously flawed understanding of biological reality (which they almost never scrutinise).

It is your lived experience, it is my lived experience and the experience of every man in this gynocentric culture. I do not deny that. However even a casual observation of society shows Briffault’s law to be false. Women do not control all the conditions of society. It ain’t that simple. The fact men are conditioned from birth to assign their worth to what they do and think of themselves as expendable, does not then make them an expendable human doing any more than conditioning a human being to act like a dog makes them a dog. All it proves is that you can control how people perceive themselves by using social approval and operant conditioning. It just highlights how powerful the effects of social and psychological manipulation can be, especially when done from a young age on the target group (men and boys in this case). People are social learners and we are a social species and are susceptible to manipulation (especially when that is all we are exposed to from birth).

Men need to recognise the extent to which the lies they have been told about themselves influence their perception of themselves and of reality. Female omnipotence and male expendability are illusions our gynocentric culture uses to control men. Whilst the Myth of Male Power¹⁸ was an excellent book, an equally important book is The Manipulated Man¹⁹ by Esther Vilar. How do you convince the physically stronger sex to subordinate themselves to the physically weaker sex? Manipulation. That is the nature of the mechanism of control over men at work. How do institutions and governments exploit men whilst simultaneously relying on men to operate the system of their own exploitation? Manipulation.

Please continue on to part two of this article.

References:

1. https://gynocentrism.com/2019/04/29/gynocentrism-and-the-golden-uterus-part-one/
2. https://gynocentrism.com/2019/05/02/gynocentrism-and-the-golden-uterus-part-two/
3. https://gynocentrism.com/2019/08/19/gynocentrism-and-the-value-of-men-part-one/
4. https://gynocentrism.com/2019/08/19/gynocentrism-and-the-value-of-men-part-two/
5. https://gynocentrism.com/2020/01/10/the-nature-of-male-value-and-our-gynocentric-culture-part-one/
6. https://gynocentrism.com/2020/01/10/the-nature-of-male-value-and-our-gynocentric-culture-part-two/
7. https://gynocentrism.com/2018/03/03/jordan-peterson-on-psychological-differences-similarities-between-the-sexes/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway
9. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550616647448
10. https://gynocentrism.com/2018/06/30/the-normalisation-of-gynocentrism/
11. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140410-can-we-drive-our-own-evolution
12. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10456
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Briffault#Pseudo-Briffault’s_law
14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYaRb070r8E
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EF00RL88M
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather#World_War_I
17. https://www.amazon.com/End-Men-Rise-Women/dp/1594488045
18. https://www.amazon.com.au/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell/dp/0425181448
19. https://www.amazon.com.au/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178